#i know she has that whole repressed thing going on which was kinda fundamental to the whole thing with yaz but like

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

they fucking missed an opportunity to have 13 come out as gay by the tardis didnt they

[waters-and-the-wilde]

tags by @kyliebyelie

YEAH IT'S ALSO ABOUT THE HOPE

HI UR SO RIGHT AND IM GONNA PIGGYBACK OFF THIS

honestly Buddy's line about his enduring moral core just keeps coming back and grabbing me by the throat because it's like that's IT that's HIM the fact that every time it's about that reckless and unflinching integrity without hesitation, and both that and the hope are sorta twin facets of each other. like fundamentally. he's still manages to be someone who wants to trust others and to be trusted and is still capable of those things and still chooses them even when his experiences could have fucked that over completely.

'it is always incredibly stupid of me, but for all the pains it's caused, it's also brought my greatest joys' like!!!! HE'S FULL OF LOVE IN A BIG MEAN WORLD AND HE'S BEING SO BRAVE ABOUT IT

probably wasn't all that controversial to begin with considering how much this has gotten around by now, it just kinda seemed like once the whole Betrayev speculation thing cooled off, there was a lot of the whole 'pathetic wet disaster king of emotional repression' thing going around. which i get wasn't coming out of nowhere, but it seemed like a bit much for a narrative going 'okay have some Hidden Depths, your cool competent suave master thief Has Anxiety and is being Put Into Situations where his usual coping mechanisms are backfiring on him. of course he doesn't Have It All Together because Literally Nobody Does, not even the Coolest Person You Know (Buddy Aurinko) has It All Together. also hey did you like how we made him look suspicious so we could hit you with the way his overdeveloped sense of integrity got him into this mess? how was that, huh?'

and The Thing about him for me is like. Slip's line about how a person can't just tell you who they are because there's too much to string together into something tidy. and that was what made the 'emotionally repressed disaster hiding under a cultivated mask' take feel unsatisfying. bc both those facets of him are a bit true but not enough to actually sum him up, and are ultimately outweighed by the fact that his capacity for love and hope and trust and the courage to try for those things are literally irrepressible

also it's 2 in the goddamn morning but i'm gnawing on another corner of this wall and i think it's pretty well illustrated by the juxtaposition to Diamond, bc of the part where she talks about thinking it through and weighing out the consequences. like. she frames her perspective of her choices in that situation as realizing that she and Juno were getting caught up in a capital-R Romantic fantasy about Truth and Justice that wasn't going to hold up, and clocked the implications that it would have for their lives, and wasn't prepared to see it through. in its own context it was a measured decision made by a generally smart, thoughtful, capable person who also had ideals she wanted to live up to, made in a pause away from the action. and it was the kind of ultimately self-serving rationalization that perfectly hinged emotionally stable people make all the time to preserve their situation. (also while i'm here and we're talking about hope, there's an element of cynicism to it, of saying 'this won't really matter, so I might as well not.') it's understandable which is also what makes it easy to justify and reinforce (and god knows if you're an overcautious overthinker it's a tough thing to unfuck, too, especially when it can be the right call in its own time and place). in the narrative context I think it's the flawed human commonality of it that shows the opposite choice admirable and a precious quality in someone else, that sets up what we like about Juno and Nureyev and what they like about each other

it's close to being just a Doing The Right Thing Is Hard kind of moral but i feel like it's more Doing The Right Thing Can Make You Look Kinda Batshit To Outsiders bc the consequences are dire whether you fully understand the implications of them or not (like the whole thing with Juno eating the pill. yeah getting into that situation Was Dumb but like. what the hell else was he going to do once he was in it.)

and also I love the fact that this show has a go at the various forms of getting caught up in the fantasy of Doing The Right Thing but doesn't let that negate the inherent power of Doing What You Can In The Moment, Not Always Wisely But With Resolution And Commitment

anyway my longstanding and probably most controversial peter nureyev opinion is that he is actually pretty well-adjusted and emotionally mature (like not just Despite The Horrors but certainly all the more impressive considering, you know, The Horrors) and in light of the finale i am revising that to holy shit he's been running on hope and dedication and gay theatrics for twenty years he can have a fuckign messy room if he wants it's a goddamn miracle he's made it this far

[katsidhe]

7.02 final thoughts? (Idk if this one has been requested yet)

7.02 Final Thoughts

*rubs hands* Ah, yes, the episode that got me into SPN. I could talk forever about season 7.��

Fun drinking game: take a shot every time someone makes a different colorful idiom about Sam being insane. Hint: you’ll die, because I counted 25.

