#fake analysis

[joycqt]

a sequence 🐱_n catverges to 🐱 if for every 🙀 > 0 there exists 😼 ∈ ℕ where 😹 >= 😼 implies | 🐱_😹 -🐱| < 🙀

[starringbaguette]

Goncharov (1973) is a fucking masterpiece and here’s why

There is literally so much to be said here but I’ll boil it down to the three points I’ll be making: music, color, and the 4th wall.

The first and shortest is the usage of music in the film, and specifically, the organ and bells. The organ itself is a rich sounding instrument and usually accompanied by an orchestra or vocals or some other sound, but in Goncharov, it stands alone and by itself every time we hear it. Same as the bells, usually a symbol of announcement or disrupter in movies, it is instead used as a defining musical piece. They are both characteristic.

This is clearest in the first three or so minutes of the film. First, the bells play in almost high splitting notes, it leaves your ears ringing and in contrast, the organ kicks in, low and sonorous. Then the bells and organ fade and orchestral music begins to play as we are revealed the first scene in the movie. What’s interesting here is that when one plays the other is cut out, reinforcing that these two instruments are not instruments themselves, but characters, and they tell a story. In fact, we never hear the two of them play together until the very end when the credits begin to roll against a dark screen. 

The second is color, which we know to be obvious, but its relevance is primal to the arcs of the characters and the story itself. 

When the orchestra kicks in and the movie starts, it is nighttime and illuminated by cold moonlight and dull flickering candles on windowsills, no lightbulb in sight. It’s starts off feeling like noir film, with shades of grey as a silhouette of a man runs across alleys and under branching trees along the sidewalks. He too, is dark and colorless. 

The daytime this early on is no better. While still highlighting the beauty of the costal city, it is soulless and lifeless despite direct contrary evidence against it. It isn’t until we are introduced to one of the main characters (Andrey) that suddenly color is abundant. The greens of trees glimmer, the light that dances across wine glasses sends rainbows crashing against sand-colored walls and shining stone sidewalks, the ocean is a sparkling blue that blends into the deep horizon. But, there is no red, not yet.

The next 10 minutes continue is the bright, iridescence of color before we finally see the first speck of red- which is where another character pops in, though we do not know it until five minutes after the scene. Goncharov, fresh off the boat and arriving in a familiar marketplace, wears a dark suit despite the heat of the sun, with a deep red dress shirt, a poppy tucked into the side of his hat. 

From there it snowballs. Red seeps into almost every scene, growing more and more prominent in high tensions and whenever Goncharov makes an appearance, or whenever Goncharov, Andrey, and Katya are in a scene together. Red almost takes over entirely during Katya’s betrayal. There, the three of them are bathed in it, a red sun behind both men dousing them in almost scarlet silhouette, and Katya beyond them bathed in blood that does not entirely blend in to her dress. The walls are red, the carpet is red, and where there is not, the blood covers it. 

Red as a color has intense symbolism: love, lust, anger, passion, danger, just to name a few. It as an extreme without measure and consumes and swallows what it will, it is overwhelming in power- and it fades almost entirely at the end.  From that scene almost two thirds into the film, that intense color bleeds away quickly in stark contrast to the beginning 10 minutes.

Curiously, though, red does not disappear from either of these three. Instead, Katya’s lipstick is a grotesque blood red, Goncharov wears the same red dress-shirt, and Andrey carries an old, dying poppy in his suit jacket (presumably the one we see tucked in Goncharov’s hat when we’re first introduced), they are marked by what they have done and what they will continue to do until the end.

And this is where we reach the final point, the 4th wall and how Goncharov (1973) breaks it to enhance the story and its tragedy. 

We come back to the beginning of the movie. The first scene. In it we are doused in monochrome shades of gray and the dark silhouette of a man running away from something- the dull rings of midnight hour an accompanying sound to the frantic strings of an orchestra.

No longer silhouette but still a faceless man, he falls to the floor, he scrambles, fumbling on hands and knees as he tries to crawl away from an unseen assailant. 

In his last moments he pleads for mercy and cries out for help, but the camera does not move from his face and his eyes do not move away from the camera. He looks to us for help. He begs the audience and in his final moments before he drops out of frame, there is betrayal in his eyes. We are accomplices. We have let a man die.

As the opening scene, it is bold to break the 4th wall in this way. We have seen what we were not meant to, and we have held back mercy we didn’t know we had until too late. 

There are many more instances of this where a character will stare directly into the camera for a moment, bringing us in to the scene. But none are more important than this. 

