#for me she's the most poorly written female character in the entire manga

[tae-shimura-is-my-wife]

!Giant rant + an entire Hnata salt shaker under the cut! If you're a hardcore stan of her i suggest skipping it! Read at your own risk!

I genuely liked Hnata in the beginning, i liked her shy and quiet personality, i was interested to see her overcoming her self confidence and prove herself to Hiashi, and even try to help Neji (despite the awful thing she said for him) but i was delusional man, she was introduced as Nruto lover and it didn't go any further... i belived Kishimoto (such a dumb girl). But hey Studio SP kinda tricked me too, in the Bikochu arc she was so amazing! Savinh her teamates and Nruto all alone, thinking in training to get better and stuff like that... it was filler, but i still had my hopes up. But then i watched Shippuden and i finally perceveid that she wasn't going any further than loving Nruto.

I don't mind her crushing him, neither having a giant part of her attached to a love interest (i like Orihime plz), but it was not just a giant part of Hnata, it was literally EVERYTHING! Analyzing everything she did in the entire manga 98% was for Nruto related. Kishimoto couldn't just make her a cute shy weirdo, he needed to reduce Hnata to Nruto! All her training and making her confidence better, was to confess to Nruto, comfort Nruto and fight for Nruto. Fuck proving herself to Hiashi, fuck trying to help Neji, fuck trying to get better in order to help her teamates in missions...

Kishimoto made her become so annoying with it! Everytime she appeared i knew it was gonna to be Nruto related and if it wasn't? Well it would become about him! It was unbearable at the point of making her seem extremely selfish and thinking that only she and Nruto exist in the whole world. Like she was ready to get her team eliminated from chunnin exam because a boy? In Pain arc she literally prefered to confess her love and die instead of trying to free Nruto (which was the only hope for the village)?? The scene where Neji died, instead of being of both her and Nruto suffering with their lost, was about she caring more Nruto feelings than her cousin??? KISHIMOTO WHY?

Not to mention, how everything aside of Nruto in her life seems so irrelevant, Kurenai, Hanabi, Neji, Kiba and Shino, barely had anything with her? It seems way more that they care about her than the reverse, because gosh forbid Hnata or having a life outside of Nruto right Kishimoto?

It's hard to like her that way! I tried my best, but i couldn't anymore after seeing she would be a Nruto simp forever and have nothing outside of it.

I understand why people like her, because i already did! I still like her shy and quiet personality and think she's cute, but canon Hnata behaviours annoy me way too much! Despite that i wish she was better and i try to make her justice in my fanon content of her outside of tumblr btw, i love the Hnata i created in my head and her fanon version, but it will never stop me for disliking her canon self.

Despite everything, i don't hate her, i don't want Hnata to die or be tortured, i want try to make her better as she should be! I already hated her a time, but after seeing how i was falling the trap of bittersweet shippers and people who put her down to uplift their faves, i perceveied it was just pettiness, - especially because they spent more time hating Hnata rather than Kishimoto who did all this sh!t -, and none of them wanted her to be a better character and person, which is what i wish.

[aurora-313]

I suspect that you, like me consider that the women in Bleach were done dirty. Am I right, and if I am who are the winners of the got -done- dirty competition?

How about in all shonen? Who takes the cake?

And for a Naruto edition, if you know, care and want to respond. Is it Sakura? Is someone else? Is it Kaguya? Is it all of them?

Thank you.

Allow me to prefix this by saying it got very salty towards the end.

The women were treated poorly, but I also maintain that they were written in a different era by another culture whose tastes are entirely foreign to my own. They're entirely not to my tastes. But I also recognize that other female shonen/seinen manga characters have been written extremely well. Among my favourites are the Claymore Claire and Casca from Berserk.

As a personal aside, among my favourite mangas is Claymore, which is a cast comprised about 99% of female characters who are designed to be living weapons. I highly recommend it.

I can't speak for all shonen because I haven't read all shounen but in the categories described, all characters were done dirty in Bleach.

Orihime. Her character was so thoroughly reduced between the anime and the manga. I've read the manga and her first and second act was fantastic. I wish we saw more of that Orihime. She was an absolute delight and one of my favourite parts. But after the Aizen reveal and the arc that followed, she stagnated and sharply took a turn for the worse, to the point where it was extremely clear Kubo was struggling to keep any of his non-Shinigami characters relevant. I have no issue with her become a stay-at-home mother. Motherhood is one of the most important roles in society. Hell I'd happily become one myself when I find the right man.

But to sum up my personal problem with Orihime briefly: she's a gardener in a war. We don't need gardeners in war.

Rukia was the deuteragonist and she got cast by the wayside. She is the catalyst of the manga, she gave Ichigo his powers, invested him with pride in those powers and helped him come back to himself when he was trapped in a spiral.... then she disappears. Her relevance vanishes completely. Made worse by the fact there was a perfect opportunity for a bookending in the last bout against Aizen-Wannbach, but it was abandoned completely for some bollock "Bro" moment between Renji and Ichigo? As if Renji is supposedly as important to him as Chad purportedly is or Rukia actually is?

I will preference my summary of the other female characters by stating outright this is my inner Warhammer 40k fan talking.

The crux of my complaint through the entire story, for Bleach and Naruto, is; you're all meant to be warriors. Soldiers... you are entrusted to protect on pain of death or take lives if demanded of you; will you fucking act like it?

Quirk is all well and good, but can I please have the impression at ANY point that any of you take your jobs seriously? Can we pretend that you possess a level of martial discipline and prowess please?

[taohs]

You'll learn even more about characters in the Roberta's Blood Trail arc when you get into the ova season. Revy, Rock, Eda, Roberta and Chang are some of those characters you will learn more about during that entire arc.

Exactly! None of the characters are poorly written at all. I believe that every character is fleshed out in their own ways... Which is definitely a reason why people enjoy the Black Lagoon franchise. That I know of.

Wait till you get into the Yakuza arc. Even more Balalaika backstory in that arc too, and you learn about the yakuza princess too. No more to say about that. You'll see. I won't spoil that for you. More ruthlessness on Balalaika's part.. We'll see if you still like her character during those arcs. Even if her completely ruthless, I enjoy her character a lot.

Many fans will say that the Vampire Twin arc is definitely the darkest arc of the series. Because of obvious reasons that you've already seen happen.

I forgot Roberta! I forgot to ask you about Roberta. How can I forget to ask about her?! She's another interesting character too.

I think the only female character I can't tolerate, in my opinion, is only Janet Bhai. She's the Indian woman who ends up with Benny. She is a well written character, but I find her too annoying for me to enjoy her.

I love Shenhua too, and Frederica Sawyer (the mute goth girl). Like.. I can say, minus Jane, I enjoy just about every female character in this series. And there are even more in the manga. I hope they'll continue the anime so we could see more of the story, characters, everything.

That's definitely one of the reasons why I enjoy the English version so you can her their accents, and the English language makes a lot more sense than most of the other languages. But that's just my opinion.

I think the reason why you don't see subtitles for those scenes is just because Rock is the one translating between characters, and also the viewers who are watching the anime (or reading the manga).

Leigharch is brain dead now so he won't ever be coming back. But his reaction to them being chased by terrorists, while he's too completely high to comprehend what even happened to them.

Actually.. Eda and Frederica Sawyer are characters who actually have their own spinoff mangas, but none of the novels are in English yet.

Honestly? I don't want to spoil anything. So I'll try keeping my whole opinion vague. At least until you watch more of the anime anyway.

I have mixed feelings about Rock in general. If I'm being completely honest.. I can't tolerant people who are pushovers, I believe people do need to stand up for themselves and other people which is why I have never liked this character. I respect that he wants to help people in so many ways, but he does it in a way that is not the right approach. But you do find out why he always wants to help people in the Yakuza arc.

But as the series progresses, at least during Roberta's Blood Trail arc, he is easily manipulated while also manipulating other people too.. So I'm having mixed feelings about his character. He's this antihero now.

But I haven't read any of the new chapters yet. So I don't know how much characters have changed yet, or even stayed the same either.

- 💋

going to put this under read more because lots of thoughts!!

i finally finished the series (plus the ova and omake) a few days ago, and wow, so so many things to unpack. roberta's blood trial was even darker and more violent than i expected. i binged it in one sitting, so the whole thing felt like a movie. roberta feels like a superhuman character, and i think she is probably the strongest, if not one of the strongest warrior in the anime (like WHO is able to just chomp off a machete like she did?? she's on another level). anyway i liked that they fleshed her character out more in this arc. i didn't expect her to make it to the end honestly, i thought either garcia will end up killing her to relieve her of her insanity/pain or she might get killed in battle. i'm glad that she has an opportunity to more forward and heal from the trauma! a lot of interesting things happened too, balalaika, chang and shen hua is always a joy to see. i love that shen hua has a little family with sawyer and the other guy, that was so cute. it was great to see eda getting some action too! even though it feels like we still barely know anything about her lol. season 2 is still my favorite season as of yet though :'D

but that aside i think out of the whole series, roberta's arc might have been the hardest for me to watch. i felt sick watching that scene of revy's flashback and thinking about it now still makes my stomach queasy. also, i don't know what kind of relationship they were trying to push with roberta and garcia?? i thought it was entirely platonic up to the point where he kissed her and i fully shouted at the screen because i did NOT expect that 😭

i see what you mean by janet. i actually don't mind her character, the only time i was a little annoyed with her was when she was rambling in the church. i felt like eda and revy wanting her to just be quiet :')

since i'm done with the anime i can gather my thoughts about rock a bit more: he is a complicated character, but i think season 2 made me dislike his character more. mostly his actions (because i don't hate him), but the things he says and does makes me question him a lot. he's incredibly smart and has the potential to thrive both in the dark and good side, but i find his ideals and "standing in the twilight" to be... hypocritical? he adapted to his new environment and sticks with them, yet he does not want to fully embrace it. i actually loved this in the beginning, like the theme of him remaining a pure light in his dark world, but eventually it doesn't seem that way anymore. he wants to keep his sense of justice by saving people even though he doesn't have the power to do it, and instead manipulates others to do it for him so he doesn't get his hands dirty. he's fine with saving one person at the downfall of another, but again he refuses to be the one to do any of the dirty work. i think that's why he feels like he's on enough of a higher moral ground to be able to lecture yukio about her choices even though he's also living a criminal life, when in reality he is just being indecisive and imposes his thinking on other people. i like that he is still able to be empathetic towards others despite everything, but i hate the way he goes about it. at least that's how i interpret it though. it was more interesting to see rock seeming to shift more towards the dark side in the ova and take on a more villainous role. it makes me wonder what's going to happen to him next and how it will affect his and revy's relationship, because revy for sure wants a way out of the darkness and sees rock as her light. i'm super tempted to read the manga even though i read that it updates really slowly.

balalaika is still hands-down my favorite character; i think the ruthlessness is part of her charm and helps her survive at the top in the world of black lagoon. i can probably go on and on about her :'D her backstory was tragic and i could see how big of a strain it caused her and the rest of hotel moscow. all the peeks into her backstory just makes me want to know more too. i would absolutely read an entire spin-off just about her and her men. i could also listen to her voice the whole day, her voice actress did such a fantastic job on her!!

the omake was such a cute way to move away from all the dark themes though. i loved it so much 10/10

i also read the link that you sent about the gender roles! really interesting to read about how revy and rock seemed to fill different roles in the anime, and it explains a lot of their actions too. rei hiroe definitely does a fine job with his female cast

and feel free to let me hear about your opinions too!

[sweetbottletops]

JJK Spoilers #208 pt2

After sleeping on it (actually after reading some really poorly written Arcane smut on AO3 til 2AM to clear my brain of that one really horrible page that was keeping me up... and then sleeping on it) I've come to terms with certain facts.

First of all, the potential I've spent most of my fan labor cultivating just isn't what that one-eyed cat menace cares about as the manga snowballs to its conclusion. And I doubt this will be the last of it.

