#emotion thinkpiece

[snakesandstone]

[strellunas]

Damage Gets Done, to me, is such a visceral experience to southern living as a minority. 18 years of isolation in a nowhere town (it's the comforts that make us feel numb) where the closest city is an hour away. Where I travel 80 minutes roundtrip just to get an education, driving hours to chase any experience (we'd go out with no way to get home). 18 years of being shown that the way I am human is so inherently different than the way everyone else is human (being blamed for a world we had no power in). Being left to wilt so young when I continue to strive for something better for myself, chasing wonders, sharing dreams of selfishly abandoning what I've always known with the less than a hand's count of people I could trust (I swear goodwill kept up the engine). I don't know, it always makes me cry when I'm listening to it on long drives back from something greater, a world just out of reach that I've longed for as long as I've been alive (All I needed was someone when the whole wide world felt young). There's this feeling of desire, & love, & greed, & guilt.

[zhuhongs]

dude. but the thing about teaching tho.. no matter how long or how short you do it for.. some students never leave you, some things never look the same again bc it will always remind you of a student. its crazy. man...

[foolsdiamond]

here's the epilogue ideas i dont know if i will actually turn into content

concept: either a series of snapchats a-la the homestuck ending, or a series of ctrl+alt+del format comic strips because i like those

Getting Jake new clothes

Dirk: Thank god I’ve learned literally every skill, including sewing/tailoring Jake: What are you talking about, why is this relevant. Dirk: Your clothes are torn and disgusting and not to mention ill-fitting.  Come with me into the city, where I can dress you up into something more proper. Jake: Gross

A scene of them in Lotak just. Filled with dirks in various peasant costumes doing various peasant jobs

Dirk successfully gets Jake in a properly fitted suit.

Jake flexes and rips the sleeves off immediately.  Dirk’s gay heart can’t take it.

Jake teaching Dirk things too

Maybe how to shoot a gun

About how politics have changed in the outside world

Jake just ranting to Dirk about his many adventures slaying other vampires; it cuts to “This one’s asleep?!” because. The dirk listening fell asleep.

Obligatory GangBang joke

Obligatory Jake gets banged by several dirks at once joke

ALSO Jake sparring with multiple dirks at once

COULD be combined into one, like those old plastic holo trading cards that would show one image and then the other; it’s a bunch of dirks with swords launching themselves at jake, but you rotate it 20 degrees and now they’re all naked and holding dildos.

[aangarchy]

Ok now we're just taking the piss right? Right?

Once again this sort of thinking is removing a fundamental character arc that makes this story what it is. A big part of Aang's journey, especially in season 1, but tbh it does return in later seasons too, is accepting that he is the Avatar, and that he's the only one who can end this war. During the whole first season he is in complete denial about who he is and what he's supposed to do, which is why in most of this season there's no sense of urgency, and then once Aang gets faced with a very real, very close deadline he panics. This makes it even more brutal when in season 3, after accepting this responsibility, he gets faced with the reality of failure. He runs away again, this time not because he doesn't want responsibility, but because he knows how heavy his responsibility is and he doesn't want to burden anyone else with it. Removing the first aspect, aka running away and denying responsibility, it in turn also removes the heavy emotion from his later arc.

It keeps surprising me that people who claim to be such fans of the original seem to completely miss the point of most of this story? Like how could you look at Sokka learning about women's rights, Aang learning to accept responsibility, and Katara's motherly warmth which happened because how young she was when she had to step into a motherly role, and think "well we should remove that." You're taking out all of character development and going purely off of plot (which isn't gonna be nearly as good without the character development!)

Atla is probably one of the most analyzed and picked apart story, has one of the most long running loyal fanbases, people are STILL making thinkpieces about this show, and you manage to still misunderstand so much???

[prokopetz]

Thinkpieces about why people seem to become more authoritarian as they get older tend to focus on neuroscience and survivorship bias and such, but based on my experience in various activist communities, I think a big piece of the puzzle that these sorts of discussions often overlook is that a large chunk of people just never had any principled objection to authoritarianism in the first place.

It's easy to talk about fighting the power when you're under the boot, but when some folks get hold of any sort of power or authority for themselves and sticking it to the Man is no longer a proposition with no perceived downsides, they start backpedalling in a real hurry. Power didn't corrupt them. Nothing changed about their politics. Their commitment to anti-authoritarianism was only ever as strong as their perception that it personally benefited them.

(You absolutely can't tell who they are just from looking at them, either; a person can use all the right jargon and support all the right causes and show up at all the right protests, yet the moment their private emotional calculus determines, rightly or wrongly, that they have more to gain by putting a boot on your neck than by lifting it off, watch out!)

[thegiantofkokonur]

Some choice excerpts about his professional conduct

Criticisms from academics about his writing on the subject of attention.

We do have SOME direct evidence that high and variable levels of stimulation that come from intense and daily internet use (the rest is filled in through extrapolation of behavior theory) but this dude’s work is not representative of that science and only serves to offload our society’s problems onto an obvious scapegoat rather than actually confront the interwoven web of social ills, oppression, and class division that cause mental illness, which leads to dependency on high and variable stimulation moreso than early exposure.

Remember: Dependency is a tool systems use for oppression but it is, in and of itself, not immoral behavior, and free information/advanced technology is not inherently immoral either. Ludditism will not free you.

ALT

Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen by Johann Hari

[problemnyatic]

The reason, by the way, you keep seeing thinkpieces on how Hating All Men is Bad is because this actually is a feminist issue. Writing off all men as inherently tainted by Evil Man Juice due to their Loud, Intrusive Masculinity not only lets them off the hook for their actions, but asserts bioessentialist and gender essentialist narratives which are directly counterposed with progressing the conversation on human rights and feminism in a useful direction.

It's not saying Not All Men, it's not saying "men are the REAL victims, actually," and it's not a dismissal of the very real dynamics of systemic sexism and patriarchy.

If anything is ever going to change, we need to assert the idea that men aren't inherently different than anyone else, and that means they hold responsibility for when they perpetuate systems of oppression. It means we acknowledge those systems of oppression and the way patriarchy cultivates toxic masculinity in men, rather than just pretending that testosterone just somehow makes you turn into The Oppressor, What A Shame.

