#but it's odd because there *is* an overlap with that kind of fandom at large | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

catgirlxox · 3 years ago

Text

A Deconstruction of The Flame Keeper’s Circle & The Audience’s Common Complaints | Catgirl

As the title states, I’ve been reminded of a couple complaints made about this episode that stem from a large portion of the audience’s general disliking of the way both Ben and Julie were handled during the run of Ultimate Alien. In fact, I recently read a "review" of “The Flame Keeper's Circle,” or, more of a parody, actually, since a review would actually have some kind of substance to it and not just...a slew of insults thrown at a show you claim to like. It's almost like you're looking for something to be mad at, but anyway.

One of those was the OP actually asking someone to (probably joking, but anyway) explain "how Ben's mind works" to them.

And I was like, gladly!

According to the comments under the review, it seems like the general audience didn't really like this episode all that much when it first aired. Which, I bring up because, I on the other hand, actually did. And for a reason: because it proves my previous defence points right.

There's a lot of talk about Ben coming off as a “jerk” or a “douchebag”...but, in a situation such as the one presented within “The Flame Keeper’s Circle,” I would argue he did exactly what he should have done. So that's where I beg to differ.

This episode puts Ben in a position where he, once again, needs to deal with the overlap of a romantic relationship and his priorities as a superhero. The only reason there is conflict here is because they are both important to him.

A bad boyfriend would only care about himself, but Ben clearly cares about not only the safety of his (clearly, quite naive) girlfriend, but also the safety of the rest of the earth. Which, as I’m going to be stating several times, should be something expected of him considering everything else within the series that establishes who he is as a character.

So, on the topic of things that are important, ask yourselves, why would Ben prioritize going along with Julie's idea of joining a cult more than keeping her, and the rest of the world, safe when he realizes the trouble she could potentially be getting herself into?

Throughout the episode, and the fandom’s discussions from what I’ve seen, there is so much focus on "oh, he laughed at her idea so he's a douchebag and therefore a bad boyfriend" and not enough focus on the fact that he's not blindly following an alleged “good cause” because he isn't naive and that's in character based on everything we know about him as a character.

Context matters. And this kind of thing only further makes me question the people who want to cry "inconsistent" writing or characterization because he's acting the way he's been conditioned to.

Arguably from the age of ten, Ben's been dealing with situations where he needed to fight to survive and decide who to trust. Sometimes he trusted the wrong person, which wasn't done out of any other reason besides wanting to help and do the "right thing."

For example, Michael Morningstar in the episode “All That Glitters,” who fooled Ben and his team into thinking he was innocent all while abusing school girls for their life energy and almost killing Ben's cousin.

Or, Simian in “Birds of a Feather," who fooled Ben into thinking he was royalty and into helping him steal something that would aid the Highbreed in their mass murder plot.

In that way, Ben and Julie could have related in this situation because they were both trusting people in the interest of doing something “good.” Both Michael and Simian made Ben believe that they had something in common, or a common goal they could work together to reach. But, he trusted them blinded by his ambition and drive to save the world. Much like Julie is blinded by the promise of being a part of a group trying to make the world a better place.

As such, Ben has made the mistake before, so he's extra weary of how things could go very wrong. He's not against his girlfriend just to be a “jerk” - he's been through things like this before, and we’ve seen him go through those things.

Furthermore, the situation in which Julie is trusting The Flame Keeper’s Circle involves her indirectly agreeing to work with Vilgax. Who, as anyone familiar with Ben should know, is one of if not Ben’s biggest, and more importantly, most dangerous enemy.

Again, she, at the beginning didn’t know that he was involved, or what Ben had gone through already to make him act the way he does in this situation, but she does know what his job entails at this point in the series. She should probably infer that he’s suspicious for a good reason, as should the audience.

Not trusting people blindly is something he learned from being the leader of his team, while trying to protect the earth, namely from the Highbreed invasion back in Alien Force when he was putting together a stronger team. It would only make sense for him to then apply that to a situation in which his significant other gets roped into that which he fights against.

Speaking of fighting against, that brings me to another odd criticism of the writing of this episode. It’s no surprise that the flawed belief of Ben coming off as an alleged “sociopath” is brought up again, considering this episode takes place after The Ultimate Kevin arc. And yes, I realize the problematic connotations of using that term as a borderline insult as part of the issue here. But that aside, in this episode, the fact that he begins to fight Vilgax in his apparent “weakened” state is what is being attributed to that description.

Besides the fact that defending Vilgax is questionable in itself, he’s never needed water to survive for the many times he actually tried to kill Ben. I can’t find a solid answer from a writer that knows for certain if his need for water is genuine except for one who is only assuming that is the case when he’s in this state.

But regardless, (since he clearly survived long enough to morph with Dagon and become a bigger threat to the earth later on) we are still defending Vilgax the LITERAL INTERGALACTIC WARLORD.

Y’know, the guy who’s only in this position because of his own immoral actions? Who absolutely would not hesitate to take advantage of his opponent's weakened state in order to further get away with his immoral actions? Such as he is in this very episode, taking advantage of the people wrongfully worshiping him?

If we are trying to imply that Ben is “just as bad as Vilgax,” then I would assume you’d easily find the flaw in that being Ben’s motivation for incapacitating a dangerous offender who is, at the moment, manipulating naive humans to work for him and help him continue get away with his immoral actions. Which is, needless to say, not the same as Vilgax, at all.

Again, you’d think that’d be obvious.

The Flame Keeper’s Circle’s mission is to end human suffering and find a solution to certain issues happening across the globe with the help of alien technology that is much more advanced than what everyday people are used to. And, while the end goal seems like a good cause, even something Ben as a superhero would be all for, the means through which they attempt to get there aren’t a good idea, at all.

A lot of people find it hard to navigate the use of technology considered advanced by human standards in the real world, so you can only imagine the various things that could go wrong if those kinds of people were suddenly exposed to something much more powerful. In short, a lot could go wrong.

Again, Ben has been in that exact position as soon as he was armed with the Omnitrix. Which is exactly why he’d see the flaw in what these people are trying to do, and therefore not be convinced that it’s such a good idea to allow them to continue, much less endorse it.

This is why I love when the writers actually allow Ben to speak for himself instead of cutting him off for drama or plot. Once he actually gets a word in, or more accurately, has his moment of heroic monologue, he makes himself very clear and, I think, only further proves what I’m trying to say about him.

Here he is, explaining exactly what I’ve been trying to highlight throughout this body of work:

Ben: “Even if Dagon was real, using alien technology to accelerate a planet’s natural development won’t bring utopia, it’ll bring disaster. It’s happened before. Why do you think the Plumbers have those laws? But even that’s not the point, because that isn’t Dagon! His name is Vilgax. He’s not a hero, he’s a selfish, evil warlord who’s using you. And if you let him get in his ship, he’s going to fly off and start an interstellar civil war.”

It’s not that only he can use alien technology to save the world, it’s that his status as a hero proves that he knows what he’s doing, unlike these businessmen in fancy robes leading a cult for profit.

That is not what I would have assumed reasonable people would consider “douchebag behaviour.” That’s actually smart, and going back to my first point, exactly what he should be doing in a situation like this.

The actual episode does end off on a positive note for both Ben and Julie, which is omitted from the review and most of the comments I have read from others on the topic. And, I bring it up because it’s actually vital to wrap up everything brought up within this episode that I have just expanded on. Not only because they make up and seem to understand each other’s perspective after all is said and done, but because they both agree to be open to further discussion on the topic, as Ben offers to go out for dinner.

Which, needless to point out I hope, but once again, is not “douchebag behaviour.”

#new essay to make up for all the drama lately #enjoy ben 10 protection squad <3 #ben 10 #ben tennyson #ben 10 ultimate alien #the flame keeper's circle #benlie #julie yamamoto #ben 10 uaf #essay files #and yes new essay title format cuz reasons :P

78 notes · View notes

booksandwords · 2 years ago

Text

The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck by Sarah Knight

Full Title: The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don't Have with People You Don't Like Doing Things You Don't Want to Do

Read time: 1 Day Rating: 4/5

The quote: Not giving a fuck — crucially — means releasing yourself from the worry, anxiety, fear, and guilt associated with saying no.

I actually own Sarah Knight's Calm the F**k Down but I decided to read The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k first. Honestly, it was a bit of an odd read for me. For any that context might be required. I'm 33 with a large slightly chaotic Welsh extended family and have spent a lot of time in my life around fandom. While reading this I realised I had already stopped giving a f**k about a lot of things, about aspects of work environments, solicitations, many sports and shared bloodlines. I was already on the way to living the life that Sarah Knight was advocating for. What was interesting was the NotSorry method. The idea of how to tell someone you don't care about the same things they do. Reading this I never really wanted to do the practical exercises so I can't make comments on that. But the idea of providing those practical steps and some of her personal examples were good. Even better there was space in the book to allow for you to complete the exercises if you want to. There is a list of 10 things that

When I said it was an odd read I decided that was because I was not quite prepared for the sheer amount of times f**k was used in the text. Oddly though Knight refuses to uses to write s**t out in full. She only writes f**k out in full and frequently which is logical given the title. This draws parallels between and was written on reflection of Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Where Marie Kondo focuses on cleaning up your physical space, Sarah Knight's focus is your mental space. It's an interesting contrast but your mental space and sanity is as important arguably more important than your physical space.

There is a list of six family thing that according to a survey people rank highly on their no-fucks-given list. The overlap in responses surprised Sarah Knight. I want to add them here because I find them so relatable. • The fact that we share a bloodline as though that pertains to something you are trying to convince me. • Mandated togetherness/ "liking" of all family members. • Group photos • Ancient history • Outdated holiday or other family traditions • Religious or Political differences (a tie)

For those to whom it matters there are some references to political and pop culture that is dating. This was written in 2015 and it is starting to date. Honestly, if you want to like this book if you buy into this kind of self-improvement technique and if you can take the language you will enjoy it. But I don't think it is for everyone.

#the life-changing magic of not giving a f*ck #sarah knight #self help #book review #ktreviews #read 2021 #booklr

2 notes · View notes

bigskydreaming · 4 years ago

Note

Alright a noob's question to a veteran fan, when do you think the blatant hatred for Dick started? I've heard from old, 50+ years old fans that he was the best, he was badass, better than Batman A lister. What changed? I know DC can't stand their legacy characters and they've always put abuse in their books, but I want to know about the fandom. When I joined I fell for the Tim Drake Best but Underrated Robin thing until I realized that was polar opposite of the truth. When did That start?

Okay, well it took me forever to get back to this ask and finish like I promised, but I kept my promise, huzzah! Long as fuck theorizing on this topic below:

So here’s the thing. I’ve been fucking around fandoms since the 90s, and I can 100% confirm that Everyone Hates Dick Grayson absolutely was not always a thing. Its a large part of WHY I’m so convinced that modern fandom is just fucking WEIRD about him, because like....I actively have something else to compare it to. I can absolutely remember what Bat fandom was like in regards to him back in the days of the Bludhaven yahoo group and squidge.org and other random URLs that mean absolutely nothing to 99% of you, lolol.

Like, there is very much, distinctly, DEFINITIVELY, a difference in how the majority of fandom views him and interacts with his character now, as opposed to like.....the first decade or so I was in fandoms.

And if I had to trace it back to a specific time period where there was like...an actual, visible sea change....the only thing I can come up with is around the Battle for the Cowl era, the start of the Morrison/Dickbats run. Not so coincidentally, this was the precise time I moved away from Batfam fandom after having pretty consistently being in it for a good ten years by then, BECAUSE there very clearly IMO was this change in how people were writing about Dick all of a sudden.