I was bamboozled. Yuki was given plot weight way back and treated like a rare, powerful female special grade. The oldest special grade. She was in single possession of an entire polar end to the CE solution. She got pages where she's plotting something and talking to unnamed people and things left were open ended. Having Geto's former acolyte on her side even. What was up with that? Her meeting with Gojo way back we didn't get to see.

She and Gojo weren't that far off. She cared about the kids too. She had a cool student of her own. Todo is a smart tactician, morally sound, and shared some of her odd habits. We saw them together one time, but I guess at least he has that scar to remember her by. Then we got Maki achieving zero CE and never meeting her again. Was that all in my mind as being an interesting meeting?

I didn't need her to win at the end of it all, but I needed some of that at least in her thoughts when she's closing in on the end of her life. Not spending her emotional labor on that yeehaw man she just met.

Put all that in the bin. She actually has no agency in this story. It's a bummer, but fine. You really got me, Gege. But learning from that I retroactively I need to look back at my other pet favorites.

Like Nobara coming back and her CT being perfect to target Kenjaku's brain through his defenses should they establish a link via some sleuthing to his physical origins. Or to damage Sukuna without damaging Yuji via the other fingers. Her CT was actually really cool and powerful and specifically helpful to that original storyline with the trio. Especially for Yuji, who along with Megumi, she had a vested interest in helping survive his fate.

With this mad rush to the end of the manga Gege's on and several other overpowered characters already with Mary Poppins level asspull potential... Nobara's actual CT advantage isn't needed and would just take too many pages to set up now anyway with this 1 year deadline. She can just stay in her long nap at this point. Stupider things could happen to her if she rejoins the story too.

Also, Maki's zero CE doesn't have any tie in back to the broader CE discussion now. Yuki was it. She's in the danger zone with no asspull buffs comparable to those deemed to matter. She doesn't even have extra weapons storage. The best potential she's got now is to motivate Yuta when she dies. Characters like Panda and Nobara who she had friendships with aren't important going forward so who is she even interacting with? Giving pep talks to Noritoshi some more? Awkward family reunion with Megumi?

So I'm just not seeing much future for characters or plotlines I've long liked. Even when they are given every indication to be important that's never going to come ahead of the narrower path Gege is swiftly going down. I can really see how this is ending in a year.

I'm going to go on a hiatus. I think reading big chucks someday will help me get through it. And if I glance in and it gets even worse maybe not even that.

The strange thing is I still really like the years of fandom'verse that came from this. I don't feel like everything is torched. I can forget a lot of this even happened and keep enjoying the bits I like until the heat death of AO3. There's that.

[durotoswrites]

For the writing meme thingy: 🍄how do you get yourself in the mood to write? 🍑 do you/would you write smut? 📒 any fics planned?

🍄 How do you get yourself in the mood to write?

Getting in the mood to write and actually wanting to sit down and start writing are two very different things, but they're connected, so I'll explain both.

To set into “creative mode” it helps me to do these things:

Listen to music that makes me think of a character/situation in my story/stories. I've got playlists separated by character and pairing. Sometimes I also just work on curating those playlists for fun and get my brain going.

Bounce overall ideas off of my friends and husband/editor (but he's my best friend, too 💗)

Reread old chapters or recent ones and future snippets based on what I want to do.

Once I actually want to put words down, I get a little more strict with myself. I get distracted verrrry easily sometimes and I have to fight the urge to open a million more tabs when researching a small detail.

I move to instrumental music (I have playlists for different moods like “emotional”, “soft”, “sad”, etc. I usually listen to “soft” as a general soothing background sound, as I can get pretty dang emotional when I write, especially with the stuff I've been churning out lately.

So, yeah, I need tissues within reach if I get upset. (Wow, I'm not making this sound fun at all, lmao)

After sound has been established, I like to eat a snack (something with protein) because I can be under for hours, lol. Eat it and finish it. Otherwise, I get distracted.

I also like to have drinks available. I always have a bottle of water, but I also like having a hot cup of tea. I think it's the time of year for me to switch to cold barley tea.

I write while seated on a recliner with my feet up. I have my laptop on a lap desk and it's a pretty cozy setup.

I basically try to remove any excuse I have to get up once I start writing, because I am the worst procrastinator I know.

🍑Do you/would you write smut?

Heheh... heck yeah, I do. Waaaaay more than most people realize. Stuff I've actually posted? It's pretty limited. I posted a couple pieces (Let Me Love You and You're Like the Sunshine) a few years ago, but I've been practicing ever since. One of my planned stories literally has what I refer to as a “smut dump” in the draft where I've been experimenting with writing different moods. I like the intimate scenes to play a role in the overall plot or have it be a bonding experience.

Despite that, I do have a shameless Gray x Mary story I should just get out there that has zero plot, just two cuties in love. In my mind it's so naughty and kinky and I get flustered thinking about it (Mary is hot, okay?), but it's probably hella vanilla, lmao. I really am grateful that people have been really supportive about my writing smut despite what I usually write, and they've been so encouraging, too! I honestly feel like the smut I've posted is really stilted because I was so self-conscious about it. I don't feel like they are terrible for first attempts, but I have definitely grown more comfortable writing it.

Will The Shy Newcomer become explicit? I kinda really want it to, but I might separate the chapters for those who don't care for that content. Overall, I'd like to write more and post more, and I want to write more than just male x female smut as well. I have some of those in my planned pieces (more about them later).

📒 Any Fics Planned?

Firstly, I'm super tickled more than one person was interested in this. I copied the answer I wrote earlier.

Short answer: Yes. I also plan to bring more of my stories over from ffn to Ao3.

Long answer under the cut, heheh. I rambled quite a bit.

Ask me about my writing processes and stories!

I have so many WIPs that haven’t been touched in years that I’d like to finish, so new planned fics aren’t posted yet. Some of them have more adult themes than most of the stuff I’ve been writing, so I get flustered sharing them. I’ve been at a crossroads, as I feel that you can’t have growth without changing things up. On the other hand, I feel like a lot of my readers associate my works with a specific “wholesome” feel-good mood. It’s kinda nice to be known for something, although that might just be my ego talking, thinking that people recognize my work as a “type”.

Regardless, in the end, I feel growth is necessary.

I don’t want to leave a lot of unfinished WIPs waiting because they stress me out and I have too many of them already, so I’d like to have a bulk of my new stories with a good chunk written before I decide to post them.

Among those include:

A longfic featuring Pete’s farm in Forget-Me-Not Valley (A blend of HMDS with the FoMT plugin and AWL). It takes place in the same universe as The Shy Newcomer (Claire in Mineral Town) and there are a few overlapping moments, although Pete’s story starts first. Pete’s personality is verrry different from Claire’s, and his story was kind of supposed to be the yang to TSN’s yin. Pete’s best friends in his story are Ruby (not sure if I’m adding Tim yet), Nami, and Rock. Readers will be treated to a poorly-socialized pre-Mineral Town Cliff (if you think he was bad at the beginning of TSN, well… heh… he’s a wreck here).

Another planned unpublished story is a crossover of Harvest Moon and the movie “In This Corner of the World”, based on a manga of the same name by Fumiyo Kouno. It was written as a gift for a friend. I have the entire outline figured out and have slowly been filling it in. My friend asked for an AU where Claire and Cliff have an arranged marriage and live with his family in Akiyama, the hometown I had created for Cliff in The Shy Newcomer. I took the opportunity to expand the characters in his family. I have it written during the same time period and society as “In This Corner of the World”, but had decided to write a spreading disease as an allegory for war, but then COVID happened and some parts of it just got really hard to write. There are also a lot of sexually explicit content as Claire slowly grows and learns from her spouse that it’s okay to express what she wants despite sex being a taboo issue. If there’s enough interest in the story, I’ll post it, but I worry it’s a little too niche for there to be many people into it.

Pastor Carter and Doctor Trent are one of my favorite rare pair ships. I’ve had a partial draft for a story about them for a few years now, especially focusing on Trent growing up and acknowledging that he has an unhealthy addiction for things that he knows he can’t have. There are some more adult/sexual themes in this piece, too, including the main character lusting after a married woman (who also happens to be his patient) and some lemons. (Does anyone call it that anymore or is it just referred to as “smut” nowadays? Haha) I always feel so bad for neglecting the folks at the clinic in-game and wanted to write a piece that focused more on them, Trent specifically. It’s a multi-chap fic, but I don’t think I’m going to let it get as long as some of my other pieces.

I also really want to write a short romantic oneshot for every marriage candidate in Mineral Town, around 1,000 words each. So far, I have one for Cliff and one for Gray. I want to write Claire with everyone, because I think it would be fun to explore all the different personalities.

I have more installments planned for A Single Day, including a day in the life of the following characters, all with drafts in varying degrees of progress:

Anna

Doug

Nora (yes, I’m writing from the point of view of the cat living at the inn)

More to come – I think Lillia and Thomas would be especially interesting to explore

I do still have that Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask piece I’ve been pondering where Link befriends the soul of the deku scrub child while possessed by the mask. I don’t have much written about it, but I really love the world of Majora’s Mask. Such a fun game.

I also think about the lead carpenter’s son in Ocarina of Time and that weird side quest involving the blue chicken and the son being lost to the forest. Then that unique-looking kokiri girl explaining that all who get taken in the lost woods become stalfos. Like, did the guy die? Was he sick? Did he want to die? There’s just so much going on there that would be fun to explore.

I also have played OMORI recently and have like… A LOT of feelings about it. I don’t know what I’d write, but I’m still damn impressed at how well the characters are developed in such a short game.

Other games I’ve had vague ideas about writing for include the following:

The Flame in the Flood: I’m thinking a survivalist/action story fleshing out Scout’s backstory a bit more and her thoughts as she’s traveling. I feel like she’s a very lonely person, but isn’t given the chance to really dwell on it.

Night In the Woods: I’d love to write more about Mae’s dreams and what they mean to her. She doesn’t really talk to anyone about them openly, so it’s really hard to tell her feelings about them in some regards. We know that she’s distressed about them, but I’d like to dive a little deeper. Do the nightmares end after the games does? What about Bea’s new nightmares?

Hades (Supergiant Games): I think it would be fun to write more about the events that take place before the game starts, like Zagreus’s duties in the house of Hades, and expand on the strained relationship with his father.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

I was reading your latest post. Does Ienaga not use gendered pronouns to refer to herself? Or are they ambiguous and you decided to use male pronouns?

Actually...

I stared at this ask blinking like an idiot for a while because, as far as I’m involved, I gender Ienaga as female and it was a while I didn’t write about her so I couldn’t understand what where you talking about and I feared I messed up pronouns again (in my mother tongue we tend to skip them... as a result my use of them in English is... messy to say the least and I have to go through the text twice to make sure I have put them in and put them correctly) until it clicked in.

The convicts list post.

Sorry, I didn’t think at it because the old part is copypasted by the first list I made.

That one... is  a bit of a special case.

Anyway sorry for the digression and let’s deal with your ask.

One of the most terrible problems of dealing with Japanese text is that Japanese is gendered in ways that are different from English (or my own mother tongue)... and manga/anime not necessarily use the most common speech (you can find in manga/anime a large amount of character using ‘ore’, which is actually not so common if you go in Japan).

Back to the problem at hand...

PREMISE

If someone has further information I welcome them wholeheartedly. What follows is what I’ve been able to find and what I’ve asked other people with better Japanese knowledge to check for me (but I couldn’t really demand an in deep analysis of the story from them so something could have gone missing) but this was also some time ago so more material could have come up. Or something could have gone missing or understood wrong. Whatever. If you’ve new INFO just please share.

So now, let’s start.

From what I could find Ienaga uses ‘Watashi’ (わたし/私 “I”).

‘Watashi’ can be used by females (Asirpa, the first client Ienaga had, Umeko, Inkarmat, Sofia (when her Russian dialogues are translated in Japanese)), but also by males (Hijikata, Makanakkuru, Nagakura, Tsurumi [who alternates it with ‘ore’], Sugimoto’s dad).