Goncharov confronts Mario for the first time in a study. Mario sits behind an old desk and Goncharov stands in front of him. There is an unknown man who stands to their right, and he bares remarkable resemblance to the man killed in the opening shot. He looks nervous, his eyes flicker back and forth between Goncharov and Mario. A clock in the corner of the room gets louder with each resounding tick.

Mario grins and nods towards Goncharov, who holds his gun at his side. The camera suddenly switches views so now Mario grins at us, nefarious. His eyes connect with ours, “you know what happens next” he says. The gun fires but the camera does not move.

End scene. 

This pivotal moment at the end of Act 1 addresses the audience as accomplices to the first man’s murder in the opening scene, and even further than that, it creates within us a vicious omnipotence for the rest of the story. 

While most of our experiences with fourth wall breaks in cinema have been for humorous reasons, Goncharov (1973) brings us in to partake in the tragedy, because now we know what happens next. Rewatching the film makes that moment all the more cruel because there is no one moment a character can stop what is happening, there is no one moment we can stop what is happening. 

Goncharov falls into a downward spiral. Katya begins her plot against her husband. Andrey is a helpless accomplice as are we, but the blood is on his hands and not ours. 

We see this prominently between the sole interaction Andrey and Ice Pick Joe have with each other. 

They seize each other up, faces blank and unreadable, they stand alone on the street at sunset. Red, once again, a primary hue in the roses and poppies that surround them. The camera switches between the two. We look down at Joe, from Andrey’s POV and then we look up at Andrey from Joe’s POV. Finally, we settle on a wide shot of the two of them.

Joe: “Beautiful day, it’s a shame it’d had to end like that. Though, I must say, I never expected this of you.”

Andrey: “And I’m surprised you had expectations at all. I’m also surprised by the nerve you have, to say it to my face.”

We switch now to Andrey’s POV with Joe looking down on him, this time. He stares directly into the camera. 

Joe: “And you have some nerve, existing the way you do.”

They continue a short bout of back and forth conversation before separating on terse words and furrowed brows. Almost unnoticed, Goncharov (1973) has broken the 4th wall again, in a far more subtle “blink and you’ll miss it” approach. 

In another film, there would be no need for this POV and it would have stayed a wide shot. But here, Joe calls out the audience for how we exist and consume the film as both bystander and collaborator, so far removed from the equation but somehow arriving at all the right answers.

It’s easy to miss on the first watch, and easier still if you have no idea that they’re breaking the 4th wall, but the characters and the story challenge the audience in ways I haven’t seen recreated to this mastery since. Though, Moonrise Kingdom (2012) comes close from what I’ve seen so far.

All in all, Goncharov (1973) is a masterpiece and love letter to the art of storytelling all the way from the music, to color, to how we approach tragedy in breaking the 4th wall. There is probably much more to say that I have missed but this is all I wanted to talk about because this entire movie is just (chef’s kiss) fucking beautiful.

[aunmenosheteroenespanol]

2.12 Chimney Begins - 2.09 Hen Begins - 2.16 Bobby Begins Again - 7.04 Buck, Bothered and Bewildered

Tommy's family arc

[shellem15]

Thinking about how, out of all the betrayer gods, Asmodeus is perhaps the most incapable of changing. Of redemption. Of becoming better.

Because at least the others are honest. Honest about who they are. Honest about their love for their siblings. They know exactly what they are and what they are here to do, even if it is for ill. And that means they can be worked around. Can be changed.

Asmodeus, however, cannot do this. He is the god of lies. Even his truths are rotten. He cannot be honest. Not with others, not even with himself.

Do you think he knows what he even wants? He says he wants eternity to torment his siblings yet tries to kill them. He tries to kill them, yet (whether he realizes it or not) gives them just enough time to stop him. They are gods, after all. One round is all they need.

He says he hates his siblings yet told trist he loved her when in disguise. He didn't need to do that, she was already going to leave. It's the truth, but rotten.

You cannot change, you cannot become better, if you are not honest with yourself. And Asmodeus is the most dishonest of them all. It's no wonder he is always banished by the light of Pelor's truth. He cannot face it, so he runs and hides and lies.

Always burning, always lying, always turning away from the light. Never changing, never growing, never moving on from past hurts. Lashing out at those who try to help, a dagger in the side of his family.

It would be better to remove him. Kinder, for all of them. But he is their brother, eternal, and they cannot lose him. They will keep him, even if he kills them. And he will keep lying, stabbing, burning, because it is all he knows how to do.