Like, there had been tensions building towards Dick’s character for awhile, probably ever since Jason’s return because like....in a sense, Dick’s too far removed from say, Tim, to be directly in competition with his character. What I mean is, there’s too little overlap in what people like about Tim and what people like about Dick for them to ever be like...a threat to each other’s fanbases in that respect, and push people to make a choice there. But with Dick and Jason, there’s enough overlap in them and what draws people to them - even just purely in terms of positioning within the Bat franchise, as an older Bat-sibling and former Robin that nevertheless is no longer Robin himself - that like....ever since Jason came back, you could start to see ‘fractures’ in how people viewed Dick. Because now there was another alternative to his character who occupied a similar......not sphere, but perhaps ‘level’ of the Batfamily franchise, and so people kinda started....picking sides, even though no actual sides had to be picked in the first place because its not actually a fucking competition.

And this isn’t to say the view of Dick in fandom and how he’s interacted with is the ‘fault’ of Jason’s return, not at all, just.....this is just me talking analytically, in terms of patterns and causality. Not trying to assign blame here, more just kinda explain the way it appeared to me anyway.

But then things all came to a head in the Battle for the Cowl era, and ignited stuff that had been lurking under the surface in SEVERAL different areas of fandom, and brought into direct conflict long-held assumptions and views and biases that had only never been in conflict before because they didn’t NEED to be in conflict before.

Basically, my Big Thesis about why fandom is the way it is about Dick, is that I feel its not so much that fans of other characters hate him, its that I think many of them RESENT him for very specific things and how those things like....make him a narrative obstacle to the kinds of stories they want to read and write about the Batfam specifically.

With the biggest examples here being Bruce fans, Jason fans and Tim fans.

See, my take is this:

1) I think a lot of Bruce fans resent Dick on some level because he’s actually the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent view of things. As much as people have always liked to claim and take for granted that Dick is Bruce’s favorite or whatever, the truth is there is a far longer and far more VARIED history of Bruce and Dick being at odds than there is between Bruce and any other of his kids.

Essentially, in order to really sell Bruce as CONSISTENTLY being a good parent, regardless of what canon says or does at times.....DICK is the character you MOST have to rewrite or write around, change or ignore his stories, reframe his past interactions with Bruce in order to make this stick.

I know people are probably going “Umm what about Bruce and Jason though?” But the difference is, Bruce and Dick’s conflicts cover a lot more ground than Bruce and Jason’s. Its not that Bruce and Jason’s clashes aren’t epic and that Bruce’s behavior with Jason in stories like UTRH hasn’t been massively shitty....its that in terms of Bruce and Jason, these things are a lot more....confined, than they are with Bruce and Dick.

Basically, most of the major conflict between Bruce and Jason CAN be rewritten or avoided by simply addressing three or four definitive things: the Garzonas case and aftermath, Bruce’s actions/response in regards to the Joker killing Jason, Jason’s return and his wants and needs in regard to Bruce in UTRH, and Bruce’s view of Jason’s actions and ideology post his return.

None of these are small things by any means. But they are FINITE things. They’re concentrated into specific stories, specific areas of canon....and thus, more easily navigated around by anyone who wants to avoid engaging with these things in the form of Bruce being a shitty parent, and rewrite and reframe Bruce and Jason’s dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent.

In contrast, with Dick and Bruce, to rewrite and reframe Bruce and Dick’s OVERALL dynamic in the vein of Bruce is a Good Parent......you’ve got a LOT more ground to cover.

There’s Bruce firing Dick as Robin, there’s Bruce not reaching out to Dick and being content to stay estranged from Dick for all the years they barely interacted, there’s the effect Bruce’s adopting Jason and making him Robin without a word to Dick in advance had on Dick, there’s Bruce still not using the conflict between them over that to make changes in how he interacted with Dick like say adopting him now, there’s Bruce’s actions and behavior towards Dick in the aftermath of Jason’s death, there’s Bruce’s inconsistent appearances in Dick’s stories in all the many times Dick very much needs help or comfort juxtaposed with Dick’s consistent appearances in Bruce’s stories any time he so much as calls him and asks him to show up due to the fact that canon writers can consistently be counted on to prioritize Bruce’s needs as more pressing than Dick’s needs, narratively speaking. There’s Bruce’s clear judgment of Dick in Last Laugh and failure to reach out and help Dick through its aftermath. There’s Bruce’s non-involvement in the extended greatest hits album that is one of the lowest periods of Dick’s life, encompassing Blockbuster, Tarantula and the destruction of Bludhaven, and Bruce’s non-helpful ‘fix’ in the wake of all that, which can be summed up as him yelling “suck it up, buddy.” And in the New 52 you’ve got Bruce’s shitty handling of the Court of Owls revelations and his treating the effect of these revelations on Dick as a total non-issue, there’s the aftermath of Forever Evil, there’s Bruce’s failure to say anything about why Dick went to Spyral even after seeing the effect it had on Dick’s relationships with the rest of his family, there’s the absolute disaster that was his handling of the Ric Grayson situation.....

See what I’m saying? Its not that Bruce doesn’t have plenty of fodder for being a shitty parent in stories with Jason, its just that the times and the ways he is are more isolated and contained, relatively speaking....thus more easily ‘treated’ by anyone who wants to FIX those parts of canon in order to realign it all in the framework of Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent.

Its nowhere NEAR as easy to do that with Dick when you ACTUALLY engage with the full extent of how shittily Bruce has been written interacting with his eldest over the course of decades....

And so for fans of Bruce who very much WANT Bruce to be a good parent, that’s what they want to read, that’s what they want to write, that’s what they’re HERE for and stuff OUTSIDE that is stuff they (understandably) do not want to engage with....

This makes Dick actively an OBSTACLE to all of that. It makes him a Problem. Dick and his stories and his dynamics with Bruce, in order to truly align with Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, have to EXTENSIVELY be tackled and rewritten and reframed, and this is no easy feat or no small process.

And for fans of Bruce who are here for BRUCE first and foremost, not Dick, and who thus don’t want to and aren’t thrilled to be confronted with a need to PRIORITIZE him and his stories to such a large degree in order to ACTUALLY ‘fix’ canon - which for the record has nothing to do with Dick being more important of a character or anything to do with character preferences whatsoever, but rather is simply symptomatic of the ROLE Dick occupies in Bruce’s life, and is an extension of the fact that in any scenario in which Bruce Wayne Is A Good Parent, Dick, as his son, logically MUST be as much a priority at least some of the time as any other of his kids because THAT’S WHAT A GOOD PARENT DOES, HE MAKES HIS KIDS A PRIORITY.....

Like, its honestly understandable (even if thanks, I hate it) that people who really just WANT to focus on Bruce and his Good Parent-ness and don’t want to be forced into HAVING to make Dick and fixing or rewriting how Bruce has screwed up with him into a priority when writing fic that ultimately, for these fans, is still supposed to be ABOUT Bruce.....like, its not exactly rocket science, grasping how this could easily lead to people being even less keen on the guy, because he complicates so many stories they want to write without remotely being one of the characters they’re inspired to write in the first place.

So I mean, yeah. Dick very much became an object of resentment for a lot of Bruce fans, I think, for that reason specifically, and for the narrative obstacle he innately presents to anyone who just wants to write Good Parent Bruce and doesn’t want to have to write Bruce Actively Fixing His Mistakes With Dick in order to do so.

And again, this is pretty much JUST Dick in this particular role (especially as of the time I’m talking about) because much like how even though Bruce has his fuck-ups with Jason, they’re more finitely contained to specific narratives and TYPES of narratives....the same is true of Bruce’s interactions with his other kids. Yeah, he has his fuck-ups with them too, but again, they’re more isolated, more traceable back to singular sources and stories that are a lot more easily sidestepped and navigated around by anyone who just does not want to engage with Bruce Being a Bad Parent and the EFFECTS this has had on various of his kids throughout their stories as a result.

So you have this thing, about Dick, narratively speaking, not even a matter of character like or dislike. And its been there all along, slowly building story by story....

With it all coming to a head, I feel, in the Battle for the Cowl era, where Bruce is shuffled off-stage for a time, and REPLACED by Dick as Batman.....while at the same time Dick is cast in the same role of surrogate father figure to newcomer Damian, that Bruce was cast in with Dick when he and Dick were of similar ages to Dick and Damian now.

And Bruce was absolutely celebrated for how good he was with Dick back then - and with reason - BUT, I think this period with Dick and Damian, and the stories it told, brought front and center the fact and the awareness that it’d been a LONG TIME since Bruce was so uncritically celebrated for being a Good Parent, and with Dick specifically. And then additionally it made and kept front and center at this exact same time....people celebrating Dick for being a Good Parent (in essence) in much the way that they HADN’T celebrated Bruce for quite some time. And add to that the fact that Dick was doing this WHILE in the role of Batman himself, the same role Bruce had occupied in the parallel situation....so it made all this into a parallel that couldn’t easily be dismissed or discounted by saying things like “well Dick didn’t have the pressures of being Batman to deal with, being a good parent throughout all of this and STAYING that way would have been innately easier because of that.”

And thus....long-simmering resentment of the obstacle alleged favorite son Dick poses to actually writing Bruce Is A Good Parent content without significant revision or ommissions....ignited. With kinda the insult added to injury that now Dick was getting the same kind of praise and attention that these particular fans came to the franchise to see BRUCE be the focus and recipient of, not Dick.

2) At the same time, you have another large segment of fandom by this point, Jason’s fans. Or to be more accurate, you have a select but EXTREMELY vocal subset of Jason’s fans.....

Who come to Jason’s fandom with a very specific angle: they LIKE Jason as the misunderstood outcast of the Batfam, the black sheep alone and apart from the rest of the family who Just Don’t Get Him And Never Will, thus making him eternally sympathetic in this specific regard. But with that specific regard, in order to STAY eternal…..requiring that….nobody in the family gets him or cares or ever has really.

Thus once again, Dick just by the existence of him and his actual past dynamics with Jason, is a narrative obstacle to writing THIS specific narrative.

And so of course it had to be reframed and EMPHASIZED that Dick had always been a jerk to Jason, barely a brother, heck they barely even knew each other apparently - even when Jason came back and one of his first interactions with Dick post-Return was to clearly express that he’d always seen Dick as family, which very much does not mesh the idea that Jason and Dick barely knew each other or barely ever interacted before Jason died.

It also, of course, does not mesh with the idea that there’s nobody in the Batfamily who understands Jason, or is capable of seeing things his way instead of Bruce’s, or who cares enough to avenge him……because Last Laugh very much DOES exist, and puts the lie to all of that. Dick’s not only killed at least once (actually more than just once) and still remained fundamentally the same Dick Grayson he’s always been, but on top of that, it was the very person Jason desperately wanted to see dead as some kind of evidence, some sign that he had MATTERED to his family, that him being taken away from them hurt them enough that they felt driven to DO something about it, beyond the usual toss ‘em and lock ‘em.

Dick actually did that, ‘gave’ Jason what he wanted, and for the very same reasons Jason wanted it, to know that it was because of him, because of the loss of him, because he MATTERED and his absence HURT….and while of course, Dick was never the person Jason most wanted to see do that deed, want to see that evidence from….nonetheless, it very much does remain as significant evidence towards the fact that Jason mattered a great deal to Dick, enough even that having differing beliefs about killing would still be unlikely to ever stand between Dick having some kind of relationship with his returned-from-the-dead brother - because not only was it because of Jason (and Tim as well, admittedly, I’m not trying to gloss over the fact that he was part of the story and part of Dick’s motivation, this is just a matter of topical focus at the moment) not only was it actually BECAUSE of Jason that Dick crossed the line that so often he otherwise rigidly adheres to…it was never that realistic that Dick would judge and condemn Jason for killing, at least not by any narrative that took Last Laugh into consideration.