Long story short... it tells us nothing as it can be used by both sexes as it’s a first person pronoun that merely remarks a certain formality and politeness, which is kind of mandatory in female speech but can also be used in male speech (hence the many males who use it).

I don’t really like to say Noda had Ienaga use ‘watashi’ to make Ienaga’s gender ambiguous.

Ienaga, from the little I could notice and from what I’ve been told, uses usually formal speech (Ienaga also tends to use ‘anata’ to say “you”, or name + ‘-san’ which again, is formal), which just fits with Ienaga, who’s a doctor (and who, to become one should have come from a family well off that could pay all the studies required to get a degree), therefore likely formal speech was the norm to Ienaga.

Are there other things we can use to know if Ienaga defines as male or female?

Well, when working as the ‘Sapporo Murder Hotel’ Ienaga says to her customers ‘Okami no Ienaga... tomōshimasu’ (女将の家永... と申します “My name is... Ienaga, the proprietress”).

‘Okami’ is gendered, it’s a female noun but in that setting Ienaga is disguising as a the hotel’s owners’ son’s widow, so it doesn’t tell us much.

I couldn’t find Ienaga using another gendered noun that we could use to gather if Ienaga identifies as female or as male.

Again this isn’t necessarily a deliberate attempt at keeping things ambiguous, the same would apply for many other characters, we just don’t realize it because we’re confident we know which is their gender because they all present themselves in a way that conforms with the expectations we’ve for them completely or, at least, enough we’re confident they are what’s written on the tin.

On an interesting note multiple characters, when not saying just ‘Ienaga’/‘Ienaga-san’, have referred to her as ‘Jijī’ (ジジイ “Old man”) which is a gendered male noun also in situations where they didn’t need to be rude, with no one correcting them, which seems to imply they weren’t told to address to Ienaga using female nouns.

This might mean Ienaga didn’t ask to be addressed as female.

There’s to say that although Ienaga is always listed as “Ienaga Kano” or, at best “Ienaga Kano (Chikanobu)”, Noda, in a Q&A, said that ‘Kano’ is Ienaga’s ‘gimei’ (偽名 “alias/false name”) and that her ‘honmyō’ (本名 “true name”) is ‘Chikanobu’.

Long story short it’s entirely possible Ienaga continued to present herself as Chikanobu, a male, wearing a female disguise, ‘Kano’, while among the Hijikata group.

This seems to be confirmed by the fanbook which says:

‘Ikken suru to zetsuyo no bijo daga, Hijikata ya Nagakura ni yowai chikai dansei de aru.’

一見すると絶世の美女だが、土方や永倉に齢近い男性である。

‘At first glance, (Ienaga) is a beautiful woman, but (in truth) is a man who is close in age to Hijikata and Nagakura.’

I might have of course missed something, there’s plenty of Japanese text in the fanbook but that’s what I could find.

Men who dressed as females but didn’t identify as such had existed and still exist, so it’s possible this is what Noda was aiming to get when he created Ienaga.

When talking with Ushiyama Ienaga says ‘Ushiyama... you’ve spent your life honing your body, so I’m sure you can understand... when I was young I was so strong and so beautiful. I was even willing to steal from others just to cling to that old, perfect me. What about you, Ushiyama? How long has it been since you were perfect?’

This seems to imply Ienaga’s goals were to have back youth, beauty and strength so as to be perfect again.

The body parts she eat come from both males and females so it doesn’t seem there’s a special tie to a specific gender, but they’re chosen for their purposes, like eating Ogata’s eyes because they can see well, or Asirpa’s eyes because they’re beautiful.

So, if anything, Noda defined Ienaga as a male.

Of course an argument could be made that Noda is talking only of the sex and not of the gender, which might lead people to decide ‘he’ isn’t the right pronoun to use and to go for ‘she’ or ‘they’ when talking about Ienaga.

It’s really up to everyone.

As far as my current interpretation goes I say that I believe Ienaga lived as Chikanobu, a male, and identified as such, up until there was the big convict escape. Then ‘Kano’ was created, at first as a disguise... but ultimately ‘Kano’ slowly became Ienaga’s true identity.

Ienaga’s goals are told twice, once in the Ienaga’s arc and those are just going back to being ‘strong and beautiful and perfect’ but the other time is during the ‘Inkarmat’s escape’ arc. Ienaga actually strived after her mother, she wanted to become her, perfection for her was ‘getting pregnant and able to give birth’, not just getting ‘strong and young’.

Inkarmat will become perfect because she’ll give birth, not because she’s young.

There’s no mention Ienaga used to dress as a woman before becoming a convict (we’re told Heita occasionally behaved like a woman while in prison but nothing about Ienaga acting as such), yet the ‘Kano’ disguise isn’t discharged when she’s captured by Tsurumi.

I think that’s because by then Kano wasn’t anymore a disguise, it was her and Chikanobu was no more. Maybe, if Ienaga had managed to help Inkarmat to give birth to her baby, this could have helped her further. Part of her denial of identifying as a female was probably due to society expectations but part was also self imposed.

The image of a woman as someone who gives birth was something that was even stronger back then than it is now. Ienaga knew she could never give birth and in her mind this took shape as her never being able to become a woman.

Of course though, this is just my interpretation of how things went for Ienaga, of how for her the story of GK was just a travel toward accepting who she really was and the fact she realized she was Kano happened late in her life didn’t make it less true.

The fanbook doesn’t cover the whole of GK, it more or less stop at chap 224, with Boutarou’s apparition. Characters like Tomoharu or Tanigaki’s daughter aren’t included, so Noda’s description of Ienaga could have been very well not updated to chap 229.

On the other side I can very well be wrong and Ienaga be meant to be just a man who likes to dress as a female... and others might even see Ienaga as someone who’s agender or just be more confortable with genderless pronouns.

Currently there’s enough ground for each of those possibilities... unless someone found info I’m missing.

I’ve no idea where the Japanese fandom stands in this situation and how they view Ienaga... but for them the problem might be simple because they don’t have to use gendered pronouns, so they can comfortably and respectfully discuss of Ienaga without having to discuss about which pronoun they should use.

Still, if someone has info on how they view Ienaga I would be glad if they were to share it. As they deal solely with the original text they surely have a better grasp on it than what I can ever hope to get.

Back to the convict post... that one was poorly worded, yes. Back in the far past that was meant to be a note just for myself saying something along the line of ‘Ienaga Chikanobu’s crime was...’ and so on for all the others and since even back then I believed as long as she had been Chikanobu Ienaga gendered herself as male the sentence was gendered as such. Then the notes were modified and rearranged so as to fit it in the convict post but my not English speaking brain didn’t realize with the changes I made that sentence would become confusing due to the pronoun which now seemed to refer to Ienaga Kano.

Sorry about that and thank you for the head up.

[sweetescapeartist]

Since there is barely anybody that looks at this blog now, imma say some things now that I'll reveal later on Twitter (maybe). Also this is gonna be a long read so you can read if you wanna or not. Its kinda a rant.

I started this blog because I liked Dragon Ball and wanted to share my ideas and things I liked with other fans. I enjoyed that. Krillin is my favorite character so I wanted to show him some love & maybe get more ppl to like him. Then eventually I started drawing nsfw art.

I began doing so because there's a great lack of Krillin positive nsfw art. Eventually on my Twitter, I gathered a following that like to see Krillin getting some love. I also went from sfw with my OC Tobi to drawing nsfw. The problem I have with both is that I don't have time as much to draw what is like to. Nor do I care as much for nsfw art.

So this is what I'm trying to say. I have other things I want to do. I draw for free and accept some requests. I'm not getting paid and I feel like I'm wasting my time somewhat. The positive is that more ppl have come to like Krillin and hopefully more will later. There aren't a lot of nsfw artist that promote Krillin. Its all about Saiyans and I understand why. I like Saiyans too. But its always at the expense of human characters that I like especially Krillin.

"Vegeta got beat up by 18 so he deserves to dick her down"

"18 should be with anyone else but Krillin. She should be with a Saiyan."

I'm seriously tired of it, ya know? Its just such negativity. I've tried to combat it with positivity and that does work but that's not what most ppl seem to care about or see. Krillin means a lot to many of us. Yes, we know he's a fictional character but he's someone we can latch on to and see ourselves in. How he constantly tries hard and doesnt give up despite having low self-esteem. He is very relatable and an encouraging character. So understand that it frustrates me and others when ppl keep making fun of a character we love just because of memes that are very innacurate, he's short, he's married to what most of the fandom consider the most attractive female in the series (so they're jealous of him to an extent), or when ppl downright degrade his character.

Why? Why treat a positive character so negatively? Ppl make fun of Krillin because he has PTSD but won't make fun of Future Trunks. They trash his marriage and make it seem as if 18 doesn't care for him because he has the most stable marriage in the series. They call his daughter an ugly troll but want to see her in hentai with some Saiyan. Such hypocrisy. That's why I've drawn some of the things I have.

There are drawings I've done that I haven't posted because they are so disrespectful to characters like Vegeta or Gohan. And I love Gohan so that's a reason why I never posted them. I'm a positive person but it seems many ppl only respond to negative. So here's what I've done/plan to do.

I have some comics planned to draw along with some pictures. The pictures vary on what they will be, but the comics... Here's what they are.

I will be making NTR comics starring Krillin but he is the main character. There are too many of him being portrayed as a wimp or punk that lets everybody get with 18 besides himself. Or its done behind his back. So I'm going to have Krillin taking other character's ladies from them. Yeah its negative in a way but also positive for Krillin. Maybe this can get the point across to ppl? Idk.

But I will make a comic where Krillin gets Videl, Bulma, & Chichi. I will make others where he gets into "situations" with characters like Kale & Caulifla, Cheelai, & others. I also plan to make a comic about Roshi basically being cucked by Krillin (you'll have to wait and see to understand that one). So that's what I have planned. Hentai comics with Krillin as the lead. Its unpopular and that is why I do it.

I'll make other more positive comics too. Like a comic about Krillin getting advice then marrying 18. Ill draw stories with my OC Tobi as he lives with Krillin and his family & dates Marron. It will focus on the Chestnut family and have father/son moments with Krillin & Tobi. And ill introduce other characters too.

But here's the big thing that contradicts everything I said prior. I don't want to draw DB anymore. The fan base has kinda wore me out but so has the direction the series has gone. In bored of the writing for DBS and it being solely about Goku & Vegeta when there are other characters like Gohan & Piccolo. Its a fighting anime so why would we only want to see 2 characters? God ki was introduced so that's an easy way for everyone to get stronger and involved. But its too corporate now and lazy. And the DBS manga... so terrible. Toyotaro is a much better artist than I am and not to talk bad about him but I think DragonGarowLee is much better for the position that Toyo. DGL knows how to choreograph fights better and understands Toriyama's comedy better. Toyo doesn't know how to write the characters. He makes Goku an uncaring idiot, makes Vegeta a poorly written Goku clone, makes fun of Krillin for no reason except he doesn't like him (seriously! He has called him ugly, weak, scared, useless, & had ppl like Goku and Roshi insult Krillin. Wtf?!), he doesnt know how to create a unique character without ripping off a character Tori has done much better. And the fanboys (& girls)

Gosh! The Vegeta fans are great but they can be crazy sometimes. They ignore all the evil Vegeta has done and ignore his flaws as if he's a perfect angel. Vegeta's flaws is what makes him such an interesting character! And him being different than Goku is a good thing. But there's a weird and false understanding of his character. "Vegeta is a better dad than Goku" sure. Vegeta just knocked up Bulma then left her as. Single mother and didn't care if she or his infant son died, never hugged his son until he was 10+ yrs old & didn't love Bulma until sometime during the 7 yr time skip. He was a terrible person in a terrible relationship! THEN he became a better person and actually loving to his family. That change is what make Vegeta great. Not his power level or how many kills he has or "cool moments."