Asserting that men are inherently dangerous, inherently trash, inherently untrustworthy, inherently different than women just asserts that likewise, women are inherently different than men. Ten fucking years ago this website was buzzing about how obviously bullshit that is.

Men and women get raised different, but that's nurture, not nature, and a given man is literally just some guy who like, probably has some biases to watch out for.

We cannot fight the patriarchy and we cannot disassemble systemic sexism if we're convincing ourselves that these things are just intrinsic to the male sex, with nothing to be done but induce an adequate volume of shame and ostricization in every man you meet in hopes that we punish the evil ghosts out of their blood.

Also, people are more receptive to change and criticism when you're not treating them like a fucking bomb for existing. It's not useful to treat men as a tainted category of person, and it actively contributes to the emotional isolation men are subject to by the patriarchy that only deepens the issues society tries to instill into them.

You don't need to be Personally Responsible for pulling every man you meet out of the partiarchal miasma of brainworms or anything, but upholding the narrative and belief that men are Just Worse, Because They're Men keeps the conversation misdirected.

The patriarchy is actively invested in teaching men to be emotionally isolated, and to fill that hole with entitlement over women's lives and bodies, and that it is the natural and Correct state of a Man. The least you could fucking do is stop fucking agreeing with it that Yeah, Men Are Just Like That, even if you're oh-so-progressively appending it with "Sucks, Huh?"

[throwing-in-the-towel]

my long awaited thinkpiece prompted by a tiktok posted by mickeyjotheatre:

gonna be extremely long. bear with me. i like to be thorough!

very brief background introduction for this post: the user listed above (who is an avid theater goer and reviewer for both broadway & the west end) decided to share a video talking about the closing of Suffs and how that relates to The Outsiders. a comparison that is pretty unnecessary imo except for the fact that they play on the same street & opened in the same season, but hey that's just my opinion! these two shows are nowhere near similar whatsoever and it is pretty crazy to act as though they are comparable in any sense of the word.

MJT starts to mention how Suffs won the Tonys for Best Score & Best Book of a musical. he also mentions how The Outsiders won Best Director & Best Musical! however, he only points out how none of the nominated acting performances for The Outsiders won Tonys, but doesn't mention how none of the nominated Suffs performances won either!!! later in his video, MJT does graciously mention how The Outsiders was directed by a woman (Danya Taymor) and the original novel was written by a woman (S.E. Hinton). he goes on to say that it seems as though young women seem to be attending The Outsiders over Suffs, even though The Outsiders is about "emotionally inarticulate men" while Suffs is about "emotionally articulate, very intelligent and driven young women." he also mentions how any time he has been on 45th, there is always screaming at The Outsiders stage door, but not as Suffs. while he does (off-handedly) mention that Suffs has some passionate & enthusiastic fans, he disregards them pretty quickly. i know some people who are major fans of Suffs, and they deserve more respect than that. not fair to compare fanbases that are made up of different demographics entirely.

he doesn't think he's the person to have a conversation about that, but starts one anways! so i will finish it for him! :D

before i get into my thoughts, i wanna jump back to MJT's intial review on The Outsiders!! a lot of the comments he makes about aspects of the show are shared in a very patronizing and condescending tone. i have an example here for you guys: "which signifies to us, the audience, he can be better than all this because he's reading a classic novel." which was in relation to pony reading great expectations. i fear that is not the point of him reading that book! he also shares that it's an "annoying habit of retaining the first person point of view" and uses "telling rather than showing"...well that is how narration works! the story being in first person is extrememly important to every aspect of the plot. pony can even be considered an unreliable narrator. it's important, no matter how annoying you thought it was! MJT used the drive-in scene btwn cherry & pony as an example, saying that when pony tells the audience about cherry's family that cherry's depth is taken away so pony can talk to the audience??? ok, i think the point of cherry's character kinda just missed you a little then! he thinks the lack of cherry is very frustrating :/ you know what's frustrating to me? speaking on things that young women enjoy as if your interests are better than theirs!

there are more takes that i, frankly, disagree with in the duration of his 23 minute video that i so painfully sat through, but i will spare you guys the boring details. i will share a quote from him, "the characters are emotionally inarticulate men who are performing a certain amount of masculinity and aggression in order to survive their circumstances. does that prohibit you from a certain amount of emotional connection? you can feel bad for them, but i don't know that they necessarily have the requisite vulnerability to allow you to feel that emotional connection." all in all here, i think the plot and relationships between these characters just went completely over his head. constantly commenting on how these boys are "emotionally inarticulate," then refusing to mention moments like DAMD, TITT, Soda's Letter, or even the final scene between the curtis brothers is certainly a choice!

i would like to get to my thoughts, more so on the intial tiktok now. i think it's important to acknowledge that a lot of people seeing The Outsiders aren't theater fans and that there are definitely a lot of younger people (not just young women btw) that go to the show because the cast is conventionally attractive. im not gonna sit here and say there aren't attractive people in the cast, because that would be a lie. i also can say that a pretty face doesn't keep a show open and make it as successful as this one has been. also who cares if a decent amount of the fans are young women? that means more young people getting into theater and engaging with theater content online, which is great to see! young women are usually very in tune with picking out what will be successful and what won't be! maybe there's a reason why The Outsiders is the show staying open!

it's also important to note how accesible the cast is for this show. they are extremely active on social media, which raises fan interest and engagement. and a lot of that is due to Melody Rose, a FEMALE cast member!!!!! IP does better on broadway than original stories in the current climate, that sucks, i agree, but that is not the fault of teenagers and what shows they are choosing to see. the music of The Outsiders is more engaging and the story is more relatable for younger people. if you sat and thought about it for more than 15 minutes, you'd realize why it's so successful. it's a story about acceptance, perseverance, family and love, and boiling it down to being about emotionally inept men who are attractive, you're doing a disservice to the story that has resonated with so many in the darkest of places.

[jimblejamblewritings]

An Observation of Humankind [thinkpiece number: 1]

Every girlie (nonbinary, women and men of all orientations included) is a type of Marauder and their partners are marauder love interest — fandom version included.