Because not only has Dick done the same thing himself, and MORE than wanted to do it on many other occasions as well thus he very clearly understands both the temptation and the arguments made for it…..BUT just as significantly IMO, is the AFTERMATH of Last Laugh. Where Dick very clearly was shown wrestling with and being affected by Bruce’s implicit judgment for what he’d done. Meaning not only was Dick never actually likely to condemn or judge Jason….he also is one of a handful of people most able to empathize with being judged or condemned by BRUCE for crossing that line. It never made sense or was realistic that there’d be this great divide between Dick and Jason after his return, that Dick was unable let alone unwilling to try and bridge, even for the sake of spending time with the brother he thought he’d never have a chance to spend time with again.

(And yeah yeah, its not like he was embracing Jason with open arms in Brothers in Blood, but I maintain that had more to do with Jason’s approach than Dick innately being predisposed to being stand-offish with Jason. Like, when you announce yourself by impersonating your brother and getting him a rep as a manic killer being hunted by the police, instead of just like…ringing the doorbell, its kinda like, well, you may have to shoulder some of the blame here. Not to mention there still was the specter of what Jason had done to Dick’s other little brother Tim, with this still unaddressed between the two as of that time).

So yeah, for the above reasons and many more, Dick once again presents a narrative obstacle to a specific KIND of narrative that happens to be the one a lot of Jason’s fans most want to tell. The one where Jason sticks it to all his uptight family and rides off into the sunset with his NEW family, one that appreciates him and holds him in proper respect and positioning, the one where Jason will always be at least a somewhat tragic figure, forever apart from the family he does still very much love, because THEY can’t reconcile who and what HE is and believes.

Cuz once you take Last Laugh into consideration, AND add in Jason’s own words at the end of Brothers in Blood and the fact that they DIDN’T hate each other back when Jason was Robin, nor was it just one-sided on Dick’s end of things…..well, with all that taken into account, it becomes a lot trickier pulling off the above narrative, doesn’t it? When the in-character behavior of Dick according to THAT characterization of him would never accept any version of events where Jason was cast out for good (and yes, yes, RHATO and Bruce exiling Jason from the city, I know that in the New 52 that’s pretty much exactly what happened and Dick didn’t do anything about it, but he was kinda busy getting shot in the head right around that same time, so, y’know. That cuts into the ability to intervene on Jason’s behalf).

But basically, this is IMO why Last Laugh barely gets acknowledged by a lot of Jason’s fans, even though on the surface, you’d THINK its exactly the kind of story that would appeal to anyone who wanted, well, a story where someone in Jason’s family showed that they actually gave a damn the damn dumb clown still wasn’t dead. Its an in canon story that showcases and even highlights very clearly Jason’s place in that person’s family and memories, and the importance and weight with which he was regarded by that family member. Isn’t that exactly what Jason - and thus by extension his fans - have always wanted?

Well….yes, except it was the wrong family member. To have the weight, the significance that a lot of fans TRULY wanted from that story, from that outcome, it needed to be BRUCE that did it, not Dick. There’s no real place in that particular narrative or dynamic for an older brother who does actually give a damn. Like yeah, its great that Dick cared and all, but when its viewed as being more of an all or nothing situation, like, it has to play out with Bruce in that role and no one else, or it doesn’t count, doesn’t mean ENOUGH…..once again, this positions Dick to be more of a narrative obstacle to a certain (popular) kind of story than a benefit.

And so Dick has to be repositioned, reframed, rewritten…..to be something and someone writers can actually work with when writing the kind of story where Bruce’s acknowledgment is the only one that ultimately matters. Him being likely to WANT to help and support Jason from an in-character standpoint, simply doesn’t help writers for whom this just becomes an unwanted plot complication that inherently bumps Dick a little higher up the Priority Ladder, because his status as a Rare Ally rather than Yet Another Antagonist pretty much inevitably paves the way for more screentime for his character, and again….he’s just not the character these writers want to write about (and yeah, again, this part is totally understandable), and they’re really just not interested in allotting him that much screentime, let alone a role that could feasibly steal focus at times from Jason, edge the narrative into being more of a co-lead than the single protagonist it was definitively intended to be.

So. Fandom subset number two is equally predisposed to resenting Dick simply for the narrative obstacle he presents to one of their preferred stories to tell - with again, this pretty much taking off right around the Dickbats era, fueled in no small part by Morrison’s shitty take on Jason, which, while I maintain it was Jason that was most out of character in all of that….DOES still very easily play into that take on him, where he’s misunderstood and eternally at odds with his family.

And which also, I suspect, is why Morrison’s run tends to be weirdly popular with a lot of Jason fans who in most other places are quick to point out earmarks of Jason’s usual characterization that are entirely at odds with Morrison’s take on him, like that he’s extremely against the idea of younger sidekicks in general at this point (especially pre-Reboot), which uh, makes him taking on a younger sidekick a very….Strange Choice.

3) And then lastly we come to Tim, and a lot of his fans’ issues with Dick Grayson - which I think are heightened by a kind of feeling of betrayal that ties in here, and emphasizes the fact that just a year or two prior to Battle for the Cowl, most of these same fans would have sworn they loved Dick’s character and he was a great big brother to Tim.

See, the problem here, I think, lies in the fact that Tim is THE definitive Robin for an entire generation of readers. He’s who they see in the role every time they close their eyes, because he’s who’s always been in the role as far as they’re concerned. Back issues are just that - back issues. They’re about the history of Robin. But in the present, the here and now, for the solid twenty years or so before Battle for the Cowl, for all intents and purposes there really was only one Robin and it was uncontested that it was Tim.

And again, on a lot of levels I totally get this. I’m somewhat similar when it comes to Kyle Rayner and Green Lantern. Kyle was ‘my’ Green Lantern, the one I grew up with, the one starring in the stories that were current and ongoing for me as I aged. I was pissed as hell when they brought Hal Jordan back and he resumed being front and center in the GL franchise…..not because before this I’d had any real strong feelings about Hal one way or the other, outside of how I felt about him in the individual stories he popped up in…..but simply because Hal front and center happens to coincide with the starring GL of the solo title I personally would consider the definitive GL run….like….pretty much getting shoved offstage entirely, most of the time. I get that. It sucks.

Except that’s not QUITE the situation here.

Like the thing is, I do believe that for a lot of fans, Tim IS Robin and Robin IS Tim. That’s how its always been for them, that’s the way they like it, that’s how it should remain until his character is ready to launch into a new persona and identity of his own character’s volition. And its not like it was ever a secret that other Robins came before Tim, and that Dick was actually the creator of the mantle, the guy that all the other later Robins, including Tim, were literally the legacy OF. And its not like Dick wasn’t around in Tim’s stories, and wasn’t a familiar presence to Tim’s fans….its just that for almost twenty years, the WAY Dick appeared in Tim’s stories only added to them. There was no angle from which he took away from Tim’s stories, or the fact that they were Tim’s.

Like yes, he was a reminder that Tim was not the only Robin and never had been, that there were others with just as much claim to the title, if not more……but in a very background way. Not in any way that presented any kind of ‘threat’ to Tim’s actual status as Robin. Dick Grayson’s days as Robin were way in the past, and there was no real likelihood that they were ever going to put him back in that role, so his ‘claim’ to the Robin mantle was never at any point one that potentially contested Tim’s own. It was simply a non-issue. Instead, Dick’s status as the original Robin juxtaposed with his current roles of doting big brother and secondary mentor figure….like, at the time, this actually ADDED to Tim’s own wearing of the mantle. Dick’s presence was less a reminder that he was the one without whom the mantle wouldn’t even exist, and more just a kinda embodiment of the Robin LORE, the fact that Tim’s superhero mantle came with history and the prestige of past accomplishments accomplished by the Robin name, and the gravitas of the dangers and downsides that potentially came with the cape as well. It gave Tim an additional angle that even most of his friends and teammates in various books didn’t have, made him stand out even more.

And it didn’t hurt that pretty much any time there was a guest appearance from Nightwing in Tim’s stories, he was firmly slotted in the supporting character role, there to help Tim but not overshadow Tim, to support him but not claim credit for Tim’s ultimate victory in any given story’s climax. And there weren’t many occasions when things went in reverse, where it was Tim guest-starring in Dick’s stories and thus him clearly slotted in the supporting character category, the B character role….simply because the older veteran hero needing to call upon his younger, comparatively inexperienced ally just was never as likely - and thus, occurring as often - a story as one where the younger, relatively new hero calls upon his more experienced predecessor for help or even just some advice or someone to listen to whatever was troubling the younger hero at the time.

Thus there’s the additional angle where for almost two decades, Dick Grayson’s presence in a Tim Drake narrative was for one reason and one reason only - to support Tim in whatever endeavor he was in the middle of, and to be what Tim needed, when Tim needed.

But then of course, once again we reach Battle for the Cowl….and all of that gets upended, not even because of Dick making Damian Robin per se, IMO…..to me, its always felt like the bigger issue has always been many of Tim’s fans resenting just….the reminder, the newly centered awareness that no matter how long Tim had been THEIR Robin, he wasn’t the only Robin and never had been….and that supportive, helpful older brother whose presence had previously only added to Tim’s stories and their weight, never threatened anything that was ‘his’ narratively speaking…..not only did he also have a claim to the Robin title, he has literally the biggest claim possible, the one none of the others can match due to the mere fact that they are quite literally HIS legacy characters.

Which, not at all incidentally, is IMO the reason a lot of Tim fans are so vocal about dismissing or minimizing the impression/association of Robin with Dick’s first family. Always quick to emphasize that it being his mother’s nickname for Dick was a later addition to the canon, because it ties Dick to the Robin mantle in a way none of the others ever will be. But of course, like I’ve always maintained…that’s besides the point. Whether or not Dick named himself Robin because it was a cherished nickname, because he was a fan of Robin Hood, or for any other reason, its still equally true that he’s the creator of the mantle, plain and simple. It doesn’t exist without him, it was his aims, his intentions, his DEEDS back when he wore the (clearly circus themed and inspired, no matter what else is said about the name’s origin BUT I DIGRESS) costume originally…..like, those are literally what Robin WAS because they were what Dick created Robin to be. It was only something for others to take up later, let alone to even WANT to take up, with it coming with a weight of history and past heroics that later Robins were proud to embrace….all of that’s only because of what Dick imbued the mantle with in the eyes of the world, not to mention his own successors….via what he DID in the costume, while wearing it, coupled with the fact that there’d never really been anything like him before, a kid kicking bad guy ass alongside the more intimidating specter of his mentor.

Dick being the first Robin isn’t just a matter of linear progression, like its not just a matter of him EXISTING ahead of the others ‘in line,’ so to speak. Rather, being the first Robin is a matter of…..its literally HIM and HIS actions that every later Robin is the LEGACY of. He’s the SOURCE of the legacy. And you can’t really go…’how dare the guy I’m literally part of the legacy of, like, think he has the right to decide what happens with the mantle he and he alone created, long before I ever came along’…I mean….y’know? Boiled down to that, that doesn’t really….work, like its pretty plainly evident why the originator of a legacy mantle would think its his place to be the definitive voice on what’s done with his own damned legacy. Regardless of why he named it what he did and what specific associations the name had for him originally.

But there’s always been a determined focus on kinda…..shifting attention away from the question of who actually DOES have the right to say who wears the Robin mantle and when, because I think there is generally an awareness that like….Dick wasn’t out of line to think that his own damn creation was his to give in the name of adding to their circle of family, the same way as it did twice before. Its not that there’s NO angle from which even Tim’s fans might admit that who created a legacy matters in the question of who gets to decide who carries that legacy next. Its more that like….just the reminder, the newly centered awareness that yes, Tim is not the only claimant to the Robin title and never was, like…I think that grates a lot of people, tbh.