(I WONDER WHY Sam didn’t want to tell Bobby or Dean about his active symptoms of psychosis. Truly, a mystery for the ages.)

Even setting Hallucifer aside, this episode highlights so many of the things I high-key LOVE about season 7: the erosion of Sam and Dean’s support network (as tenuous as that already was)—take away Bobby’s house, take away angelic healing, take away the Impala, make them vulnerable and alone and crumbling under the weight of the trauma they’ve accumulated. The broken leg, Sam’s head injury and seizure in the ambulance? Strapped down, badly injured, the fates of their friends uncertain, headed into the belly of the beast? ICONIC. Over the top. Amazing.

It’s a similar kinda thing to Jody’s predicament—sure, she’s capable enough ordinarily, but if you give her surgery and drug her and leave her alone in a hospital with a liver-eating monster on the prowl, the stakes look a lot different, don’t they? I’ve seen this episode approximately one gazillion times but every time I get tense for her.

Quick thoughts on the Leviathans, which have a reputation as an underwhelming SPN villain. Perhaps because of how unsubtle and half-baked they are as metaphor for corporate greed/capitalistic consumption, perhaps because of how their promise of truly terrifying Old Ones, Cthulu-esque devourers, never quite came true (except for a bit in 7.01 and 7.02, yikes!). But honestly I’ve always liked them—I like how their organization and assimilation of knowledge drives the Winchesters deeper underground than even the Apocalypse did; I like how they made the Winchesters’ entire world into something mundanely unsafe and miserable; I like how they showcase the horror of a enemy composed of lockstep drones, the way that Heaven (and Hell, sometimes) tries to be, but never truly manages; I like Dick Roman’s gleeful ravenousness; I like their spooky mouths; hell, I even like the Dick jokes. 

Bobby’s solicitousness towards Dean, and how awkwardly he talks to Sam a little later in the episode, is very emblematic of how bone-deep uncomfortable he is around an honest-to-God mental illness, and, well, around Sam’s issues in general. Which doesn’t make him a bad person, or unsupportive, necessarily. But it’s very evident that he’s got no clue what to say to Sam or how to handle him, that he’s leagues more comfortable dealing with Dean’s problems (as has often been the case regardless of Sam’s mental health).

A related, but separate point: the lengths the show goes to to emphasize “look, Dean’s not okay,” while Sam’s in the middle of a psychotic break… It baffles me a little every time I see this episode, when Bobby walks away from Sam all “yyyyeah I gotta go do some work” and then is immediately all “ok but Dean, how are YOU feeling?” It’d be one thing if Dean weren’t emotionally demonstrative, and if Sam were—if Sam, at this point in the episode, was so obviously struggling to such a painful degree that Bobby wants to make sure Dean’s not overlooking his own reactions. But that’s not really the case. Apart from some flinching, Sam’s been very matter-of-fact about the whole thing so far.

This is our first deep-dive into Sam post-Cage, a full season about he returned. And I love it to pieces, you guys. I love how these inescapable, soul-deep consequences are the inevitable answer to the moral of Sam’s story, where he interred himself with his worst nightmare, forever.

Dean after Hell is clawing for moral high ground. Dean focuses on this bleak kind of virtue, this idea of martyrdom and righteous struggle that eventually unspools and reveals itself to be fundamentally unmoored. He needs some kind of redemption for himself after what he was forced to do in Hell; he needs to own his destiny, and he needs that destiny to be meaningful and good, and he channels his violence outward in that cause.  

Sam does not take any kind of high ground. He hurts... himself. He gnaws inward. No illusions about how “messed up” he is—he sidelines himself before Dean or Bobby can say a single word; he figures he needs to be on top of it, needs to get out ahead of the danger he could represent and reassure his family that he knows he’s a hazard. Sam has learned to repress and downplay and hide his traumas and his freakishness both to avoid feeling stigmatized and to avoid being a burden on the people he loves, especially on his brother. So when Dean reacts with fear (understandable) and anger (less so), Sam takes it in stride.