That same twisted misunderstanding of Vegeta is similar to the misunderstanding of Krillin. Ppl think he's weak and a coward. But he fights aliens & beings stronger than him and even injures stronger opponents. He smiles in the face of danger and even gets excited during fights but is smart enough not to risk others lives. Krillin nearly killed Nappa, he would've finished Vegeta with the Spirit Bomb if Yajirobe didn't alert Vegeta that Krillin was attacking him, smart enough not to fight on Namek when they're outnumbered, took on aliens stronger than him, outsmarted them & escaped, protected both Gohan & Bulma, more skilled than Ginyu when he was in Goku's body, sacrificed his safety for others like Dende & Gohan, (for real tho, Vegeta didn't see 2nd form Freeza move but Krillin was fast enough to throw Dende out of the way and sacrifice his life. Krillin saw Freeza attacking and Vegeta who is supposed to be stronger did not see Freeza move!), he was the first person to actually damage Freeza and then taunted the Emperor of the Universe, he's always there for his friends, knew better than everybody else that if the androids defeated Vegeta & Trunks then he shouldn't get involved. He saved 18 who was innocent in this timeline, helped 16, wished for the bombs out of 17 & 18 so they could live normally. Then fast forward to DBS he fought to protect his family & planet & 18 calls him "cool", he conquers his PTSD and gained new power he always had but laid dormant, he defeated someone who actually hurt 18. & there are things he's done I didn't even mention.

And ppl constantly saying Goku is a bad dad. He's waaaaaaaay better of a father compared to Vegeta if were being honest.

I guess I've seen a lot of the negative side of the fandom and its disappointing. So I'm at a point where I kinda don't care. I'll make my comics but after I'm done with what I have planned, I'm just done with DB. I won't stop drawing entirely but I won't draw any requests unless I feel like it, I won't keep up with much DB news and content. I just want to come back to Tumblr, draw Krillin fanart, draw Tobi, write some rewrites, draw Tobi's story & that's it. Ill be a part of Chestnut Fest every year tho. That is one of the greatest things to come out of my time on Tumblr & Twitter. So big thanks to @chestnutisland!

But basically I'm tired of the fandom and I still enjoy parts of it but I want to do my own thing. So I'll partially be a part of the DB fandom but not in it too deep. Look forward to what I have in store. If some of my future content isn't to your liking, hopefully you ccan find something else I've done that you'll enjoy. But its still been fun & I've enjoyed the ppl I've talked too & friends I've made.

[echodrops]

What made you fall in love with Toga's character? I'm asking because I've tried liking her but I can't bring myself to, her personality is just really annoying and repulsive to me on a visceral level for some reason, and that makes me sad because I WANT to like her. So I'm hoping by gaining the perspective of people who enjoy her I'll see the appeal. I'm a manga reader btw.

I’ve written before about why I think Toga is one of the only “well” written female characters in Boku no Hero Academia (I’m not saying she’s great, just that she’s the least offensive and most three-dimensional of the many poorly written women in this series), but the long and short of it is that Toga gets to do things that no other female character in the series gets to do–she gets to fight hard, get bloody, and stand on an equal playing field with the male characters, while every other girl in this series is relegated to support and being emotional crutches for their male counterparts.

Now that Toga’s backstory is revealed, I think we can make an even better case for her, given that this makes her one of the very few female characters in the series with a developed backstory, and the only female character in the entire series to have a backstory that asks a meaningful question about what it means to be a woman with a dangerous quirk, with a quirk that–by its very nature–makes it impossible for her to be “normal,” to fit in to society’s expectation for “cute little girls.”

Toga’s refusal to wear a mask, her refusal to be anything but exactly who she “really is,” her own brand of normal, gives her (the illusion at least) of having more agency and control of her own life than 99% of the other female characters in this series.

I think one reason I am able to like Toga so much is because I can easily separate Horikoshi’s portrayal of her character from the way that I, a female reader and fic writer, would portray her. I can look at what the manga delivers and cleanly divide who Toga is from how she’s being used. Horikoshi uses her as fanservice, and you’re right, that’s pretty gross. But characters don’t choose to be used that way, and there’s a lot more to her that isn’t just fanservice (especially if Horikoshi ever got good enough at writing women to properly develop on the foundation he built), particularly in her bravery, her dedication to the League, and her dogged pursuit of what she cares about.

That said, it’s really impossible to like every character in every story, and just because other people like the character doesn’t mean you absolutely must. If she repulses you, it might just be better to concentrate on characters you do like so you don’t end up forcing yourself to see content that doesn’t engage you!

[the-fashiongeek-blog1]

FASHION GEEK: ORIGINS

(or How Writing Got Me Into Fashion)

    Show of hands; who participated in NaNoWriMo 2018? To all of you who hit that mythic 50k, a hearty round of applause! And even if you didn’t, words are words and more power to you for adding to your wonderful stories! This year was a bit of a struggle for me, but I did manage to cross the finish line just before midnight on Friday.

    For those of you feeling a little confused (NaNoWhoNow? Fifty-thousand what?), NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, is a personal challenge to write a fifty-thousand word novel during the thirty days of November. According to the official press release from 2016, the previous year had over four-hundred thousand participants, with almost ten percent “winning”, or verifying online that they had achieved the word goal. Some well-renowned authors have written pep talks for the program, or even participated in previous years. For example, both Water for Elephants and Cinder both started out as NaNo novels. It’s an amazing experience, and I would absolutely recommend looking into it if you’ve ever been curious.     Now this could come as no surprise, but I love writing. Until recently, I always specified that I like creative writing - and by “creative”, I would’ve meant “fiction”. As the existence of this blog can attest, I’ve come to see the fun in creative non-fiction as well. Unfortunately, for as much as I love writing, trying to keep up with this blog and my NaNo novel proved a bit too much to handle. For those of you wondering where I disappeared off to this November, there’s the quick answer. But I’m back now. Hope I haven’t disappointed anyone!     But Katie, I hear you say, what in the heck does this have to do with fashion? Don’t worry, we’re circling back to it. Way, way back.     When I was a kid, I hated fashion. Or rather, I hated what I thought fashion represented. Internalized misogyny is part of it, but it gets a little more specific than that. To this day, I love action and fantasy fiction, but growing up there weren’t too many characters for a young girl like me to live vicariously through. Sure, there were some female characters in the series I used to watch, but even tiny Katie understood that many were treated poorly by the narrative or were just given nothing to do. (I see you, Anna Valerious in Van Helsing.) The women that actually got to participate in the action all seemed to share a common archetype. If I wanted to kick any kind of ass, I had to abandoned things that were considered feminine - or so I was taught by the media I consumed. So, just like that, I decided to “reject” fashion. I pretended I didn’t know what Juicy Couture was, and I refused to wear the color pink. Oh, Miranda Priestly would’ve had a blast dragging me.     Thankfully, I outgrew this frame of mind somewhere around my preteen years. Part of me wants to thank the more varied portrayals of kickass ladies in the comics and manga I started getting into around the same time. (Stick a pin in that for now.) Another part of me wants to thank the emo/scene fashion circa 2006-2010. Did I dye my tips red, or wear tutus over jeans, or cut holes in my striped socks to make them in to fingerless gloves, and other “cringe-y” things like that? Hell yeah, I absolutely did. (Also, cringe culture can kiss my ass.)     Back to the point, this was the start of me consciously using fashion to project an image of myself into the world. Of course, I thought I was doing this by subverting fashion entirely, but you can’t spell “subversive fashion” without the word “fashion.” I mean...it’s literally right there. (Baby steps, tiny Katie, we’re getting there.) Around the same time, a sudden move took me from living in the Big City to the actual literal middle of nowhere. Fashion was a lot more homogenous in my new school, and I delved more deeply into quirky style as a way of broadcasting my city mouse identity.     Throughout this whole era in my life, I was writing non-stop. It was mostly fanfic and message board RPs at the time, which led me to dollmaker games. Besides giving me a nifty visual aid for my characters, I loved using these games to put together cute outfits for my them, and developing their fashion sense as part of their character. Clothes can say a lot about a character. Was she a total punk rocker, or did she prefer athletic wear? How did she use fashion to make others perceive her? It was all kinda similar to how I was using fashion for myself.     Some time in high school, I stumbled upon a website called Polyvore. (Quite literally. I found it through the StumbleUpon extension.) Unfortunately, Polyvore no longer exists - No one expects the SSENSE acquisition! - but it was a wonderful slice of the internet for a while. There was a flourishing RP community on the site that produced some of the most amazing content I’ve seen and read on the internet to this day. Due to the fact that Polyvore was originally a fashion website, making anything on there required at least a tangential understanding of fashion. High fashion (and occasionally commercial) models were used as faceclaims for characters, and searching for clothing to put them in meant knowing which brands or designers best suited each characters’ tastes.     Before then, my interest in the world of fashion was incidental. I knew that I liked certain designers, but I couldn’t list off my favorite collection of theirs, or tell you their biggest influences. Seeing members of the writing community discuss these and similar topics was what inspired me to look more deeply into fashion. At first, it was a way to follow conversations, which mostly involved looking back at old seasons or editorials. This quickly evolved into me seeking out new content and actively trying to keep up with the fashion world of my own volition.     And, well, here we are now. An active fashion across several social media platforms, pursuing a dream to make it somehow in the fashion industry. For me, writing and fashion go hand in hand, no matter if I’m writing one of my stories or working on a new blog post. It all comes back to the same thing. I can honestly say that, without writing, there would be no Fashion Geek.

[filipino-wallacewells]

the original op was talking mostly about genderbending in fanfiction but i'd also like to take this opportunity to talk about genderbending in manga, which includes crossdressing and cisswaps.

as someone who had a genderbender manga phase when i thought i was cis and still kinda read some from time to time, it did help me deal with gender stuff BUT a lot of the stuff i found were also pretty gender essentialist.

they were usually stuff like "my best friend ♂️ turned into a girl ♀️ and now im in love????" (there were always the mars and venus symbols in the titles). not to mention the trashfire of a genre that is tsf.

the genderbender genre is somehow simultaneously inherently queer while also some of the most cisheteronormative bullshit i've seen.

i can see how it can help queer people, especially trans people, process emotions that they aren't that familiar with yet, but it also can perpetuate harmful stereotypes a lot of the time.

in a lot of the manga, the originally male genderbent character ends up thinking "oH No My BrAiN iS TuRnInG FeMaLe ToO" when they transform. their straight male friend ends up getting feelings for them. the protag's sexuality also gets changed most of the time and they become much more stereotypically feminine, regardless of their original personality.

just once, i'd like to see a genderbender story where an amab protag gets "turned into a girl" and experience dysphoria. most of the stories were so obviously written by people who have no idea that trans people are a thing.

i also find it super frustrating how manga that are explicitly about trans people are tagged with stuff like "crossdressing" or "genderbend". it just feels disrespectful to me. i don't really know how to word it, but it feels like by tagging trans stories as those they're reducing it to a gimmick or smth. a trans man just living their life isn't "genderbending" because they're men and not "women that somehow got turned into men".

anyway, genderbender as a genre is extremy dicey territory and very easy to mess up. a lot of stories in the genre are written by people who doesn't know that being trans is a thing so they often end up poorly executed and can feel pretty festishized.

i don't want to dismiss the entire genre as it was pretty important to me exploring my own gender. not every gender bender manga is bad.

an example is "kashimashi girl meets girl" a yuri/wlw manga that actually handles the subject matter quite well.

another is "ouran high school host club" (as full of imperfections it might be) where the haruhi's entire thing is that she doesn't care about gender or gender roles, she only values who the person is. she's one of the first characters i really resonated with and she can be read as nonbinary.

genderbender manga is important to me, but at the same time, it's plagued with so many harmful tropes and stereotypes.

anyway, feel free to correct me if i said anything wrong or offensive, i'm only human. i'm just talking from my own viewpoint and perspective.