It may have been something that there was always SOME awareness of, the whole time, but previously it was in a way that was supposed to be ancient history, not something that could ever end up ‘taking away’ something they strongly identified with being Tim’s and Tim’s alone. Especially when the character suddenly exerting a prior or greater claim on that mantle just so happens to be one that a lot of Tim’s longtime fans had long-since internalized as being part of TIM’S supporting cast, not another protagonist in his own right, one whose decisions could have a shaping effect on Tim’s narrative rather than the other way around, the way it felt like ‘its supposed to go.’

And bringing it back to the overlap with the first two fandom impressions I talked about, I think again, yeah, this resulted in a kind of resentment of Dick’s character and the narrative obstacle he presents to…..well, keeping Robin associated with Tim and Tim alone, practically speaking. Its not so much giving Robin to Damian in the first place that’s the problem, its the fact that he COULD. That within the actual canon narrative, this was acknowledged and supported as something that ultimately, Dick did have the right to do whether individual characters liked it or not, and no, that didn’t make him the same as Bruce when he’d taken it from Dick originally (assuming they acknowledge that version of the story at all in the first place).

Because due to the fact that its not something NEW that was introduced to the story that led to Dick being ABLE to do this, but rather just him choosing to exert an option he’d had the entire time and just previously chosen not to use……inevitably, this creates a slight shift in the framing and context of even previously consumed stories. Suddenly Dick’s presence in many of those previous stories ISN’T incidental, because now they couldn’t help but be viewed through the lens of….remembering what had been kinda hand-waved away as inconsequential the entire time Tim was Robin. The fact that ultimately, Tim was only Robin because Dick endorsed him. That if Dick could give Robin to Damian later, then Dick COULD have, by the exact same token, the exact same claim and association with the mantle he’d been the one to create….he could have stuck by his initial stance, which was that Robin died with Jason.

In all fairness, as I’ve said many times before, this NEVER had anything to do with whether or not Tim became Bruce’s PARTNER, specifically. I’ve never been of the opinion that even Dick’s status as the originator of Robin had nothing to do with who ended up Bruce’s PARTNER after him - that was always going to be between Bruce and that person, and no one else. But whether, as that partner, Tim went by the name Robin….with everything it embodied and signified and carried with it already….that, yes, Dick had always had the option of saying no, I’m not okay with this, I do not give you permission to wear the SPECIFIC mantle I created, what my brother died wearing.

I mean, granted, Bruce and Tim could have done what they wanted anyway, but much like people try and dismiss or invalidate the version of events where Bruce fired Dick as Robin and stripped him of the mantle precisely BECAUSE there’s no real way to go with that version and NOT get that Bruce looks like a douche in it one way or another, simply because that was never his to take….like, same deal here. They could have powered on without Dick’s approval of someone else wearing the Robin costume, but ignoring the wishes of a mantle’s creator, to let it rest given that someone had literally died carrying that very same legacy, HIS legacy….like, that was never going to look good and would have stained pretty much Tim’s entire career as Robin.

So yeah, I think the third corner of this Isosceles of Suck is that I do believe on some level, a lot of Tim fans resent Dick’s character simply for where and in what ways it exists in any and all Robin narratives…..as the one who ultimately CAN NOT be overlooked as inconsequential, because its literally HIS legacy that Tim and all other Robins took PRIDE in embracing. And everything with Damian simply hammered that point home and made it front and center and impossible to avoid confronting, no matter how much a long time fan wanted Robin to belong to and be associated with Tim and Tim only…..with the ironic part being that I truly do GET why this would bug….because again, if you’re here for Tim, if its his stories you want to read and write, if HE’S the one you’re a fan of, and if for whatever reason you just don’t like Dick Grayson all that much even if you don’t actually hate him…..

Yeah, its likely going to lead to resentment if you yourself feel, purely from a narrative standpoint, like….’pressured’ to write Dick being afforded more respect or importance in the other characters’ eyes than you personally feel like writing. But that its hard to avoid or becomes something you actively have to write AROUND any time your own story backs you into a corner where the origins of Robin are directly relevant to the plot, and logistically, and given there’s really no plausible angle from which Tim would have embraced or taken up (let alone taken pride in) a legacy belonging to someone he DIDN’T look up to or view as worthy of respect….like…in this kind of specific plot tangle, it could very easily feel like if you want to keep things feeling in-character, you have no CHOICE but to have Tim talk up or speak positively of a character who, if it were up to you, would never command that kind of respect from Tim, a character you happen to think is just plain better than the one you feel like your story is MAKING you say is so great. Bam. Once again, you got yourself a recipe for Instant Resentment Ramen.

(Again, not at all incidentally, I think the above also has a lot to do with the pretty prevalent trend in Tim-centric stories of having him pretty much ONLY fixate or focus on Jason’s time as Robin, citing him as ‘Tim’s Robin,’ not just as like, a preference but almost to the exclusion of Tim having ever had any kind of interest in, let alone appreciation/respect for, Dick’s version of Robin before Jason stepped into the role. A lot of people would rather the respect/admiration that would normally be afforded by any legacy hero to the person whose legacy they’ve chosen to carry, like, go solely to Jason instead of Dick, just because they like him better and would rather Tim was just his successor, no one else’s.)

And with all three of these angles/elements coming to a head at the exact same place and time in the comic books and fandom……it IMO created kinda the perfect storm right around the Dickbats era, where suddenly all these totally disparate sections of fandom all felt weirdly in agreement on one thing and one thing only….Dick Grayson was really just kinda bugging them, and what’s so great about that dude anyway?

And from there I think they all kinda just fed into each other and grew exponentially, with the individual ‘workarounds’ used by each other characters’ fans to get around the narrative obstacle that Dick represented, like…..I think these all became so prevalent and widespread throughout fandom because even these totally separate corners of fandom that had very little else they agreed on, were more than happy to take each other’s ‘rewrite’ of Dick and his place/depiction in the overall narratives and canon and just run with it….because not at all coincidentally, each other ‘group’s’ revisionist take on Dick Grayson made their own even easier to sell within their own stories. And thus you also ended up with correlating trends like Jason and Tim being besties and bonding over their resentment of Dick, because why not, both their fanon narratives now predominantly shared the same deliberately unappealing depictions of their eldest brother.

With the New 52 and post-reboot storylines then doing absolutely NOTHING to negate or derail all of the above, but rather just reinforcing all of it. Because as Bruce kept being written behaving worse and worse with his children, including Dick, it only added to and expanded upon the problems Bruce’s fans already have with Dick’s character, even if just in terms of how big a plot/characterization obstacle he presents for the stories they want to write.

Just as the way Lobdell wrote Jason equally fed into and built upon the issues a lot of Jason’s fans have with Dick’s character and the tangle he creates for a number of stories. And then with the frequent conflicts over how two of the characters Dick’s historically been closest with had been practically cut and pasted from Dick’s stories and history into Jason’s stories and history instead, like, that just threw more fuel on the fire, particularly when it happened to ignite defensiveness among fans of the Roy/Jason/Kory trio who additionally resented having to defend their usage/embrace of a trio that canon threw together, not them, that they just happened to like. And that in turn hardly making them any less predisposed to resenting how complicated Dick’s character makes things for certain key narratives.

And then lastly, DC’s just complete and total fuckery with Tim’s character in the New 52 as a whole, but specifically in his issues with trying out various personas post-Robin but never finding/creating anything with a truly firm sense of its own identity, the way Dick has Nightwing and Jason has Red Hood, and thus give fans of both characters no REASON to mourn the loss of Robin or wish for them to go back to it….whereas without ever settling into something similar, that was both strongly and uniquely Tim Drake in premise and execution, there was no reason for his fans NOT to begrudge the loss of the Robin mantle and wish for him to go back to it/to have never left it, at least not until he’d found that other persona to actually ‘graduate’ into.

Phew. *wipes brow*

Anyway, that’s my big theory on why fandom as a whole is the way it is about Dick’s canon vs fanon. Am I right? Probably not completely, and even if I am its not like this is universal or that there aren’t other reasons for why fans engage with Dick’s character in the ways they do, including but not limited to “I just don’t like the guy, so what.” And its not like there’s any way to know for sure, or to get a sense of how much of fandom this theory IS on the right track with, at least in some ways. But overall, I do think there’s at least some of the above present in various ‘parts’ of fandom or with various specific fanon trends. *Shrugs* YMMV though.

#me @ me: wow shut up already #me @ @ me: Im not wrong tho #me @ @ @ me: yeah but still. jeez. take a breath much?`#okay Im gonna stop now

538 notes · View notes

trainsinanime · 3 years ago

Text

Zoé can never replace Chloé (and she’s not meant to either)

There’s still quite a bit of dialog in the Miraculous Ladybug fandom about the question: Is Zoé supposed to be a replacement for Chloé? I felt like examining that a bit further. The key to figure this out is to look at what Chloé’s role in the story is, and how it does and does not overlap with what we’ve seen from Zoé so far.

For example, is Chloé’s role to be the mayor’s daughter? I would argue no. Being the mayor’s daughter is how she gets her (considerable) power over the class, and thus, a large part of her ability to influence or create stories. You could just as easily imagine her getting that power from elsewhere, e.g. by her father being Monsieur Damocles or some school superintendent, or just a really rich political donor, and it wouldn’t change Chloé’s role at all. Alternatively, there are characters who are in similar positions of power and privilege, but don’t actually use it. Adrien and Kagami are both rich, and Gabriel seems to have at least an indirect connection to André, so you could easily make stories about Adrien abusing that power and privilege if you really wanted to - except it doesn’t fit his character and his role in the story at all.

Is Chloé’s role to be the carrier of the Bee Miraculous? Again, I don’t think so. The bee miraculous is a result of how Chloé acts. Its power of telling people what to do is tailor-made for her personality, and by that I mean pre-possible-redemption-arc personality if that makes a difference. The story does not really need to her to have the bee miraculous specifically. Any would do. The bee was created for her because it fits her established personality best. This is in general how the show works: It’s ultimately never that Marinette has a certain miraculous and has to find a wielder for it; it is that the show wants to highlight a certain character, and gives them a specific power-up that matches their established character and the plot of the episode (except arguably for Alya, where the only link is “orange”, but that’s a different post). The story works just as well if Chloé got a different miraculous, or a different way to get a glimpse into the superhero world, because the point of her getting this is to tell us more about who Chloé is as a person, what she really wants, and how she acts when she both gets and loses it.

Is Chloé’s role to be a close friend of Marinette’s? Clearly not. That may change in the future, maybe, who knows, but so far, when Chloé is important in a plot, it is often specifically because she dislikes and resents Marinette.

Ultimately Chloé has a very simple role. It is literally the same as Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter, Cordelia Chase in Buffy, Libby in Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and many, many others like them. Almost every teenage TV show has someone like them. Chloé is here as the school life antagonist, as a counterpoint to Hawkmoth. Some author (I remember it as being Marjorie Liu, but I’ve never been able to find the quote again) once said that the fun the thing about writing teenagers is that everything has equal importance: Tomorrow is the big dance, and also the world is going to end, and both things are equally important. Miraculous Ladybug follows that scheme strictly, and in it, Chloé’s job is to make the „big dance“ part of this challenging.

A fun thing is that the show generally tries to link the problems she causes to the superheroics, because that makes for a better story. The obvious case is when she is the akumatized villain herself. But there are also for example things like Darkblade, where the show uses the situation with Chloé to draw explicit parallels even though her situation isn’t really linked with D’Agencourt’s at all. A few times Chloé’s role is to literally just show up, upset someone for no reason until they become Akumatization material, and then leave again, such as in Frozer, Stormy Weather 2 or Frightningale. And sometimes the superhero plot is all about Chloé’s actions and also a hilarious homage to every single zombie movie trope ever (Zombizou). Either way, Chloé exists to cause problems - and by extension, episode plots - on purpose.

Another aspect of that is that she helps Marinette grow. Sometimes she is simply motivation for Marinette to go out and be a better person (Darkblade), but she can also appeal to Marinette’s darker instincts so that Marinette can then reject them, or at least feel bad about her actions, such as in Animaestro.

