#but this is a really blatant and pretty cool moment imo

[mako-mahko]

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned (and if someone has please direct me to it) is that there is a clear visual representation of the inaccessibility of the council room in episode one.

When Salo gets crushed under the rubble after the explosion, he becomes wheelchair-bound and loses the function in his legs. His first scene after this is when he enters the council room, and in order to get to the center of it, he has to go down two sets of steps in his wheelchair. The camera focuses on these shots, and I think it's a really interesting way to portray that inaccessibility, especially since a person with a physical disability played such a large role in the previous season. Not only did the writing in season one support the fact that the council was inaccessible, but this cements the fact that without Jayce, a council member willing to bring those without access to the other side of the table, Viktor wouldn't have had any possible chance of affecting change.

It stood out to me on my first watch because I thought it was a really solid visual way of showing that the council isn't as inclusive or fair as they portray themselves as being, and that in order to affect change, the people that don't have direct access to the council have to put themselves in peril in order to get there. No one on the council was physically disabled prior to the explosion, and it is only after they have been brought down to the level of those they preside over that their inaccessibility becomes an issue for them. That moment is a sound reinforcement of that inaccessibility, and I found it so cool that they decided to include it.

[akkivee]

i’m still not sure what was ranked lol??? but ig it’s a ranking of which hypmic media is peak hypmic media????? and some notes lol

s tier:

the manga and chuuou stage!!!!!

tho knocked for its inaccessibility, inability to hear the character voices and insert raps, and it being behind canon, the manga is still just like, the best way to consume hypmic’s canon lol

you get the drama tracks and additional storytelling for those tracks AND stories that help build hypmic’s world and characters!!!

the best way to consume canon tho imo is reading the manga to the drama tracks whenever you can lol

the chuuoku stage was originally a tier but i was asked to put it higher and therefore it is LOL

the stage as a whole would be a tier i think, despite some misgivings about it lol

but the chuuoku stage had peak acting, peak character moments and bonds, peak canon interpretations and it was sick seeing a group of women oppose the women’s rule while lowkey guilty of what chuuoku was doing as well 😫👌

also seeing honobono in the flesh and our first auxiliary media honobono too where she was just as terrible and terrifying as you might expect thanks hypstage lmao

sucks it’s not very accessible tho lol

a tier:

the drama tracks and the legends era stage!!!!

tho the drama tracks are my s tier lmao, i can acknowledge it can be hard to sit down with a couple dozen or so drama tracks when a good majority of them are 30 minutes each lol

all of the canon drama tracks are very accessible!!! side media not so much lol but the majority of the main story is on youtube!!!!

but bc the manga was made to accompany the tracks, you don’t get the full picture as you would with the manga lol

the legends era stage, despite not being the most faithful to the character portrayals, showed character flaws in peak dramatique lmao

thru the side characters you get a lot of worldbuilding that is relevant to canon despite its other universe status

it’s my issues with its characterisations and ESP the blatant disregard for the women that doesn’t have it higher lol

it’s pretty inaccessible too lol

b tier:

arb and hypdream!!!!!

hypdream is new and i haven’t played it but creating ghost versions of the characters where their character traits are Slightly skewed is automatically peak writing for me LOL

and any game that calls ichiro pretty is aight by me lol

arb is really cool!!!!! it’s mostly b tier bc it’s incredibly inaccessible lol but it’s zany and in character crazy lmao

like sometimes character traits are played up for a comedic effect but it doesn’t detract from the character itself lol

i also think the main story is cool!!! the arb ocs are very neat and the divisions intermingle in ways canon simply cannot provide

it also being paywalled knocks down lol

c tier:

the current era of hypstage!!!!

they haven’t done anything lol

like them doing og get together stories is nice ig and even if idk how i feel about them forming nagosaka alongside the og divisions, i can appreciate them weaving their narratives together so they all begin together

there’s a sanitation of a few characters that are already showing thru that might be a detriment in the long run idk where the stage is going tho lol

like i mean there felt like there was an attempt on nuanced characters in the first era of the stage and idk if it’s been carried over based on what we’ve seen so far??? maybe a bit???? idk i think only time will tell

always on that inaccessibility ✌️

d tier:

rhyme anima!!!!!

i don’t hate rhyme anima let me just preface lmao!!!!!!

it was originally on c tier but i felt a little offended putting it next to the stage lol

it’s a little too silly i think lol like arb is fun silly but rhyme anima doesn’t have enough charm in its silly

it might be bc the character portrayals toe being offensive tbh lol i always commiserate with mtc fans watching samatoki be bastardised like that 😭😭😭

ramuda too imo but idk if that’s my place to comment on lol

like arb tastefully exaggerates their characters, rhyme anima made caricatures of them 😭😭😭

tho i will always be amused by kuukou being so sanitised of his insanity lmao he’s smart and you can actually see that and it’s so funny to see lol

[amulet-or-not]

Ok so I watched rise of the titans and it was... An experience...

The things I loved/liked:

Children of the sun summoning the amulet sequence. It was pretty cool. But it's funny this is one of the things in this category since it was basically ripped straight out of the scene in 1x12. But I don't mind a little self plagiarism if it's satisfying

Toby actually being smart and having a part in the defeat of bellroc

Toby's last moments with Jim. Not to say I liked Toby dying that was fucking horrible but seeing Toby and Jim be close again was something that had been desperately absent for a few seasons. And the idea that Jim even after winning would sacrifice the entire world and take on the burden of going back into the past himself, just to save Toby is kinda sweet even if this movie didn't go in that direction. Cuz it just proves this boy would give up anything for his friends and that's one of his core qualities and why we all love him

The opening sequence on the subway. That was pretty excellent and raised the hype and allowed everyone an equal chance to shine

Aarrrgghh going batshit when Toby dies cuz mood

The taco truck with the little tune entering arcadia and all the government are like 'remove the barricades, let them through!!'

Jlaire was pretty cute in this movie, not the best it's ever been but y'know.

Douxie was pretty good throughout

The things I was ok/unsure about:

Ajas characterisation. I know a lot of people hated it in this movie but it wasn't the worst. She acted like a leader trying to protect two worlds of people, and that's entirely fair tbh. I didn't like how she doubted Jim but as she didn't know him that well especially as neither of them remember the events of d'aja vu it was kinda understandable. And I agreed that they did need a contingency evacuation plan

Krel. He was consistently good in this movie as usual but didn't get enough time to shine individually, same goes for blinky and aarrrgghh

Stricklake getting married was cute, however I didn't like how Barbara was used as a mouthpiece to mediate all of Jim's relationships with the older men in his life, i.e. when her and Jim talked it was either about strickler or James SR. and honestly that's just a disservice to Barbara's own character (and makes me realize that I doubt this movie passes the bechdel test)

The things I disliked:

Eli basically doing nothing all movie and being useless

Having Eli come back after a glow up for the sole purpose of having a moment where Steve is jealous and distrusting of his girlfriend. Actually no this can go in the hate category too ❤️

Jim saying 'i always wondered about dad' to his mom. The only reason this isn't in the hate category is bc it meant we actually spent time on the relationship between Jim and Barbara which is something that was sorely lacking in wizards tbh, and something that really made trollhunters shine. But what happened to 1x17's 'you know I don't care about my father'? Like what is this bfr

Toby being used as comic relief didn't bother me in this as much as in wizards cuz at least he got that important moment at the end but him saying 'moral support is the lamest superpower' what happened to the Toby that cherished supporting his friends and knew that his support was the greatest gift he could give to Jim and Claire just as their support was his greatest gift. Cuz that seemed like a key factor in earlier seasons imo. Also what happened to the Toby that started becoming confident in his abilities in earlier seasons of trollhunters?

The blatant Hollywood stereotyping. The kids kicking the football in Brazil and the fishermen in the South China sea, and then the bright neon lights of anywhere in east Asia at nighttime visual. It's not the worst but I'm tired tbh

The things that I absolutely fucking hated:

This shouldn't matter to me so much, but why when Jim went back into the past, did he wake up at 8.00 instead of 6.00? You could claim it was because it was cuz he was disoriented, but the time of his alarm should never have changed. If I remember that it said 6.00 on the alarm, and I haven't watched the first episode since probably 2018, the screenwriters should've too. It's just lazy. Or maybe it's symbolic of the fact that Jim only used to wake up at 6.00 to make his mom breakfast and all of them lunch, something which was a key part of his characterisation and clearly showed how much he cared for and loved the people around him - something which is very obviously no longer a part of his character since he allowed Steve to bully Eli and manipulated Toby into becoming the trollhunter. But idk. You choose

Nomura's characterisation?? First of all she just seemed ooc, like a stereotype version of herself for some reason. Secondly, her death. She died. In the sun. She's a changeling. The sloppiness of the writing team in keeping their facts straight is fucking astounding.

Stricklers death. Just for shock value and a play on emotions cuz it contributed nothing to the story. Same with nomuras. All it showed me is that the writing team were sitting around a table and someone goes 'you know we should kill off a few characters early on in the movie just to show this is a serious level threat'.

Pregnancy being used as a fucking joke. I wouldn't have necessarily minded the mpreg concept happening but the execution was just. Ugh. Steve being pregnant was treated as a joke and gross and just something to fill in time as comic relief, rather than what pregnancy actually is which is fucking hard work. It just seems like another extended misogyny-as-comic-relief trope again and Steve's character and everything was thrown down the drain

Toby Jim and Claire not having a group moment together. There was a scene somewhere in the movie where Claire was comforting Jim and I was wishing Toby was there too. If they're going to play the moral support joke with him at least have him be there when morals are at the lowest

Toby being stuck to the van. The treatment of his character in general throughout the last half of the franchise, he should've been given proper development as a character since trollhunters ended but fuck that I guess

Getting human Jim back was WASTED. Utterly wasted on this poor excuse for a movie. The peak of Jim's character arc was accepting himself in every form even when his humanity was stolen from him. The 'am I a hero without the amulet' in this and even the corruption storyline in wizards were both forced, particularly the former, as we'd already gone through that part of his arc in s2 (and it was one of the best arcs this franchise has produced frankly). It was really really apparent they couldn't think of anywhere to go with his character but still wanted to use him bc he remained the most popular. Fanfiction writers can and have done better. Fuck this movie

The lack of emotional maturity and depth between a lot of the characters honestly?? I really don't know how to explain this other than anytime this movie paused to have an emotional conversation or moment between two characters it seemed hollow and worthless because none of them were going through true important character arcs

I'm sure I have more things in this category but for now this is all I can think of. Might rb later with more if I can think of more things that really annoyed me :)) time to rewatch trollhunters s1 and remember how good this franchise used to be :))

[darkcircles4lyfe]

Hii I’ve stumbled across a few of your posts and haven’t even gleaned the tip of the iceberg that is your blog, but I would love to hear a more fleshed version of your Bakugo with AFO post (if you have more that you wanted to share), because that is such a cool concept???

Like, it’s such a nice way to address the symbiotic nature of the two quirks + Bakugo’s relationship with Midoriya at the same time, and there’s also so much to explore in terms of the repercussions of that (not just the symbolism of it, but also the parts you’ve mentioned like what that would mean for people who’ve had their quirks stolen, how they will deal with all the stockpiled quirks, or even on a wider scale of how the media would react if AFO/OFA is leaked/ revealed to the public).

Just imagine the amount of continued exploration in terms of the nature of quirks v nurture of society, because AFO/OFA has so far been (imo) one of the few evidence that quirks carry personality, which is so awesome because it’s like saying a quirk literally holds a part of you through the vestiges while demolishing this idea through basically the entire plot of the manga loll. (To phrase it slightly better, the manga is sort of reaching the conclusion that a quirk is a part of you and you only, without being all of you, and that it’s exactly what the name says it is: a quirk.)