Hallucifer is probably my favorite thing this show has ever done. I could probably write another thousand words on Hallucifer alone—on how Sam’s using this face for coping, for compartmentalizing; both to hurt himself and to keep himself company, to sort through his pain and arrive at a place where it’s at all tenable for him to exist. 

Sam’s skepticism about professional mental health treatment—his idea that this is a problem he can handle himself, that a doctor would "just stuff [him] full of pills”—is clearly one born of the family mold. This is his dismissive response to Hallucifer!Dean’s accusation that Sam won’t be able to cut it on his own. This denial, this idea that Sam knows he needs to get a handle on this, and therefore that he MUST do it himself, make a science of it, is fascinating. 

On the subject of denial: Hallucifer poses a simple question to Sam: are you sure you got out? And Sam’s NOT sure. Faith that he’s free is yet another maybe-lie that Sam must tell himself with maniacal intensity this season, for the sake of his own sanity, to avoid the voice in his head telling him to shoot himself. 

That Scene in the warehouse. Dean’s advice to Sam is to trust in Dean as the cornerstone of his reality. Asks him to build his whole world on his trust in Dean. What choice does Sam have? Who else can Sam rely on? What else can he do? There is no one else, nothing else. There’s only Dean, or Lucifer. It’s a dichotomy. It’s so CHILLING.

Especially in the context of what we know comes next—7.03, where Dean lies to Sam’s face, murders Amy, and uses Sam’s ~insanity~ to defuse Sam’s (justified) anger. And then, season 8, and 9, and 10, and, y’know what, the entire show. 

Sam drives his thumb into his bleeding hand, and it’s SPN in a nutshell—forever choosing the claustrophobia of the path of slightly less resistance, forever clinging to the misery of a life that’s only just this side of bearable, burying yourself in the toxic fallout because the alternative is unimaginably nightmarish—using the trappings of free will, of defiance, to choose to claw holes in yourself so that someone else won’t. There is no escape.

Dean’s threat of murder-suicide on the phone is so clearly meant to be sympathetic. And yes, on a certain level it absolutely is; and then on another level, it’s, y’know, MURDER-suicide, where Dean’s taking explicit responsibility for and ownership of Sam’s life, even though Sam’s pretty clearly lucid. Dean’s assuming as a matter of course his ability and right to make that decision for Sam. How Dean views and deals with Sam’s instability in season 7 lays major groundwork for Dean’s willingness to let in Gadreel in 9.01.

[fishoutofcamelot]

I'd like to preface this by saying that I love your blog and all the analysis that you've done on various characters, scenes and ships. You are one of my online heroes. I'm not sure if you're still doing the ship asks, but if you are, what are your thoughts on frelin?

Dude tysm! I’m not sure ‘online hero’ is a great way to describe someone who once made a post comparing dragonlords to furries, but I’ll take the compliment nonetheless!! Your kind words have given me enough dopamine to last until my next paycheck <3

Freylin is a decent ship - conceptually. They're two kindred spirits who found solace and intimacy with each other, drawn together by their mutual sense of otherness (possessing magic). However, I think Freylin does fall into some obvious trappings of Insta-Love, Heteronormativity, and Not Giving Female Love Interests Any Discernible Personality Traits.

For some people, that's not a problem. They like watching Merlin and Freya be cute and sappy with each other, and I'll agree that it was a treat to see such a fun side of Merlin. If that's the kinda ship you like, then great! Ship away. But personally, Freylin makes me feel bad for Freya. 

Not because of the death thing - lord knows I've done far worse to beloved characters without even a hint of remorse. But I feel bad for her because of her role in the ship. As mentioned above, her main purpose in the narrative and in Merlin's life is to give him some angst, then come back later in season 3 to give him some helpful advice as a sort of Freya Ex Machina. Her personality has no depth beyond what was necessary for the story. And even in fanon interpretations of her, she's essentially just a more shy/introverted carbon-copy of Gwen. 

And, okay, as a writer I can admit that there are some characters who don't need a lot of depth. Some characters are plot devices, and that's okay. Freya only appears in like two episodes, so under normal circumstances I'd begrudge that level of shallow characterization. But the rules are different for characters who have a close emotional connection with the MC, especially love interests - even episodic dalliances like Freya! 