Zoé, who is friendly and passive, and whose stories are all about her relationship with Chloé, is as far from a replacement as you can possibly get. Yes, Zoé has taken over the bee miraculous, but that was part of a plot that was all about Chloé as a person, and not at all about Zoé herself. And it doesn’t really matter, because Chloé isn’t here to get the bee miraculous, the bee miraculous is here to tell a story about Chloé.

Now, yes, Zoé may seem like she has taken over from Chloé if you look at it from a hypothetical end point: Throughout parts of season 2, it looked like Chloé might do a standard grade 1 redemption arc, become nice, a friend to Marinette and a member of the team. There were hints that Chloé might be interested in that, and hints that Marinette might be open to the idea, and then the show went very hard in another direction. Zoé is indeed very, very roughly the kind of person that Chloé and parts of the fandom thought she deserved to be.

But that isn’t actually a replacement of Chloé, because the role of Chloé is not to become redeemed as quickly as possible. The point of a redemption arc, or in fact any arc, isn’t the endpoint, it’s the way there. That’s why people read 100,000 word enemies-to-lovers stories despite the fact that eventual result is already literally there in the tags. Miraculous Ladybug doesn’t need "mayor’s daughter who looks good in yellow and is nice" and takes shortcuts to get there; it needs - and most importantly clearly wants - an interesting story about Chloé specifically. You can’t replace Chloé in a story all about her personality and her relationships with people with anyone except literally Chloé herself, and certainly not with someone who is noticeably nicer.

(This does not mean Zoé is pointless; it means Zoé’s role is something else entirely. Maybe someone who pushes Chloé to be better? We’ll see.)

Now, will this story be told well? As of right now I’m honestly giving it 50:50 odds, and my guess is that it will both feel drawn-out and rushed at the same time in the end thanks to the "occasional large dumps of plot" technique of storytelling the show generally uses. We’ll see. But I am certain that the story will be told at all. If the show writers didn’t want to, they could have literally sent her off to America, that was literally a plot point in the season 3 finale.

So: Zoé as a replacement for Chloé? That’s ridiculous, utterly ridiculous.

And final thought: Once more, I want to point out that literally all Chloé-related salt is true if and only if you insert Lila instead at the right place. First, she is the obvious replacement for Chloé. She makes Marinette’s life more challenging when not in costume, and she is very good at that because she’s specifically designed to push all of Marinette’s righteous fury buttons. Lila is literally an explicit counterpart to and partner of Hawkmoth. And finally, she’s the character the creators don’t seem to like at all, or at least don’t seem to know what to do with, considering how little she appears and how she’s gotten no development whatsoever. We really need a "justice for Lila, turn her into the meaningful dastardly villain she deserves to be" movement in the fandom.

#miraculous ladybug #mlb meta #Chloé bourgeois #zoé bourgeois

23 notes · View notes

kumoriyami-xiuzhen · 4 years ago

Text

Hakuoki Yuugiroku Drama - Thumb-Sized Samurai Tracks 1-4 (of 7)

This is my last post of the month, so I’ll end by asking you to please support me if you can through my ko-fi, and paypal or patreon which provides access to my hakuoki blog translations and early access to my postings. Also, please let me know if you have any hakuoki drama cds that you’d be willing to share that are on my Lookout List since i either do not have audio for those cds or do not have audio that I can share.... and if you are able to remove watermarks from a video, please contact me.

Well... I’m finally done with all that i can translate for this drama. posting these tracks all together since im unable to continue translating the rest of this by myself... which is something i wouldn’t normally do because i prefer splitting tracks up for more items on my queue, tho that’s also a side-effect of me usually not being able to stay focused on one drama... not sure when i’ll get to the subtitle videos for these since im still pretty busy (while i have the first 3 tracks of this drama subtitled [unedited], at this rate, i might just wait for when finals are done and just focus on all my videos in bulk then... plus ive yet to receive the tl for track 6 and 7 [and need someone else to go over where the voices overlap in track 5], so that will likely cause further delays to the videos for this drama).

also i totally caved in and exchanged points for the yuukoku no moriarty stage play file with chinese subs that someone finished translating recently and bought the blu-ray for the 2nd musical. havent craved more content from a fandom this badly since about a few months before i decided that i would start translating hakuoki stuff lol.

Hakuoki Yuugiroku 2 Limited Edition Bonus Drama CD “Thumb-sized Samurai”

Translation by KumoriYami

Track 1

Kazama: hehehe~ Sure enough/As expected, this medicine's blend of Forsythia grass and boiled eel, along with my yearning and passion....

Heh.....hehehahaha~!!! Success at last! This forbidden drug, it shall be named ——the New Ishida Sanyaku · Changed/Improved!!

Hm~. as long as this strange drug "the New Ishida Sanyaku" is improved, it will become a panacea that will make people fall deeply in love.......

She obviously loves me, [however] my wife is is unable to honestly admit to her feelings [and] is tormented by the pain of love-sickness/My wife, tortured by love sickness, has refused to admit her feelings, isn't this medicine suitable for her?

Alright/Well, now that this medicine has been completed, this must be quickly brought to my wife to drink.

No, wait, just in case, the effects of this must be tested first. (Kazama begins walking off somewhere—)

Track 2

Harada: So that's it/all, Hijikata-san, that's all I can report on. Sure enough/As expected, the team members' most pressing concern is the security of headquarters.

Saito: My opinions/suggestions are almost the same/similar/the same as Sano's. I believe that we need to improve our defences against intruders.

Hijikata: Is that so. I understand what you guys are saying. Harada and Saito, you've worked hard....... That being said, it's difficult to completely prevent intruders from coming in. This place is a temple, not a fortress. Even if we installed a fence now, that isn't really a good plan.

Saito:.....So what you're saying is......

Harada: But, shouldn't the area around Chizuru's room at least be fortified? It is true that someone is after her.

Saito: Kazama Chikage, Amagri and Shiranui [check audio], the self-proclaimed group of oni......

Hijikata:......Indeed. In short I need to consult with Kondou-san about this....... Then, that'll be it for today's report.

Saito: Then I'll go make some tea. You should rest first. Sano, you should also drink some.

Harada: Oh, thanks a lot. Then I won't be impolite [rephrase later].

(Saito leaves then returns shortly after)

Saito: I've brought the tea. This is fresh[ly brewed] and hot, so please be careful.

Harada: Thank you. I didn't expect this so quickly.

Hijikata: (sips tea)......Oh, what's this, Saito? Did you use some other tea leaves today?

Saito: Nn?......No, I haven't done that.

Hijikata: Really? Then why do I feel that this tastes different from usual?

Harada: You didn't put poison in did you?

Saito:......!! Don't say such frightening words, Sano. The idea of me poisoning the Vice-Commander is complete nonsense. [i prefer the word 'utter']

Harada: Don't get angry, I was just kidding. (sips tea).......but, like Hijikata-san said, the taste of this tea really is odd/strange [tl says 'subtle']......

Saito: Strange? How could that be...... (sips tea)....!!

Harada: What's wrong? You've suddenly become quiet.

Saito: This taste is of...... Ishida Sanyaku ！？

Hijikata: Ahaha, I was thinking that this tasted a bit familiar, so that's what it was........ wa, wait! Why was that put into the tea!?

Harada: Saito..... you bastard, did you actually put Ishida Sanyaku into tea/you didn't actually put Ishida Sanyaku into tea did you? Even if you love that stuff, you should know when to stop before going too far [idiom. rephrase later]!

Saito: No......I would remember doing something like that. I only saw that the teapot lid was open, that there were tea leaves already inside, and that I was thinking how it could easily be brought over to be used......

Hijikata:......There was already tea inside? Did you notice if there was something strange/weird in the surroundings?

Saito: Speaking of which........ I saw something, I thought it was garbage so I ignored it, I think I remember how a note there was a written note saying "dedicated/specially for my wife. Dogs are strictly prohibited to touch this" or something like that.......

Hijikata: What, those words. From where do they....seem... familiar.......

(Hijikata collapses)

Saito: Vice-Commander!!

Harada: oi~ oi!! What's wrong, Hijikata-san! Why are you/why did you suddenly....... falling/collapsing/fall/collapse......!!

(Harada collapses)

Saito: Sano!! Why are you also......!!.......Why am I/How can I.......also....... be fainting........!

(Saito collapses)

Track 3

(footsteps)

Souji: Ha...... good grief, this is a real problem. I've long wanted to say this, but why is it necessary for us to submit a report about our patrols when nothing unusual happened?

Heisuke: I actually think that way too. But nothing can be done about this because of the rules~

Souji: Anyway, if nothing unusual happens, isn't it enough for Heisuke to make the report/that you make the report, Heisuke? I don't think I should be involved in giving it~

Heisuke: You just don't want to go to Hijikata-san's room. If you were giving a report to Kondou-san, you'd obviously be very happy.

Souji: That's because Hijikata-san sees me he won't stop talking as soon as he sees me. Before this, all I did was secretly prepared some ink and smeared a stone into it so that it turned black. He surprisingly became furious at me.

Heisuke:......Anyone who experienced this kind of thing would get really angry....... Hijikata-san, we're coming in. (they stop walking and open a door) Hey~ Hijikata-san~! Eh? Ah? It seems that he isn't here?

Souji:......But, doesn't it look like he was was recently in the room? Look, something spilled on to the floor.

Heisuke: What~? Is it possible that he wasn't careful and spilled his teacup, then panicked as he left to go and get a towel to dry this?

Souji: Maybe. Anyhow/Speaking of which...... besides the tea, there seems to be some other strange thing on the floor...... What is this?

Heisuke:......Hijikata-san, Sano-san, and Hajime-kun? What are these, these puppets/figurines [or dolls] look very well made. These might be Hijikata-san's things, so it'd be better not to touch them.

Souji: Anyway it seems like he's not in his room right now. Nothing to be done about it then~ [we'll] hand in our report later.

Heisuke: Yeah. Really, just where did he go......

(they open the door and leave the room)

Track 4

Harada: Saito...... Oi, Saito...! Wake up, I'm telling you to wake up!

Saito:.......Mm...mrgh... S-Sano?

Harada: Yeah.... oh, wait a sec! It's good that you're awake, but you can't open your eyes yet!...... Well, how should I put this...... you need to be mentally prepared......

Saito:.....? What are you saying? What mental preparations......?

~music tune~

Saito:.......!! Sano!?………………Sano?

Harada: Why is that a question? Without a doubt, it's me, Harada Sanosuke.

Saito: No....... But, the Sano I know, doesn't have that height......

Harada: Don't worry, you've become just like me. Just look down at your own body.

Saito:.....!! Even my sword is unsteady in these smaller hands, and if I step forward, there's the risk of falling over because this extremely big head..... What the hell happened to my body...!

Harada: I'll say it first, but this isn't a dream. Because I've already my face quite a few times.

Saito:......This lowly/humble body...... let alone moving, won't I be useless to the vice-commander and be unable to contribute to the Shinsengumi!?

Harada: In a sense, I don't think you'll need to worry about that? Take a look/Look, Hijikata-san has also become like/also looks like this.

~music tune~

Hijikata: Ah...... damn it......! My hands and feet [arms and legs] have gotten shorter, and everything else [tl is surroundings/everything in the surrounding] has become incredibly large......!

Saito: E-Even the Vice-Commander.....!? Why do you [also] have this awkward appearance......!!

Hijikata: Saito, you're awake. I just woke up...... Oi, Harada, why on earth have we become/do we look like this!

Harada: Even if you ask me that, I have no idea/I don't know. I was like this when I woke up.

Hijikata: Yeah....... well, since the three of us have all become like this, it's obvious/goes without saying that the pot of tea was strange.