The thing I don’t really like about this conclusion is the blatant disregard for the quirkless community, which was the initial point of discussion and social commentary in bnha. This is why I think Bakugo being given AFO would be great fuel for the debate of should we be allowed to mess with the quirks we are given.

As in, who gets to decide? Who gets to play god? How will it be regulated? Should it even be regulated? How do you do all that without dehumanising Bakugo the same way society dehumanised pro heroes? (Bonus points for linking this to real life because I’m all for social commentary/ reflections in fictional media)

And then on a personal level, what will it take for Bakugo to be able to control AFO’s personality (hello, eye symbolism + name symbolism) within the quirk? How will All Might handle this info? How does this all relate to the conflict of children in war? The development of the league of villains’ character plots (esp Tomura’s)?

I have a lot of questions with very few answers loll, I would love to hear your thoughts on this!!

this post, for reference

Gosh, I am so sorry for taking forever to answer this. But you ask so many good questions! And I think this is actually a pretty good time, after 419.

I guess where I stand with the idea now is still somewhat ambiguous. All for One as a power is too big and interesting to go away--or at least, if it did go away, it would speak volumes. It feels like an almost elemental, fundamental, and even spiritual power, something beyond the man himself. So I'm still wondering about its future.

While a lot of other characters' narratives, including Katsuki's, are about this "nature of quirks vs. nurture," with the original Japanese name for quirks literally meaning "individuality" ("個性" or "kosei"), All for One (the power) oddly represents a lack of individuality. Like a shapeshifter with no form of its own. With that in mind, might we actually compare it to quirklessness? This is worth considering if we're trying to guess who might be a fitting person to inherit it.

I'm at least certain that Tenko shouldn't keep it, since he was literally groomed for it, to be a vessel. For him it represents a lack of individuality in the absolute worst way: a lack of agency, and an identity determined by/in the image of someone else since before even the moment of conception. Actually, as of 419, it seems like if there is any echo of him left after being possessed again, Tenko needs to get rid of the quirk. If he is able to regain control for even a second, the most logical action he can take to save himself and do something of his own free will for once, is to pass the quirk on to someone else.

What I'm a little less certain about is who should get it. On the one hand, Katsuki has a very strong sense of self, especially now. As I said before, this would make him an interesting candidate because he wouldn't want AFO, and thus wouldn't use it for his own gain, on principle. However...

In between now and when I wrote that little post, the future of One for All has also become ambiguous. Does Tenko have it even though All for One does not? (because of Izuku's intent in passing it on?) I've wondered for a long time what would happen if OFA and AFO combined. Would they become more than the sum of their parts, creating something new? Maybe something that can connect with other people and build them up? Perhaps it would develop some aspect of agency that takes away its capacity to exploit people. I'm just speculating...

And I haven't wanted to talk about it, but I'm ambivalent about Izuku becoming quirkiness again. As in, I think Horikoshi could pull it off either way. So this is just an idea:

Izuku could also be a candidate for AFO because he lacks a sense of self, in his own way, as I've gone into before. At best, this means a lack of an ego, the opposite of AFO's personality. In AFO's words, Izuku is the boy born with nothing, who now has less than nothing. There's also a nice symmetry to this idea: Izuku giving OFA to Tenko, then Tenko giving AFO to Izuku. It would be interesting to see what the power would be like in the hands of its antithesis.

But like I said, if you ignore AFO's own selfish interpretation of the power as a tool for domination and a sign of his natural superiority, its essence is a lot more comparable to quirklessness. Just as one's quirk does not encompass one's entire self even though it is unique to them, so too does the quirk have potential beyond its user's point of view. It is potentially ideal for someone who wouldn't make it a part of who they are or use it to enforce their desires, and this applies to both Izuku and Katsuki.

The final thing to mention from your question is the possibility that whoever received AFO would have to deal with overcoming his possession. Maybe this is too much for one person to handle. Maybe Katsuki plays into this either way.

[neverendingcomplaints]

That wasn't it.

This has been a spring/summer of surprises for movies for me. I wasn't expecting to like The Little Mermaid live action, but it turned out to be the best one imo - not that that is saying very much since these live actions are just blatant cash grabs but I would watch it again (except Scuttlebutt because). And I was super super hype for Barbie, but what a disappointment.

SPOILERS

Why was it so rushed? I felt no pay-off for anything because everything was just happening so fast. I didn't care nor do I understand the importance of America and her daughter to the story. They should have had more adventures in the real world, I think, instead of skipping back and forth like it was nothing. Also just in general, how dare they waste America Ferrera!

I don't care if it's a "choice" or not, the whole Take Sh*t Verbatim From Twitter or TikTok and Put It Directly Into People's Mouths thing is just cringey. The only people who talk like that, truly, are academics and maybe some university students who just started smelling themselves after taking a social sciences course. I'm sure there's a Professor Barbie but I'm pretty sure that wasn't Margot Robbie's Barbie. And coming out of a TWEEN'S mouth...That's not satire or absurdity, it's just bad and lazy writing to me. I think it let's Hollywood off the hook because why think of clever, entertaining ways to show all of this when they can just lift some cool tweets and academic work and throw that on the screen as lines? Easy Button!

Also, I know they were going for nostalgia and they are trying to sell us everything everywhere, but it was such a blatant commercial for Mattel. People are gonna run out and try to find Midge and Allan and and the Palazzo pants or whatever. I have never felt so uncomfortably aware of product placement and ADS in my life. But played for funzies tho *wink wink*!!!

I feel like I get what they were trying to do with the Ken stuff and Ryan Gosling was a FORCE so I'm not as unforgiving there, but it still felt kinda off to me. They sorta had the right idea but I definitely had a few Kens for my Barbies and they were together. They both hopped in Barbie's Jeep with Barbie and her friends and they kissed and hugged and even though I didn't have any of Barbie's homes, they lived together. I feel like some of the stuff with Ken didn't feel true to my experience of playing with them as a little girl - of course it was mostly about Barbie, but I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that she was just hanging with the girlies all the time. I get it - it was supposed to be an exaggerated reverse of the Patriarchy but I don't think anything would have been lost if the Barbies had treated Kens more like say, absurd 50s housewives than annoying puppies who whine and nip at your heels no matter how much you try to tame/reassure them.

People are saying it was just some summer fun but the dialogue suggests otherwise.

Ugh. I was hoping for another Mean Girls or Heathers - unapologetically fun and feminist with a strong message, iconic because it just undeniably IS. Instead, it's this pink plastic empowerment ad with some really funny moments (most of which were already out and about before the movie hit theaters) that felt kinda like forced iconic. Like the equivalent of companies "standing with" BLM or turning rainbow for Pride but it's actually just empty virtue signaling so we will all please keep buying their products please.

Really liked the beginning in Barbie Land, Ryan Gosling was the absolute perfect Ken and I've known it since day one because that man can act and kills comedy, kinda love seeing Michael Cera randomly in stuff lately, Margot IS THE BARBIE, and yes I'm sorry Midge was absolutely a creepy idea but there was no way Midge was not gonna be creepy because the whole process of pregnancy and giving birth is a little bit of a horror story if we're being honest. But that's all I got.

[autisticandroids]

hi i'm trying to keep up on spn fandom drama without actually watching the 6 seasons I don't care enough to watch so could you tell me what on earth "why lamp" means? tysm

ok so this is a long one. 

so the way i see it there are three major pieces of evidence, in the last two seasons, that dean is going to reciprocate. 

i’m not talking about like, evidence that i would use as a textual analyst if the author was dead: if i use everything that looks to ME like dean being queer then i would have mountains. i’m talking three pieces of evidence which i am absolutely convinced were intentional on the part of the people who write the show, meaning that they suggest deancas might actually go canon officially. 

that’s also why i’m only counting the last two seasons; cas made his deal with the empty in early season fourteen and it was definitely intended to come off as romantic. why do i know this? because it has the same goddamn terms and even wording as angel’s curse from buffy: angel experiences “one moment of true happiness” and he loses his soul, cas experiences “one moment where he is truly happy” and he dies. on buffy, angel’s true happiness is..... well.......... sex with buffy. so when i heard the deal i was like hm. at the time i thought they were just fanservice/easter egging me, but now i know better: they intended that. so i think mr. dabb has been planning deancas endgame since at least them lol. i’m pretty sure they knew the show was ending at that point so they could do it.

anyway the first piece of evidence is dean’s michael fantasy in 14x10. this is imo the second strongest. in it, he’s a bartender, accompanied only by a woman he can never sleep with because she has a boyfriend. they flirt endlessly, and she comments “how come you only want what you can’t have” which is a mirror for what cas says in his confession: “the one thing i want, it’s something i know i can’t have.” she also later comments “besides, you don’t want me, you just like to flirt. i’m psychic, i know.” suggesting that dean is faking his interest in her, which could be normal but reads to me as intentionally suggestive that he’s either uninterested in women or simply hung up on someone else. like “dean pretends to be interested in women to show off his flirting game and flex his dudeness muscles” is a subtext that’s present in a huge amount of the show; like, there are a few female love interests he has chemistry with, but mostly his sexcapades read like i-need-to-prove-i’m-manly bedframe notching or showing off for his buddies. this is even explicit-ish a couple of times, like i said in this post here. but they’ve never explicitly pointed it out in words i don’t think. and like. “pretending heterosexuality” is pretty queer lmao (even if dean is bi he’s still faking ultrastraightness to prove he’s manly/straight). 

also, it’s weird as hell that they picked pamela barnes for that scene. she never had a particularly close connection with the boys or anything, why not someone else? but she’s 1) psychic, so she can say that line about dean not wanting her, and 2) much more importantly, she’s intimately associated with cas. like, she first appears in lazarus rising, and she’s the one who gets her eyes burned out looking at cas’ true face. like that’s her biggest deal: Woman Who Got Her Eyes Burned Out To Show How Dangerous Cas Is. and then she died off pretty quickly because she was a woman on spn s4.

also, in the scene, she wears an angel wing necklace and a shirt that says “to hell and back” (pointed out to me in the same post). plus the guy who wrote the episode also wrote lily sunder has some regrets which i hope we can all agree is an ICONIC destiel episode.

the second piece of evidence is the purgatory confession in 15x09. this is the strongest evidence. i don’t really have much to say about it because it’s so blatant? like, when i first saw it, i was literally like “this is intentional deancas fanservice jesus christ.” like i lean towards generally interpreting deancas stuff as an accident on the part of straight writers and the purgatory thing did not feel accidental to me. and then cas cuts dean off at the end of the confession, before dean can say some final thing, and dean looks devastated, and then we never find out what the final thing was. like, it’s pretty blatant.

the third piece of evidence is the lamp dance. this is the weakest of the three. basically, dean has a dream sequence in 15x10 where he dances romantically with a lamp. given that one of the things that’s going on in 15x10 is that dean is realizing that he could be allowed to have domestic bliss, the apple pie life, and still be a hunter. the dance with the lamp does kind of come off like it’s implying that there is a partner shaped hole in his life. he has no female love interest in s15 and he hasn’t for years. here is a really cool, if way too smart for spn, piece of meta about it, and here’s another which is less cool but acknowledges that spn is dumb and doesn’t think that hard and is therefore imo more correct. also, andrew dabb himself wrote the lamp dance episode, which makes it stronger evidence than it would be otherwise imo.

anyway when i was Feeling the Madness on saturday, i decided to make this joke post based on the format of that one alvin and the chipmunks meme, you know, “if women are oppressed then why ___” (i would not suggest looking at it on my actual blog because tragically that breaks the format, open it in dash). i was basically using the lamp dance as slightly-ridiculous synecdoche for all three of these pieces of evidence because it’s the weakest.

then later that day, because i treat my blog as a deeply self-referential internal monologue, i made this post documenting the madness i was experiencing, and i ended it with “then WHY LAMP” as a reference to my earlier post. that one got popular, and now “why lamp” is a common way to refer to the lamp dance meta.