[dansemacabre]

i’ve been thinking about “sixer, it would eat you alive” since i read it and. man. every layer you peel back makes it worse. im not a bill apologist but. shit

if you (1) take it at face value, it paints bill as an apologetic murderer in his single (and maybe sole) open moment of regret. he doesn’t let his walls down often- only with ford do we even get to see the remnant of his galaxy, see the “actual remorse” ford describes, get just a hint of his origins. but he does it, because he thinks ford should know.

if you (2) take it from ford’s point of view, as something he committed to journal three, like. wow. imagine being so committed to a being that you’d hunt down and kill the monster that destroyed his home, only to (assumably) figure out later that that being was the monster. the small moments of trust, the “good times”, are so key to manipulation. how long did ford hold onto that one shred of vulnerability? no wonder ford stayed for as long as he did. in his eyes, bill was a survivor. ford wanted to survive too.

(slight tw below for unreality- any time i mention our reality, i mean “our reality” as a narrative device used in the book of bill as a proxy for the idea of bill being in our reality, since he can’t actually be in our reality. all of this is a fictional theory about a show/book with fictional contents!)

but if you (3) remember that “even his lies are lies” and absolutely Nothing bill says should be trusted. Whoo boy. if i read tbob right the book itself is being created in the theraprism (even tho it shows up with the ciphertologists at some point? idk that’s a whole other post). it’s meant to show what the reader wants to see; it manifests in our reality as what the collective fandom wants to see. so if we want to see truth, if we want to see where bill ended up and who he actually is, there’s a non-zero chance that the whole interaction was a complete fabrication.

imagine bill, stuck in the actively harmful, probably earth-illegal theraprism, once again being forced to be “fixed” and molded into something more palatable, being forced to conform no matter how much it hurts. (i know natural uncontrollable mutation ≠ just so much murder and destruction and chaos, but. you can’t ignore the similarities. bill has obviously been thinking about those silly straws.)

he looks back on everything that went wrong, back on his relationship with ford, back through every dimension where he wins. would that one moment, that one truth amid centuries of lies, have saved him from purgatory? if he had just been open? shown his damage? maybe he did think of his parents, or his henchmaniacs (especially the oracle). people who he might have once opened up to. maybe he just wanted to open up to someone again.

so in his own weird way, stuck in a cell, he reshaped reality again. in this reality, for this fleeting moment, he had been someone worth believing. and ford had listened, hell, ford had wanted to help. looking back, knowing how he treated ford, knowing how ford ended up because of it, maybe bill would have said the most honest thing he’d ever told ford: i am the monster, i am not worth your time or belief, and i will eat you alive.

[bellepeppertronix]

My dad's an old hacker with friends in different media businesses, so the first one I watched was a HELLA bootlegged VHS tape with the boat ending where Katya gets shot by nobody-knows-who, but she gets away with the briefcase. (That wasn't the American region ending, I don't think?)

I've also seen terrible grainy vhs-to-digital file transfers of the ending where Goncharov gets shot on the clock tower steps, AND another ending where Andrey is sobbing in his car and beating the steering wheel in impotent rage, before speeding off down an icy road overlooking the sea. The one where the last scene before the car breaks the guard rail is a shot of the watch on his wrist, stopped at the same time the bells were tolling when Katya was escaping and when Goncharov was lying on the steps bleeding out. The symbolism with the blood and the clocks is really beautiful even if Katya's boat escape was absolutely harrowing.

Now, as an adult (I watched this as a teenager. Do Not Recommend.) I just wonder if maybe the endings were all meant to be played at the same time? I mean they still make sense, even played together. But I guess a 3 way split screen would have been both too distracting and too avant-garde for people back then. I mean Matteo JWJH 0715 is pretty well known for his REALLY trippy abstract endings and stuff...i thought it was a haunting, unsettling touch, the way the clock tower bells gradually muted to a ticking sound that you gradually realize is a slowing human heart, in the Goncharov on the steps ending.

Oh you like Goncharov (1973)??

Name three of the four endings that were on rotation depending on what the region and which theater you went to.

I'll wait.