Someone on Discord: Wait, why is there genderbend discourse?

Me, popping up like a dog that just heard the word “walk”: Let me give you an essay on how it’s a matter of conflicting needs and poor genre rep.

[smokeybrand]

Disappointment

I love comics. I do. I’ve loved them since I was a small boy. I remember fondly, journeys to my local comic shop before it closed. I remember buying first editions of Aliens versus Predator, Alien: Earth War, The Killing Joke and those three issues of Amazing Spider-Man where Carnage debuted. That panel where Pete realizes carnage left him a message in his own blood? Chilling. I remember the dour feeling I got when I first witnessed Miller’s bleak, almost nihilistic take on Batman with his masterpiece , The Dark Knight returns. I remember the jubilation as I scanned the pages upon pages of graphic violence in McFarlane’s Spawn for the first time. The Violator fast became one of my all-time favorites Comic villains. I watched the comic bubble grow and grow until it burst and the fall of an entire industry toward the late 90s, early 00’s. I remember the cringe worthy, poorly written, maxi-events born distinctly from that ridiculous “extreme everything” epoch of the mid 90s. I was excited when the industry rebounded on the back of epic storytelling and art that was head and shoulders above what I had as a youth, in the late 00s, early 10s. Even now, I pick up any one of the Bat books DC is shilling and I am wildly impressed. Capullo’s run, in particular, has been a creative and narrative refreshment. I’m going to miss him when he’s gone. I love comics as much as I love film, cinema, anime, manga, and f*cking pancakes. My geek card is legit and punched, particularly for Marvel Comics.

I love a good Marvel book. Don’t get me wrong, I can dig a DC outing, I rather enjoyed Judas Contract and Death in the Family in particular, but Marvel always felt real to me. DC comics was escapism. They were Gods pretending to be human in my eyes, the ideal way to live. That made sense to me as I grew older because they were created in a time where escapism was needed. Most of the groundwork for DC was laid in the 30s. WWII was beginning to rear it’s ugly head and there was a necessity for the American populace to have a place to divert their attention to fantastic tails in order to distract from the horrific realities of the world.  Marvel was born in the sixties. They’re a product of one of the most socially tumultuous times in out history. Marvel heroes are people thrust into godhood. They have to learn how to be heroes because they are inherently flawed. There are no Superman allegories here, no perfect specimens to light the way for humanity. Nah, these cast are assholes just like the rest of us, trying to stay above water. Only they can shoot f*cking lasers from their eyes sometimes. While DC relegated their more socially experimental or controversial stories to the oblivion of Vertigo or Elseworlds, Marvel embraced them. Reed Richards became an emotionally distant asshole. Tony Stark became a functioning alcoholic. The allegorical comparison of Mutants being black people struggling for human rights during the civil unrest of the 60s was not lost on anyone with a brain. I loved that Marvel let their heroes be human. I loved that they made mistakes and that those mistakes had real consequences. I loved that I could look at a comic and see myself, in both demeanor and ethnicity. Spider-Man is my all time favorite comic character. I wrote about this before but I WAS Pete as a kid and I think that’s why he’s so endearing. He is the best of that Marvel lot and epitomizes the genius Stan, John, and Jack had when they crafted the most endearing literary universe in the last century.

The fact that i love Marvel so much is why I am hurting with the direction they have decided to take with all of this SJW nonsense. If you know Marvel’s history, if you’ve read their books, then you know they were already one of the most progressive companies out there. I mean, they’re genesis was one steeped in social awakening! Hell, I’m not even mad Marvel is shoehorning all of this PC propaganda in their books or killing off characters I love (**cough**Wolverine**cough**), or subsisting on year-long maxi events or allowing Slott to ruin Spider-Man! Actually, I am livid about that Slott nonsense but I’ll get to that. I’m not mad Thor is a woman. She is a great character and a breath of fresh air in a narrative that was growing a bit stale for me. Jane Foster being Thor gave way to The Unworthy Thor story line, which is probably the best written Thor arc I have ever read. I’m not mad Mockingbird is a feminist. How can she not be? I rather enjoyed Spider-Island and that little tease at the end with MJ and Pete? That made my heart all aflutter. Speaking of, my favorite book at the moment is Renew Your Vows. Goddamn do I miss Pete and MJ and that book just reminds me of everything that could have been. F*cking Slott, man… I ADORE the direction they’ve taken Talon (X-23 and the current Wolverine for those of you who don’t know Laura’s actual X-Men code name) and even like a little of that whole Cyclops fiasco fallout. A little bit, not all of it. There are a few things SJW Marvel has done well, their increasing diversity is a big one, but it feels like those good things pale in comparison to the issue I think that is crippling Marvel; The writing is sh*t now.

SJW Marvel feels like they’ve traded actual, inspired, storytelling for “Woke” gimmicks and a pandered slathering of social commentary. There are too many soap boxed now and not enough passion in crafting a compelling narrative. Dan Slott (I told you I’d get to this asshat) is a perfect example of this bullsh*t. Bro has taken Spider-Man and basically turned him into Tony Stark. He’s erased, literally erased by having Pete and MJ cut a deal with the goddamn devil, their marriage. Slott, in his run on Amazing, has regressed Spider-man back to those harrowing and swinging days of being a College Freshman but with a multi-billion dollar tech company. For a second there, I even think Peter was an international spy or some sh*t. It’s wild nonsense that is just north of embellished fan fiction! What happened to the great tales we got like Kraven’s Last Hunt or Torment? Why do I have to sit through The Superior Spider-Man?? F*ck, then there’s THAT fuckery. Doctor Octopus is literally a Spider-man clone now. He is, and I am not sh*tting you right now, living in a perfect clone of Peter Parker, powers and all. But he leads Hydra or some sh*t. We’ll circle back around to that in a second, let me tell you, but first, this whole Fantastic Four bullsh*t. I liked Secret Wars II. I thought it was interesting that Doom finally got his wish and became a f*cking god. I thought his characterization in that whole event was brilliant. What I didn’t like? Marvel using that even to essentially erase the Fantastic Four. I liked Sue. She was a great character and had grown considerably over the years. All of that, gone. More to the point, I loved Valeria and her interactions with Doom. Those few books where she actually plays Robin and conscious to Doom’s villainy are spectacular. Marvel essentially nixing that relationship just to scorn Fox feels a lot like Slott nixing MJ because he thinks Peter should be a hoe.

Both circumstances are f*cking ridiculous and do nothing but leave the characters and company less. And it’s not just these instances. Riri Williams has a ton of potential but sucks and everyone hates her because she’s written as a smart-mouthed b*tch. America Chaves is another missed opportunity! And, oh my god, what did they do to my Carol Danvers?? I LOVE Miss Marvel. Her stint in Might Avengers and Heroic Age solidified that she could be the premiere female Marvel hero. In my eyes, Carol is their Wonder Woman and, for a time, she was on her way. Now? After all of this SJW branding and agendas have made her power absorbing Hitler. They’ve destroyed her character, assassinated nay real progress in an effort to portray her as a feminist icon. She was already one of those!

Carol Danvers doesn’t have to be the new version of 1610 Captain America! And then there’s THAT debacle. Secret Empire was a goddamn cash grab and the biggest farce I have read out of Marvel since Onslaught. Cap is a Nazi? Really? Get the f*ck out of here with that nonsense. And the ending? Just a bit too fan service-y for me. There was literal deus ex machina. Seriously, ClassicCap came out of the cosmic cube to punch out NaziCap. He allegory is just so heavy handed, it’s borderline insulting to my intelligence as the reader. I cannot stress how ridiculous this entire situation was, this entire stupid goddamn “event”. Also, the f*ck was up with Dead No More? Didn’t we learn our lesson about clones with Ben Reily and that whole clusterf*ck? Why are we even doing this nonsense again??

It’s not just the writing though, either. The art for most of these books is atrocious. Anything Olivier Coipel or Esad Ribic touch with a pencil is god’s work and Kris Anka is one of my favorites but the redesigns of some of those classic outfits are terrible. I mean, Spider-Man’s tech suit is ass. Riri’s armor looks like a knock off Rescue mod, and Foster’s Thor comes across as a hodge-podge of nonsense. That classic Ms. Marvel Leotard is my favorite of her outfits but I get the upgrade to her current garb. Running around in stilettos with your ass out doesn’t really bode well for gaining confidence you can protect the general public from giant, interdimensional, crab monsters or rouge government assassi-bots. What i don’t like is how masculine Carol’s drawn now. Chick isn’t She-Hulk, yo. Why you got her so yoked? Carol Danvers was a vision of beauty, legit model caliber. She’s always been fit, yeah, but there was still a softness to her. Just a touch, I’d say. Now, chick is a rock of f*cking angst granite. Not only is she poorly written but her overall design is sh*t! It’s like, goddamn Marvel! You want to push Ms. Marvel to the front, give me something to work with How am I supposed to root for an ugly, b*tchy, incompetent who constantly makes decisions that get people killed? How is THIS “Captain Marvel” a leader?? Bro, speaking of “leaders”, Sam Wilson Cap is ridiculous. That sh*t feels like blatant tokenism, particularly when there have already been several black captain Americas in Marvel history. There was this whole Tuskegee allegory about it. One of the grand kids was the Young Avengers, for chrissake!

I don’t know, man. I think Marvel need to take a step back and figure why things were so good back in the day. Why the Ultimate universe was so successful and then why it wasn’t. I think they need to get some fresh blood in those executive chairs, cats with actual vision and a very poignant, very innovative story to tell because what I’m getting now feels a lot like that Extreme nonsense I got right before everything fell apart. The art might be better but the narratives are not. What I got with Secret Wars II feels a lot like what I got with the Clone Saga or Identity Crisis and them sh*ts were terrible. Legacy has a ton of potential but if it’s just a way to bring actual Jean Grey back from the dead, you can keep that sh*t. Give me back Wolverine. Let Laura and her father have some adventures. It feels like a crime Gabby hasn’t met her grandpa. Give me back Pete and MJ. You’ve already taken his daughter, first love, and uncle. At least let the guy have his wife. Give me back Doom and Valeria. The potential those two have together is profound and vastly untapped. Look, I get it. I’m pining for a bygone era.

Times are changing and this SJW sh*t is becoming the status quo. If you want to exist in this society, you have to embrace that sh*t to an extent. All I’m saying is don’t be so heavy handed with it. Have some tact. Use a deft touch. It‘s not difficult to be inclusive without being obnoxious about it or ruining entire character histories for a year or two of upped sales. Marvel is actually hemorrhaging money at the moment because of this ridiculous turn in narrative. Marvel Studios is essentially holding them up. Those motherf*ckers are printing money for Disney. Actually, Marvel Comics only has to look as far as their cinema counterpart to get the blueprint. Spider-Man: Homecoming is how you traverse this new age of social wokeness. Those cats wrote an outstanding story, full of diversity and social commentary, and grounded it in a world that felt real. And they did it with excellent characterization and a true reverence for the source material. Homecoming felt more like Spider-Man than any of the other Spider-Man films and it kept true to the current social current effortlessly.

That’s how you write Spider-Man. That’s how you write, period. That’s how Marvel Comics needs to write if they want to salvage their company. Hell, Logan is another great example. So are both of the Guardian films. Pretty sure Ragnarok is another but that remains to be seen. It’s wild to me that films, created for the sole purpose of getting scratch, cobbled together by a committee of producers and executives, can create something that has more depth, scope, vision, and soul than the motherf*ckers entrusted with the goddamn source material, themselves. That says so much about the people in charge of my beloved Marvel comics and what it says depresses the f*ck out of me.