Take Balinor, Will, and Daegal, for example. They were all important to Merlin, and all had distinct personalities. Balinor is cantankerous and reclusive. Will is pragmatic and confrontational. Daegal is earnest and youthfully naive. And we as the audience liked them too, because they felt like actual people, even though their main purpose in the story is mainly to serve Merlin's arc. They are, fundamentally, plot devices, but they don’t feel like plot devices because of how organically they’ve been written. 

Freya is a harder sell, because she doesn't have as much of a personality with which to endear us. I'm not saying we need to know Freya's favourite colour and her fondest childhood memory, nor do we need to witness her go through a seasons-long character arc. Not every background character needs their personality painstakingly detailed, least of all background characters. If well-written main characters are chicago deep-dish pizzas, then well-written background characters are hot pockets - easy to make, easy to love, easy to remember. Characters like Gilli and Elena and the love of my life Sophia are good hot pockets. But Freya as she currently is, she's not even that. She's like if we were told there was a hot pocket in the microwave, only to open it up and find it's just a lump of half-melted cheese. 

And it's sad, because Freya had the potential to be interesting. She could've had a distinct personality that made us fall in love with her right alongside Merlin - which would have made her death even more painful for both the characters and the audience alike. But even if you don't give her a personality, at the very least let her fulfill her purpose of furthering Merlin's character arc instead of just making him sad for a few minutes. 

While I'm by no means an expert writer, here's how I would've taken a crack at having Freya’s impact on Merlin's arc. 

So Merlin sees Freya again, but she's not some helpful water spirit. She's emotional and volatile and vengeful and deeply, profoundly traumatized by the nature of her death. And maybe it's his job to finally lay her soul to rest once and for all.

She gets upset at Merlin. She cries and shouts and weeps about her death, about the pain and injustice of it. How could he continue protecting her killer? How could he befriend the man who literally murdered her? Freya didn't want to die, she didn't want to be a monster, she didn't want to be alone (cue implications that she has been trapped inside the lake all this time, maddened by isolation). She just wanted to be left in peace. To be loved. Merlin naturally defends Arthur, saying that he is destined to be a good king, destined to free magic and bring about the golden age of Albion. But she insists that destiny must be wrong, because what has Arthur done for the magic community besides perpetuate his father's company line? He killed her, killed several others like her, and even to this day he condones the oppression of their people - what makes him think a man like that could ever change, could ever set them free? And even if he does, why should any of them be expected to forgive him for his war crimes? 

She tells him that deep down, Merlin knows this. Deep down, Merlin fears Arthur just as much as the rest of them. If he truly believed in Arthur's inherent goodness, in his destiny, then Merlin would not have kept his magic hidden for so long. 

Thus sparks a seed of doubt in Merlin's mind, and scenes like Morgana's speech in Tears Of Uther Pendragon Part 2, Arthur's drive to destroy the dragon egg in Aithusa, Kara's execution in Drawing in the Dark, and the confession in Herald of a New Age would only cause that seed to grow. 

Not only is this a natural and logical progression of his character, but it would also be compelling to see Merlin's unwavering loyalty to Arthur do exactly that - waver. It grants depth to his character, empathizes us to his cause and the cause of his people, and lets us see Merlin in a unique perspective. It also puts a new light on Arthur's actions, foreshadowing an eventual moment of reckoning where Arthur will have to face the consequences of his harmful rhetoric - thereby creating a subtle layer of tension as we wait for that moment to finally arrive. And there's yet another layer of tension that arises from Merlin's repressed yet growing doubts: will he finally admit that Arthur isn't the shining saviour Kilgharrah had promised he'd be? Will he snap like Freya did? Will he and Arthur drift apart? And if they do, what will bring them back together, if such a thing is even possible? How will they make amends? How will Arthur learn from his mistakes and earn back Merlin’s trust?

I could go on and on about how this would impact the story as a whole, but I'm not here to talk about my rewrite ideas. I'm here to talk about Freylin.