James Girlies:

either like sports or play sports, especially soccer/football or rugby

bad eyesight

defends everyone

himbo and ditzy but we love them for that

fanfiction reader/sharer

have had several short-term but very intense crushes

surprisingly not always high school sweethearts (which yeah odd cause of Lily)

nature bros

calls their journal a diary with no shame

are always outside and can't sit their ass at home for too long

love bouquets

own at least one pair of converse

loves pop music and Hozier

have scaled a fence before

might be able to play the guitar

handwriting could be nicer if they tried

didn't get their drivers' license right away

take their coffee any way that isn't straight black coffee

definitely think all people are hot even if they don't swing that way (think lesbians love Thor)

loved Merlin the tv show

James Girlies love Regulus and Lily people, which means:

cold people, smart people, black cat people, painters, polite people, readers, homebody people, gothic people, hippie people, people with beautiful handwriting, black coffee drinkers, whisky lovers

Sirius Girlies:

dog people and cat people equally

doc martens

loves coffee and tea equally

fanfiction writer/reader

gorgeous handwriting, probably cursive

might know or has had an interest in calligraphy

an astrology and/or astronomy girl

speaks at least two languages

plays an instrument, any instrument... but their parents definitely suggested piano

leather jackets

denim jackets

wears way less black than people think

fantasy nerd and has played dungeons and dragons

was a superwholockian

usually the only child or older child

doesn't smoke but everyone thinks they might

cocktails or whiskey and beer, no in between

virgin till like freshman year of college or later, to everyone's shock

looks like a black cat but is actually a golden retriever

however they could kill you don't get it twisted

has trauma but won't trauma bond

crooked smile and not perfect teeth but gorgeous anyway

perfect hair that is deliberately messed with

motorcycles and vespas and small cars

listens to every genre of music

tattoos (even if just one small one)

journal person

can quote certain movies by heart

unfortunately turned on by sweater vests

fashion girlie

Sirius Girlies love Marlene, Remus, and other Sirius people, which means:

warm people, confident people, tall people, flirty people, musicians, readers, intellectual people, fancy people

Remus Girlies:

sweets lover

probably likes dark chocolate the most as well as hot chocolate

owns sweaters, probably vintage, some handmade by their Sirius girlies

plays chess

can draw

mismatched socks

waits till the last minute to do laundry

is more of a cat person but also loves dogs

didn't have strict parents and ended up giving themselves curfews and discipline and only late realized the reverse psychology

keeps a notebook about everything their partner likes

messy cook in the kitchen

loves tea a bit over coffee

is probably the actual smoker of the group

doesn't make their bed

good kissers

always carries a jacket or wears a shirt under their sweater so they can give it to their partner

can hold their liquor a bit too well perhaps

has trauma and might trauma bond

great fashion sense but will wear literally whatever is clean

Remus Girlies love Sirius, Pandora, and Dorcas (hear me out) people, which means:

black cat looks and golden retriever personality, weird people, people that pour their pain and emotions into their art whether music or painting or drawing, people that take time to care for themselves in the morning, witchy people, smiley people

Peter Girlies (pretend there was no betrayal):

underestimated

asks the most off-putting questions without realizing it

takes a camera everywhere

loves board games

tea drinker all day every day

baker

sends selfies at literally any angle because they don't care

always pays attention to everyone

loves breakfast food eaten not at breakfast

had a ukelele phase

cleanest of their friend group

Peter Girlies love Mary people, which means:

sunshine people, almost always happy, excitable people, pda lovers, carefree topeople

[icharchivist]

LIKE FUCKING CLOCKWORK YOUTUBE IM GOING TO HUNT YOU DOWN FOR SPORTS

gdi i looked up ONE ff15 videos on youtube to share it with a friend and now youtube is already recommanding me ff15 videos which i dO NOT WANT because EVERY SINGLE TIME it happens i end up getting garbage in my recommendation get the fuck away youtube i don’t trust you in trying to “appeal to my interests”

[arkus-rhapsode]

When you see yourself in trash (Gachiakuta Discussion)

So with the positive reception of my recent thinkpiece, I wanted to make good on my promise that I’d post more. And this has kinda been one I’ve been wanting to do for a while. But due to the deeply personal nature of it, I wanted to really give it the time it deserved to come together.

This is going to be a post about Gachiakuta, which if my multiple posts on it haven’t been an indicator, I'm kinda a big fan. But what’s more, I really wanted to talk about why Gachiakuta speaks to me more in depth.

Background 

So for those who don’t know, Gachiakuta is a weekly manga series by mangaka Kei Urana. Urana is a former assistant of the student of the Soul Eater and Fire Force creator, Atsushi Okubo. This series premiered shortly after Okubo’s Fire Force finished up, and stars a young boy named Rudo who lives in the slum area of a place called “The Sphere” (Or Heaven depending on the translation). Rudo has a habit of stealing from waste deposit sites and repairing broken items he finds. He lives with his adopted father Regeto after his biological father was sentenced to “The Abyss” for murder. The Abyss is a gaping chasm where all of the Sphere’s trash and prisoners are dumped. 

Rudo is a somewhat surly child, and noticeably struggles with properly expressing his emotions despite the fact he is a highly emotional person. Smiling in particular is a struggle for him. Rudo one day comes to find Regto killed by a mysterious masked man, and blamed for this crime. Rudo is sentenced to the Abyss where he cries in anger he will return and kill everyone here. In the Abyss, Rudo is met by monsters made of trash and people devoted to fighting them, the Cleaners (Or Janitors depending on the translation). This fighting force of magic garbage men use the power of a “Giver” to empower items dear to them known as Jinki. With Rudo discovering that he can do the same with his gloves given to him by Regeto. Now he’ll work with the Cleaners killing trash monsters as he unravels the mystery of who killed his adoptive father and how he’ll escape the Abyss.

And it has been the newest manga series in the last four years that has not only made me feel hyped but await every chapter since its release.

Now if everything I said previously sounded like “well that sounds like a fairly straight forward if somewhat interestingly flavored revenge action manga. What makes it special?” Well then we’re going have to talk about Rudo. 

Rudo

So Gachiakuta is a series with a lot of weirdos in it and some unconventional story structures to it (and we’ll touch on that later) but I think the character who embodies the core of this series is its MC, Rudo. 