[warlordgab]

Analysis: Romance in One Piece

Note: I’ll be posting condensed versions of this analysis in other sites

A) Relevance of plot and characterization AKA Unbiased Readers Vs. Delusional Shippers “Who lives on illusions dies from disappointment” – An old Puerto Rican saying Most of us know One Piece is a very popular manga. Its high quality and popularity depend on several factors, among them we could name memorable and likable characters along a deep, compelling, fun and action-packed story. The One Piece many know and love wouldn’t exist without the balance between these factors When talking to at least 3 different One Piece fans, each of them non-shippers who analyzed the manga they all enjoy, I found interesting and pretty sound perspectives of the One Piece story and its nature. All of them value characters, story, development, consistency, and logic; something I can totally relate to But I also found a pattern; these 3 guys shared one single outlook on the very same subject: shipping. Regardless of their expectations, all of them expressed distaste for shippers’ general mindset and “odd” viewpoint: One of them called shippers out for ignoring characterization and very clear and direct statements made in the manga. His attention was centered on a Luffy pairing and how it contradicts his own character. Oda once explained that he writes Luffy as someone pretty straightforward when it comes to expressing his thoughts and feelings, and this non-shipper said with brutal honesty that for the discussed ship to happen we would need to disregard and/or discard the very core of Luffy’s character. Meaning Oda would need to stop being consistent and faithful to his own story and characters The next one explained how shippers tend to turn a characters’ relationship into a sappy teen love fantasy that doesn’t match One Piece at all. His analysis also exposed how integrating this kind of underdeveloped “love” into the story would severely damage One Piece originality, ruin the series and needless to say destroy the likable dynamics between several characters as well as their own development. This fantasy, this so-called “love”, is what the vast majority of shippers support and defend. The same kind of “love” most non-shippers, fans, and critics dread The third non-shipper gave me a more detailed explanation: this is even more rough than the other two as he describes that the common shipper mentality of “he/she likes her/him so they should be together” can “only be likened to that of elementary schoolers”. And how shippers take every little meaningless detail and blow it out of proportion with no regard for context, legitimate bonding or the canon story! But we can’t put all the blame on shippers. Many manga authors seem to have no idea how to write a character-driven series or complex character relationships. In fact, mainstream shonen writers have their fair share of guilt into promoting this common shipping mindset by being notoriously bad at writing romance. Which results in underveloped premises that leave your average fan skeptical, and your average critic disappointed at a poor portrayal of emotional bonding and a severe lack of cohesive narrative in the "romantic love" department This is the reason why many fans, critics and non-shippers hold the shippers’ perspective in a very low regard. Just like the third non-shipper states: “The blushing, longing stares, corny ass lines etc. That kind of poorly portrayed romance is the kind of thing dreaded by the average fan because it reduces the quality of One Piece to the level of such poorly written series” So an author needs to build a relationship the same way one person would construct a building: stablishing a strong foundation on companionship, respect, trust, signifcant moments, and emotional bonding. All of this must come before reaching the status of “romantic interest". In relation to this subject, there’s a trope called “First Girl Wins”, a portion of its description truly fits this criteria: “From a [extradiegetic] point of view, the Law of Conservation of Detail suggests introducing the Love Interest early. An early introduction allows you to get the audience interested in her and rooting for her, gives you space for Character Development, and gives her relationship with her (eventual) partner the most time to develop organically. And with all that said, it's such a common device that in all likelihood, it sometimes gets played for its own sake.” – tvtropes.org, 2017 Notice this isn’t a cliché, this is a literary device to enhance the story. Pairing up two characters without meaningful moments, emotional build-up and development, is the equivalent to lazy writing. Having such elements firmly stablished for two characters and then deciding to go for a different “route”, pretty much wasting a well-developed relationship for the sake of a “weaker” premise, would be the equivalent to bad writing Is Oda, the man who’s willing to die for One Piece, a lazy writer? Of course not! Is he, a man who planned the ending years ago and is still sticking to said ending, a bad writer? Being number 1 in Japan and having such a loyal fanbase all around the world prove he’s not! Do shippers want Oda to be a lazy/bad writer? Facts already answered this question as many (although not all) fans value their own fantasies and delusions over the manga canon and/or the author’s take on the characters and their relationships Many (but not all) shippers now have a war. Not only against rival ships but mainly against One Piece story and consistent development. Yet as the old saying goes, those who live on delusions will have to eventually face reality and disappointment, because Oda is not a lazy/bad writer like some people here would want him to be

B) Romance Dawn AKA The not so secret origins of One Piece “If we don't know where we are going, it can be helpful to know where we come from” – Jostein Gaarder When debating posible outcomes, fans rarely look back at the time when One Piecewas a still a work in progress. Taking a look at Romance Dawn V.1 and Romance Dawn V.2 helps us to see there are constants present in all versions of these Works that made it into what would later become the most popular manga in Japan But before discussing those constants I would like to clarify the meaning of the word: “Romance”. There are people who doesn’t really grasp the concept of “Romance” both One Piece and Oda work with. Luckily the first two non-shippers I meantioned shed some light on this subject: Romance: "A mysterious or fascinating quality or appeal, as of something adventurous, heroic, or strangely beautiful" "A long fictitious tale of heroes and extraordinary or mysterious events, usually set in a distant time or place" "A narrative in verse or prose, written in a vernacular language in the Middle Ages, dealing with strange and exciting adventures of chivalrous heroes" – thefreedictionary.com, 2016 "A prose narrative treating imaginary characters involved in events remote in time or place and usually heroic, adventurous, or mysterious" –  Merriam Webster, 2016 Romantic: "Marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized" "Having an inclination for romance: responsive to the appeal of what is idealized, heroic, or adventurous" –  Merriam Webster, 2016 These definitions match pretty well One Piece and Oda outlook on this concept. Even Oda lampshaped this by giving his own translation to the title: 冒険の夜明け (“Bōken no Yoake”, “Dawn of the Adventure”) So Oda’s “romance” covers a wide variety of themes: Adventure, heroism, mystery, virtue, idealism… we can find comedy and tragedy, happiness and sadness. And among the virtues and the idealism we find companionship and love. As the second non-shipper I mentioned explained One Piece is pretty much like an “Adventure novel”, which is why we’ll find in One Piece many of the tropes commonly used in those books Among those tropes, we find a couple of constants in all versions of “Romance Dawn”

The golden-hearted protagonist and the “First Girl” who doubles as a female lead. Think about this "what if" scenario: If things would’ve played different back then and One Piece never went beyond “Romance Dawn V.1”. If that story were to be elaborated futher, which two characters would had shared the most moments to become endgame? The answer is pretty simple: The golden-hearted protagonist and the female lead! But when debating, the weight of the argument depends on edvidence so we need to rely on what we can confirm. And we confirm this, what’s the constant in Luffy’s story in all versions of Romance Dawn? a Nami-like character

This becomes even more interesting when we discover that at an interview at “Manga no Chikara” and others, Nami was supposed to be the first one to join Luffy but her debut was postponed by Oda’s editor at that time. Edvidence of this being a last minute decision remains on the first color cover:

Yet as the second non-shipper noted: “her role as secondary protagonist was not altered” for “Nami shares with Luffy the largest character development in the entire series”. And as explained here we already know how the trope goes when someone seeks to write a natural growth for an emotional connection between two characters 

In fact, the relevance of Nami to Luffy’s story is implied in what Oda himself said about Strong World: “I really wanted to make a ‘hero saves the heroine’ story (ヒロインを助けるヒーローを描きたい the japanese sentence). [....]. You might think otherwise, but I had no intention of bringing in someone new to fill that [heroine] role. So when I had to think about whom to use for it amongst the straw hats of course that meant Nami”

In Oda’s mind, Luffy is the hero and Nami is the heorine! We can tell that the hero and the heroine are meant to be the driving forces of the series, and therefore putting them together makes the most sense from a storytelling perspective

C) LuffyxNami AKA LuNa/LuNami “Logical consequences are the scarecrows of fools and the beacons of wise men” – Thomas Huxley

Many shippers tend to ignore and disregard the importance of staying faithful to the canon story, and the author’s take on the characters and their relationships

To makes matters worst some of them even deem as illogical any argument solidly based on these factors. While considering stuff like lines, frogs, sweat, fire, nonexistent sexual tension, assumption of sexuality, and even assumptions of pregnancy, as legitimate proofs of a plausible outcome! In fact they even value comparisons to other series with a different tone, themes, and characters over anything that the One Piece author conveys through his work There’s even people who goes as far as editing the wiki as if that would change the story to match their preferred pairing! But in order to reach a conclusion that remains true to One Piece and its nature we have to rely on the very same foundation that was already described several times: mutual trust/respect, faith on one another, significant moments, stress in their relationship and emotional development. If the story doesn’t let you build your premises on these elements, the conclusion you’ll reach will obviously be flawed and stray away from what One Piece really is So here I’m not only defending the premise I strongly support; I’m defending the very same story and build-up that contributes to this bond’s natural growth: As explained before there’s nothing explicitly romantic about major interactions. But given we’re dealing with a good and dilligent writer, what we’ll get to see is how big to small moments stablish an emotional connection between two characters, and how that becomes the base for a even greater growth First we have the themes of trust and faith: At first Nami doesn’t trust Luffy very much, out of her clear distate for pirates, until witnessing how far was Luffy willing to go to selflessly help others. Even then Nami treated their relationship as a mere business and later betrayed the crew Still Luffy always trusted Nami to the point of putting blind faith in her. Even when given reasons not to do so. One remarkable example is when Luffy was informed by someone trustworthy (Johnny) that Nami apparently “killed” to Usopp, and Luffy not only kept holding onto his blind faith in Nami but he also threatened Johnny for saying such things about her

This becomes something remarkable when we take into consideration that Zoro quickly gave up on Nami and later tried to attack her without even a second thought! While Usopp just wanted  the Merry back…

And it would later become even more impressive in the Whiskey Peak Arc when Luffy came to doubt Zoro because of the words of wounded man he didn't even know, and even doubted Robin during Water 7 until Nami told him and the crew the truth behind Robin's desertion:

But what else makes this situation with Nami any different from others we see in the manga? Some might point to the saga where rescuing Robin was the primary objective; but in Robin's case Luffy knew her life was in danger for Robin was planning to die for the crew, and he got the resolve to save her only after learning the truth. Others might point to the current arc, but he saw right through Sanji's act and got desperate to rescue him only after hearing his life is in danger. Here, Nami’s life wasn't in danger as far as Luffy knew. And he constantly try to reach out to her despite her harsh attitude and the fact he knew next to nothing about her past and her current circumstances. It was only when he saw her cry he got enough motivation to beat Arlong, and it was only when he got a small glimpse of what she went through that he lost it! How does Nami respond to this? Initially she wanted to get Luffy out of her villaje and her life. While Nami indeed grew fond of Luffy and the others she wasn't willing to bond with any of them; she held on her distrust of others. But that changed when she finally hitted her lowest point, when she finally lost all hope. Then it comes Nami's first major development as character: she realized she needed to rely on someone else, she realized Luffy was her only hope Nami decided to rely on him. The following scene marks the first time of many when Nami relied on Luffy to a emotional level. And the first of two times when Luffy entrusted his treasure to her in a touching gesture to provide comfort and hope:

From the very beginning the emotional build-up between Luffy and Nami was a key factor for one of the most meaningful and memorable moments in One Piece. The moment when Luffy becomes Nami’s “emotional anchor” The effect Luffy had on her character was also quite powerful as we could see during the 2nd pass of the hat: back then at Skypiea arc Nami could still panic at dreadful situations: 

But as soon as Luffy gave her his treasure, the panic stopped and when he was later removed from the battle field, Nami was capable of drawing enough courage from Luffy to face the big bad from that arc:

Not to mention Luffy’s final move against Enel was combined effort of the two as well as an impressive display of mutual trust/faith We can continue to appreciate their development even futher as the story goes on. As someone already pointed out, Nami during Water 7 displayed an impressive resolve and determination, but as soon as she got the chance to explain Luffy their situation she opened her heart to express how she felt, her anguish and her distress. When Luffy reassures her that he will save Robin, she doesn’t cry anymore until she reunites with Robin Their bonding is even futher explored in the only One Piece movie fully written by Oda: Strong World. As this is the author’s take on their relationship is still a valid argument to support Luffy/Nami development: We already considered how impressive Luffy’s blind faith in Nami can be. So after listening to most of Nami's recorded message, Luffy gets enraged! Why?