At the end of the day, while it's a good ship, Freya doesn't have much personality, which affects their overall chemistry, and I don't think they have enough going on between them to be an endgame pairing. My personal opinion is that Freya has less narrative potential as a romantic partner, and more narrative potential as a supplementary background character whose closeness to Merlin combined with her own trauma forces him to develop and grow in certain ways. She's less of a Gwen (long-standing love interest), and more of a Balinor (one-off character with emotional importance), and that's perfectly fine. But because of her lack of personality and overall narrative relevance, I have a hard time believing or shipping Freylin beyond the scope of her debut episode.

Thanks for the ask! <3

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 2nd Season Ep16 [”Ask Him For Me”]:

This week on Fruits Basket, Momiji’s whole storyline continues being super sad, and Tohru basically spends 20 minutes having a prolonged emotional breakdown because she’s juggling like five different types of trauma at the moment, and most of them aren’t even directly related to her. Fun times! :)

Thoughts under the cut.

Like I said last week, this episode adapted chapters 74 and 75, so we’re back on track with following the manga’s pacing in a pretty 1:1 way for a while. The next two volumes or so of the manga are pretty neatly divided into two-chapter story arcs, and this episode is a good example of how neatly that translates to the anime’s pacing.

At first I thought that the scene at the start with Momiji and his dad was anime-original, but after double-checking it actually isn’t, lol. I think in general this episode was a super straightforward adaptation that didn’t really leave anything out or add anything, but it didn’t really need to.

Anyway, I think as a whole this was a really good episode that’s gonna make lots of people cry, and for the most part I liked it, but I think it ended up feeling a little too melodramatic, in a way. Like it was trying a bit too hard to make the viewer feel sad. But honestly a lot of that just has to do with how this episode focused on some of the plot points that I don’t care as much about, so I wasn’t really as invested in what was going on in the first place.

This whole episode’s pretty much focused on the two threads of Uo and Kureno’s whole deal, and Momiji’s family situation. I’ve already gone over why the Uo and Kureno stuff just doesn’t work for me, and how it just feels kinda over the top, but I also have kinda mixed feelings on these sorts of parts with Momiji. I like him a lot as a character, but in these sorts of dramatic moments he almost feels unrealistic in a way that’s kinda hard to describe.

I do appreciate that as a whole this episode served as a reminder of how shitty his whole situation is, and how much he’s been having to hold himself back from his true feelings and desires for basically his whole life.

Which is basically the whole theme of this episode. That for all sorts of complicated reasons, everyone ends up holding themselves back or being held back from pursuing their wishes. Which can be particularly painful when those things are perfectly achievable, and the reasons why they’re being held back are relatively flimsy and arbitrary.

But on the other hand you also have cases like Tohru where the wish that she’s unhealthily clinging to is one that fundamentally can’t be fulfilled because she wants to be with someone who’s already dead. And that’s a big part of why she’s so empathetic toward these people who want to be with others who are still alive.

In a lot of ways, I think Tohru’s basically projecting her own trauma onto everyone around her, and watching all of these other personal struggles is just reminding her of her mother. On top of her just being a fundamentally nice person, I think part of why she’s pushing herself so hard to help everyone deal with their issues is so she can indirectly fix her own problems, in a sense. Which she basically acknowledged to Momiji, about how she’s doing this because she wants to, even if it’s also about helping others.

Even though I already said that this episode felt a little too melodramatic for me, I think that it makes a lot of sense that Tohru is reacting so severely to all the stuff around her. I’ve seen a fair amount of other people being a bit confused about why she’s breaking down so much, but I think it’s just a mix of what I said about her projecting her own issues onto everyone else, and also her just slowly breaking down under the weight of all the different things she’s been dealing with in general. It’s less that Momiji and Momi’s situation in and of itself is enough to send her into this much of a spiral, but more that she’s already been getting more and more aware of the struggles everyone’s facing, and how the curse is binding them. Which has also been making her confront her own repressed trauma more, which has just made her more mentally unsteady. So it’s just a whole lot of things going on at once that are making her one giant emotional wreck, lol.

Anyway, aside from all that, we also got the scene that first properly teases at Ren, and I was curious to see how they’d handle it. It’s mostly the same as in the manga, but I think they changed it a bit so that instead of having Tohru straight up think it’s Akito at first, they were a bit more ambiguous about what her reaction to it was. I think they had to figure out a way to alter it because of how Ren has a notably female voice, so having Tohru assume it’s Akito would be kinda awkward. Whereas in the manga there’s no voice-acting so there’s more room for ambiguity.