On the surface Rudo is a character that could feel at home with any number of shonen manga protags. Really expressive, yells a lot, spiky hair, and a power that’s kinda special amongst its power system. Basically, If Deku from MHA was a bit more angry and sleep deprived, you probably think he and Rudo were the same person on the surface. And for the most part, Rudo seemed to be that way, an angry kid out for revenge who treasured the last remaining gift he received from his foster father. Yet then we get to chapter 15 of Gachiakuta. A truly special chapter. 

When Griss, Rudo’s teammate for this mission, was run through with claws by the villain, Jabber Wongar, Rudo seems to suffer some for of PTSD as the world goes hazy and he sees Griss as Regeto, stabbed and bleeding. We cut to Rudo as a child in Regto’s care and there, Rudo is banging his head against a wall to the point blood is coming out. 

When Regto asks why Rudo would do this, the only thing Rudo can describe is how he has nothing. He has these feelings he doesn’t know how to describe yet he believes he’s nothing from the abuse he suffered at the hands of parents. All he has to really express it it this sort of frustration. While Rudo’s parents being murders may have been a lot for any child, Rudo carries literal scars given to him by his father. His hands peeled and scared and burnt black. The pain in his hands stops when he wears the gloves Regto gave him. 

And when Regto wants Rudo to find something to focus his passion into, the thing that catches Rudo’s attention the most is a broken mannequin. Rudo cries letting out those feelings he said he couldn’t describe. Wanting to fix something and can’t believe it was tossed away because it was “a little broken.” At that moment, Regto realizes something about Rudo. He sees himself in those same objects that weren’t valued and tossed away.

So this is where I get to one of the things about Gachiakuta and Rudo in particular that speaks to me. Rudo, to me, is an example of a neurodivergent child and the text actually bothers to focus on how this affects his life. Now I know the moment I’ve said that there will be a lot of people who want me to explain, and the first thing is, no the manga doesn’t come out and say that Rudo is on the spectrum. But rather it lays a pretty explicit analogy to someone who may not be typical in some regard mentally or emotionally. I know in the space of neurodivergent individuals representation is… difficult. Not just to find in the media, but also represented in a way that isn’t just “they’re a super genius.” Because there are many many forms of neurodivergence and how the manifest can be different for many individuals. Someone with ADHD may have their life affected in ways different than someone diagnosed with Autism. This is where I think it's very important for me to say, I’m just one guy on the spectrum. I’m speaking from my personal experience but you shouldn’t take my opinion as gospel. This is just me and my experiences. And my personal reading of this  

So when I say, a “mentally different character” in the media can be a tricky tightrope to walk, I mean it. Wanting there to be a positive representation for a community that may not get representation, but also not wanting to be like some monolithic depiction of what living with one of these conditions may be like. And there are plenty of ways where this could go very wrong (Anyone remember the time Aquaman cured Autism?). So when the text can’t just say “I am X” it's not uncommon for the readers to begin to see or relate to how a character may act. Speaking of how they act, in the case of anime and manga another “complication�� can occur in the fact that many of these characters can act… well whacky and that’s treated as most acceptable in the universe. Whereas in real life, its likely anywhere from Gon to Goku would get side eye with their behavior. And thus you have the basis for plenty of head canons, one prominently being a character’s place on the spectrum. 

Let's take any character, say Rill Boismortier from the series Black Clover. He’s a relatively second character in the series with an aptitude for art magic, who had locked himself in his room isolating himself from others till his butler reached him and now he’s a very eccentric, excitable, outgoing character. From the fact that he has a fixation on art to things like making sounds that could be read as vocal stimming, Rill could be read as an autistic character.

Or how about we look at one of the more memetic takes of the internet and all the jokes that Fern and Frieren from Frieren: Beyond the Journey’s End are autistic. This joke mainly comes from how in this world everything has a cool, somewhat mellow vibe with many people acting very muted. With Frieren herself struggling with making a distinction in the passage of time thanks to her elven aging and trying to understand the human condition. And Fern also a relatively reserved and subdued individual only really expresses her feeling a sensation of frustration or annoyance through “Kawaii pouting” puffing out her cheeks.

There are plenty more examples, but I wanted to illustrate that there are characters in manga and anime that I believe-yes, someone with neurodivergence could identify with, however, would I go as far as to say that this was the writer's original intention? Well choosing to err on the side of caution, I'm going to guess not likely. Someone could easily say, “you’re reading too much into it. There is nothing in the canon that outright says that. Rill is just a joke character, Frieren is a completely different species so it can’t really be neuro-atypical from a human standpoint, Fern’s pouting is just a gap moe trope.” And to be honest, I don’t necessarily think people holding these beliefs would be wrong. Nor do I wish to imply that if someone sees themselves in one of these characters that means they’re on the spectrum.

I'm saying there’s nothing wrong with either option. If you are someone neurodivergent and you see yourself in someone like Rill, that’s great. If you are someone who isn’t neurodivergent but still sees themselves in someone like Rill, that’s also great. The point I’m trying to make is that it may be unintentional, but a neurodivergent person seeing a neurodivergent story inside a specific character can happen and in many ways offer insights into the character.

And for someone like me who has spent a long time coming to grips with how my atypicality has affected my identity, Rudo’s story hit me. Hit me in a way I don’t think many series have. Rudo is a character who shows a fixation on trash, particularly broken pieces of trash. His old wounds he covers and just the feelings on this specific piece of clothing is able to make the feelings of his wounds go away. And just the way he described having emotion inside, but not being able to properly express it to the point he was doing self harm, it tore me up inside. 

Made even more dramatic by the fact that Rudo is having this flashback being triggered by Griss being stabbed. Griss is a guy Rudo has known for a day who is shown to be a cool guy, but most importantly, when Rudo spent his welcome party sulking in a corner all tied up in his shell, only for Griss to ask him about his future. Rudo truly was feeling like he was losing a fatherly figure again in front of him

This was one of the moments that in my mind showed me the sort of direction this series wanted to go in with Rudo. Edgy, dark, cool, and stylistic revenge series in manga have existed for years. In fact, they’ll exist long after Gachiakuta and myself have expired. Many of these series can vary on the portrayal of their MC, conflicted, ready to embrace destruction, righteous in their pursuit, yet Gachiakuta has been unique for me, seeing Rudo have all the hallmarks for a vengeful story yet people always come to speak with him on his behavior. 