[mylittleredgirl]

i can't stop chewing on the MASH time loop situation. my star trek brain will not turn off. there is definitely some kind of temporal anomaly at play, but it's not really a time loop in the traditional sense.

effects carry over from loop to loop. they appear to age. the same wounded soldiers appear on the table three times, but the scars of past surgeries are still there. a character leaves or dies and is gone from the mash forever; their replacement arrives near the end of the war and is still there at the beginning. the dates overlap, yet their presence is sequential. the other characters remember all of them.

how far does this effect extend? if it's summer again at mash, is it summer in tokyo? is it summer in maine? if BJ is in korea two years before he arrived, who's in residency in california, marrying his wife, conceiving his child?

their family trees at home deform—different wives, different children, loved ones alternately dead and alive and never born. those inside are oblivious to what they've lost. hawkeye remembers trapper, but not his sister. what happens in korea persists; the world outside is a fragile suggestion. he tells a soldier that men at the front can't see the whole war, only the other guys dug in with them on their one little hill.

for a deep space nine fan this is irresistible. hawkeye says, wars end, but war is forever. kira asks, if the past has changed, why do i still remember it? sisko never left that ship. time itself is warped by trauma. it is not linear. you exist here. you choose to exist here.

[imminent-danger-came]

One detail I've noticed is that Wukong's outfit is different before and after Tripitaka places the circlet on him (and Wukong was notably unwilling to be chained):

Which is distinctly different than every other iteration of this scene we've been shown:

Other retellings of this moment have Wukong kneeling in servitude...when the reality is he was kneeling after being subdued—continuing lmk's tradition of biased/false narratives (like what was done with the multiple explanations of the samadhi fire). I think it's interesting to see the ways in which Wukong's past was made easier to swallow as time went on (or if you were Azure and didn't want to believe that Wukong had been changed by his journey lol)

[getsuuna]

I can't stress enough how this Fandom can be fxcking stupid so I'll take advantage of it to make a brief analysis

TikTok is back at it with being extremely gullible

people seriously believe this is Koyoharu Gotōge's official account. a quick glance would debunk it immediately, but if we wanna look into details there are mainly 3 things that are really obvious and they all piss me off SO bad:

1) they posted fanart. literal fanart, without consent, of course, and without any credits, badly cropped and filtered too. I couldn't see signatures in most of them, but I recognized some art styles and overall it's easy to spot non-official art when you also follow Ufotable's official account. from which, by the way, this fake account takes all of the content they post, then they write a silly and pseudo-cool caption and that's literally it. what's the point? one of the captions said something that quite fucking literally made me want to scream, joking about Shinobu possibly being Tengen's 4th wife because there was a pic in which their VAs were standing close....what. Gotōge would never say that???

2) they reply to fans, which isn't bad per se but let's be SO fr...and it's not even the worst part.

3) said replies include misinformation. saw them saying Masachika would be reincarnated as Sanemi's son or stepson (what the fuck) AND that Sanemi and Kanae would've been canon if Kanae didn't die, which, I'm sorry, is the fakest fucking thing I've ever read despite being a common misbelief.

I don't want to digress too much into this but imagine you're an author, you have the power over your characters and you decide to add a couple that will be doomed inevitably...you would make it canon, if it was supposed to be. you would AT LEAST make said crush remotely relevant in AT LEAST one of the two characters' arc...which it isn't. in ANY of the canon universes. the Academy is right there, the Timeskip is right there, both had Kanae alive and both don't make SaneKana canon, not even remotely. HEAVY ON THE TIMESKIP in which ObaMitsu are married, but they're canon in all the verses...Mitsuri had an actual impact on Obanai's character and even when there's silly trivia about him in databooks or even in the manga it always somehow involves Mitsuri, something that we did NOT see with Sanemi and Kanae.

now, as much as I would talk *endlessly* about this, I don't want to sound hateful to shippers, but it pisses me off that a Gotōge-wannabe is reinforcing the toxic shippers' delusions.

I would've lost my shit even if they said the same thing about my fav fanon ships, because it's FAKE.

if the author wanted them canon, they would be. there's no "if" nor "but", there was no excuse.

they clearly and luckily wanted to leave it to open interpretation

as an OC creator if I want a couple canon I simply write them in a way in which would make them canon in at least one AU 😭🙏🏻 tf

this being said please don't fall for such weird ass stuff 💔

[dekusleftsock]

I think that there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what exactly is…happening with Izuku’s character. Specifically in regards to chapter 425.

I’m glad that a lot more people generally recognize that Izuku is not a character that can be read at a surface level, given that he’s both a repressed person with built up emotion of basically everything and also a very glaringly HUGELY unreliable narrator, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I agree with the ways I’ve seen this most recent chapter spoken about.