It’s not a huge issue, but I think it really just highlights how awkward that whole scene is the more you think about it. And in a broader sense, it’s yet another example of how the story keeps awkwardly having to sidestep around the fact that Akito’s a woman. And because of that mix of ambiguous writing, and them giving Ren a notably different voice to Akito, I can already tell that it’s giving anime-only people the wrong idea, and making them think that Tohru knows who Ren is when she actually doesn’t.

But anyway, that’s about it for this episode. There’s more I could go over, but I already ended up saying more than I thought I would, lol.

I’m assuming that the next episode is going to cover the field trip arc, since that’s what happens next in the manga, but I don’t remember what scene the episode title is based on.

[thecloserkin]

book review: C.J. Hauser, Family of Origin (2019)

Genre: the most literary of fiction

Is it the main pairing: yes

Is it canon: yes

Is it explicit: kinda

Is it endgame: no

Is it shippable: if you’re into unhealthy ships

Bottom line: i hate literary fiction. ok i don’t hate fiction obviously i just hate when it tries to be too literary?? u feel me fam

Two estranged half-siblings spend a week tying up loose ends on the remote island where their father died (it is unclear if he committed suicide). The “loose ends” are that they had sex once, as teenagers, and now it’s weird. The island is populated by cultists and nut jobs who are convinced it’s the end of days and evolution is going in reverse. I have… many equivocal feelings about this book. On the one hand there are so many lines that just peel me like an orange, lines like “There was nothing more humiliating to Elsa than her own desires” or “Elsa was never surprised when someone killed himself. She was only surprised by her own animal perseverance day after day.” Plus I think this book really gets the dynamic where they’re constantly needling each other and every interaction is doused in fifteen gallons of repressed attraction. I think this is a novel that accomplished everything it set out to do with assurance and aplomb; I’m just fundamentally uninterested in what it’s trying to do. It’s about damaged people who learn to heal but the problem is the healing is much less engaging than the hurting.

Here’s the difference between speculative fiction and literary fiction: SF/F presumes zombies are literal zombies. Instead of assuming the zombies metaphorically represent something abstract, you just take them at face value ok? You spot a time machine or a vampire, you take it at face value and you add additional layers of meaning later. Which puts me in a pickle because Family of Origin is decidedly not a genre book, so what am I supposed to think about Famous Bigshot Biologist Ian, Elsa and Nolan’s dad, and his reasons for relocating to this island? There’s no cell phone service; it is quite literally removed from civilization. When I said nut jobs I mean it’s populated by secessionists, survivalists, doomsday preppers, anti-establishment types of all stripes. And they have some kooky theories about ducks. Which Ian apparently subscribed to. If this was SF/F I would just go along with it because maybe Elsa and Nolan, having arrived on the island, will finish Ian’s life’s work and find this elusive duck and prove Charles Darwin wrong haha??? But it’s fucking literary fiction which means I have to look for SYMBOLISM gahhh kill me now.

C.J. Hauser knows what she’s doing. Her bio says she’s a creative writing instructor and you can see why. It sucks that “what she’s doing” only glancingly aligns with “what I want her to do,” but c’est la vie. I was immediately taken with her choice of island setting (remote islands breed intimacy!) and the familiar configuration of type-A older sister paired with a younger brother who begs for a scrap of notice or attention. From the get-go Elsa’s priority is control. Nolan’s is acceptance. This quote sums it up pretty handily:

The problem was that Nolan wanted answers, and Elsa wasn’t sure what she would do with answers if she found them.

Like, I personally identify more with Nolan than with Elsa, because there’s this sense of learned futility that I find kind of charming in him but everyone finds annoying af in me:

Nolan wished he could return to a time before anyone had any expectations for him.

Elsa, otoh. Here is Elsa thinking about her ex, a relationship she clung to well past the expiration date merely because he loved her more than she loved him back, and she wasn’t willing to give up that bargaining position:

As long as his side of their love had more ballast to it, she felt in control and like he would not leave. Everyone left Elsa, so she had to be sure.

Nolan and Elsa are certified disasters. They’re both so burnt-out, and twisted up inside with shame and guilt and impossible desires, and the island is the ideal backdrop for them to resolve their issues:

There was so much that was not allowed that the island seemed willing to permit. Things underwater. Things offshore.