Not in a sort of guidance counselor way, but more in a natural way of trying to make this kid who has had a life where he hasn’t had to properly think about/experience certain things life can throw at you and they want him to improve. From telling him it's okay to not know what he wants to do in the future, to letting him know it's okay to make mistakes, to learning how to properly have a conversation and connect with others. I think a lot of these moments can feel like sweet nothings, but for me I saw it as a part of growing up. Or rather something I wanted growing up. I’ve experienced many moments of my life where I felt lost not in small part to the fact it felt like no one could meet me on my ground. And something about Gachiakuta is the attempt that almost every character has made trying to reach Rudo and show him a form of empathy. And as the series has gone on that empathy has really changed. He went from a kid not understanding what was wrong about saying “I'm only working with you till fulfill my goal!,” demanding cooperation from others, to actively trying to ask for help when hears of an opportunity to come closer to his goal. 

This sort of vulnerability I think was present in his moment screaming his revenge. He’s visibly crying. Despite all the bluster and crassness, there’s clearly a frustrated and overwhelmed boy who has been condemned by a society that brands him “unclean.” This is also where I should mention Urana is an absolute master with art and expressions. Making everyone feel so alive. Rudo’s faces are an absolute highlight. Despite a person who seems set up to have a chip on his shoulder, he may be one of the wackiest in just how big he can let his emotions go. Which ties into our next part.

Zodyl and the Watchman Series

Now I'm sure you’re wondering, “Arkus, you said that this manga hasn’t hard confirmed Rudo is actually neurodivergent, yet you say the text makes the analogy so does someone finally say it?” Well to answer that, I’m gonna need to talk about the main villain of this series and the tools he’s after, The Watchman series.

Our seemingly main antagonist of the series is a man named Zodyl Typhon, leader of the organization The Raiders (Or the Vandals depending on the translation) a group of evil givers who seem to be devoted to the destruction of The Sphere. As they living in a world where the natural order is simply that they are a people who have garbage raining down upon them. Polluting them, crushing them, and people of the Abyss have gradually become accustomed to it all. Zodyl wants to shock the system and he wishes to get his hands on all the various powerful Jink known as the “Watchman series.” So far it's known that only Rudo’s gloves, Amo’s boots, and Zodyl’s coat are part of this set. 

Zodyl is depicted as an amoral, somewhat sociopathic person, with intense eyes, viewing people as experiments to test his theories, and showing practically no emotion. He describes each piece of the Watchman series as containing extremely powerful emotions in them. A normal person couldn’t use these items with going mad due to these emotions. Yet people like Rudo and Zodyl haven't gone mad. Well that’s being they’re not like others.

In one of the most painful visual analogies, Zodyl describes that in this world there are people born missing pieces that every other human is born with. This leaves them as something sort of empty. WIth Rudo knowing exactly what he’s talking about. This was already hinted at by Amo who says wearing her Watchman boots feels as though she’s a toy that had a new battery inside. Zodyl doesn’t think that missing something fundamental is a bad thing though, in his opinion not being born with it has made him a vessel for this power. 

I once again cannot say with a hundred percent certainty that Kei Urana was intentionally channeling the experiences of those who may be told “they’re not like others because they were born atypical” but it's so hard for me to not read it that way. Especially the part where Zodyl rejects the idea that there’s anything wrong with this. He’s not wrong for how he’s born, look at all the cool stuff he can do now. While Rudo stands there and thinks about how isolated he felt from everyone else. It's easy to see these as two very valid responses to someone with a mental health diagnosis, lamenting how this puts you at odds with others and how being different in this way makes it harder for you to connect. While the other rejects needing the validation of others, there isn’t a problem. 

Once again, no one just flat out says it, but so much of the subtext is basically there in your face in regards to Watchman and Zodyl’s speech. But the fact this power is only wielded by something that is described as a missing piece. With the image of a heart in pieces. To me, the emphasis placed on the value of one’s emotional and mental capacity as something that can be filled, like its just so out there how can I not see something there? 

Well maybe its because I want to?

Artistic Interpretation 

Look, I'm not gonna to give you a dry lecture on the value of artistic interpretation. I think we’re all mature enough that multiple people can have multiple different interpretations of a single world. With art being something that lends itself to being read in a variety of ways. I'm not making this post to delegitimize any interpretation.

Rather I wanted to come all the way back to the pin I put in when mentioning the unconventional story structures. Now it should come to no one’s surprise that the woman who was an assistant and student of the guy who made Soul Eater makes some bizarre choices. Not the least of which being the characters and tone.

No, rather I wanna touch on something that I find Urana and Okubo do better than a lot of people which is visual interpretation. Both utilize the visual aspect of this visual medium to make some points. But rather, both of them allow these visuals to hang out there and allow you the reader to come to your own interpretation of this. 

This type of storytelling in my opinion can force the audience to actually engage with the work in a deeper meaningful way. While some would argue that it leaves things open in a way that may never truly be satisfying. I think in the case of Gachiakuta it has less of that tha an Okubo work, but there are plenty of things I do believe Urana leaves out there for you to read as you will. 

When I see her going out of her way to make a doll with their heart missing and a man describing a feeling of them missing, Uruana is not expressly saying anything, but allowing us the audience to decide how we read it. I'm certain she has her own way of viewing this story, but I do appreciate that she’s allowed Gachiakuta to be a series where we are allowed some creative liberties. Especially in the fact this is a weekly shonen manga. A demographic I feel often can suffer from needing to make everything somewhat obvious in its meaning or intent. 

But Urana really knows how to capture this sort of vibe. Allow the art to speak for itself and I find myself having to put some of myself in the series when I read and interact with it. So while I’m sure there will be people who think I have basically convinced them of nothing and that this might all be reading to deep, I do at least want to point out that Urana herself has at least allowed for me to make these connections on my own and I think that is worth something at least on her part as a creative.