I see posts, comments, etc with ideas like “Izuku don’t suppress your emotions! Open up with people! It’ll be okay I promise!” When that’s fundamentally not what is happening here.

There’s always always ALWAYS been a distinct difference in character throughout horikoshi’s writing when he is showing that a character is:

A—Avoiding emotions, thoughts, ideas less than ideal for them. Not opening up when they probably should about their problems given that they’ve been handed the space to do so. Just genuinely not acknowledging, feeling, or expressing emotions that they don’t want.

B—Reflecting on the ways they feel about the world, themselves, or other people given their new perspective on a situation. Not outright reaching out to others to talk about these problems/feelings, but instead waiting until the moment they feel they have the most confidence to do so with their new outlook on their own life.

And genuinely, guys, to grab your BkDk attention rn, this is the exact reason why Ochako’s reflection on her feelings for Izuku and thereafter decision to pull away from them WAS NEVER GOING TO END IN OCHAKO EXPLODING WITH HER LOVE FOR HIM.

This was another common interpretation I saw of Ochako and Izuocha for a long time. That because she pushed these feelings away, they were somehow going to explode in this unbelievable way and she would “get the boy” because of it. That her arc would surround accepting her romantic feelings and that she can’t just push away how she feels for a career.

But yk. That didn’t happen. At all. Nowhere close even.

The same kind of goes for Katsuki, allmight, etc. They all had moments in their arc where it was spent genuinely reflecting, and the only reason we as the audience never connected it in the same ways we do ochako or Izuku was ALWAYS BECAUSE the narrative showed their inner thoughts while doing so (mostly because Allmight’s arc after losing OFA and Katsuki’s arc on what it means to be a hero were so intrinsically tied, both starting at the same time and ending at the same time during the final war. And because they were so tied this caused their own reflections, development, and thought process to be broadcasted to us frequently throughout their arcs… to each other. They also somewhat shared aspects with Izuku, but these were cherry picked more often than not, like dvk2 for example).

To us Katsuki never seemed to be.. idk, suppressing his anger in any way because we were always told what he was doing and why (side note: this is why I’ve always thought arguments against Katsuki were so weird, bc unlike characters like endeavor or Ochako he wasn’t like… hiding who he was and how he was changing. Ever. Like the audience knows at all times past basically season 3 what Katsuki is thinking and doing. Like how do you watch this happen, stare me dead in the eye, and tell me how much of a terrible and awful teenage boy he is. Like damn I didn’t think we were this dumb. This is also my theory as to why he’s most popular, his arc is very… in your face if that makes sense). Katsuki’s entire mini arc on reflecting his mistakes and his childhood and his future is spent TELLING YOU that it’s what he’s doing. (I’m referring mostly to the endeavor internship arc, the provisional license exam makeup, and basically everything in the war arc related to him leading up to bakugou Katsuki rising here)

And see, Horikoshi will stare you dead in the eye, tell you “this girl has taken into consideration that she doesn’t want to waste her time training her career focusing on a boy because he kinda caught her fancy”, and y’all will still say that this will explode in her face.

Y’all this is a series about learning how to manage emotions, maturity in relationship to one’s emotions, how to feel an emotion, but in a way that is helpful. Horikoshi isn’t telling you “go buck wild, feel everything all the time and always express it”, in fact he explores why you DONT do that! Through Toga or Shigaraki, they show how grief and anger can genuinely consume you. But he also shows why you shouldn’t just put everything in a box to never look at or acknowledge, or why you shouldn’t just let your grief destroy the world around you, or pretending that some emotions simply don’t exist.

I can’t say this enough, so let me say it now, mha is about the extremes of your psyche. That you should control something, but not too much. Everything can be harmful. Everything can be good.

Izuku is not controlling too much, he’s expressing just enough.

I LOVE shaming this dickhead at all times in all my posts. I love saying he’s an ignorant dipshit with a weird amount of distaste for a girl who just confessed to him. I’ve joked that chapter 348 is basically an entire chapter spent on Izuku calling Himiko a mean dyke. And yet I also believe he’s doing nothing WRONG here.

In fact, I’ll even say that this moment right here?