Well, after all that time Luffy relied on his navigator without ever doubting her. He was likely expecting all his trust and faith in Nami to be reciprocated Turns out Nami does return that feeling! And why can we say that? Remember the movie's ending: Nami finds out everyone in the crew got her hidden "save me" at the end of her message... everyone but Luffy. Then when Luffy is about to play the recorded proof of Nami's unwavering faith in him, what does she do? She tries to get rid of the "edvidence" out of embarrassment 

It’s easy to see then why Nami seeked out Luffy for hope and comfort during Zou. And how she did something similar to what happened in Water 7: she opened up to Luffy

I said it before, since Luffy is Nami’s “emotional anchor”, it makes sense for her to keep strengthening her bond with Luffy. And given Luffy needs a guide to new adventures and someone “mature” enough to sometimes keep him in line, it makes sense for Luffy to grow closer to Nami She once summed it up pretty well: "He always talks big, but when it comes down to it, he knows nothing about the sea! He's severely lacking in the 'sense of danger' area! And he always overdoes it...if I left him alone, he'd die. And he's stupid, so I have to take care of him. That's why I'm gonna help him!" - Nami, chapter 596 Still, none of this is explicitly romantic in the traditional sense of the word. But just like someone who’s constructing a building, we start dealing with the foundations to then proceed to make a solid structure: a well-written relationship that enhances the story As someone once reviewed, Luffy and Nami dynamic doesn’t need to change for them to become endgame for they already have anything they need to finish that “building”. And that’s what’s being a potent pairing means: having everything to your favor for further development and growth. Luffy and Nami definitively have the major moments and the emotional bonding while remaining consistent to the One Piece canon to be considered a Potent Pairing

Bonus:

It's interesting we find other interaction that proves how comfortable is Nami around Luffy: 

She doesn't mind having Luffy around her, what she really minds is Luffy wanting to go to dangerous places But why is this relevant? In Thriller Bark we had a clear showing of how she reacts to pervs trying to accomplish what Luffy did here. She electrocutes them. We can confirm she haven't changed in this regard because at the end of Fishman Island arc Nami electrocutes a perv for trying to peek at her while she was taking a bath Another interesting detail about Nami's attitude toward Luffy is a change we see in WCI. Of course, we have the remarkable faith and trust Nami puts on Luffy by even boasting how him being the future Pirate King ensures their victory over Cracker's ability.

But the real change is when Sanji brutalizes Luffy. Nami already stated she felt guilty for what happened when Sanji got taken. But when Sanji did his "little" number on Luffy her attitude changed, she not only begged him to stop but was also promising they'll leave if he did (Luffy clearly disagreed on that)

After seeing the way Sanji treated her captain, Nami did something the could seem pretty justified because of what happened: she slapped Sanji and then sarcastically played along Sanji's "royal" act. When she goes to Luffy and finds out her captain is not relenting on his effort to get Sanji back, she gives us this little gem:

The Japanese text for Nami's dialogue reads: "Luffy!! Why?! No matter what his reasons are, after he did all that to you…" The term she used here for the line in bold conveys the idea of severe mistreatment. She was obviously mad at the way Sanji attacked and badmouthed Luffy and his dream. Ironically Luffy is the one who shows far more emotion to the prospect of getting Sanji back than Nami, she kept displaying far more concern for Luffy as the chapters went on Nami is now showing, little by little, more of an emotional attachment to Luffy. Which makes a lot of sense given what we saw in their story

[pahrak-the-sinnoh-slizer]

That’s the tl;dr

Now that the English dub of Dragon Ball Super is getting into the Tournament of Power arc I can’t help but feel it’s only a matter of time before people renew their complaints about new characters Caulifla and Kale. These two are new Saiyans introduced to serve as opponents in said tournament, and are the first female Super Saiyans shown in the series main canon. (Prior there were a handful of games that offered female Saiyan player avatars who could achieve the form, but that’s it.) They quickly became somewhat divisive additions, and of course, many of those who despise them go around calling them Mary Sues. This is something that annoys me. Dragon Ball has never and will never be a literary masterpiece—there’s plenty of bad writing and I won’t try to tell you otherwise. And though I like these characters, I can see (and in some cases maybe even agree with) some of the issues people have with them. Criticism is healthy. But calling a character a Mary Sue isn’t criticism, it’s just dismissive, and always inconsistent. What one person considers a Mary Sue is different from what the next person considers a Mary Sue, and more than that, the same person can point out a “Mary Sue trait” in one character and totally ignore its presence in another. People rattling off reasons why Caulifla’s a Sue don’t seem to realize she actually has a lot in common with the main character, Goku, and saying that Kale is only ever written poorly when she has one of the most realistic character arcs in the franchise (unlike her predecessor Broly, who is now infamous for his stupidly petty motivations) just isn’t true. But okay, if we’re going to use reasons x, y, and z to define a character as a Mary Sue, do you know what Dragon Ball character fits the ever-changing mold surprisingly well? Future Trunks. Easily one of the most popular characters in the franchise, yes, but let’s review: -Showed up literally out of nowhere after the Frieza Saga -Immediately and effortlessly transforms into a Super Saiyan, mere chapters after the form had been introduced, and that was after immense build-up, thinking there could only be one (and that it was main character Goku), and seeing Goku go through a lot of anguish to achieve it -Kills Frieza, the biggest, baddest villain in the series at that point, who main character Goku took forever to beat, by either one-shotting him (in the manga) or toying with him in a curb-stomp battle (in the anime) -Then proceeds to effortlessly kill Frieza’s father, who was stated to be somewhere near Frieza’s level -Gets to spar with main character Goku for a bit -Reveals he is the son of Vegeta, another exceptionally popular character, and Bulma, a long-time staple who at this point has little interaction with and no visible interest in Vegeta -He came from the future, because only time travel makes that parentage work -In the future he was trained by the son of main character Goku -Said future is basically an apocalyptic wasteland -Later on he gets a unique transformation that makes him exceptionally more powerful (even if it does turn out to be functionally useless) -Gets temporarily killed in the final battle with Cell to spark very sudden character development in popular character Vegeta, and then is immediately revived -Gets an entire episode at the end of the Cell Saga dedicated to going back to the future and effortlessly defeating his timeline’s incarnation of the saga’s three major villains -Also he carries a sword he rarely uses in a series that typically doesn’t use weapons (swords are cool) Now if you were reading a fanfic and saw a character like that, what would you think? And that’s all just in Z: Trunks is made a main character in GT and Future Trunks is brought back in Super solely because of this character’s popularity, and that’s not even scratching the surface of how central he is to dedicated fanservice games like Xenoverse and Heroes. He’s so popular he can be shoehorned into anything and people rarely complain. He ticks so many boxes common on Mary Sue trait lists, and…nobody notices? How weird is that? And just to be a complete hypocrite: I also like Future Trunks. It’s almost like even a character with tons of “Mary Sue traits” can still be entertaining depending on how they’re handled, and that calling a character a Mary Sue means nothing other than “I don’t like this character and choose to blame the writer and insult anyone who thinks differently.” Imagine that. I still can’t really figure out why people are perfectly fine with Future Trunks but have such huge problems with Caulifla and Kale. Huh, though now that I think about, out of those three Trunks is the only one that’s a guy…nah, that couldn’t possibly be it, right?

[taohs]

Exactly! People who complain that there isn't ever any strong female characters has never watched or read the Black Lagoon series (which is just my opinion on this). These female characters are complex in so many humane and inhumane ways depending on your perspective of these characters. I mean... Yeah there are strong male characters too, but the female characters completely overshadow them in every way.

And that was why Rei Hiroe wrote his characters like that. Because to him, women are stronger than men. He mentioned it in an interview. I might have to try finding it for you, at least if I can still find that quote for you. I really thought his opinion about women was interesting too.

Without spoiling details! I will say this... You do learn more about a lot of the female characters next season. You'll mostly learn more about Balalaika's past during the entire season, you'll learn more about Eda (the blonde nun) who comes back next season - including her past, Shenhua (Taiwanese woman) comes back, along with so many other female characters too. You will find out about some of Revy's past, but that won't be until Roberta's Blood Trail ova.

The manga is much farther into the plot. A lot of backstories are now mentioned, actually the most recent chapters brings up Dutch's, but I haven't had the chance to read it yet. I'll have to find ways to read the manga online again. Hopefully they continue the anime adaption too.

I will say Balalaika does get much more ruthless. Which could be a good or bad thing, depending on what your perspective during the events of next season. But I won't say any more than that though.

And you finished the season in English?