Conclusion

So yeah what was that all about? Welp like I said this was to be a more personal thinkpiece. One where I wanted to work through my own feelings on why this series had me captivated. Also it's possibly my attempt to broaden the discussion of Gachiakuta. 

Despite the fact many have made the prediction its gonna be a “big deal” it really isn’t. At least by pure sales wise. Nothing bad, but nothing remarkable at the time of writing this. Honestly its doing much better than a series that’s not on the extremely accessible SJ app. It’s a good series but it may just always be underground. 

Every influencer wants to be on the ground floor, whether it's this, Red Hood, Kagurabachi, Nue’s Exorcist, Astro Royale, Mama Yuyu, Centuria, etc. I get that hype and memes are a powerful thing in this internet consumer world. But I do want a series that may be big or important one day to touch on things that make it good beyond hype and anticipation. 

And for me that is what I got with Gachiakuta. There’s an element to it that I haven’t really felt in manga in other media. And the fact it could make me feel that… that’s special to me. I know I’ve talked about some heavy topics and I do hope I was as respectful as I possibly could be. Opening up like this was hard for me. 

As I do truly love this series and hoped I could illustrate why it resonated with me, perhaps it resonated with a lot of people who can see themselves in this one trashy boy.

I hope everyone reading can have that sort of character they see themselves in, and if you enjoyed please like or reblog as it tells me you'd be interested in reading more

[sharoo]

Canto 7 thoughts

So me and my pals finished canto 7 yesterday and just. Projmoon how do you keep one-upping yourselves. How are you going to keep one-upping yourself we still have 5 episodes of Inferno and god knows what more after that.

So like a lot of fans i'm gonna leave my thinkpiece here and try to sort out the emotions I have about it all. This is going to be rambly as heck.

Family and how messy that can be

Bloodfiend families kind of make me short-circuit when I get thinking about them. A chosen family of blood, but one with an unfortunate power dynamic, where the children cannot willingly disobey or harm their parents.

Old Don Quixote was a good guy. He was an idealist, he treated his kids well, he wanted the best of for them. But so often they did not have a choice in his antics. Sancho herself even says, during the Bloodfiend war days, that she could not leave him.

And the fall of La Manchaland involves several instances of him making choices for others without considering them. Forcing Sancho to leave when, as the story clearly shows us, DQ is in large part her reason for living and happiness; forcing the family to first live off of flavourless mush for 200 years and then locking them away to endlessly keep on starving as they're unable to die, all for the safety of humanity.

Don Quixote has the air of someone who centres his actions on what he feels is right or wrong, not necessarily considering others?

But as someone once said, any action committed in the name of love exists outside the framework of good and evil.

I do not think DQ was evil, nor were the bloodfiends. They were just trying to survive and do what felt right. And really, Don sums it up best - he was upset with them, they were upset with him. It's not black and white.

Really, the villain here is their illness and what it forces them to do to stave it off.

But also we have another family. The family of a Bloodfiend who all her life insisted she'd start none. A chosen family who forged their closeness in blood, yet do not share it.

Heathcliff's line about your coworkers being kind of like family (of course it's him saying that, seeing how the dead rabbits replaced the Earnshaws) and then the entire group talking about how much Sancho means to them, how much her bravery inspired them...

All culminating in her telling her father about this wonderful family of twelve she's acquired. God, that just killed me in the softest way possible.

Both Don Quixotes have large families of those younger than them who are ready to fight with them, who are going to support them.

Except our Don does not have the undertone of an imbalanced power dynamic over the sinners that her father had over her and her siblings.

Even just how Sinclair, the youngest of the Sinners, looks up to Don, wants to be like her, mimicking how Sancho wanted to be like DQ as described in Hero. It's so good!

Choice

During the dungeon, we had a discussion with my friends over the postulates older Don posed - that bloodfiends cannot change their nature.

I am of the opinion that you cannot change if you are not given choice or are not aware that you have a choice. And there's a difference in meaning. When people in a state of depression bemoan unchangeability, they often are blind to the tiny changes, they wish they could drastically alter themself in an instance in order to remove whatever part of them poses them trouble. That's what Don the elder sees - they could not change.

For most of the canto, Sancho denies her ability to be better too. Bloodfiends cannot den their nature, it's useless to try. Her choices were either made for her (leaving la manchaland on Rocinante) or were made in the name of avoiding pain (forgetting oneself and slipping into a dream delusion).

But in the end, she realises that the dream of Don Quixote is one she and her father shared. That he did not force her into it, but that she inherited it through choice, through interest, through being inspired, little by little.

She chooses to continue it for them both, now that her father is too exhausted to dream it. The title of Don Quixote, much like in our world for some, becomes a symbol of daring to have a dream.

The duality of "dream as delusion" and "dream as tomorrow"

I love the dual meaning here. I love how the canto is called the Dream Ending yet in its final minutes our Don's rebuttal is literally "The Dream Un-Ending". I love how it flips her "needing to wake up" on its head.

It's not the idea of heroism she has to abandon, it's her dream of escape. Sancho became Don Quixote to escape pain. But she cannot change and become better if she just leaves all choices to her amnesiac self.

Sancho's Don Quixote act really began as wilful delusion. An escape from pain into this hope that she shared with her father, really, the most valuable elements of the memories she'd be erasing.

But that "delusion" ended up genuinely inspiring others. Especially our boy Sinclair, who wants to be like her, brave and strong.

Now she's awake to actively engage with the world, to strive for the better, to consciously dream. To hope.

The line between hopeful ideal and delusion is really just... in the eye of the beholder. At what point is it alright to chastise hope?

To wake up from it, to abandon it... it's not worth it, especially in this City ready to crush you into pieces the moment you stop hoping for a better tomorrow.

The Christian undertones

They put a confessional in La Manchaland, I get to discuss the christian undertones of the entire set up. Is it thematic? Idk, it's fun for me tho :]

Of course I in no way want to imply that this is universal for Christianity, just that, depending on your religious surrounding, it can lead to such interpretations; speaking from a perspective of a former Catholic who used to be really religious, I do see this theme of selflessness at all cost emerging here.

Selflessness and sacrifices for the sake of others can, in the right amount, be necessary and beautiful and noble. The issue is where that line crosses into indirect harm.