ISNT EVEN IZUKU DOING THE SOCIALLY APPROPRIATE THING ABOUT IT! But he’s still TRYING to reach out to someone he thinks MIGHT be able to understand. (And frankly, this moment is far deeper than what it’s being made out to be, to me it reads more like an unrequited friendship that Izuku both desires and has thought of them to have, while simultaneously showing the distance Ochako has successfully wedged between them for her own sake. Maybe it was always there though, maybe in weird, miscommunicated Horikoshi fashion, this is a representation of how Ochako always read all those “fun friend hangouts” as a little more than that, and without those feelings the friendship never really held any substance to her in the first place. Where Izuku saw his first real friend at UA, she saw little more than acquaintance)

Simultaneously, Izuku is genuinely reflecting on what it means for the world to change, to be a hero, to live after loss—and trying and failing to gain the connection he desires from individuals who can not and will not afford him that.

Izuku is ready for the world to change, a few select characters are also ready for the world to change (mirio, for example), but not nearly enough are. So maybe I’ll have to take this back if I’m proven wrong and I accidentally looked into this far past what everyone else did for no reason, but I genuinely believe with moments like this

And this

Aand this

That Izuku has come forward with that aspect of his character development. He’s reflecting on his new beliefs, not repressing his emotions for them.

[rabbits-of-negative-euphoria]

you can tell Shawn is faking his general cluelessness by how badly he freaked out when he couldn't remember the events of the retirement party in Last Night Gus

[ellisbian]

just making a remind how bakugou avoids kirishima who tries to reach him because he was worried bakugou felt tired and he wanted to help, here you may think bakugou hate touching and being touched and it’s true in a way but as soon as izuku grabs his arm, making puppy eyes he doesn’t even try to pull izuku out of him. and even if he acts all tough saying to deku he has just to be the cane he lets izuku grabbing and hanging on him.

i don’t want to make this post being about the evidence or not of the bakudeku, just wanted to focus on how katsuki accepts izuku’s help even if it may not seem, he’s just a fake hater who tries to convince himself and others he hates deku but there’s another truth .

[alwaysbewoke]

honestly, FUCK ISRAEL!!

[bloodreddemons]

Alastor NEVER Truly Smiled Theory/Truth? 🪞🎭🔮

I'm always very fascinated by these theories that Alastor really to some degree is putting on a major act, and a lot of it may be false confidence, because really thinking about it, it seems VERY possible. I don't think Alastor was always the way he was I think when he was even alive he had to work hard and go through trials and tribulations to become the way that he is. He learned how to be confident or at least fake confidence and hide his emotions. (That's why I feel like he understands Charlie because she hasn't really learned yet. He may know from personal experience.)

The fact that he just so happened to become a deer based demon when he died is also just very telling in itself. The lore is that he used to be a murderer and also a deer hunter in his past life, so it would feel very fitting that as punishment he would take on the form of being PREY. For his past actions of being the predator he got knocked to being the prey. That's what I feel like part of his curse is, and I think he knows that.

It was almost sort of a dead giveaway even when his smile was stitched up. Or even when you just look at his eyes and the reaction in them. It's obvious that he's clearly NOT happy all the time. He even admits that a smile can hide anything. Somebody GAVE him that smile. Maybe Lilith, or maybe just someone else idk. There's definitely hidden secrets about him still. It's just ironic to me that Angel Dust was said to be the one putting on an act...when it seems more clear to me that no one could put on an "act" better than Alastor himself.

He's been doing it for awhile and in the end he was practically breaking. He looked like he wanted to cry and actually show other emotions but he can't....

Fuck a fake smile. I hope we'll see him genuinely happy one day....❤️‍🩹🥀🌇

[ifuckinghatebriansella]

r/AITA

u/talonofthehawk • May 21, 2013

AITA for assuming my girlfriend didn't know what "au revior" means?

I (M25) was leaving a hangout with my girlfriend (F25) and I ended it by saying "au revior." I know she's insecure, and I wanted to clarify that au revoir means "until we meet again" and not just "goodbye," so I said to her "you probably don't know what that means." She responded with "Adios. I bet you don't know what that means." Which felt like she was mocking me. She also said "It's French. I know what it means. You don't have to be so mean." I feel like I wasn't being mean to her, just trying to clarify what I meant. I think she was definitely overreacting though, because she said "adios" which is a goodbye, (technically it directly translated to "to God" which feels really final and permanent idk) and she was totally mocking me. She then followed up with saying "au revior" back to me. I know NOW that she knew what I was saying to her, but it feels like she was being a little too harsh towards me. AITA?