[yamayuandadu]

Wikipedia troubles, or “Father Enlil, (...) don't let your precious metal be alloyed there with the dirt of the underworld“

clarification regarding my post about troubles with a certain site i’ve been contributing to a lot for the past few months. To preface this with a mythical metaphor: in Inanna’s Descent, when Ninshubur pleads with the other gods to save Inanna, she uses the formula “don't let anyone kill your daughter in the underworld. Don't let your precious metal be alloyed there with the dirt of the underworld. Don't let your precious lapis lazuli be split there with the mason's stone. Don't let your boxwood be chopped up there with the carpenter's wood.” Currently this is what is happening to the Inanna article, I am afraid.

So, long story short, as most of you probably have noticed I am contributing relatively often to wikipedia as of late, starting with the creation of a Matara-jin article a few months ago. Among other things I wrote, rewrote or at least significantly improved the following:

articles about Mesopotamian medicine goddesses:

Ninkarrak from the western frontier, Nintinugga, who was associated with funerary offerings, Ninisina, who took over Inanna's gimmick in Isin, Bau, who became a healing goddess by chance, Gula, who eclipsed her peers - as expected from someone named “the great” articles about Inanna's courtiers and associated goddesses:

Ninshubur, her sidekick (my best work overall imo, the one article I wrote which I think fully deserves the “good” badge but I am not vain enough to apply myself), Ninegal, a goddess turned into her title, Nanaya, just the horny part distilled (bought a book just for this one!), Irnina, inexplicably cthtonic personified victory

articles about Mesopotamian gods too insignificant for anyone else to care about them:

Tishpak, a god so foreign nobody knows where he came from, Sebitti, seven warlike brothers, Enmesharra, Enlil's evil uncle, Urash, not the earth goddess – there are two... Urashes, Ningishzida, Dumuzi but with a snake gimmick, Zababa, a war god who's NOT Nergal, Ninimma, Enlil's court scribe, Gatumdag, popular as ersatz mom among kings of Lagash, Manzat, the rainbow

articles about Mesopotamian goddesses whose main trait was being someone's wife: Marduk's wife Sarpanit, Adad's wife Shala, Shamash's wife Aya

articles about Hurrian gods: Alalu, primordial vanquished king of gods, Kumarbi, his son, divine Saturday morning cartoon villain, Ninatta and Kulitta, a pair of divine musicians who always appeared together, Allani, oddly joyful queen of the dead, Šauška, who was so firmly genderfluid there's two of them in the most famous image of the Hurrian pantheon, Lelluri, a mountain goddess, Kubaba, who isn't Cybele, Goddess of the Night, who has no proper name despite being a case study in important religious rituals, Belet Nagar, who was like Ashur before Ashur got popular, Nupatik, who was important but we don't know why

articles about Eblaite gods: Ishara, “independent lady of love associated with scorpion and cannabis” popular everywhere where she went, Aštabi, a war god who really wanted to be like the weather god, Hadabal, who used to be famous but vanished out of blue, Kura, whose mask had to be renewed each year, Adamma, who left her husband to hang out with Kubaba

articles about Elamite gods: Pinikir, sort of like a bootleg Ishtar and an international sensation, Jabru, who exists only in Mesopotamian texts about Elam, Humban, mandate of heaven personified, Ruhurater, oddly obscure creator of mankind, Inshushinak, the underworld judge and his Akkadian helpers Lagamar and Ishmekarab, and Simut, the “strange star”

articles which were borderline unusable before due to low quality of sources:

Astarte, who was much more than vintage Bible scholars might lead you to believe (but not a fertility goddess), Dagan, who wasn't a fishman, Qetesh whose existence proves that Egyptians were fond of making ocs for their favorite foreign franchises

assorted articles about general topics pertaining to Mesopotamia:

Sukkal,  Hurrian religion (ongoing project), List of Elamite gods; also a much needed overhaul of List of Mesopotamian deities (ongoing project)

and, last but not least, a solid chunk of the Inanna article.

Two guiding principles of these ventures were the following:

people who cannot access academic resources or don't know how to use them and as a result rely on wikipedia aren't any less deserving of receiving up to date, credible information

Wikipedia's mode of operation isn't flawed in itself and the only problem is lack of will to edit it

I think I did a pretty good job at these two things, honestly. I made sure to rely on rigorous, credible, and, if possible, easy to understand sources, and removed the horrors which sometimes were hidden in bibliographies: a book written by a hate preacher who believed Bush didn't start enough wars; 1930s race science; what I can only describe as a hybrid of Woman's Encyclopedia and a bdsm manual; a fringe book asserting that Minoan palaces were graveyards and that Egyptians only learned mummification from superior Minoans; etc. Of course, it’s a thankless job, but as long as I could make the site more credible undisturbed, that’s fine by me. I even got some help in a few cases, most notably that of the god list, indicating that the work was on some level appreciated. The only problem I've encountered prior to today came from editing the Ereshkigal article – I've removed the claim the Burney relief depicts “Lilith”; this edit was however undone. I left a message on the editor's page, complete with links to articles about the Burney relief AND about the possible Mesopotamian forerunners of Lilith (who are undeniably not depicted on the Burney relief). They're responded rather dismissively to it, and asserted that even if unproven, a connection existed, so I pretty quickly gave up, as they relied on sources which were outdated or fringe. I focused on fixing two long, important articles instead: the god list, and the Inanna article. Some parts of it were alright, but there was much work needed: fringe theories trying to assign greater antiquity to relatively late myths, and frankly insane hyperdiffusionism, had a prominent place in the article, while well attested association between Inanna and similar deities from cultures closely associated with Mesopotamia wasn't, much of the info was outdated, scandalous hot takes about Dumuzi's treatment were all over the place, the section on Inanna's descent favored Jungian confabulations over credible research, etc. My progress on fixing that had been slow and steady. However, today the aforementioned person intervened when, in between editing the Inanna article and the god list, I reverted a dumb, brief , unsourced edit – made by a third party - which asserted that Inanna's descent is “similar to Persephone” which it isn't – if anything is similar to Persephone in Mesopotamian mythology it's Nergal and Ereshkigal. They pretty clearly didn't take it well: not only the unfounded speculation went back up, but they also added a “source” affirming it, from a controversial -medical- author, not an Assyriologist. They also added Persephone to the list of Inanna equivalents in the infobox, removing any credibility whatsoever from it. The author of the claim this is all about relied on sources so antiquated that they interpreted Inanna's sexual character as her being a child-snatching boogeyman. Inanna's primary connection to boogeymen is that she was invoked, alongside Nanaya whose sexual connection is even more blatant, to -ward off- child-snatching boogeyman Lamashtu (whose character was not sexual, because sumerians and akkadians weren't victorian aristrocrats and weren't paranoically afraid of sex - and why would a demon representing death in infancy be sexual in nature, anyway?). Simply put, the book in mention is worthless as a source. Of course, I reverted that; when it went back up (despite a justification being included in my reversal) I edited the Inanna article to remove this outlandish claim (you have a limited number of possible reversions per day for some arcane reason), also adding other information about Inanna I had prepared: a few tidbits on Assyrian royal inscriptions which involved the warlike and erotic aspects at once, suggesting that transgressors should lose both potency and bravery in battle, some info on love poetry about her and Dumuzi, that sort of stuff. The weird person reverted my edit – removing valuable info – and reinstated the claim. For a moment I lost my cool and reverted this edit, which sadly put me in the reversion overuse danger zone, but which was a necessary sacrifice to save the credibility of article I put weeks of work into. See the edit history here. As you can guess HaniwaEnthusiast is me. I left messages critical of this decision on the talk page of the article and on the talk page of the outlandish editor. Sadly, they responded rather rudely, and basically declared Wikipedia isn't meant to be credible, and that favoring academic sources over random crap is an “ivory tower” approach and should be discouraged; they also insulted me but that's much less relevant and much less hurtful than their desire to spread lies. If you ask me it's more of an ivory tower attitude to say people who cannot access or don't know how to use academic sources do not deserve equally credible info and need to be at the mercy of weird wikipedia editors. What's the main problem here, though? That person is a mod. Not a random user. They have 16 years of Wikipedia experience. They spread fringe, pop-spiritual claims about Lilith and the like, so I assume they have an ulterior religious agenda of some sort, which they seem to actively encourage judging from these ventures. I'm not sure if the Inanna article is a lost cause yet but I do think the weird addition of Persephone they made is a step into some hellish direction, and I am entirely certain I cannot win this conflict. Simply put, I think that if this is the sort of staff the site has, this is a lost cause. I am not sure if I will go back to editing.

[lilyhoshikawa]

Finished delta2ne last night. Final thoughts below, with spoilers:

:readmore:

1. I still hate Berdly. I appreciate his character arc fine enough but it was done pretty plainly and I’ve seen it done far better for much more likable characters. It just didn’t feel like enough, y’know? He’s a fine character just still not someone I’ve grown to actively like

2. Weirdly boomer move to pull the “addicted to screens” trope toward the end, it didn’t jive much with the rest of the themes of the chapter or Queen as a character and just felt bizarrely out of touch for a game that hits a lot of themes so intimately and beautifully

3. Shouldn’t have told Noelle and Berdly it was all a dream, that’s dumb. I’ve never liked the secret identities trope and having to keep it a secret from characters who played a major role and were really impactful on the story kinda sucks in a major way

4. The lesbianism should have been more explicit. I know it’s extremely blatant that Noelle and Susie have feelings for each other and are just blissfully ignorant but it’s a bit of a shame that whenever there’s been explicitly romantic feelings in Deltarune so far it’s been straight- Toriel’s ex-marriage to Asgore, Berdly’s explicit crushes on Noelle and Susie. Some more outright gay relationships would be appreciated. I also refuse to count Alphyne bc Undyne is a cop in this one which cancels out her gay status /s

5. Queen is very good, I liked her a lot. Aside from just being very funny and having a lot of great moments she was leagues more interesting as a villain than the King, who existed more as an intimidating figure to overcome and a force to facilitate development in Lancer than his own character

6. I’m a bit uncomfortable abt the like… very default Christian theming of Hometown? Toriel as a church mom, Gerson and his son as pastors and even having a significant subplot related to that, everyone in the town talking abt going to church and the prominence of the church as an object in the town, feels kinda… weird. Especially given that Hometown and the Dreemurr family especially are framed as ideals, the perfect town and community and the ideal family

7. Kris continues to be an icon. Eating moss, sniffing markers, making bath bombs, doing general feral activities

8. Lot of unanswered questions… I would try to list them but I can’t even remember all the loose ends the game introduced and hinted at future installments following up on, and just… gosh, I wish the full game was out, I want answers… and I wanna play more fndkfnf

9. The punch-out minigames were cute and fun, in general the chapter was significantly harder than chapter 1 but had a lot more unique ideas, battles and minigames as well as overworld challenges and puzzles. The final robot battle kicked ass

10. I don’t like Catti’s sorta weird implication that Susie will turn evil, something that’s kinda reinforced in a few places as well, just cuz it would be super uncool for the story to take that direction (imo), but it’s also weird bc Kris is like… the one doing what is “bad” in terms of the game’s story, the one facilitating the conflict is them, the Knight, y’know? So you can’t exactly have multiple secretly evil betrayal party members. There’s also a theory floating around online that Ralsei is secretly evil but I don’t personally think it holds much water