Harada: Yeah. To begin with, it's strange to have tasted Ishida Sanyaku in tea.

Saito:......I see. That is to say that this is all due to Ishida Sanyaku......

Hijikata: No, that's impossible......

Saito: Ishida Sanyaku is a medicine that is meant to be taken with sake, because it was deviously put into tea, this sort of of trouble happened.......

???: Che~ how stupid [tl is more "stupid beyond the point of help/redemption but i can't figure out how to word that]! Devious? It's shameless to even guess/speculate about this [reword later].

Harada:......! That arrogant voice......! Kazama!!?!?

Hiijikata: You bastard! Are you actually here to harass Chizuru again[??? there's an idiom used in this sentence that I don't really get so i omitted it]!? Where the hell are you hiding!?

Kazama: HAH~! Are your eyes just decorations? I don't run or hide, so are you not able to see who is before your eyes?

~music tune~

Saito: Ha....... so you've also become like this...

Harada: I couldn't help but look up just now ['doubt my eyes'ish or 'look away'.... or something?] . (whispers) Ha.... It turned out be some random passerby.

Kazama: You bastard, sighing after looking at someone else's face, you really know nothing about etiquette!

Hijikata:: After breaking into someone's home, it goes without saying that etiquette will go to the dogs [reword later]! Alright, Saito, Harada! Let's drive this guy out of headquarters!

Saito: Understood (draws sword)

Kazama: Ah~ do you plan on fighting me with that poor body of yours?

Hijikata: Look at yourself, aren't you also the same!?

Harada: Speaking of that guy, why are you even here?.... Don't tell me that it was your plan to make our bodies smaller!?

Kazama: Ha, have you finally noticed it. You idiots/fools with no brains.

Saito: In other words, this is all that guy's fault?! Making all of our bodies smaller, what do you intend on doing?!

Kazama: It has nothing to do with you. I was only looking for my wife.... Yes, only just my wife.... That damn vile medicine!! To actually make turn me into this inferior article!!

Hijikata: Although I don't get why you're so upset, quit rambling, and hurry up and tell us the way to get us back to normal!

Kazama:.......Che.

Saito: You still won't talk. Then violence can be the only answer [reword later. don't like how it reads]...!

Harada: Hold it, Saito!

Saito: Why are you stopping me, Sano! If we don't get the answer out of that guy's mouth, we won't be able to get our bodies back to normal!

Harada: Don't you think it's a bit strange? Kazama was originally the culprit with that medicine, but why is that guy so small now? If he was able to get back to normal, he already would have done that!

Hijikata: Co-Could it be.... you're not going to say that you don't know how to get us back to normal, right!

Kazama: Did you finally realize it? You idiots with no intelligence!

Harada: Uwah....... I really want to beat him up......

Saito: Vice-Commander, please give me the order to cut that guy down!

Kazama: Che, listen to me! It's not that I don't know how to restore us to our original states. It's just that this method will be extremely difficult to accomplish.

Hijikata:……Difficult [Difficult how]……?

Kazama: It's simple to get back to our original states. The teapot with the medicine in it is still in the kitchen. We just need to drink more of that medicine, the "New and Improved Ishida Sanyaku."

Harada: I feel that I want to complain about the name of that medicine since it's a bit too subtle.... But will that really work?!

Kazama: Of course. As I possess the noble bloodline of the oni, it's impossible for me to lie.

Hijikata: For the time being, we'll believe what you say. For the time being, we'll believe what you say. You said it'd be difficult, but shouldn't being able to get into the kitchen smoothly, be the only problem?

Saito: Indeed. Just from the drop to the ground, which looks as high a wall, you can definitely infer how difficult it will be to get to the kitchen...

Kazama: That's right. As a dog who can only wag his head and wag his tail, that ability to understand is really good.

Harada: How is it that I feel angry whenever I hear you say something nasty [reword later].... Well, since we're like this, if we have more people, we'll be able to solve this problem sooner.

Hijikata: Speaking of which...... if someone would pass by/if someone just passed by......

(voices heard in distance)

Souji: Eh~ really, I don't always want to be doing this every time~

Heisuke: Don't say that. Hijikata-san should be back at his room now, right?

Hijikata: Those voices just now...... are Souji and Heisuke's?

Saito: Souji! Heisuke! Come here......! Mmph......! (mouth gets covered by Harada)

Harada: Don't be impulsive, Saito!!

Saito (weakly) What are you doing......!

Harada: I'm telling you/Listen [to me], just think about it! Even if Heisuke helps, the other person there is Souji!

Hijikata: If that guy finds out that we're tiny/this small, who knows how he would react!

Saito: (gasps and moves Harada's hand away) Ha...... Indeed, he'd treat us like toys and handle us as if we were straw...... just imagining that gives me the chills [reword later]......

Kazama: Che, as expected of a pack of dogs made up of rogues and villains. It's amazing that how you don't even have confidence/trust in your own companions.

Hijikata: Shut up! Under these circumstances...! Perhaps Souji is the only exception!

Harada: In the first place, what should we be doing, Hijikata-san? We have to do something, so should we just tell Heisuke about what happened?

Hijikata: Uh………… No, let's pretend to be dolls for a while. After, we can wait for Yamazaki or maybe Gen-san....... ah, there's still Chizuru, [but] we should wait for someone reasonable to pass by.

Kazama: What are you saying? You're actually telling me to pretend to be a doll [reword later]!?

Hijikata; Shut up and just do as I say! Even if it's you, if you can't get back to normal, won't you have a lot of problems!

Kazama: Che. There's nothing to be done/that can be done about it then.

Harada: Heisuke's coming! Everyone stop talking!

(door slides open)

Heisuke: Hijikata-san~! Hah!? Still not here......

Okita: That's strange. I just heard a very quiet voice just now, so I thought Hajime-kun was here. (looks around) Anyhow, why have these dolls that were placed here, so scattered around [reword later/thesaurus]? Furthermore, this/And this strange doll with blond hair, I don't remember seeing it earlier.

Toudou: What is this, a doll of Kazama? There's even one of one of Sano-san, but why isn't there one of these odd dolls of you or me, Souji?

(Heisuke pokes Kazama's head)

Kazama: You bastard......! The only one in the world who is allowed to touch me, is my wife...!

Harada: Come on, don't talk, just be patient!

Souji: These two figures look very much like Hijikata-san and Hajime-kun... Come look at them, they look pretty funny/interesting~

(Souji pokes Hijikata's head)

Hijikata:………………！！！！

Saito:…………！

Okita: Nn? I seemed to have heard something strange?

Harada: Well since these are Hijikata-san's things, if you play around too much with them, he'll get super angry~

Souji: That's right. But, if we just leave them here like this, isn't it likely for that cat to play around with them [reword later]?

Heisuke: It's as you say though since they were already left in a mess, maybe that cat messed them up [reword later].

Souji: In that case, why don't we just put them all into a box? They can be also put into a closet where the cat won't be able to reach them.

Saito: ………………What!?

Harada: If that happens, won't we be unable to move!?

Hijikata: This bastard/guy, he just had to come up with such a rotten idea right now!

Heisuke: Let's hold onto them for the time being then. Anyway, we still need to come back later and give give the report for our patrol. At the time, we can return these to Hijikata-san.

Souji: You're not thinking about taking these back to your room to prank them because you're upset about the faces of these dolls, right [i think? reword later]?

Heisuke: This idea of yours won't be any good/You're the only one who would come up with such a bad idea... well, then I'll take the Sano-san and Kazama dolls for to hold onto for safekeeping.

Kazama: Kuh......! Things are getting more and more complicated...

--To be continued...?---

#hakuoki #hakuouki #hakuoki drama translation #hakuoki drama cd #hakuoki yuugiroku #Hijikata Toshizou #Saito Hajime #Okita Souji #Toudou Heisuke #harada sanosuke #Kazama Chikage

20 notes · View notes

hopeymchope · 4 years ago

Text

If you like Danganronpa, you might like...

I’ve discovered quite a few games/animes I’ve loved and even new fandoms by using recommendation engines/following online message board recommendations for people who already like the Danganronopa games or anime or manga, and I thought I’d give a quick rundown of how these things have worked out for me.

I’ve been wanting to do this for a while now, honestly... it’s just time-consuming to write it all up, y’know?

Today, I’ll focus primarily on the video game side. If I put “Danganronpa” (any entry) into a recommendation engine, these are the results that I see spit back at me the most... and now that I’ve tried all the most common results, here are my findings.

Persona

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: The storylines have teenagers in Japan having to investigate dark goings-on while counterbalancing that with scenes of daily life that are lighter and more humorous. There are also “social link” scenes with the other characters that could easily be compared to the “Free Time Events” in DR, wherein you learn more about the lives of your compatriots via some one-on-one time.

What I Played: Persona 3 Portable and Persona 4 Golden on my Vita, then Persona Q on my 3DS. And I watched the main anime adaptions for 3 and 4...

Did It Work for Me? Will it Work for Others? Persona 3 and 4 absolutely worked for me. Q didn’t so much; the Etrian Odyssey-style map-your-own-first-person-dungeon gameplay was a turnoff. Regardless, it’s hard to pin down exactly why there is SO DAMN MUCH crossover between Persona and Danganronpa fans - probably more than anything else I’ve got listed here - because they’re actually very different. These are RPGs with turn-based combat and fantastical story elements involving magic and mystical beings and other worlds. And yet... I do feel the tonal similarity, and the characters feel like they could be at home in a DR game or vice-versa. And I deeply loved 3 and 4. (The stories are individualized to each numbered entry with the exception of the two “Persona 2″ games, so you can jump in on any numbered entry without any problem). I am excited to one day play 5 (although it is so much easier for me to play portables so I really, really, really wish there was some portable version of 5 in existence). Also note that the “social links” didn’t exist UNTIL Persona 3, so you can’t really go back and find that aspect in the first few titles. I can’t say these will work for everyone, but the massive amount of fan overlap says something, so if you’re game for a turn-based RPG AND you like Danganronpa... have I got a soup here for you.

Zero Escape Series (”9 Persons, 9 Hours, 9 Doors” + “Virtue’s Last Reward” + “Zero Time Dilemma”)

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: Dark, complex storyline filled with twists, memorable characters trapped in killing game, a mysterious mastermind, visual novel-style presentation, off-kilter humor interjected at surprising times.

What I Played: All three games on the Vita (the first two are collected as “The Nonary Games”).

Did It Work for Me? Will it Work for Others? Yes and yes. Aside from maybe Zanki Zero (see below), this is probably the most obvious thing to recommend to Danganronpa fans, and I’m kind of surprised there isn’t even more of a fandom to it. I can see why it doesn’t have as big of a following as DR - I mean, the humor isn’t quite as widespread and the characters are a bit less quirkily odd - but it’s hard not to get sucked in and fall in love with these stories. The big point of separation for DR fans is that instead of “Trials” where you use logic to solve puzzles, you have to constantly do “escape rooms” and use logic to find your way out of those rooms by doing point-and-click style hunting for items and solving puzzles in those rooms. Just like in DR, however, you’ll find that the more you fail, the more the game gives you increasingly blatant hints as to what you’re supposed to be doing, so it’s not like anything should get you stuck for too long. There’s also the somewhat obtuse nature of how to progress at times, but if you use the branching storyline map whenever you get stuck to look for updated items, you’ll probably be just fine (I hear the DS version of the first game doesn’t have such a map - or even voice acting - so you may need to beware of that being the most obtuse version out there). I loved these games, even if my rankings for them are probably out of sync with how most of the fandom seems to feel.

Phoenix Wright

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: Visual novel-style plot and investigation scenes, murder trials with logic puzzles where you need to point out flaws in testimony/falsehoods using evidence, plenty of humor.