[wickmitz]

Do u actually ship rocky and mitzi?

to try and be as simple as possible, i suppose i do ship them ; i’m particularly drawn by their dynamic and have long since grown enamored with it … so, naturally, i enjoy turning them over in my head and shoving them together, seeing all the possible ways they fit and how they function when glued together. rocky’s feelings for mitzi are so intense and metaphorical that there’s a lot of ground to run with, honestly. it’s not a black and white relationship where they fit neatly under one label or another either, hence my constant use of the term ‘a secret third thing’ for them overall. there’s romance, obsession, desperation, platonic associations, and a thousand other factors embedded into what they have. rocky simply ‘seeing mitzi as a mother figure’ or ‘being totally in love with her in a traditional sense’ just doesn’t capture them with the justice they deserve. it’s more … muddled than that. rocky, at this point in time, is completely incapable of maintaining love anyway, and mitzi certainly isn’t any better either. in a context where i envision them together, that aspect is a big part of things : where they click together due to their inability to sustain a healthy and stereotypical romantic bond, and thus accidentally fuel each other’s unhappy paths. it’s easy to see how mitzi does this to rocky! but rocky is capable of doing it to her as well, what with his all-consuming need to be who she relies on and to restore the lackadaisy to it’s previous glory for himself and her. he enables her and she enables him, even if it’s subconscious and accidental. while there is undeniable fondness and care there, they are also walking down this path hand-in-hand, tugging each other along when one of then falters or pauses. so, to me, it’s not hard imagining things becoming closer and more intimate … who doesn’t want to be smashed together against someone who gives you all the validation you crave and never shuns you, twisting all your awful deeds into something good and believing you righteous at all times. it’s addicting! and natural. while rocky obviously would enjoy such a relationship, so would mitzi at this point in her life. where she’s exhausted and feels particularly ugly within, and is currently all alone.

they also would click in ways that wouldn’t force them to abandon how they currently go about romance. mitzi needs to spend a good portion of her day thinking about her dead husband and nobody else, meanwhile rocky is very enamored with being a knight in shining armor so to speak, only able to express himself through extreme devotion, a thing that ( as said by crew members on stream ) can’t singlehandedly keep a relationship afloat … normally. but mitzi can deal with rocky’s rather eccentric and destructive behavior, can take the only thing he can offer and accept it wholeheartedly, because she couldn’t handle anything more normal or mature right now. and rocky, despite his occasional displays of territorial behavior, never bats an eye at or feels inferior to mitzi’s atlas obsession. this wouldn’t be the case in other relationships, where both of them would have to change or grow in some way in order to keep the love stable and secure. there would be things they’d have to give up, or be vulnerable about, and both of them are too stubborn for that at this point. a random lover would always be a second thought compared to the lackadaisy.

( now, of course, i ship mitzi and rocky with other people! and i’m very interested in these bonds forming during canon’s events. but it’d either be an unhealthy relationship, due to everything i said above, or a happier sort of take on things : where mitzi and rocky are pulled from their minds’ unraveling edges and are both given the care, patience, and understanding they both need. one where they can set aside the lackadaisy for a moment or two, and can find genuine happiness somewhere else. i never see them as fully moving on from it, nor do i see mitzi fully giving up atlas or rocky fully giving up mitzi, but things can be softened and less insane. sometimes! )

now, is this healthy? no. but is this me saying they should be surgically removed from one another because they make each other ‘worse’? also no! i adore them in every sense of the word and acting like there aren’t positives attached to their dynamic would, frankly, be stupid of me. they are there for each other in their worse moments and approach each other with kindness, something they don’t really get from others anymore. they are genuinely happy to be in each other’s presence and have a habit of lifting each other up, or providing each other some much needed warmth on a bad day. you see it many times in the comic, situations where mitzi is devestated, and rocky rushes in to comfort her ; and he always succeeds in some way, wiggling that severe expression off her face and getting her to smile, even if it’s small and weak. and rocky loves that! it makes him happy to be able to ease her heartache and worries so. it makes him feel useful and needed, and she’s one of the only people in his life to give him even a sliver of praise here or there. here are some examples i can remember off the top of my head :

and while there isn’t many examples of mitzi praising rocky, she is also still one of the few people who shows concern over him and asks after him. there are also two scenes, in the pilot and in the comic, where rocky messes up big time, and mitzi has every right to be frustrated with him. she could yell, she could get mean, like rocky is so used to, but instead … she sucks it in and simply lets it go. this happens with the pig farmers, but also in the pilot most notably! where the second she realizes how hard rocky is taking her words, her reasonable and sympathetic irritation at things not working out, she backtracks. she forces those emotions away and simply says this, earnestly and kindly, and wipes the devestation off rocky’s face :