11. At one point Lancer calls Queen a “girldad” and that’s so powerful and so gender, god damn. I hope she continues to be a recurring character and I also hope Lancer just continues to collect dads like Pokémon

12. Kris being the Knight was a real cool twist but it’s surprising that we got it this early on. I was also very interested in like, the way Kris rips their soul out to stop letting the player control their actions, I dunno how that’ll factor into future events but I’m curious… like, if Kris will be the final enemy or what have you. Combined with the “your choices don’t matter” theme that keeps getting reinforced. It’s obvious that Kris is aware that the player is in control of their actions and is aware that by ripping out their soul- the means by which the player exerts their will on the character- and trapping it somewhere secure where it cannot be moved (as in battle) they can move about freely and do as they wish. My roommate theorized that there’s an additional external force controlling Kris when their soul is out but to me it makes more sense that the soul is just the embodiment or player influence- this is backed up a bit by the book on souls in the library which can’t determine their true purpose. So to me it stands to reason that Kris must have their own reasons for creating the fountains. I have multiple theories as to why but nothing concrete, one being just as Susie pointed out and was hinted at when the Lightner gang almost made a fountain, that being heroes in the Dark World has allowed these kids who were obviously very lonely (it’s repeatedly emphasized how much Kris misses Asriel and what a big deal it is for Kris to have made friends with Susie) to make friends and be important. The themes of the game so far as well as Undertale as prior knowledge kind of point toward the idea that the player is a force that influences the characters and this might not be a good thing, so Kris acting independently flies more on the path of that theme than a surprise evil influence, especially given Toby’s consistency in not writing completely malicious and irredeemable characters (I see all these ppl blaming Chara again as if they’re just some ultimate omnipotent malevolent force in the Undertale universe for some reason and I scoff), especially also since Kris’ independent actions take place offscreen, away from the player’s sight. My roommate also pointed out that Kris is the only human in the game and since we know from Undertale human souls are exponentially more powerful than monsters’ souls it stands to reason that Kris is A.) probably the only Lightner with enough Determination to consistently make fountains and B.) the only human in the entire game so far, which is coincidentally also the case with Frisk in Undertale, implying some innate ability of humans in this world to be controlled by players or that there would be some other complication brought on by having multiple humans in the Light World, presumably related to how souls interact and function. All just… super interesting stuff

13. Talked this over with my roommate as well and based on Ralsei not turning to stone in Cyber’s World like the other characters from chapter 1’s world combined with everything else (the hiding his appearance in chapter 1, his name literally being an anagram of Asriel, his knowledge of the Light World and people and places within it, his knowledge of humans and souls) it seems pretty possible that he’s just straight-up Asriel going undercover. These same pieces of evidence have been used to claim he’s secretly evil but they fit so much more neatly into place for me if he’s Asriel instead. It’s even stronger if Kris already knows this since it would reinforce my “Kris is making portals to see and spend time with their friends” theory

14. The scene where Susie stays over at the Dreemurr house was so pure and good it almost made me sob. Genuinely worried abt Susie’s potentially abusive home life (it’s vague but there’s implied Bad Stuff at home and I’m worried) but so happy to see her get to feel at home there. During the scene where Toriel calls the police abt the slashed tires I was so petrified that she was calling abt Susie and I was almost heartbroken

15. Susie, Noelle and Kris are probably my favorite characters so far, but honorable mentions to Lancer and Ralsei for just being funky little boys I’d love to hug and buy ice cream for

[brave-clarice]

“Clarice” Liveblog: Episode 2

Again, some extremely unfashionably late hot takes.

(Special thanks to @kathrynethegreat and @special-agent-pendragon​ for encouraging another liveblog!)

Clarice is working out! And eating junk food! I love it.

and cleaning her gun!

hey, Ardelia is drinking what I’m going to assume is her grandmother’s “smart people tea”.

Krendler disciplining Clarice already is infuriating but appropriate.

“I lost control.” Oh no, I don’t like that. Don’t make Clarice unstable. Her mental and emotional state never had anything to do with her failing career.

getting weird mixed signals from Ardelia. Last week, she obviously didn’t want Clarice to lie/stick to the script Krendler gave her, but now she’s telling Clarice she messed up by not doing so...?

“I better know you if you’re calling this early.” Amen, Ardelia.

I’m in love: this cinematography is straight out of the film (when she’s flying to WV with Crawford)!

“When’s the last time you went back to Appalachia?” “It’s been years.” What??? It has NOT been years--Clarice was JUST in West Virginia last week as well as in Silence, and she arguably attended college there as well. (UVA is at least nestled in the mountains, and you don’t have to drive far outside the Albemarle Valley to hit Appalachia proper.) After all the details about her character they’ve been nailing, they miss this glaring error? 

I like the tiny details she’s noticing (like the guy biting his nails). Not only because she’s an investigator, but because it’s reminiscent of Hannibal’s influence (imo).

Clarice Is Short: The Saga continues

still not getting any creepy vibes off Krendler. He’s going to be much less effective as an antagonist if he isn’t lewd as well as a dick.

I really don’t care for the way the opening “credits” fade out from the death’s-head moth to Clarice’s face. There are MANY animals that represent her, or parts of her, in the books--lions, lambs, horses, and of course birds--so this choice feels empty and lazy to me.

also lazy: having a fellow agent straight-up tell her in episode 2 “you shouldn’t be in the Bureau.” Maybe in two or three years, after some further “Death Angel”-type incidents, I could see this blatant rudeness, but not yet.

“Reesey”? Thanks, I hate it.

this flashback must be of Clarice’s little brother. That answers one question I had last week. That said...Clarice’s brother doesn’t play the same role in her story that Mischa does in Hannibal’s--but this sure feels like a Mischa-esque flashback.

good: they’re finally getting to the source of Clarice’s actual trauma!

bad: this is NOT how Clarice found out about her father. In fact, that whole incident is laid out in detail in the novels, and there’s nothing overly literary/un-cinematic about it, so this feels unnecessary. “The police are here! Something happened to Daddy!” No, bad! Show, don’t tell!

she would’ve known better than to introduce herself to that kid as “Clarice Starling, FBI,” come on now.

were they regularly able to wire tap hair clips in 1993? 

actually, nothing in this show looks very 90s to me so far. I’m sad about it.

so in eighteen months, Ruth Martin has gone from a junior Senator to the Attorney freakin’ General, and now she might run for governor?? At least let her get settled in one position of power first, why don’t you!

yet more Buffalo Bill flashbacks...alas.

are they trying to make this guy another surrogate Hannibal character? He’s commenting on Clarice’s accent and the dryness of her skin, asking about who she “left behind”...it all feels very Hannibal. (I know he’s a Charismatic Cult Leader trope, too--but when played off of Clarice...)

“Ew.” “I hate this guy.” I laughed.

I understand that Clarice probably feels conflicted re: her siblings in the book, but I’m really not digging the flashbacks of this Tim Burton character her brother.

@ the writers: Clarice already has the lamb backstory/symbolism, too. We don’t need this Little Brother stuff.

*shrieking* Mrs. Starling! At the sink washing the blood out of his hat!!! 

...aaand they had to ruin it with the brother’s painfully bad dialogue. Will still be good for gif-making, though.

are we supposed to interpret all these flashbacks as Clarice being incapable of controlling her emotions/state of mind? She keeps losing herself in memories and emerging all doe-eyed and panicky. I don’t like it.

not to be a broken record but...Clarice should be TOUGH. Again, Ardelia only saw her cry once in seven years. But she’s more worked up in this scene than Jodie was in Memphis!

when Mr. Cult Leader shouts “Agent Starling! Agent Starling!” he sounds exactly like Hannibal calling her back to his cell in the asylum. That has to be intentional. 

damn, wish that I could look as good five minutes after I’ve been crying as Clarice does.

I LOVE that Ardelia gets to be the crucial behind-the-scenes book-smart partner to Clarice’s action heroine.

AG Martin’s just playing politics by turning a blind eye to the crooked sheriff. But when her own daughter was just kidnapped and almost killed, she looks like a real hypocrite.

gosh, Rebecca Breeds is great. I already hope she gets nominated for an Emmy.

so Krendler is...doing the right thing???

Clarice’s father was definitely not a sheriff. I hope she’s just exaggerating for dramatic effect. (Maybe this will be clarified later.)

she couldn’t just sit with a manipulative guy without getting emotional, but she’s cool as a cucumber while telling an extended story about her father? HmmMM.

sometimes her mannerisms and facial expressions are so much like Jodie’s that it’s uncanny, like here when she leans forward to confront the Cult Leader.

“She did it.” Damn straight!

another great callback to Silence. this show’s camera crew knows its stuff!

“He’s concerned I have some residual trauma from Bill.” I. Hate. This. Subplot--and all its OOC implications.

“Catherine was close to her father, too.” Ooh, a nice allusion to the novel! Clarice makes note of their “common wound,” the loss of a father, when she’s in Catherine’s apartment in Silence.

she is just SO pretty.

little Clarice looks a LOT like Rebecca Breeds. I hope we see some more of her. 

The Good:

the continuing visual nods to the Silence film via cinematography

Mama Starling!!!

Clarice’s “The World Will Not Be This Way Within the Reach of my Arm” attitude, refusing to leave without helping the victims.

Ardelia Mapp coming in clutch! 

Clarice being, generally, a badass

and using psychological tricks/mind games to pin the antagonist...that’s the woman who disarmed a monster with just a few words.

Rebecca Breed’s acting has been phenomenal so far.

I like Clarice’s haircut a lot better when worn down (though it’s not very practical for fieldwork, so we probably won’t see it much).

The Bad:

the continuing Buffalo Bill-related Trauma Subplot. Ugh.

all the flashbacks to Clarice’s brother (and the not-so-subtle suggestion that her brother is, symbolically, another lamb).

will the real Paul Krendler please come forward? this guy is so TAME.

the other agents’ hostility towards Clarice needs to be toned down slightly so that it can escalate. Otherwise, where’s the tension?

is this actually 1993? I’m not feeling it. Shouldn’t it have a little of that Season 1/2 X-Files aesthetic? Please give me more than once-an-episode references to pagers and fax machines!

that glaring Appalachia continuity error...it’s still bugging me.

I missed the overt Hannibal references, even though they’re not necessary to any part of this episode. A lady can dream!

Overall, I really liked this one despite my various issues with it. It started shakily but built to a great finish. The emphasis across both episodes on Clarice being in the FBI not just to “get out, get anywhere,” but out of a genuine desire to help victims has been wonderful. I just hope they don’t swerve too far into the “too traumatized and emotionally compromised to function” lane. It would be a disservice to Clarice’s character and to her journey (and would smack too much of “Hannibal really did prey on her weak mind/brainwash her”.

Things I’d still like to see: More of her personality. Her hobbies and interests. That she’s cleaning her gun is great! Now let’s see “Poison Oakley” practicing her sharpshooting skills. Or car shopping. Or clothes shopping to show off her “developing taste.” (Ardelia can come!) I’ll take literally anything. Give us more of Clarice’s sense of humor as well. She had some subtle funny moments in the pilot, and it’s nice to see Rebecca smile for a change.

And Krendler? Smear that man in grease! I appreciated a happy ending even though Clarice’s career is, as we know, already in a downward spiral--the last thing we want is for every episode to be a slog, especially when a good chunk of the audience hasn’t read the book and doesn’t know Clarice is doomed to fail in the Bureau.