What did you think of Eda, Yolanda and Shenhua? What about Chang and Leigharch? So many interesting characters to keep track of.

~~~

Well... Like I said before. I know it might not seem it. But I do respect everyone's preferences on which languages they prefer whenever any of them watch anime. For me personally, I'll only ever watch anime in English. So I will say that when Black Clover first came out many fans said the preferred the English over Japanese because Asta's actor did seem like obnoxious to them. And regardless of which language you'd watch the show in, whether you watch in English or Japanese, Asta's character does get less annoying at the series progressess.

- 💋

so true! it's not to say that the male cast are poorly written, because they aren't, but they don't hold a candle to the female casts. i think many authors mistaken "strong female characters" as women who can fight without any further depths to their character, but i don't see that issue here, especially with the female leads. i'm currently on episode 11 of season 2! i should be able to finish it by tomorrow and start the ovas, i really love it. i think i thoroughly enjoyed this one more since i get to see more of the women in action, even though some of the arcs were absolutely horrifying and insane (like the ones with the twins... that one left an impact on me.) i LOVED seeing more of balalaika, especially having a glimpse of the flashbacks when she was younger and in the middle of the soviet war. i think she made it up to the top 3 fictional women who terrifies me the most, but i love and admire her so much. also she is so attractive my god

yes i watched the anime in dubbed! it sounded natural and i appreciated the little details that they added, like balalaika's accent slipping when she's pissed off and the character's native languages added here and there. i did rewatch some episodes in subbed for comparison but i do think that both versions were great for them. the only episode where i switched to subbed was when rock had to translate between the russian and japanese. they didn't have subtitles for the japanese and i got confused after a while lol :')

i really like eda and her dynamic with revy, everytime they're on screen together i know things are going to go down. their frenemies relationship is also golden. at one point i got really concerned that one of the twins were going to kill her, and i'm so glad that they didn't. i hope i can see more of her! it was the same with shen hua too, i was really shocked when i thought she was going to die in her fight with eda. her, yolanda and chang are part of the "really badass characters that i want to know more about" but i don't think i've seen enough of them to have more thoughts 😭 leigharch was funny, but i dont think he added anything to the story

the only character that i don't feel too fondly about is rock. i liked him in the beginning, but not too much now that i'm nearing the end of the second season. i'm going to wait to finish everything before i say anything to see if things change though. what are your thoughts on him? and on the other characters you mentioned?

[smokeybrandreviews]

Disappointment

I love comics. I do. I’ve loved them since I was a small boy. I remember fondly, journeys to my local comic shop before it closed. I remember buying first editions of Aliens versus Predator, Alien: Earth War, The Killing Joke and those three issues of Amazing Spider-Man where Carnage debuted. That panel where Pete realizes Carnage left him a message in his own blood? Chilling. I remember the dour feeling I got when I first witnessed Miller’s bleak, almost nihilistic , take on Batman with his masterpiece, The Dark Knight returns. I remember the jubilation as I scanned the pages upon pages of graphic violence in McFarlane’s Spawn for the first time. The Violator fast became one of my all-time favorites Comic villains. I watched the comic bubble grow and grow until it burst and the fall of an entire industry toward the late 90s, early 00’s. I remember the cringe worthy, poorly written, maxi-events born distinctly from that ridiculous “extreme everything” epoch of the mid 90s. I was excited when the industry rebounded on the back of epic storytelling and art that was head and shoulders above what I had as a youth, in the late 00s, early 10s. Even now, I pick up any one of the Bat books DC is shilling and I am wildly impressed. Capullo’s run, in particular, has been a creative and narrative refreshment. I’m going to miss him when he’s gone. I love comics as much as I love film, anime, manga, and f*cking pancakes. My geek card is legit and punched, particularly for Marvel Comics.

I love a good Marvel book. Don’t get me wrong, I can dig a DC outing, I rather enjoyed Judas Contract and Death in the Family in particular, but Marvel always felt real to me. DC comics was escapism. They were Gods pretending to be human in my eyes, the ideal way to live. That made sense to me as I grew older because they were created in a time where escapism was needed. Most of the groundwork for DC was laid in the 30s. WWII was beginning to rear it’s ugly head and there was a necessity for the American populace to have a place to divert their attention to fantastic tales in order to distract from the horrific realities of the world.  Marvel was born in the sixties. They’re a product of one of the most socially tumultuous times in out history. Marvel heroes are people thrust into godhood. They have to learn how to be heroes because they are inherently flawed, they are inherently human. There are no Superman allegories here, no perfect specimens to light the way for humanity. Nah, their cast was a cast of assholes just like the rest of us, just trying to stay above water. Only they can shoot f*cking lasers from their eyes sometimes. While DC relegated their more socially experimental or controversial stories to the oblivion of Vertigo or Elseworlds, Marvel embraced them. Reed Richards became an emotionally distant asshole. Tony Stark became a functioning alcoholic. The allegorical comparison of Mutants being black people struggling for human rights during the civil unrest of the 60s was not lost on anyone with a brain. I loved that Marvel let their heroes be human, first. I loved that they made mistakes and that those mistakes had real consequences. I loved that I could look at a comic and see myself, in both demeanor and ethnicity. Spider-Man is my all time favorite comic character. I wrote about this before but I WAS Pete as a kid and I think that’s why he’s so endearing. He is the best of that Marvel lot and epitomizes the genius Stan, John, and Jack had when they crafted the most endearing literary universe in the last century.

The fact that i love Marvel so much is why I am hurting with the direction they have decided to take with all of this SJW nonsense. If you know Marvel’s history, if you’ve read their books, then you know they were already one of the most progressive companies out there. I mean, they’re genesis was one steeped in social awakening! Hell, I’m not even mad Marvel is shoehorning all of this PC propaganda in their books or killing off characters I love (**cough**Wolverine**cough**), or subsisting on year-long maxi events or allowing Slott to ruin Spider-Man! Actually, I am livid about that Slott nonsense but I’ll get to that. I’m not mad Thor is a woman. She is a great character and a breath of fresh air in a narrative that was growing a bit stale for me. Jane Foster being Thor gave way to The Unworthy Thor story line, which is probably the best written Thor arc I have ever read. I’m not mad Mockingbird is a feminist. How can she not be? I rather enjoyed Spider-Island and that little tease at the end with MJ and Pete? That made my heart flutter. Speaking of, my favorite book at the moment is Renew Your Vows. Goddamn do I miss Pete and MJ and that book just reminds me of everything that could have been. F*cking Slott, man… I ADORE the direction they’ve taken Talon (X-23 and the current Wolverine for those of you who don’t know Laura’s actual X-Men code name) and i even like a little of that whole Cyclops fiasco fallout. A little bit, not all of it. There are a few things SJW Marvel has done well, their increasing diversity is a big one, but it feels like those good things pale in comparison to the issue, I think, that is crippling Marvel; The writing is mostly sh*t now.

SJW Marvel feels like they’ve traded actual, inspired, storytelling for “Woke” gimmicks and a pandered slathering of social commentary. There are too many soap boxes now and not enough passion in crafting a compelling narrative. Dan Slott (I told you I’d get to this asshat) is a perfect example of this bullsh*t. Bro has taken Spider-Man and basically turned him into Tony Stark. He’s erased, literally erased by having Pete and MJ cut a deal with the goddamn devil, their marriage and all of the history they’ve had together. In the process, he’s ruined Mary Jane as a character and that sucks. Well, Joe Queseda did but Slott has perpetuated this bullsh*t and treated SPider-Man as little more than a goddamn fan fiction. His run on Amazing has regressed Spider-man back to those harrowing and swinging days of being a College Freshman but with a multi-billion dollar tech company. For a second there, I even think Peter was an international spy or some sh*t. It’s wild nonsense that is just north of power fantasy and it’s stupid! What happened to the great tales we got like Kraven’s Last Hunt or Torment? Why do I have to sit through The Superior Spider-Man?? F*ck, then there’s THAT fuckery. Doctor Octopus is literally a Spider-man clone now? He is, and I am not sh*tting you right now, living in a perfect clone of Peter Parker, powers and all. But he leads Hydra or some sh*t. We’ll circle back around to that in a second, let me tell you, but first, this whole Fantastic Four bullsh*t. I liked Secret Wars II. I thought it was interesting that Doom finally got his wish and became a f*cking god. I thought his characterization in that whole event was brilliant. What I didn’t like? Marvel using that event to essentially erase the Fantastic Four. I liked Sue. She was a great character and had grown considerably over the years. All of that, gone. More to the point, I loved Valeria and her interactions with Doom. Those few books where she actually plays Robin and conscious to Doom’s villainy are spectacular. Marvel essentially nixing that relationship just to scorn Fox feels a lot like Slott nixing MJ because he thinks Peter should be a hoe. It’s all stupid and disheartening. But the fact that these “creators”, cats that have been entrusted with character beloved by generations of people, are simply doing sh*t they want on a whim because, and i’ve seen said creators post sh*t like his on the Facebooks, fans don’t know what they want. They have to tell us what we want. F*ck you, bro.

Both circumstances are f*cking ridiculous and do nothing but leave the characters and company less. And it’s not just these instances. Riri Williams has a ton of potential but sucks and everyone hates her because she’s written as a smart-mouthed b*tch. America Chaves is another missed opportunity! A latina lesbian who ha the power to Super Boy-Prime punch her way around the galaxy? Sign me up! Wait, never mind, because the people writing your book are lousy. And, oh my god, what did they do to my Carol Danvers?? I LOVE Ms. Marvel. Her stint in Might Avengers and Heroic Age solidified that she could be the premiere female Marvel hero. In my eyes, Carol is their Wonder Woman and, for a time, she was on her way. Now? After all of these SJW brandings and agendas have made her power absorbing Hitler, basically, not so much. They’ve destroyed her character, assassinating any real progress she’s made as a person, in an effort to portray her as a feminist icon. She was already one of those! She was becoming more than that. She was transcending that whole Rule 63 action of her origins. She was becoming real. Now, she’s a f*cking cartoon, worse off than when she flew around in the stomach bearing bikini, pretending to be Mar-Vell’s side kick or lover or whatever.

Carol Danvers doesn’t have to be the new version of Captain Hydra And then there’s THAT debacle. Secret Empire was a goddamn cash grab and the biggest farce I have read out of Marvel since Onslaught. At least Onslaught had a dope antagonist. A villain that was connected to the lore and true it’s roots. Cap is a Nazi? Really? Get the f*ck out of here with that nonsense. And the ending? Just a bit too fan service-y for me. There was a living deus ex machina. Seriously, ClassicCap was pulled out of nowhere, by the power of a sentient cosmic cube, to punch out HydraCap. The allegory is just so heavy handed, it’s borderline insulting to my intelligence as the reader. I cannot stress how ridiculous this entire situation was, this entire stupid goddamn “event”. Also, the f*ck was up with Dead No More? Didn’t we learn our lesson about clones with Ben Reily and that whole clusterf*ck of a Clone Saga? Why are we even doing this nonsense again?? SO not only are your new arcs stupid, but you are rehashing old, failed, ones as well? Really Marvel?

It’s not just the writing though, either. The art for most of these books is atrocious. Anything Olivier Coipel or Esad Ribic touch with a pencil is god’s work and Kris Anka is one of my favorites but the redesigns of some of those classic outfits are terrible. I mean, Spider-Man’s tech suit is ass. Riri’s armor looks like a knock off Rescue mod, and Foster’s Thor comes across as a hodge-podge of nonsense. That classic Ms. Marvel Leotard is my favorite of her outfits but I get the upgrade to her current garb. Running around in stilettos with your ass out doesn’t really bode well for gaining confidence that you can protect the general public from giant, interdimensional, crab monsters or rouge government assassi-bots. What i don’t like is how masculine Carol’s drawn now. Chick isn’t She-Hulk, yo. Why you got her so yoked? Carol Danvers was a vision of beauty, legit model caliber. She’s always been fit, yeah, but there was still a softness to her. Just a touch, I’d say. Now, chick is a rock of f*cking angst granite. Not only is she poorly written but her overall design is sh*t! It’s like, goddamn Marvel! You want to push Ms. Marvel to the front, give me something to work with. How am I supposed to root for an ugly, b*tchy, incompetent who constantly makes decisions that get people killed? How is THIS “Captain Marvel” a leader?? Bro, speaking of “leaders”, Sam Wilson Cap is ridiculous. That sh*t feels like blatant tokenism, particularly when there have already been several black captain Americas in Marvel history. There was this whole Tuskegee allusion about it. One of the grand kids was in the Young Avengers, for chrissake!

I don’t know, man. I think Marvel needs to take a step back and figure why things were so good back in the day. Why the Ultimate universe was so successful and then why it wasn’t. I think they need to get some fresh blood in those executive chairs, cats with actual vision and a very poignant, very innovative, story to tell because what I’m getting now feels a lot like that Extreme nonsense I got right before everything fell apart. The art might be better but the narratives are not. What I got with Secret Wars II feels a lot like what I got with the Clone Saga or Identity Crisis or Future Imperfect and them sh*ts were terrible. Legacy has a ton of potential but if it’s just a way to bring actual Jean Grey back from the dead, you can keep that sh*t. Give me back Wolverine. Let Laura and her father have some adventures. It feels like a crime Gabby hasn’t met her grandpa. Give me back Pete and MJ. You’ve already taken his daughter, first love, and uncle. At least let the guy have his wife. Give me back Doom and Valeria. The potential those two have together is profound and vastly untapped. Look, I get it. I’m pining for a bygone era but what an era it was!

Times are changing and this SJW sh*t is becoming the status quo. If you want to exist in this society, you have to embrace that sh*t to an extent. All I’m saying is don’t be so heavy handed with it. Have some tact. Use a deft touch. It‘s not difficult to be inclusive without being obnoxious about it or ruining entire character histories for a year or two of upped sales. Marvel Comics is actually hemorrhaging money at the moment because of this ridiculous turn in narrative. Marvel Studios is essentially holding them up. Those motherf*ckers are printing money for Disney. Actually, Marvel Comics only has to look as far as their cinema counterpart to get the blueprint. Spider-Man: Homecoming is how you traverse this new age of social wokeness. Those cats wrote an outstanding story, full of diversity and social commentary, and grounded it in a world that felt real. And they did it with excellent characterization as well as a true reverence for the source material. Homecoming felt more like Spider-Man than any of the other Spider-Man films and it kept true to the modern social current effortlessly.

That’s how you write Spider-Man. That’s how you write, period. That’s how Marvel Comics needs to write if they want to salvage their company. Hell, Logan is another great example. So are both of the Guardian films. Pretty sure Ragnorok is another and Black Panther was all about that sh*t. It’s wild to me that films, created for the sole purpose of getting scratch, cobbled together by a committee of producers and executives, can create something that has more depth, scope, vision, and soul than the motherf*ckers entrusted with the legacy of goddamn source material, themselves. That says so much about the people in charge of my beloved Marvel comics and what it says depresses the f*ck out of me.