What I Played: All of the first game (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney) on the DS

Did It Work For Me? Will It Work for Others? Well... this is a little unfair, because I played the first one of these before I ever played Danganronpa, but... I didn’t like it. The humor was... lame for me? and I found the trials excruciatingly difficult because MY version of how the logic was flawed was never exactly how they wanted me to approach it. It was a matter of me attacking the wrong parts of sentences over the same general facts but... yeah... I didn’t get into this. Maybe I’m dumb, or was dumb, but it didn’t click for me and I only got through the first game using a guide and expending a lot of patience. I later tried out the anime because I heard it had a good rep (and this was after getting into DR and anime in general), and I didn’t care for that either. So I don’t know about this one.. it wasn’t up my alley. Will it work for other people? Well, clearly it DOES work for other people or this wouldn’t be considered a similar recommendation that comes up so often, typically in the top three of “if you like DR games” results! I do think the humor is FAR different than that of Danganronpa’s, and the characters lack the same kind of nuanced depth you see in DR (but again, that’s just from me playing the first game). But it’s easy to see from the “Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d” that there are elements that would definitely appeal to DR players. Give it a try for yourself if you aren’t already a fan, I’d say. My experience feels... esoteric to what most people think. I may need to try one again. These are on tons of platforms nowadays, many with demos, and often at discounted prices.

Zanki Zero: Last Beginning

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: It’s made by largely the same team using the same art style and presentation stlye and is an extremely dark story full of unique personalities and LOADS of weird off-kilter humor with zany mascots somehow overseeing apocalyptic circumstances and the characters look and act like they could easily be in DR and...

What I Played: The whole lone game from start to finish on my PS4.

Did It Work For Me? Will It Work for Others? HELL YES. Everyone who likes DR should really give this a chance. It gives off so much of a similar vibe despite being a “survival”-style game with navigation puzzles rather than logic puzzles, and you can turn off the survival/combat aspects entirely if that’s not your thing! And the story is excellent and the characters are excellent and really just please play this. Underrated game of 2019, and most underrated game that needs a fandom that I’ve ever played.

Fire Emblem

Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d: The bonding sequences you get when your units stand next to each other could be compared to FTEs. It’s got an anime design aesthetic, and the story can go pretty dark. Characters may suffer permadeath (even if other characters won’t react to this fact), so I guess there’s that...

What I Played: Awakening and Fates on the 3DS in their entirety (Yes, I did all three routes on Fates).

Did It Work For Me? Will It Work for Others? I can’t say I fully “get” this one. Fire Emblem is a turn-based strategy game that takes place in a medieval setting, so why is it always turning up in recommendations for people who play Danganronpa? Yes, I did enjoy it quite a bit. I became a newly minted fan of Fire Emblem. Success! And yet... I don’t know that the crossover is obvious to me, nor do I expect it would be a clear-cut case for most DR fans. I don’t even know that all of the traits Iisted under “Why This is Probably Getting Rec’d” actually apply to the whole series. I suppose that any game series that has a balance of darkness and humor plus a “character bonding” scene mechanic might just fall into the “if you like Danganronpa... “ pit, regardless of how incredibly different EVERYTHING ELSE is. But perhaps there’s a deeper connection here than I realize. Care to theorize?

#fire emblem #phoenix wright #danganronpa #danganronpa fandom #zero escape #zero escape series #persona #zanki zero #zanki zero: last beginning #video games

112 notes · View notes

hylialeia · 4 years ago

Note

wait I remember when the arya stans came for you, but what happened with dany and sansa stans?

oh boy okay, here we go

it's been a while but here's the gist of it: a lot of show!Sansa stans came after me for saying her show and book character were almost entirely at odds, for liking Daenerys, for thinking Jon/Sansa won't happen in the books, for liking Arya too much (?? I guess), and for the general sin of writing meta based on book evidence and not character preference. my Sansa meta is largely positive but once the show started doing its whole Sansa vs. Arya thing in season 7, and then Sansa vs. Dany in season 8, my stance on it all being bullshit and refusing to side with show!Sansa meant instant death. Plus there was a huge influx of Sansa Stan/Anti-Dany overlap and Daenerys is my favorite character in the series, which didn’t help. that was my first big blocking spree, which is probably why I don’t see or interact with horrible Sansa takes or anti-Daenerys nonsense anymore.

now. for the Dany thing.

me being a Fake Dany Stan (yes that is literally the term that was used) and that whole debacle happened for kind of the same reasons; I try to write meta based off the books and not character preference, and even though Dany is my favorite character and I probably do have a bias towards her, I'm also really into flawed characters and have always loved that ASOIAF doesn't hold back or try to make sure its characters, including the relative Good Guys, are blameless, flawless, or even totally palatable (which is something stan culture Does Not Vibe With because it’s boring and has no taste). so here’s what went down.

I wrote a meta forever ago where I praised Daenerys for being able to be as flawed as any male character in the series without the narrative demonizing her for it (the fandom is another matter but that wasn’t the point of that post or this one). unfortunately,, filtering this through stan culture brain rot apparently made it translate as "Dany is evil" or something (because flawed women = evil as everyone knows), and because stans are really into gatekeeping their “communities” (literally, by their own admission, this is something people are proud of and have said outright) and dictating the One Right Way to like a character, I got accused of being a Fake Stan who was infiltrating pro-Daenerys spaces (fkgjdkfljgklfdj) which I guess makes sense, considering most of the people saying this had actively reblogged my previous writings about her (a lot of my Dany metas remain my most popular posts).

and okay. this is where it got kind of fucked up: some stans took it to be a personal, individual, specific attack on them and they actively came after me for it, complete with tagging each other for.. I don’t know, back up? I guess?? which sorta hurt since I’d previously had positive interactions with these people and assumed they had basic reading comprehension. I should have just blocked them there but instead I replied and essentially said "get fucked" which didn't go over well, and according to friends who could still see their blogs after I blocked them, they proceeded to drag me by name for a whole week after it happened. pretty sure I got accused of being a white supremacist afterwards plus a bonus of a ton of anon hate and death threats, and for some reason some of my mutuals were pulled into the mix for associating with me. it was genuinely unhinged

#don't reblog #ask #anonymous #fandom wank #no public asks about specifics please

9 notes · View notes

aikainkauna · 8 years ago

Text

I was actually updating the whole If Tumblr Went Old Hollywood post to make some bits clearer where I failed and shit (do feel free to reblog with additions of your own! It’s a free-for-all), but I got thinking that I missed one major meme.

Namely, if fandom went OH overnight, who’d take Nic Cage’s place as the guy whose face gets pasted everywhere for lols? I’m crowdsourcing this, because I can’t really think of who the Golden Age equivalent of him would be. Any ideas?

#nicolas cage #old hollywood #memes #meme #lols #and things #i also feel iffy about trying to explain jokes but i guess that whole hogwarts houses thing fell flat :(#so i tried to just make it clearer now because...#i feel pretty pathetic about trying to be funny rn #it's lame when you've got the impetus and the ideas and the spirit for memes/porn/fanfic etc.#but those things don't really exist in OH fandom since it's full of so many strait-laced people #but it's odd because there *is* an overlap with that kind of fandom at large #ah well i guess the area just needs stubborn nutcases treating OH like any other fandom #i've seen some memey things made by other OH fans as well and they've been super funny #but they never get reblogged and i find that's so infuriating!#the amount of slashy lols in so many of those movies and/or the meme potential and and #and then you've got some jokey memey things but they're run by hopelessly prudish people #where are all the bawdy slash fangirl types?#if anything an area dominated by prudishness requires some shaking up #but i guess unless it's a huge fandom everyone prefers to just be more and more navel-gazey these days #i have a ramble on that topic specifically with regards to the whole oc phenomenon... but later #but again old hollywood was crazier and pervier than current hollywood it seems #so you'd *think* fandom would latch onto it but i guess it's just the gay guys who are all the pervs there #and they don't really do the same kinds of things fangirls do which is a shame #BASICALLY I WANT MORE OH MEMES WITH ACTUAL OBNOXIOUS PERV JOKES #is that too much to ask #p.s. re: cage--am now imagining shots of basil rathbone in son of frankenstein #bc he makes so many ridic faces in the promos for that film #but i have already shown too much bias towards my favs in that meme #so i am legit trying to aim for a balance

1 note · View note

talkingsquidphd · 7 years ago

Text

Review: Jason Mittell, “Complex TV”

Entering my third year of grad school feels like leaving behind the comforting Shire of coursework and term papers and striking out for the Mordor of dissertation writing. The overall plan is clear – chuck the ring in the volcano, write a book people want to read – but standing in the doorway needing to take the first actual steps of such a grand undertaking has me asking stupid basic questions like:

Imagine my relief when I picked up Jason Mittell’s Complex TV and was rewarded with not only a model of the kind of monograph I aspire to write, but also an encouraging glimpse behind the scenes of an ambitious book-length scholarly project.

Mittell closes Complex TV with several pages admitting the project’s challenges and limitations. Big on practicing what he preaches – more on that later – Mittell decided to publish his scholarly project on serial TV serially, making chapters available online for perusal and critique as they were written. This practice, says Mittell, came with both rewards and challenges:

“Of course, this openness also meant that when I ran into trouble, anyone could see it… my nine-month hiatus felt like a very public failure, letting down readers through my stalled momentum and providing visible evidence of the all-too-common instance of an academic missing publishing deadlines. But such failure can be extremely productive, as the chapter I was struggling with transformed radically during my break…” (352)

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard someone speak to the difficulty and emotional strain of book-length academic writing. But it was, unbelievably, the first time I’d heard it couched in a kind of “it gets better” context – not a disheartening exposé on the part of someone who, for better or worse, went ABD, but a frank admission of specific failures from someone who got through it and whose work I admire immensely. Less “how the sausage is made,” more “getting a peek behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz.” As someone who worries regularly about academia’s tendency to dehumanize its practitioners, it was also comforting to me to see Mittell find space to share these personal reflections in a major academic publication – another aspiration to add to my dissertation checklist.

It might feel odd to start a review with the book’s closing words, but the structure of Complex TV – one of the book’s primary innovations – actually encourages its readers to experience its chapters in virtually any order they like. Why? Formally, Complex TV takes on the tall order of using the form of complex TV itself to tell its story – striking a balance between rewarding intense audience engagement and accumulated knowledge and welcoming audience members who have engaged the material out of order or less religiously. Naturally, the result of a monograph whose chapters can be read in any order is an argument which doesn’t strive towards a single unified thesis beyond ‘complex TV is a thing and takes many forms.’ Instead, the book sets off little Big Bangs in a number of undeveloped galaxies of TV criticism, giving the impression of a cartographer starting in the center of a map and fleshing out in all directions rather than an explorer breaking the next ten feet of a particular trail. Again, the idea of opening up new arenas of thought sounds a lot more appealing to this budding scholar than picking a niche scholarly hill to die on.

[This is how I picture the book’s structure. There are many points of overlap between the chapters and a central point which they all touch on, but each has its own substantial claim to a unique arena of thought.]

The other half of my unabashed love for Complex TV comes from its take on fan engagement. Not only does the book consistently argue that a range of fan practices are both valid and valuable, it does so as a cornerstone of its argument rather than as a tokenized afterthought or a discreet footnote. Mittell’s definition of complex TV itself is built largely around the idea of the “operational aesthetic” – the “conscious accumulation, analysis, and hypothesizing of information concerning how the story is told” (169). Picture this familiar scene: I recently sat down with a couple friends and discussed the most recent finale of Game of Thrones, analyzing (no spoilers, I swear) an extended shot of a particular character pulling a face. Combining character analysis (“this seemed out of character for him”), plot analysis (“the last scene he was in involved X, and he had no clear reason to be in this scene”), and formal analysis (“they put in two lingering shots, they wouldn’t have done that if it wasn’t important”), we came to certain conclusions about what this strange expression foreshadowed. Just like that, we had engaged with complex TV through the operational aesthetic.