However... Krendler’s not a “redemption arc” kind of character. Or even a “run-of-the-mill sexist asshole” character. This is a man who spent seven years systematically sabotaging a young woman’s career because a) he was jealous that she solved the Gumb case before him, and b) she wouldn’t fuck him. He was a Justice Department official working fist-in-glove with a serial child molester who was planning some of the heinous vigilante justice imaginable. THAT’S why his very gruesome end at Hannibal’s hands felt deserved--even Clarice thought so! In short, he needs to get nasty.

Anyway, thanks for coming to another long-overdue TedTalk. Fingers crossed that the next one will be more timely (aiming for Sunday night)! 

[ecl1pse]

Hi! I saw ur post on how it’s hard to stan gidle bc of the questionable stuff they do and since I don’t know much about it can u please explain to me anything problematic they’ve done? Not that I doubt u I just wanna know about it

ooh, girl! lemme tell ya. this is gonna be a long one, and i will preface this saying i absolutely do not have all the facts and details, but this is what i’ve gathered in my time being a mostly soft neverland.

when (g)i-dle debuted they released this v beautiful mv along with their debut song latata. in the mv the girls had henna in their hands, which, ok. nothing too bad, right. but that was just the beginning of a very weird history of cultural appropriation.

then they released another banger: hann (alone). amazing vocals. amazing sound. cool choreo. but the mv was littered with all these…hm. middle eastern references. which. ok, latata also had some of that. it’s…ok. maybe they’re just going for A Thing. it’s ok. this is just their first comeback, their second single overall, and their first digital single release ever. BUT during one of end of year shows, the girls found themselves in hot water bc they had a stage where they had freaking synagogue as their backdrop. not even like a cool 3d stage, it was printed synagogue on freaking sheet. we all collectively had a very oof moment. (also, shuhua had like, no lines in this song. a crime on itself.)

after that came senorita. which should have been called señorita. it was catchy, it was replayble, it was spicy. it was also also kind of weird how they had a guy just singing “señorita” in the background, and no other lyrics in spanish, other than soojin saying “señor” by the end…hm. also the beat is just very generic “latin-inspired” song. in one of their live stages they had a fake-ass mariachi band as their….back up dancers. or whatever. they were just in the background pretending to play the trumpets. which personally i found more funny than offensive. but also i’m mexican and when momoland dressed up in ponchos, sombreros and fake mustaches, me and my sister just laughed and went “haha we do look like that!” i can take a joke. like, very easily. (also, if you want a more tactful latin-inspired k-pop song, listen to vav’s senorita & give me more. absolute bops imo.)

after that came uh-oh, which is a very clearly an old-hip hop inspired comeback, even down to the mv. it’s proooobably my favorite song of theirs ngl. this comeback wasn’t…too bad or shrouded in controversy, ‘cause tbh the mv director did a pretty good job at paying homage to late 90s/early 2000s music videos. but still, some people were skeptical considering the rep they had been building up. and at this time it was becoming very clear that soyeon is calling the shots, or at least has the most say out of all the girls both in songwriting and art directing when it comes to their concepts/mvs.

during the summer/fall of 2019 gidle participated in the competition show queendom. in the show, during the planning of the stage performance for their cover of 2ne1′s fire, soyeon asked yuqi to make “tribal sounds” for the opening of the song and sing it like she’s “an african chief” and said this was how they could keep their sound, which she describes as “ethnic hip.” it was. gross. and the rest of the girls just laughed it off. queendom pretty much ended up confirming everyone suspicions that soyeon is the one coming up with these ideas and the rest of the girls are just there to do what she says. you can look up the behind the scenes and planning of the stages on m-net’s youtube channel. soojin doesn’t even get a word out when they were planning the fire stage. it’s…weird ngl. you can’t even accuse m-net of evil editing this one bc she just says that! like, wtf. anyways [here is an excerpt of the video]. she says it with such a straight face, too. ew.

people demanded an apology from gidle, soyeon more specifically. it never came. so people boycotted their next release: lion. honestly i don’t know if any transgressions happened during this time cuz i was just so put off by what was mentioned above that to this day i can’t really even vibe to lion. it just brings a guttural disgust to my whole being.

i’m little iffy on the timeline here – bc like i mentioned, i was keeping as far away as possible from gidle at the time cuz of soyeon’s comments – but i do remember that some time after yuqi found herself in hot water for a comment she made about shuhua during a livestream that went like she “needed darker skin to be a police because her white skin wouldn’t let her to catch criminals at night.” or at least that’s how a fanclub made it sound like. it sounded v suspish, but a lot of fans came to her defense saying the joke was poking fun at how fair shuhua is and how she wasn’t actually making fun of darker skin. the fanclub that made the translation actually came out with a letter of apology saying they had rushed the translation and the joke was actually little more nuanced than what they made it out to be. regardless, yuqi actually apologized on a fancafe letter. which was actually really nice of her, since the mistake wasn’t so much on her part, and if anything this is a way lighter offense than anything soyeon has ever done or said, and yet….

[here is a koreaboo article that includes screenshots of the fancafe letter and a translation]

it’s been awhile since gidle/soyeon have said or done anything since – well, it’s been a while since they have released anything, and they’ve been under a microscope since the queendom incident. also, i haven’t payed attention at all to what they have been doing, if they have been doing anything, lol.

their latest transgression has been the very blatant, very suspicious uplifting of imagery from fka twig’s cellophane mv onto their mv for their newest single, oh my god. @anna-something made a [post] which very clearly lays it all out, screenshots and everything. considering all the evidence above i have to say this one also falls on soyeon’s shoulders yet again. also, as i was making this post someone commented on an yt comment i made on a mv reaction of the mv (since i’m not gonna give them views, lol) saying “maybe they have the same mv director.” i looked it up, they don’t. cellophane was directed by andew thomas huang, while oh my god was directed by yoon rima.

in conclusion, it is very exhausting to try to stan (g)i-dle. wouldn’t recommend it. mostly because soyeon does not seem like the greatest person ever. now, i will say i am all for cultural appreciation! in fact, i tried to believe that’s what they were going for during senorita. but… it’s become very clear that soyeon doesn’t understand there IS a line between appreciation and blatant appropriation, so she tends to fall on the latter. if she just apologized, strived to be better, and actually took the criticism and applied it towards becoming a better person – and therefore a better artist – than i could get behind her 100%. but as it stands right now, i don’t like her. i don’t like her at all. i have given her chances, but she does not seem to want to accept her missteps. she doesn’t even addresses them at all. and i’m tired. if yuqi could, why can’t she? i doubt cube, as shady as they are, is keeping her from releasing some sort of statement. 

if she intends to make it big over here in the west she needs to grow up, she needs to apologize. until she does that she will continue to jeopardize not only her own career, but also yuqi’s, miyeon’s, soojin’s, shuhua’s, and minnie’s careers, and they really don’t deserve that. she might be the biggest voice in the group, but she’s also the one dragging them down. APOLOGIZE, SOYEON, GODDAMMIT!

if anyone wants to add anything else that missed, please feel free to do so.

[bat-lings]

Hey, you mentioned in an earlier ask any Damian that Tim was also low-key sexist and tbh I'd love examples cause I feel like this has never been brought up and it's interesting??? Anyway, thanks Ur stuffs super interesting and insightful!

Thanks for your interest & nice words!

Let’s be clear tho Anon (I assume it’s the same Anon both times?), you are 200% entitled to disagree with me. Yes I am unapologetic about my opinions and write looong paragraphs of questionable pertinence to give arguments but like. The goal is to explain “why I think what I think,” never to tell you “why you should think what I think”. You’re very much welcome for the Damian post btw

Now I think Tim, precisely, shows internalized sexism. Doesn’t change the end result all that much though.

Random sequences

Let’s get the most straightforward stuff out of the way.

[Robin (1991) #1 || Robin (1993) #43 & #179 || Detective Comics (1937) #687]

Dunno about you but the first two are particularly cringey for me. That and the agenda section.

Okay to be fair: He does attempt to defend Lynx (first example) beforehand, throwing the on-point “she doesn’t have to go with you if she doesn’t want to” line. All is good for five seconds and then he goes “maybe she likes that treatment”.

We may have different sensibilities but the mere fact that that went through his head for even a second is the perfect illustration of what’s internalized sexism imo. Conscious thought & action level: A+ behavior (being able to identify a visibly wrong situation and taking action against it). Unconscious level: blatant sexism (”maybe she likes it” aka a less visible/more subtle manifestation of bigotry).

He has a… pretty specific way to regard women’s agenda. And is overall patronizing to straight-out disrespectful.

Tim’s treatment of Steph is a well-known fact but this is a call-out post so have a non-exhaustive bunch of examples:

[Robin (1993) #4, 41, 35, 44 || Batgirl (2009) #8]

On we go and see how there’s absolutely no ill-intent on Tim’s part in the next examples, yet I have a big problem with how he’s considering the ladies’ agency:

[Robin (1993) #182 || Red Robin #10]

Notice how it’s all about him whether the lady obeys him or not. His failure to impose the necessary authority or his failure to give the right directions. The girls’ choice/independence just doesn’t factor in. It’s a cop and a vigilante we’re talking about, not some civilians caught in the crossfire.

((btw it’s disputable but his apology in RR#10 is too little too late as far as I’m concerned. Tim gets a pass since Nicieza has him referring to his dumbass traitor!Steph arc but he doesn’t deserve any additional credit either. Okay no I’m being mean, he gets kudos for making a step in the right direction with Steph. Tiny kudos. It’s a tiny step.))

[Red Robin #5]

Tam? Okay. She’s the civilian who got embarked into this crazy story, she is in need of saving. But Prudence? Maybe don’t automatically assume that the assassin needs you to pat her on the back to even consider pursuing her own wishes, Timmy.

Tim can be arrogant to everyone yeah (more on that later), but I don’t remember him negating a man’s agenda like that.

[Robin (1993) #25]

Yeah the kid who will feel betrayed when Bruce tells his identity to Steph just elected to tell her name to Connor whom they both don’t know well yet. While talking in her place rather than letting her answer for herself (something he’s done on several occasions). Then he attempts to decide for her whether she has a right to participate, again. On that note: thank you Connor for putting Tim in his place, that sure doesn’t happen often.

[Robin (1993) #6 & #28]

Uh, yes you can. Give the adult woman who’s been handling Gotham’s streets since before you were born some credit, Tim?

As for Helena, the scene in itself is… well, not okay exactly. He’s basically dismissing her wish to handle a personal matter alone, which could imply he doesn’t think the other adult woman who’s been handling Gotham’s streets since before he was born can handle the case.

I’m just putting it with his constant attempts to keep Steph from participating, often to cases that concerned her directly, and how he tends to take it personally when she doesn’t obey… but he casually brushes off Helena when she’s saying she’ll handle a personal case alone. Double standard? Maybe I got too specific a reading but. I don’t remember that sort of thing happening between Tim and male characters– do call me out if I’m remembering wrong though.

And then there’s the “another vigilante” remark.

Anyway yes Tim can be arrogant towards both men and women. Much like Damian being antagonizing to everyone didn’t negate the possibility of him being sexist, Tim being generally arrogant doesn’t negate that possibility for him either.

Plus the only male characters I’ve seen him be that patronizing with are Chris Kent in World’s Finest #3, and Damian. The ten-year-old who’s regularly antagonizing him and does deserve to be put in his place. Oh yeah, and maybe Dodge, another brat. So yeah I do think there’s a slight difference between Tim’s treatment of men and women, if only in frequency. (and in intensity tbh.)