as much of an accidental negative influence they can have on each other, there’s also a more purposeful positive influence that is inherent in their dynamic. i wouldn’t ever want to dismiss that, nor do i enjoy when other people rush to do so themselves, claiming they’re simply no good for each other. well, they claim mitzi is a manipulative person who only sees rocky as a pawn, but i’ll pretend fans are critical of rocky’s many faults as well. the point is : they’re good for each other and to each other! they just happen to have a great capacity to cling and stay where they are rather than doing anything more beneficial or productive. any dynamic in lackadaisy can become toxic in a sense, given the fact that a majority of the characters are prone to indulging in their flaws and chasing what’s familar, what’s most comfortable, with little regard to anyone else. but i find that aspect interesting, and i love rocky/mitzi all the more for their accidental enabling and vastly obscured views.

the more romantic aspects aren’t really something i care too much about, overall. i play around with it and find scenarios where things can bloom in such a way, but them calling each other ‘boyfriend’ or ‘girlfriend’ isn’t something i care for. i do not think mitzi would ever be attracted to rocky in a sappy lovesick way -- she’s above fawning as it is, and is rather methodical about things like passion or adoration nowadays anyway. her eyes can’t exactly sparkle upon seeing rocky spilling syrup all over himself nor can she sigh dreamily at his nonsensical, improv poetry spiels that just burst out of him like water through a broken dam. but they could soften at the corners and she could convince herself of something romantic if it held her the right way. if she felt battered enough to give into it, or was lonely enough to indulge herself in a place she knows she’s wanted. rocky, on the other hand, is a bit easier to imagine here! he would never say no to miss m. and actively wants to ‘keep’ her already … if they were to become an item, an obscure, happenstance item, than he’d embrace it full heartedly! it’s been well established rocky isn’t one to turn down love or affection, so to get it from mitzi of all people? it’d be extremely ooc to even pretend he’d regret it or shy away. he loves her, of course he does, his beautiful dionysus : who unlocks her doors for him to enter, who smiles upon him with her wine soaked lips, who brushes a dainty paw across his shoulder and sings him praises like it doesn’t pain her to say them. she is warm and comforting and soft, and rocky is possessed by a maddening desire to wrap every spaghetti limb he has around her, and never let her go. again, his love is nothing short of all-consuming and obsessive where mitzi is concerned. her devoted acolyte! it would be simple to see how he’d get here in comparison to mitzi’s more wounded and guarded heart. i don’t think rocky fully loves her in only a romantic sense, however! i’m a firm believer that it is a mix of romantic and platonic feelings, an awkward and intensive blend of the two, this sort of combination that isn’t easy to sort through. he does take comfort in the fact she reminds him of a motherly figure, just as much as he genuinely finds her attractive and appealing in a puppy love kind of way. there’s also the fact that rocky is keen on lying to mitzi and wearing masks around her in the name of seeming more amazing in her eyes -- the fact his love for her is metaphorical and personal in equal measure, and the fact mitzi hides herself away from everyone around her. there would be a lot of untangling! a lot of pretending. this is a ship that will always have a multitude of layers and caveats attached to it, so to speak.

but that excites me! i like it! i love a dynamic that i could write endlessly about no matter the context it’s being framed in! how utterly unsurprising it is that the first lackadaisy fic i thought of was one that would focus heavily on these two and what’s happening between them, what could happen. mitzi wallowing in her self-inflicted misery while rocky prowls around her, begging to be useful to her while simultaneously chasing off a suitor of hers that he cannot stand to let near, is quite the image in my mind, and is one i always have looping around in the back of my head. the parallels to atlas/mordecai are an added bonus to this! if rocky is doomed by the narrative then mitzi is the narrative to which he’s bleeding himself upon, you know? that, as well as his own insecure delusions. mitzi, similarly, would easily waste away to nothing or get herself killed while trying to pursue her nostalgic ambitions if it weren’t for rocky being so willing to do the dangerous stuff for her. i think about how mitzi almost got herself killed in skedaddle and how rocky rushed to save her. while zib and ivy care for mitzi, and viktor is obligated to protect her, they are not as quick as rocky is -- nor as recklessly devoted to the point of readily given sacrifice.

anyway! i’m very fond of them, and there are so many scenes and other aspects of their characters that i could spend ages pouring over. this is, genuinely, merely a fraction of my thoughts on them. although i do hope i answered your question, anon! i got a bit carried away and i’m sure a lot of this is hard to parse through by default, but oh well!