How much happiness must you deny yourself for the sake of others in order to be "good"? Is it even worth it?

Bloodfiends, by their nature, crave blood. It's not something they can just deny themselves. It can't kill them but the emotional toll of it is not much better.

And now imagine framing that necessity as "sin". I mean for goodness' sake, they built a confessional where bloodfiends could talk with a priest about their forbidden craving. They have to be penitent for something they cannot control.

Blood is their forbidden fruit. They disobey the teachings of the Father who built them a paradise in order to taste it, and they are subsequently punished.

[districtxii]

Thoughts upon finishing The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Spoilers unmarked ahead as it's been out for a while and the title of the post warns for them.

As I've mentioned in my other few posts about it so far, I came into TBOSAS as a movie-only watcher despite having been a book-first person back when the original Hunger Games films came out.

I've got to say that when I heard the idea of a prequel about President Snow which included a love story, my tumblr-raised self wasn't particularly interested. I remember seeing the book display at Walmart when it first came out and not really having time or interest at the time.

However, the movie trailer caught my attention, and I'm really glad that it did.

I am happy that TBOSAS, while having a single POV character in Snow, switched from first person narration to third person. I remember reading meta years ago that I wholeheartedly agree with. While one can make the argument that the "blindspots" one gets in the original trilogy themselves make a point, having a slightly more zoomed out, third person point of view just feels better for the scope of the story. As an English teacher, I can't help but feel like it's a little more mature, too.

But without the movie, I still don't know if I would have ever picked up this book in audio or visual format.

Funnily enough, looking back on the first four Hunger Games movies, I actually don't like them as much as I like the books for the most part. The visuals are good in parts, but I do not like the casting philosophy that was used. I sort of hope that we are around long enough to see remakes as a prestige miniseries or something like that.

Back to thoughts on TBOSAS: I remember seeing a few kind of poorly produced (sorry lol) thinkpieces on websites like ScreenRant that were insisting that you weren't getting the full picture from the movie, that the movie made Snow too sympathetic, that you have to understand he's a monster because he views Lucy Gray in an objectifying manner or because he gets Sejanus killed.

I think that those takes have a point. However, I think that they also miss the nuance of the narrative, and I am not even suggesting that the prose is particularly deep or esoteric. Just that people love to be reactionary.

What I saw in Snow's character throughout the book was someone who was warring with various philosophical and personal dilemmas without having anyone he ever really trusted to talk through it.

There are moments with Lucy Gray and with Sejanus when Coryo almost opens up completely. When he has real conversations with them. But, like Katniss, he is a traumatized person who has a lot of baggage which makes him strategize and behave defensively with every decision he makes.

If anything, Coryo is LESS closed off than Katniss is at first throughout most of the story.

I couldn't source it, but I distinctly remember reading someone suggest that they believed that Coriolanus became irredeemable when he got Sejanus killed. However, reading through his internal conflict about the decision to snitch on him was one of the times when I found Coriolanus the most human and relatable. He was torn in every direction. He is someone who is deeply propagandized into a fascist regime whose family has a personal narrative of power and meaning within that regime. He also believes that the Capitol is necessary and better than the alternative. He wants Sejanus to survive and to change his mind. He wants him to stop putting himself in danger. He wants him to stop implicating Coriolanus by association. And yet, Coriolanus does feel responsible and tied to him, however much he hates it.

Coriolanus defends himself from emotional attachment and the cost of loving anyone, romantically or platonically, as a defense mechanism.

It isn't until he works himself into a frenzy and narrates what Lucy Gray must be thinking out at the lake in the end that he finds himself so utterly alone in his own head that he has no choice in his mind except to give into his colder side that he associates with his father, the Capitol, and ruthlessness.

Interestingly, a running theme throughout the book - without ever being explicitly stated in these exact words - is that Coriolanus is irreligious and doesn't believe in gods, rituals, or an afterlife. Every time someone brings up the stars or fate or performs some kind of ritual associated with passing on an even in the scene where Lucy Gray sings about the hereafter and therebefore, he can't help but internally scoff at the idea. He holds himself as more enlightened than those who believe in such superstitions.

But then, when he is all alone and trying to navigate his way back to District 12 with his father's compass, he starts to believe that there is some kind of spiritual guidance and blessing from his father, whom he never even felt close to except as an idea.

I think that Coriolanus's internal journey is an exploration of opposites and the divide that Lucy Gray describes and how evil is rarely even a boundary over which one cannot cross back into good from. It's just that, at a certain point, Coriolanus cannot bear the weight of his own guilt and misgivings if he ever turns back to a "better" path.

On the subject of Lucy Gray: I've got to say that I thought the book was effective in showing Lucy Gray as someone with dimension and depth that Coriolanus saw glimpses of but never really fully understood. Had he stayed with her and not needed "civilization" so much, I believe he would have learned to see her as more and more of a full person. However, the way she is written in the book, it is really hard for me to get a mental image of her at all.

Again, I think that this is perhaps intentional as a part of this format of the story. However, I find that I appreciate Rachel Ziegler's portrayal of Lucy Gray so much because without it, I'm not sure I would find that much to emotionally invest in. This is actually quite the opposite, as I like my mental image of Katniss far more than JLaw's portrayal lol.

Anyway, those are my wrap-up thoughts.