Yes, he’s been consistently disregardful to his girlfriends.

Anon, you say very rightfully that we shouldn’t automatically assume it’s due to them being girls. Please believe it’s not a conclusion I’ve come to automatically though:

A) While I realize that Tim only having canon girlfriends is due to heteronormativity & homophobia rather than a conscious writing intent to highlight any character trait, assuming that he wouldn’t have behaved better with boyfriends is pure speculation– aaand I am totally speculating he’d behave better if only because he’s never that patronizing or that dismissive of his peers’ agency (examples above) when they’re men. that’s part of why I ship tim/kon more easily than tim/steph.

B) Like with everything I brought up on this post I’m not considering his behavior with his romantic partners separately. It’s a character fault that could take its roots in several things, but Tim’s global characterization makes me think the root is sexism.

C) I understand why you’re thinking there’s no reason to conclude his disrespect is due to them being women; in the same vein I think there’s no reason to conclude it’s not. It’s kind of a stalemate and both conclusions are valid.

Skipping Tim’s habit to break up by letter or by phone, ‘cause that’s not cool and obviously disrespectful but even I think it’s more due to cowardice/inadequacy than sexism.

I don’t think I need to speak about Steph again. Let’s go with Ari. Who Tim casually cheated on by kissing Steph on several occasions.

Being a cheat is, in itself, a distinct character flaw that doesn’t always takes its root in sexism. Plus it’s something I have my reasons to assume Tim has grown out of.

It’s his reaction when he learns about Ariana “"cheating”“ on him (she went ice-skating with another dude once in the 87 times Tim stood her up) that ticks me off. Btw and unlike Tim who didn’t seem to feel all that guilty, Ariana did try to tell him about it but he fell asleep during her confession.

[Robin (1993) #15 & #17]

Two things bother me here, a lot more than the cheating in itself: the possessiveness and the hypocrisy. You really don’t have a right to go all “My Ariana” and to chew her out for the grand treachery that is ice-skating when you’ve been casually kissing Steph, Timbo. What those panels prove is that there’s a double standard in Tim’s head. Which one exactly is up to your interpretation and that’s probably where we’ll end up disagreeing. I read it as the “proper girls don’t get close to several boys at one time, but boys who get close to several girls are either ladies men or boys being boys” double-standard, hence Tim’s blatant lack of self-awareness here.

Btw and the thing that solidified my opinion here: Tim, as a rule, tends to be pretty self-aware, at least retrospectively. He puts himself into question and has no problem admitting when his judgment was clouded. I dunno take YJ #55 or Robin #119 for example (I even selected examples that both have Tim recognizing he wronged a girl!)

So if he’s generally self-aware, but doesn’t see anything wrong with his own behavior in the specific situation where he’s cheating on his girl then chewing her out? I explain it with the above double-standard. He internalized a mindset that keeps him from realizing how hypocrite he’s being in this situation. Also he doesn’t confront Ari immediately, he had time to think about it, it wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. That should’ve been enough to allow him to step back and evaluate himself but he just. Didn’t.

Bonus: Jack has been hinted to be sexist, and contrary to Tim it’s safe to assume that was totally intentional.

[Batman (1940) #441 || Robin (1993) #122]

Only two occurrences in decades of canon arguably don’t make for solid basis but they still allow me to build a coherence since our parents do influence us without us realizing. And given how much Tim loved his dad (he said himself how much he got from Jack), it sure isn’t an element that could plead against him being sexist.

.

There’s a bunch of other sequences that I low key read as sexist, but that I’m more mitigated about or in which I gave Tim a pass for various reasons so I didn’t include them here.

All in all when I take a solid look at Tim’s global behavior, I see sexism. While it may not be a “solid canon fact” since it surely wasn’t intentional on the writers’ part, I really don’t think it’s an unreasonable thing to infer from his very canon behavior. And tbh writer intent doesn’t excuse much. Factually speaking that portrayal has been there since Tim’s early days,he’s been consistently dismissive & disrespectful of his female peers and/or of their wishes and agency. It’s part of him & his history.

It’s not incoherent with his character either– Tim has always been intended to represent a normal boy/teen (dude was legit marketed around the fact that he’s relatable). It’s not baffling or coming out of nowhere that a random teen just so happened to have internalized sexism. It’s pretty damn common, even. It’s not like Tim being sexist was a brutal turnaround that contradicted what makes the core of his character to the point of making him unrecognizable (*cough* Talia’s current characterization *cough*).

Hope this explains that.

Thanks for the asks!

[bthump]

Don't you think that Casca is a little boring and overrated? The character who only purpose is revolve around male characters and be their love interest -especially if those men have special bond- is annoying, but people think so highly of her when she's not really that complex, interesting and independent character, especially when her sole role only is rubbing the salt on Guts' wonds. ://

Kind of yes, kind of no lol.

I find Casca a very frustrating character because I think she had plenty of potential to be interesting, and we see brief flashes of that in canon, but Miura fucked her over at every turn, flattening her, making sure every aspect of her character revolved around men somehow, etc. Personally that potential is more than enough for me to love her, because I’m easy when it comes to angry women with swords lol, but that’s just me and my ability to ignore what I don’t like about canon.

For example, when she brought Guts up to that cliff by the waterfall so she could take her anger out on him by trying to murder him. The narrative never really acknowledges how utterly fucked up that was, it’s played off as Casca being a hysterical woman, but man in theory that is a very interesting, super dark character note.

Casca’s lack of independence is actually interesting to me too as a major character flaw. But again, it’s something that the narrative… doesn’t necessarily acknowledge, but rather seems to treat as the default role of a woman.

Like Miura’s misogyny is never more blatant than when it comes to how he writes Casca, and it sucks, but despite that he’s still a really good character writer, and that still shines through even with Casca. She has relatable moments, she has awesome moments, she has strong dialogue, moments that make me feel empathy, and interesting traits. I mean the most heart-wrenching part of the Eclipse imo was when we saw it through her point of view as she fought with Judeau. Miura’s writing still makes me feel real feelings for her, and I can’t not love a character I feel for lol, even if that writing fails her enormously in many other ways.

Like it blows that her motivation for joining the Hawks and becoming an incredible swordsman was being in love with Griffith, but it doesn’t change the fact that she’s an incredible swordsman who can lead an army and it’s cool and badass. Like, it seriously blows that she’s almost 100% motivated by men - either being in love with them or fighting against their misogynist violence - but I can still read moments like her capture of Doldrey, or the way she can take command of the Hawks in moments of panic, and want to cheer for her. It blows that she’s always being depowered somehow so she can be rescued, but I can still read dialogue like “they say she can defeat ten strong men at once” and go ‘yeah that’s my girl’ lol.

BUT ALL THAT SAID like, I can completely understand being exasperated by her character too. Like, I personally can kind of… ignore how badly she’s often written and just take the parts I like and form my opinion based on that. But that’s not something anyone should be required to do, and her writing fucking sucks let’s be real.

No one should feel like they have to like her when she pretty much exists as an example of Miura’s misogyny, and when she is forced into the love interest role for the sole purposes of a) no homoing Guts and Griffith and b) getting horrifically and off-the-charts offensively fridged for Guts’ manpain. One of my pet peeves is people calling fans misogynist for disliking fictional women, cause like, the thing is she’s not real and hating her as a poorly written and often offensive fictional construct isn’t the same as hating a real woman, so yk, I support you lol.

Plus yeah I do think she’s often overrated in lots of fandom - a good chunk of Berserk fandom doesn’t acknowledge the enormous flaws in her writing, and does consider her to be genuinely a well-written ~strong female character~ lol. So yeah in that case I think she’s overrated. Though it might be more accurate to say Miura’s writing is overrated.

idk tl;dr I like Casca but her writing is so deeply flawed that I completely get disliking her.

[sytycdrankings]

Top 10 Perform Rankings!

First of all, I’m really excited to have things to list again. This was a really good first show, I thought. For the most part, I liked everything.

10. “Clown” (Cyrus/Kaylee contemporary), Tessandra Chavez 

I didn’t hate this. I really didn’t. I just felt like...I don’t know why this was the routine that was given to these two. We all know that Cyrus isn’t that great at contemporary, though he didn’t really do much other than partner Kaylee, to be fair. It wasn’t that I thought they didn’t have chemistry, it was just...I don’t know. It somehow felt flat? I also didn’t think that dress was very flattering on Kaylee. Not her fault, of course, but it was distracting. I hope she doesn’t go home because of this because I’m still excited about this pairing and I think they could do great things. Fingers crossed.

9. “More” (Gaby/Lex tap), Anthony Morigerato

...this is just me being stingy. I’m not a fan of this style of tap, just like my general dislike of Broadway. I give Lex all the credit in the world for pulling this off, but I wish we could have seen him in Anthony’s more modern tap style instead of this. I will say that he did a great job bringing out his personality. I wanted a bit more chemistry between them, but I’ll withhold that judgement until I see a routine that I don’t have inherent bias against. 

8. “There’s Nothing Holdin Me Back” (Jenna/Kiki cha-cha), Dmitry Chaplin

So...if I were judging Jenna, this routine would be much higher. She’s amazing. But since Kiki is the contestant here, this is where it ends up. Because where even is he. Like, was he there?? Maybe all of it isn’t his fault. After all, Jenna is  a very hard person to show up when she’s on stage, and the purpose of ballroom is to show off your female partner. But on the other hand, there have been plenty of male ballroom dancers on this show that didn’t disappear, so Kiki has a lot of work to do. Also, why was that table there? Did we need the chairs? What is it with unnecessary props on this show?

7. “Protocol” (Audrey/Logan contemporary), Tyce DiOrio

Oh, Tyce. I can’t even hate here, though. I actually thought this routine was gorgeous. I’ve said before that Tyce is far better at contemporary choreography than at jazz or anything else IMO. I think this routine would have ended up higher if Allison was dancing it and we got to see the chemistry between her and Logan, but I don’t think Audrey was bad at all. It’s just not easy to have perfect chemistry and partnering with only a few hours to get something right. There were some beautiful moments, though. I especially liked that part where Logan grabbed her ankles and Audrey kinda swiped her back on the ground and got back up?? That was really cool. Looking forward to seeing how Logan does on the show. (And I hope Allison can come back!)

6. “Change is Everything” (Robert/Taylor contemporary), Travis Wall

So...the judges are really blatant sometimes, you know? It’s not that this routine wasn’t really gorgeous. I loved so many things about it. The lighting, how the dress Taylor was wearing flowed when she moved, the weight shifting and some of those extensions...Taylor has some of the most beautiful lines. I didn’t even know she was that good since we barely saw her in Not-Vegas. But like...some of those lifts were really shaky?? Robert looked like he was struggling a lot. And lifting someone who is that close to your height for an entire week probably took its toll on his body, but there was not a single mention of it from the judges?? I’ve also said in the past that Travis focuses a lot on pictures and lifts in his choreography and not a whole lot of dancing, and that was true here. I wanted them to break away from each other and dance, but they never did. But on the other hand, I loved their chemistry, and I felt really connected to Taylor for some reason. This is going to sound weird, but I love her face. It’s very striking. She’s not going anywhere for a while, so let’s see how she does from here on.

5. “Perm” (Jasmine/Robert hip-hop), Christopher Scott

Speaking of too many damn props. What was in those spray cans? Was that not a choking hazard? Sheesh. But I love this pairing! Robert has personality for dayssssss, and Jasmine can have chemistry with a paper bag. This routine was so fun, but what I want to see eventually is a more challenging routine for Robert since I really don’t think this was very difficult for him at all. I really want to know what he can do. I always love routines that make me happy, though, and this definitely fit the bill.