To anyone who’s been a serious fan of something televisual for a long time, this probably sounds a lot like just being a serious fan of something. As a superfan of Korean dramas, you might “accumulate” information about a drama’s characters by memorizing their birthdays and blood types, “analyze” a touching bit of banter between the female lead and the second male lead, and “hypothesize” that the second male lead is finally going to get the girl this time. (He isn’t.) But the key to Mittell’s argument is that this metatextual and reflexive behavior is no longer the stuff of obscure fan sites and hobbyhorse email newsletters, left up to the fickle chance of unexpected hits and cult followings. These days, shows are being designed to elicit this kind of engagement from anyone and everyone, and the operational aesthetic is consequently rearing its head everywhere from the water cooler to the front page of Reddit.

[And people like Anderson from Sherlock, long shunned by the daywalkers, can be open about their obsessions instead of turning their office into one big conspiracy wall.]

This blanket affirmation of fan practice allows Mittell to do some fiddly and impressive work on fan engagement. In a particularly excellent chapter on Lost and the evolution of its integral and infinitely complex fan wiki, Mittell navigates a very tricky line, productively distinguishing transformative fan practice (such as fanfiction) from supplementary fan practice (such as recording a show’s canon information in a wiki) without hierarchizing one over the other. Especially intriguing was Mittell’s discussion of “spoiler fan” culture – folks who collect leaked info, surf fan theory forums, and engage in furious analysis in an attempt to “spoil” the show and its secrets for themselves as early as possible. In Mittell’s view, spoiler fans are the operational aesthetic taken to its most extreme conclusion, an exaggerated version of what complex TV definitionally asks of its viewers.

The spoiler fan discussion felt particularly relevant to the ripple in the complex-TV time-space continuum that was Westworld, HBO’s 2016 prestige TV remake of the old Yul Brynner flick. The show inspired a bustling Reddit community which rather controversially pieced together all of its many twists and turns well in advance through a pooling of information, interpretation, and theory. Some considered this a failure on Westworld’s part, assuming that the purpose of a prestige show is to keep even its most dedicated viewers baffled and guessing until the last second. Are they right? Did Westworld underestimate the operational aesthetic and the dedication of fan sleuths, making its twists too obvious to a careful observer? Or was it masterfully designed to reward spoiler fan practices while preserving the show’s mysteries for the non-spoiler-fan audience – a complex TV ideal? The jury, it seems, will remain out for some time.

[The Man in Black is basically a spoiler fan trying to unlock the secrets of Westworld’s operational aesthetic.]

Acting as a further ally to the fan community, Mittell helps validate fan scholars and scholar fans in a chapter urging critics to let evaluation back into the realm of criticism. Sentiments that get a lot of play in student term paper conferences – “I don’t care if you like the book or not, I care what you think about it” – have kept simple statements of appreciation out of contemporary literary criticism to a large degree. Mittell argues that feeling free to declare one’s basic, personal appreciation of a text in the context of criticism would spare us a lot of essays along the lines of “thesis: why Mad Men is great, not because I have a personal reason for liking it, but because of these brilliant universal objective formal things it does, and anyone who disagrees just doesn’t understand its formal, structural, objective genius.” Consciously or unconsciously, Mittell’s call for evaluation in criticism helps free scholars of the popular from a deadly professional catch-22. As a fan scholar, you can choose to hide your fan investments in an effort to ensure your work will be taken seriously as ‘objective’ criticism, but this will inevitably perpetuate the idea that fans are unwelcome in academic discourse, and it might invalidate your work if your investments are later discovered. Conversely, you can declare your fan investments from the start, have a certain subset of the academy consider your work invalid as a matter of course, and proceed through your career feeling like you have something to prove and an extra swamp of unfair assumptions to wade through. If and only if personal fan investment, appreciation, and evaluation shed their stigma in the academy will fan studies fully bridge the gap between academia and fandom. Calls to action like Mittell’s are the baby steps necessary to get us there.

In addition to these broad choices, smaller charms cemented my esteem for Complex TV. Included alongside the holy trinity of prestige television (The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and The Wire) were analyses of Battlestar Galactica, marking the encouraging entry of an sf show into the old boys’ club of mimetic TV that invariably gets play in TV scholarship. To accommodate the invitation to read in any order, each individual chapter had a clear but flexible structure (genre history, general principle, broad survey of short examples, then a case study of a particular show or two and its relevant phenomenon). Finally, Mittell’s affect is clean and conversational, never afraid to straightforwardly signpost where other academic writing might waffle. Take chapter one, sentence one: “This book’s main argument is that over the past two decades, a new model of storytelling has emerged as an alternative to the conventional episodic and serial forms that have typified most American television since its inception, a mode I call narrative complexity” (17). Let’s hope that in short order, I’ll have a sentence this clean and clear poised to incorporate my disparate interests into a dissertation. In the intervening time, I’m sure I’ll keep coming back to Complex TV for inspiration.

#movies & tv #reviews #battlestar galactica #complex tv #criticism #jason mittell #westworld #tv

0 notes

woohooligancomics · 8 years ago

Text

Webcomic Whimsy Review: Iron and Steel

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! I've given a couple of interviews in the past, but this is my first experience with reviewing. If you have any suggestions for ways to improve these reviews, feel free to leave a note. If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Iron and Steel

Author: Erin • DeviantArt

Site: Iron and Steel

Genres: Sci-Fi, Mystery, Espionage, camp, Inspector Gadget Alternate Universe

Rating: PG(?)

Updates: Tuesday and Saturday

Synopsis: (from the ComicFury hosting profile) This is an alternate universe take on Inspector Gadget. It mainly draws it's base inspiration from the classic series, but does use bits from the other incarnates done over the years. Don't expect to know what this is from knowing the canon content. This is a more serious and elaborate take on the fandom. I highly suggest reading the back stories connected to the comic before reading it. That is the only way the characters and plot will make total sense.

I have a confession to make. I have very mixed emotions about writing this review. Maybe I should have turned this one down, but I've already done the reading and the author is a friend of mine. So maybe this will be a learning experience for me, getting my footing writing these reviews, as this is new to me and only my third. On the one hand, I enjoy helping other creators (I publish my own humor comic), and my goal with these reviews is to help creators find their audience and readers find the kind of works they enjoy. On the other hand, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that with this particular review.

When Erin requested this review, she said that the comics more or less require supplemental reading if you want to fully understand them. When she sent me the request for the review, she suggested that I start with the first prose backstory (of three), titled "The Nature of Change and Destruction". So I checked it out and realizing it was more than a few paragraphs decided I would need to print it out... had it been as much as ten or twelve pages, I might have read it. Over the past few years I've managed to improve my reading speed quite a lot, however, even assuming slightly large print, there's no way I had time to read 70 pages of backstory before getting to the very first page of the actual comic. (So if the other two are of similar length, that means an entire rougly 200 page novel before one page of comic.) Because I'm really busy lately both with publishing my own comics and a lot of errands and doctor's visits among my family (I'm the only driver in a house of six people), I decided I needed to set a cap on the amount of time reserved for these reviews. I figured I could devote at most an hour a week to reading, prior to writing my review, so the whole review process takes about two hours per week. My job is to condense that hour of reading into something you can digest in a few minutes to get a feel for the work before deciding if you want to commit yourself to reading it. Had I tried to read the backstory document, I could guarantee that I would have exhausted the hour before reaching the comic. So I decided to go ahead and just read from the first page of the comic to see if I could tease-out a plot. I got through thirty-two pages.

As Erin mentioned in her description, this is an Inspector Gadget fan-comic in an alternate universe. Having said that, I don't recall MAD being mentioned by name more than once, maybe twice in those thirty-two pages? The canonical master-villain, Doctor Claw appears once in about two pages. Inspector Gadget and Penny don't appear until page twenty-one, and for only eight pages before returning to the villains. So in a large chunk of the opening of the story, the heroes exist for only a quarter of the material I read.

In those eight pages, they only manage to wake up, get out of bed, discuss what time of year it is, that Penny is volunteering at a cat rescue for college credits, introduce two new junior detectives sent by HAPPY (the organization Gadget works for), and the fact that the same junior detectives cosplayed at Dragon Con and Penny isn't interested in dating them. To be fair, there is a bit of slap-stick visual humor in those eight pages, which is partially responsible for the minimal amount of information in that particular passage.

The face at the bottom of this page also shows one of the other reasons why I only managed to get through thirty-two pages. The panelling in this series is unconventional and all over the place. Rarely will you find a square panel like the one in the upper-left corner of this page. There are no gutters, just a thick black line between panels, usually squiggly, sometimes saw-toothed like these. Characters often escape the borders of panels with no clear understanding of the purpose for that. The lower-left panel in this page for example shows a plain orange background to emphasize the horesplay, but despite ample room on the page for the characters' feet to be inside that panel, the panel was cut through their legs. Meanwhile the similar horesplay panel immediately above it (blue background) offered an opportunity for the same feet to escape the panel but instead cut the feet inside the panel and allowed the characters to escape the panel on the other side where they overlap yet another panel.

I understand that on this specific page the characters are horsing around and panel breaking here could be an intentional style element. The issue I have is that panel breaking is a constant visual theme in places where there isn't any action and there was ample room to keep characters in the panels. The apperance of Gadget's face in the bottom middle panel underscores that overall feeling that panels and backgrounds and the readers visual orientation aren't given priority. Yes, you see the two at the door in the first panel in the upper left, but there's no "click" sound effect of the door opening, there's nothing to orient the face to the other characters who are already in the scene, so the only way you know he's just opened the door is if you're observant enough to notice the tan triangle on the right (the door) and realize that it's not just a fragmented portion of another irregularly-shaped, sometimes puzzle-piece-esque panel. That missing sense of orientation makes for a lot more trying to tease-out what's visually happening on the page... and then the desired visual orientation is provided on the very next page.

But again, even though that visual orientation we want is provided in that first panel, the rest of the panel layout begs for a do-over. This is a page with almost no dialogue. There's ample room for all those panels to be square, and given that it's just a basic introduction page with nothing particularly exciting happening (joke notwithstanding), all those panels probably should have been square.... but more important than the irregular panels, why do "Fidget and Digit's" heads escape the top of the third panel?! Even without moving the final panel down a little and to the right (make that a bust, we don't need to see his shirt all the way to the belt), there was ample room to get the two of them entirely inside that panel. The only thing letting their heads escape the top of that panel accomplished was to wash their hair out in the black and make it near invisible, giving them the appearance of having odd, bald, yet flat-topped, mask-shaped heads.

I really genuinely hate to be so critical here, I want these reviews to be mostly about helping people find their audience and as I said, I wasn't sure if I would be able to do that this time. There are some cool ideas in this comic (I'm usually fond of stories that feature shapeshifters), but there's been a lot of emphasis placed on backstory and on maintaining the sense of mystery, so the story istelf is parted out in really short scenes and in thirty-two pages (which incidentally is about one and a half standard comic issues), there's not been enough revealed to even guess at the plot. For my part I have to wonder, if that much backstory was necessary, then why wouldn't you just start drawing the comic from the first page of the backstory? I know a lot of people enjoyed the TV series Lost for example, but that's because they watched it from the beginning. You don't start into Lost from an episode in the middle of season three, and that's how I feel trying to read these.

So I wish I could say I have a pitch for this... If you like long-reads, a lot of mystery and Inspector Gadget, it may be worth a look, I just wish I could give you a better idea what it's about. Sorry, Erin, I tried.

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review rules here.

If you enjoy my reviews and would like to help ensure I'm able to continue publishing them, you can contribute on our Patreon or if you're short on funds you can also help me out by checking out and sharing my own webcomic, Woohooligan!

Thanks! Sam

#scifi #fancomic #campy #mystery #espionage #webcomic #review

0 notes