[yakkety-yak-art]

not to unnecessarily thinkpiece at 1 am (this might be incomprehensible) but i feel its odd when people talk about spock being half human and half vulcan like its completely literal. like somebody just put two legos together and can just separate them or turn one on or off at will. i know that in tos its explained similarly in that way a lot, but a lot of the times when it is it just seems like a more shorthand explanation for the complexities spock deals with culturally and biologically rather than it being entirely literal.

the reason i feel its weird is for two reasons: 1. spock is quite literally biracial and his personal story revolves around that a LOT. leonard nimoy even spoke before about receiving at least one letter from a biracial girl talking about how she related to spock/wanting advice because she was a "half-breed", which to me points pretty clearly to how spock functions as an analogue for multiracial people or someone of a different race and culture living somewhere where they are a minority and have to conform to the majority cultural/racial expectations. spock is treated as too human for vulcans and too vulcan for humans, but this is entirely due to cultural stigma and not because of his actual biology (and even if his biology was extremely divergent from both, that wouldn't justify bigotry anyways). spock is not actually "worse" at controlling his emotions than other vulcans, and is not more emotional than them (vulcans are very emotional, of course, and they are also quite expressive--they just express themselves differently than most humans), nor is he inherently less of a person and more like a computer, to use bones' sentiments, just because he does not emote in ways his human crewmates do. humans and vulcans both treat him as if he is fundamentally deficient, but it's not that he actually is, or that any multiracial vulcan or human COULD be, but that they are so prejudiced that they are making reasons to mistreat him or view him poorly. the only thing that actually makes him fundamentally different from other vulcans or humans is his physiology, because unlike with the current human social concept of race in regards to skin color, vulcans and humans do actually have physical differences as two different races--as in species. but, in universe, this physical difference in spock's case is nearly as minor (in a purely physical sense) as someone having more melanin than another, and is only important to those who aren't himself, his direct family, or his doctors because of the social construct of race.

this also reflects in how spock views himself; he's not cagey about being biracial, and references it relatively often (though mostly only when it's relevant), and seems to feel no shame towards his human mother herself, but he otherwise tends to exclusively racially identify as vulcan and shies away from wanting to associate his own person with humanity. he was raised on vulcan and "as a" vulcan, and aside from his human mother, he has no tangible connections to earth human culture. yet, most of the humans he meets and even his own mother judge him as being an "abnormal" or "deficient" human in the same way that spock's mixed race status is used as a reason to judge spock as being the same, but as a vulcan. spock is just as emotional as any human or vulcan, and acts in accordance with the culture he was raised in, but even as an adult has internalized racism because he considers his emotions inherently human (aka bad and wrong) even though emotions are not traits which exist only in humans, and himself not really a vulcan in some fundamental way, solely because of the racism he's faced since a child. to put it another way, if spock had been raised on earth, with the majority of his influences being in human community and family aside from his father, would he identify primarily as human, or more generally as biracial, rather than just vulcan, feeling some internal shame in regards to that aspect of his heritage and identity? i think it's entirely possible. his differences are largely based in social responses to his existence and cultural differences based on where he was raised.

(to note: i'm not saying it's bad that spock himself identities primarily as vulcan or that he should identify more as human, i'm simply saying that it highlights how much of his racial and cultural identity is directly tied to how he was raised and is treated rather than some inherent biological trait he has because he's biracial. spock is clearly visibly vulcan, which would be the racial minority on earth, so even then he would face stigma related to his race based on his appearance--on vulcan, it stems more from simply the knowledge that spock is biracial, as his family is very well-known and prestigious, rather than looking human.)

reason 2 is also because spock serves as an analogue for neurodivergent people, but in particular autistic people, people who display with a flat affect or otherwise don't react or emote in a "normal" sense, miss or ignore social cues, etc. in fact, generally, spock is a character which many socially marginalized groups and people who feel like outsiders gravitate towards because his situation as sci-fi biracial in an entirely human crew feels familiar to a lot of these people.

so, treating spock like he's literally split down the middle, fundamentally inhuman and invulcan, only halves that can be separated or a switch that can be flipped where he's "more vulcan" or "more human" feels incredibly strange because then...what does that imply about real people who are biracial, or people who are autistic? i'm sure most people don't think too hard about it, but to accept the reasoning of the people being racist to spock is conceding to the idea that something is wrong with spock. that he is two unfinished halves and not one whole, and that he either is one or the other or is in a permanent gray area where his existence is wrong. spock is different, yes, but almost all of the differences outside of his daily bodily functions are entirely because of the concepts of race that other people have. what is that meant to tell someone who's mixed race? "sorry, you'd be normal if you were just one race"? someone who's autistic, "but you're not really a person"?

again, i'm sure many people haven't thought about it that deeply and aren't meaning to imply those things, just as i'm sure plenty of people have probably written nearly identical thinkpieces in the decades since tos aired, but it's just been bugging me and i needed to get it out of my brain. by the time i'm wrapping this up, it's a little past 2 am, and i've tried to proofread this but it might still be a slog and/or entirely incomprehensible. if anyone has any thoughts--whether you agree with me or not, or felt like something in the post could be added to/reworded--i'd definitely be interested in hearing them (like i said, this is almost 100% unoriginal thoughts lmao).

anyways don't become english majors kids it gives you media analysis brainworms.

[argumate]

I was a fan of the once feminist blogger Sady Doyle back in the day, now still feminist but it's complicated blogger Jude Doyle, so I wrangle their words with only the kindest of wishes and I know they are perpetually Going Through It, but I still think they're being curiously oblivious in most of this post about erasure etc.

even just the narrative arc of "I was a feminist because traditional gender roles made me uncomfortable", like yes it's good to dig into the emotional underpinnings of your beliefs, and it can be an important part of figuring out what it is you "really" believe or what beliefs you end up settling on or converging to, but obviously something making you uncomfortable is often a terrible foundation on which to build a lifetime of political advocacy! and I don't even need to spell out the issues with that.

and yes lots of people are mad at them, of course, people are always mad at them and always will be even if the stated reasons may shift and vary, so this isn't exactly news, as distressing as it can be to witness, and of course you can't really base your politics on "people get mad at me on the internet", especially when your job is basically to make people mad on the internet, when it comes right down to it.

brief appreciation for "I obliquely subtweeted my mother," as a beautiful sequence of words.

they are of course obliged to state that "misandry" doesn't exist, but that stereotypes of men as predatory, hulking, and violent do exist, and thankfully must not lead to any kind of prejudice or negative outcomes that could be considered problematic; it's a strange assertion but a compulsory one.

they find that the writings of most cis male feminists are useless, but fail to identify why, and take them at face value instead of considering why there might be a supply of and a demand for such nonsense.

and of course, they still write in the same manner as they always have: of deriving general assertions from their specific experiences, which is arguably all that any of us can ever do and yet when expressed directly in thinkpiece form is still an intensely gendered, female-coded, way to write; when your topics are the socially constructed notions of "men" and "women" then you have to be aware of this!