4. “All Stars” (Paul/Sydney cha-cha), Val Chmerkovskiy

So happy to see Val choreographing for this show! He’s been my favorite on DWTS since I started watching. And I really love this routine. When ballroom is done well, it looks so fun and I get jealous that I don’t know the first thing about dancing it. Sydney and Paul make a good couple, and when they were looking at each other, I really felt the connection. I think Sydney needs to work on connecting with the camera a little better, though. Even during the judging, she seemed to have trouble knowing where to look. But it was nice to see just dancing with no gimmicks or props. And Paul, of course. I’ll always love anything Paul touches tbh.

3. “Shake Your Pants” (Fik-shun/Dassy poppin), Popin’ Pete

I WAS SO HAPPY WHEN I SAW THIS. There’s never been (that I can remember?) a full on poppin routine on this show before! All of this is so hard to do, and Dassy was so sharp! She was even better than Fik-shun at some points, tbh. I don’t think she’ll have a remote problem keeping up with his energy and I’m so excited to see them dance together if I can look forward to more of this. It reminded me of watching people dance in the 80s and 90s, and there was a bit of an MJ homage in there, too! This hit all my heartstrings. I get the feeling that Dassy will be around for a long time and I am perfectly okay with that.

2. “Memories” (Marko/Koine contemporary), Stacey Tookey

I have no idea how this ended up so high. The first time I watched it, I thought it was pretty but nothing super special, but then I watched it again today and I got choked up LOL. Marko and Koine look like they’ve been dancing together for 50 years. It was just so pure and beautiful, and it made me think of a meadow and oceans and all sorts of corny pretty shit. The lifts were light and effortless, and Koine looked like she would throw herself off a cliff if Marko was at the bottom ready to catch her. I want to see what she’ll be like in other styles, but at this point she’s probably my favorite girl. (Sorry Kaylee. Come back to me next week.)

I’m sure nobody is surprised at what my number one is lmao. I’ll have that up for you very soon!

[acornrising]

whats wrong with yuri on ice?

I mostly just feel bad that the dragon has art, I hate to waste someone’s honest effort.

BUT since you asked and I’ve got personal beef to fry on this topic, I can boil my issues down to two basic parts- the fandom sucks and the show doesn’t follow through. I’ll try to keep this short but I’ve been known to ramble, so, advanced apologies. And full disclosure I actually enjoy Yuri on Ice for what it is, it’s a charming, fairly well animated series with an engaging cast of characters and a killer theme song. However, I’m not going to give it credit for what it isn’t, and what a lot of people pretend it is, which is “good gay representation.”

Yuri on Ice is, unfortunately, mostly fujoshi bait. It’s made pretty specifically to cater to female fetishization of gay men and gay male relationships, which you think would be made patently obvious by the subtle dodge-arounds they make regarding the actual feelings the characters have for each other. The “kiss” scene was left ambiguous, the “wedding” or the “proposal” is deliberately denied by one part of the, I hate to call them lead couple because they very artfully nohomo around the whole thing, “lead couple”, neither of them ever refer to the other as their boyfriend or fiance, or express any affection beyond suggestive, flirtatious but unfulfilled moments and suggestive misunderstandings. 

Still, people go mad over this ‘great representation.’ It’s not. For something to be representation, it has to actually, you know, show the thing it’s representing. I set my bar low, give me one genuine ‘I love you’, kiss scene, or romantically suggestive handholding scene that is not brushed off or joked away by the characters themselves, or simple word of God, and I’m pretty confident in calling it representation- not necessarily ‘good’ representation, but representation nonetheless. My bar is drastically lower than others, to be sure, but that’s because I expect shit-all from people.

I hear people argue “That’s not how it’s done in Japan” or “Well they were censored.” Fine. That’s cool, that’s certainly a valid possibility and all, but don’t go pitching it as legitimate representation to boys desperate for it in the first place, especially when the author won’t outright confirm it either way when asked. That’s not representation, that’s sending the implicit message to gay boys that the “best” gay relationship is one that stays aggressively out of sight of everyone else, and that’s bullshit. I can accept cultural limits and censoring, but admit that’s what it is. Admit it doesn’t actually reach the bar it was (allegedly) reaching for.

I also see a lot of people arguing that anyone who discusses the problematic aspects of Victor and Yuuri’s relationship portrayal (ie, the fact that it basically didn’t fucking happen onscreen), and claims that it’s “non canon” is a straight homophobe, which is hilarious to me because most of the people I see defending it are straight and sometimes bi women who clearly fetishize gay men, and most of the detractors I’ve met are other members of the LGBT community, including my gay male friends. I haven’t actually yet met a gay man who thought Yuri on Ice was good rep, which is fairly telling imo. It’s possible I just haven’t met them, but of the ones I know. It didn’t quite hold up.

I ALSO see people arguing that making the romance more prominence would have “detracted from the plot”, which is horseshit considering the entire show was billed, sold, and advertised not on the power of it’s sportsmanship and competition, but on the alleged gayness of its protagonists. You don’t build a show with that much focus on romance and relationship-building only to say it would have ‘detracted’ from the leftover five minutes of re-used skating animation.

I also saw one argument say that Yuri on Ice was a powerful discussion about homophobia in ice skating and just about combusted on the spot because not only is it patently wrong (There’s no discussion or depiction of homophobia anywhere in the show), the writer herself confirmed that they envisioned the world as one where everyone could love freely without judgement, which ALSO boggles my mind because, if so, what stopped you from crossing that finish line??

I’ll admit there is the potential for culture context loss in all this- Japanese culture is notoriously introspective and internalizing, and in context of Japanese culture and Japanese media, this may very well be genuinely good representation for them. I’m not Japanese, I can’t speak to that, but that doesn’t mean we can’t acknowledge that, as far as western audiences go, this is not stellar, and maybe pin that disclaimer to shit so you don’t set gay boys up for disappointment when you scream about how ~oh so gay~ YOI is.

The fandom at large has soured my enjoyment of the series due to its blatant lack of critical thinking in response to a show that’s written like a fanfic, but with absolutely none of the payoff. I’m saddened by what was promised by an over-eager fanbase but never delivered by the show, for whatever it’s reasons.

For the show itself, the only thing that disappoints me is that it doesn’t hit that mark. There are many reasons it might not have. None of them are really worth defending, just mourning. 

In short: Though it doesn’t sound it, I really like the series. I genuinely enjoy all the characters, I was invested in their storylines, it was a joy to take in with the eyes, but despite not actually finishing the marathon, it got all the credit of first place, and that. Bugs me.

[kinetic-elaboration]

April 19: Thoughts on 1x11 We Are Grounders Pt 1

It’s late, I’m all upside down, and I just reread some of my old meta so I’m thinking about how Smart I am and also how bitter I am about this show. So here’s more of my rewatch!

Today’s episode, We Are Grounders Part One

I wonder if Jaha was so quick to throw up his hands and walk away from the DNR group in S4 because, especially prior to what was basically a religious conversion, he has a similarly strong death instinct himself. I’m not saying he didn’t do everything he could in favor of survival many times, but honestly how many other times has he been like ‘well, okay, tried everything, time to die’? Like compared to other characters? I’m not saying he actively wants to die so much as that he is more comforted than the average bear by the possibility of a ‘good death.’ (Also I think this has a lot to do with having lost his son tbqh.)

Note to self: someone I’m assuming is a station rep referred to her constituents.

An incredibly bleak but fitting ending for this show would have been to kill the Ark in S1 and then to have the delinquents and grounders kill each other in an escalating S2 war. It would have fulfilled certain foreshadowings/themes of the first season (all the war escalation stuff, the nuclear-age throwbacks) and it also would have been an appropriate ending for all these truly terrible, morally rotten people.

Literally Jaha v. Kane is Jasper v. everyone else (or at least, like, Clarke and Monty) in S4. Truly this show ran out of original ideas after 2 seasons, see again my previous point lol.

Speaking of Jasper there is my angular boy.

There is nothing about the delinquent camp I don’t like. Raven in like a council-level position, ish, Bellamy’s speeches and blatant emotion, everyone’s outfits.

I completely forgot Tristan existed.

I also forgot how many fake out main character deaths this show used to do. Abby, Finn. Can’t get away with that 4 seasons in. The audience knows anyone important is getting a real death scene.

Omg Bellamy has a whole like war plan with little figures and stuff.

Bellamy has this reputation for being all emotion and I think that’s him at heart but ignoring Clarke, Monty, and Finn’s disappearance is a logic-based decision. A sort of...overcompensatory logic-based decision. Also not in line with the show’s morality, like, at all. Hence why he drops it later.

Yet again impressed by how Jasper managed to change more than any other character over 4 seasons while still remaining IC. Even young and comparatively innocent he could be snarky and sarcastic and he also was honest and straightforward in his confrontation with Bellamy, and he kept on being all of those things later, but with bitterness and bite.

Murphy (having just obviously suffocated a boy): He stopped breathing. I was trying to help him. Jasper (nodding slowly): Yep, sounds about right, totally legit, lots of evidence that that is what went down. Yep.

Also I’m like 99% this ep is basically their last canon interaction so btw this was the end of what is absolutely, canonically (see the pilot and the Pike-class flashback) a same-station-forged friendship. And probably also explains why Murphy’s reaction to Jasper’s death was like ‘Jasper who???’ though that doesn’t make it any less an unforgivable sin.

There’s nothing not perfect about this scene overall, but the most perfect thing is “Tell Bellamy what?” coming from Jasper’s pocket. I love both that he tried to be sneaky and the comedic value of it.

TWO HEADED HORSE TWO HEADED HORSE TWO HEADED HORSE.

Lincoln was criminally underused. He not only saved Finn and Clarke, he “killed one of his own people to do it.” This isn’t about Octavia. He’s just been looking for an excuse to rebel his whole life.

Jackson’s being so lovely and supportive and Abby’s still calling him by his last name. Knowing this show they probably forgot it was his last name.

Today’s reminder that Octavia likes literally 4 people in the universe lol. And one of them was Jasper. Until the show forgot about that too but whatever not bitter.

RE: Raven getting in under the floor. I’m thinking about my fic and my work around for opening the dropship from the outside and okay on the one hand if such a device existed, Raven would probably know about it as much as Monty but on the other hand, there has to be a way to close the dropship from the outside, because it’s closed in S3 and there’s no one in it. So logically it should open from the outside too, without recourse to loose panels and stuff. So maybe I was a little, like, short-cut-y in my solution but the show is not consistent so we’re even. (We’re not even but I’m self-conscious now.)

Bellamy talking on the walkie with Murphy might honestly be the most beautiful he’s ever been.

Legit question: who do the Grounders battle? They have this coalition, with like Ambassadors and shit. Which doesn’t mean they can’t battle each other but there’s also some diplomacy going on, like, clearly. Which should make battling less necessary, one would think. And even if they do battle each other, over fucking what??? Land? Literally never seen solid evidence that land boundaries matter to them. Shits and giggles? Bragging rights? They have an enemy in Mount Weather but Lincoln sure as shit wasn’t fighting battles against them.

T100 drinking game: take a shot any time says ‘cauterize the wound. Take two if they actually cauterize a wound.

“We lost Clarke, we can’t lose Bellamy too” is probably the first indication literally anywhere in the show that anyone acknowledges Clarke as an delinquent leader.

I miss the Raven + Jasper dream team. Tbh Raven has so few people who can appreciate her professionally. It’s literally Monty, Wick for a hot second, and Jasper (even though his skills aren’t the same as hers, they fit with hers nicely).

I miss my alternate universe where Jasper lives but becomes pacifistic in nature, where he abandons this ‘give me something to shoot through’ attitude and eschews the use of weaponry entirely.

I don’t think this show is 40% as badass or sick as it makes itself out to be but every now and then it lives up to that ideal. I mean this extended psychological torture sequence in which Murphy makes Bellamy hang himself is super fucked up.

The young Jaha and Griffin families were adorable.

“If you were never [in the tunnels] how did you map [them]?” / “Spoils of war.” I realize this is probably just quick plot-hole filling but nevertheless I sense a story here.

The Reapers were also a sick and twisted invention of this show. I feel like in S2 it was pretty clear that the Reapers were given dead bodies to feed on, so either I’m wrong/the Mount Weatherians were more efficient in their use of their limited resource of Sky People bodies versus Grounder bodies/the show has bad continuity/that living dude in the cart is an outlier/some combo of the above.

“The Eastern Sea” lol. The Chesapeake probably.

I never cared for Luna but she could have been cool and also she and Lincoln are ex’s pry this headcanon from my cold, dead hands.

I’m pretty sure Finn pounding in the Reaper’s head was his first kill. Would his S2 story be possible without that moment?

“They look up to you. Almost as much as they look up to Clarke.” Okay I’m sorry, this is just textually, canonically wrong. This is the show retconning Clarke’s position as a leader. And it’s so unnecessary! Her story line works better if she isn’t positioned as the main delinquent leader, imo. Like, lines like that are outliers that don’t make sense within the universe; they’re obviously outwardly pointed: here audience, Clarke is protag 1 and Bellamy is protag 2 and she’s the REAL leader, don’t forget that order! If you do, you might occasionally question her leadership credentials later, when we lazily write everyone just following her regardless of their actual interactions with her or the most recent developments of her storyline! (Not that I think they were already setting up the laziness of S4 this early, but I do think they were tipping the hand of their own biases and their inability to tell the difference between what’s going on in-universe and what the audience sees and understands.)

On the other hand “Well I think the princess is dead, but I know the king’s about to die, so who’s really going to lead these people, huh?�� is a good line and I do like positioning Bellamy as king (of these people specifically) versus Clarke as a princess (of the Ark--an old position based on a class background that is irrelevant to their current society).

Lol @ Murphy’s plans being delinquent-domination though. Like that was going to happen.

Actually I think Finn’s S2 story line is created in the moment when he washes the blood off his hands: he’s killed, which changed him, and Clarke comforts him in that critical moment, and he comes to associate her with that event and its aftermath. He also says “I should have fought for you,” which I see as this...hard to describe but like...the creation of a devotion beyond what he’s so far felt. Not that he loves her more but that he’s convinced himself he loves her more, that she can save him in some way, that she is necessary to him. He has a lot of idealistic notions and I think this narrative gets created within him with Clarke at its center and everything else gets blurred out. Or something.

This Jasper and Bellamy scene is the best because it combines two things I love: Jasper’s hero-worship crush on Bellamy, and Jasper’s intense devotion to Monty. I’m a little sorry that Clarke and Finn’s return/these loser Grounders robbed us of a Bellamy and Jasper rescue mission though.

I guess it’s possible Bellamy said “Whatever the hell we want” all the time but really I think it was just the one time and the writers have already forgotten that Jasper never heard him say it omg sometimes I just want to knock their heads together their memories are such shit. (Yes I’m also bitter about Jasper’s pilot outfit returning out of nowhere in S4 and Clarke wearing his intact goggles in S5 even though he already smashed the plastic out of the lenses sometime in S3.)

Poor Jasper. He thinks Monty’s come back with them. He barely even has time to process that disappointment before they start debating whether or not they should leave.

Basically I have a lot of Jasper feelings.

Bellamy’s speech is better than Clarke’s. Come on Griffin, never start with ‘my opponent is right’ that’s a bad rhetorical move. I also find it intensely unrealistic that they’re all like ‘yes, Clarke, we will do what you say!’ when, I cannot emphasize this enough, she has literally never led them before. All of her leader decisions have been strictly BTS. Her only real advantage here is that they know they have no gunpowder and few other resources, so it’s probably just a straight up fear-flight.

“Crowds make bad decisions. Leaders do what they think is right.” I mean basically the theme of the show there lol.

I’m going to rant about this next time I watch but just gonna say here that Clarke is definitely, unequivocally, ultimately wrong in this and Bellamy was right. They should have stayed. People literally died because Clarke tried to take them out when she shouldn’t have.

The camp doesn’t look like I expect or picture in my head...where are their tents? How much land did they claim?

I remember watching this the first time and thinking Jaha’s plan to get them to the ground on the Ark itself was the outright coolest thing I’d ever see and you know what? It holds up. I stand by it.

[categoricalglitches]

So, I’ve been meaning to type this up all week and just kind of never got to it because of reasons, but since the new episode’s about to be out and the prospect of the oncoming aftermath is bothering me to the point that it has me sort of dreading watching it, yeah.... You know, this is not actually going to help but, well, screw it, may as well vent away anyway.

Cut for spoilers (next few episodes, the rest of Leviathan Wakes and vaguely the other books), length, and a lot of italics-fueled ranting.

The issue for me here is not the events of last episode as such, but rather Holden’s upcoming reaction to them, just as they did in Leviathan Wakes. Because honestly? I think Miller made the only decision possible in that moment as the scene is presented and Holden’s reaction (never fucking mind everyone else’s) is idiotic.

I don’t even really, rationally (emotionally my heart fucking broke for Miller, let me tell you) care that Holden kicks him from the crew and of the ship. I care that fucking everyone acts as if this one specific murder is so random and unforgivable somehow. And, I mean, fuck. In my book it’s pretty damned far down on the list in terms of brutality and unjustifiability in the category of people Miller shot in that period.

And, for the record, it seriously bothers me that I do have to agree with Miller here, because in general I am totally on team Holden (let them rot in jail for all of eternity) and on top of that the scene just... doesn’t work for me. At all. Like, even beyond the fact that I hate the understated, supposedly über-charismatic villain who can make anything sound “reasonable” and not that bad and/or a necessary evil and who makes other characters genuinely doubt themselves even though their plan is insanity on the order of BUT WE COULD CONTROL THE REAPERS FOR HUMANITY, SHEPARD!!! (or any of the other bullshit he tries to convince you of while maintaining he just miraculously had nooo idea what all those rogue cells committing all those atrocities aaall of their own accord, yup, were doing, for that matter--yeah I hate TIM, ask me how much) or, you know, the blatant fucking pile of lies Dresden tries to sell as he’s caught red-fucking-handed and all their talk in those scenes manages to elicit in me is aggravation and a desire for them to fuck off already because I cannot stand them and it hurts my immersion in the narrative. (Wow, that specific complaint got a bit out of hand. Sorry.)So, anyway. I don’t think the scene works on its own merits and fails to justify Dresden’s (frankly ludicrous) rationalization--brief reminder, for the murder and then some of 1,5 million/100.000 people--working.

His rationalization, you know, for the murder and then some of tens of thousands resp. over a million people. Yeah. And all he has to say for himself is that it was super duper urgent to identify the oh-so acute danger presented by the protomolecule which had been chilling as a moon of Saturn for literally billions of years and therefore could never have been a weapon intended to harm humanity for obvious reasons. And just think of everything we could do with it to improve humanity! Hypothetically, of course, because it’s not like we know what it is or does. We kind of just released it on a civilian population first to see what would happen, ’cause we’re not interested in the evolutionary potential of bacteria since we here at Protogen are professional, serious scientists! Who by the way are actually totally doing this for humanity! Honestly! And anyway they’re all already dead so ~make their deaths mean something, man! I am a trustworthy individual who you can definitely trust and they were all just Belters, so who cares.

And then everyone just falls for it anyway, as confirmed directly by Holden and Miller and now in the show, Fred Johnson too. He is literally in the process of fucking somehow talking himself out of this travesty when Miller well-deservedly shoots him in his fucking face and shuts him up permanently. Is it justice in the sense of him having been convicted in court? Well, no. Point Holden, in theory. Is it at all even a remote possibility at this stage that he will end up in a court for a judge to convict him? No, not at all. I don’t think it makes any sense, mind, but he’s already talking his way out of unleashing an unknown biological agent (that for all he knows will build a fucking zombie moon if fed enough bio-matter) on a civilian population for science! and fun and profit, so. But, like, HDU! or whatever. Meh.

(I am actually pretty sure those aren’t even all my initial reasons, either.)

And the way the show seems to be handling it makes all this even worse to me, for three main reasons (and one minor one, because I do think Dresden was miscast even though like I mentioned, his little sales pitch failed to work for me in the book as well).

The first is Kenzo. He never asked for this. (Sorry, sorry.) But I do mean it. As annoying as he was (and he was a lot annoying), he was an insufferable annoyance that got caught up in this mess because he was conveniently nearby enough to put into place as a spy. And he totally did betray them, and it’s not as if I think they should have taken him along or anything or, hell, even that Holden shooting him in those circumstances would have been totally unjustifiable.

But Holden didn’t shoot him. He chased him off and left him to die a death that wouldn’t have been out of place in a list of the more unpleasant Dead Space game overs and an undeath as part of the protomolecule hive mind. He couldn’t have known about the tentacles, true. He couldn’t have known about what happens after you die of protomolecule infection, also true. But fuck the entire fuck off, it’s not better to leave someone to certain (and he did know that obviously) horrible death than to actually kill them yourself. In fact, IMO it’s worse, especially if you then try to take the moral high ground because hey, at least you didn’t kill them!

And actually, even then I never had that much of a problem with it (that certainly put him out of my misery and it showed off some neat stuff about the protomolecule and it looked cool). But uh... I do have a problem with this happening and then Holden still having the same/a similar reaction to Miller’s execution of Dresden as in the book.

How, exactly, does he think that was any better or more justified or fucking anything? Because I am not seeing it. As far as I can tell, it’s pure hypocrisy on the level of it’s okay when I/we do it like with Amos and Clarissa (yeah, sorry, still don’t like either of them--unpopular opinion, I know). I mean, unless he thinks personally annoying traitor who nearly led to their death > evil mad scientist responsible for a six-figure number of deaths and still almost succeeded in having them killed, which I doubt.

The second is that in the show, Holden never gave Miller the ultimatum that he did in the book. So in the book, Holden pretty much tells Miller after Eros that if he kills one more person without his say so, he’s done and out (which is fair enough; his ship, his rules and all that) and so that ends up happening. I don’t think it would’ve worked like that in the show (and actually, that one kind of went to Amos in the show already now that I think about it). But still, that helped ground (I guess? I mean, like I said, I also think it was kind of stupid all round) the decision and its absence hardly helps.

And the third is that now, Miller was the only Belter in the room as this went down, and, I mean, like okay... wow. I think this is the most important factor, and actually one that applies to the book as much as the show. Dresden/Protogen/Mao-Kwik are purposely targeting Belters for their experiments because they’re a series of isolated populations who have little to no rights in the first place.

Miller is a Belter. Holden is an Earther. And, like, you take that moral high ground there, guy whose people are at a zero per cent risk of suffering the same fate!

In that very moment, the lives of all the people of Eros is being used as a bargaining chip. By the man (an Earther) responsible for--at least--the on-the-ground “conduction” of that “experiment”. Successfully. In a negotiation with the leader of the mainstream political wing of the OPA, who is also an Earther.

And then Miller shoots him, which apparently the entire crew of the Rocinante agrees is the worst thing ever and anyone who should do a thing like that cannot be associated with in good conscience.

Yeah, okay. Sure. Makes all the sense in the world!