That night, they made no pretenses about the sleeping bag and slept cupped like shells in their father’s bed.

Jesus Joseph and Mary this woman can write. I’ve even seen lines from this novel quoted in those tumblr compilation poetry posts.

Anyway Elsa and Nolan’s dynamic is they do not get along and they’ve never gotten along. It starts with Elsa’s resentment at being displaced by a new sibling, which was compounded by Elsa’s mom being divorced and replaced by Nolan’s mom. These kids have spent all their lives probing at each other’s weaknesses and I am reminded of a very apt line from a book that has absolutely jack shit to do with incest: “When siblings spar, the true cause is proximity.” This seems to apply to Elsa and Nolan’s situation more potently than most.

Will you just LOOK at this god-tier sparring though:

Nolan touched a drop of rain that hung by her ear, letting it spill onto his fingers. Elsa smacked his hand.

Don’t— Elsa began, but Nolan, dirty water dripping from his fingers, grabbed Elsa around the ankles and shook her, groaning, Graaghh! like some B-movie Swamp Thing from the deep, ready to pull Elsa into the pool. Elsa considered Nolan’s hands around her ankles.

It’s one part goofing off, one part competitive banter, and one part violent sexual tension . Elsa takes meticulous mental inventory of every instance of skin-to-skin contact and I’m like—girl you know it only means something if you let it? Who the hell pays that much attention every time their brother accidentally brushes shoulders with them?!

There was a knot between Elsa’s shoulders that twisted taut when she saw him.

Nolan is shiftless and aimless, doesn’t even have the balls to break up with his girlfriend, his internal monologue is a constant refrain of “Nolan wished there was some more-adult adult whose job this could be.” Child you are TWENTY-EIGHT years old and need to start owning your choices. I think this hypothesis that’s sorta floated in an early Elsa POV is pretty conclusively disproved in the course of the novel:

But people didn’t change. They just ran away from everyone who knew them too well so they could start over and do a better job of obscuring the worst parts of themselves.

Because they do change, both of them change and mend their ways and they become a family again and ok here’s where I have a problem with C.J. Hauser: Her idea is that you have to choose—Nolan is either Elsa’s brother or her lover:

And he understood then that he could have kept Elsa as a sister or slept with her. It was a choice, and what he’d just done was to have given her up.

It seems her whole motivation for seducing him was as a big fuck-you to their father. I’m not saying she was not attracted to him I’m saying her field of vision is dominated by Ian:

Everyone here is insane, Elsa said.

They have their reasons, said Nolan.

They have stories, not reasons.

What if you’re my story? What if the story of why I’m on this island is you?

What’s my story?

Your story is Dad.

Go to sleep.

Tell me a story.

Which is really sweet and I am a fiend for these callbacks that deliberately echo the older sibling interacting with the younger one as a baby, but Ian’s stature is such that he takes over everything?? We find out that he wasn’t that great of a scientist. That he wasn’t a great dad was clear from the start.

So the really interesting thing from a craft perspective is the climax of this book occurs in the middle of it instead of at the end. The only other novel I can think of that does this is Cloud Atlas but that has a very unique structure. The film The Talented Mr. Ripley also kind of does this?

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

It’s revealed that Elsa isn’t Ian’s biological child. Her mom had an affair and when Ian found out he divorced her and married Nolan’s mom. When Elsa learnt the truth, she took the radical step of sleeping with Nolan to prove a point, I guess? To wit: If she wasn’t Ian’s daughter then it wasn’t actually incest. If Ian was troubled then it must be because she was his daughter:

But you are this kid, her mother said. You’re so totally his kid that you think biology is the only way you can be his kid.

I’ll admit that the “they’re not related” reveal does in this instance actually serve a purpose, unlike in some other books (yup this is a Wasteland callout post). And it ties into the theme of biology, and the stupid elusive ducks that supposedly inhabit this godforsaken island:

”We’re no longer good at adapting to things in the natural world because it’s too hard to tell which parts are real anymore so we don’t know what to adapt to.”

So there you have it. Family of Origin is not a book that spoke to my soul but it is a devastatingly exquisite book, and it has a number of really shippable scenes even if the relationship taken as a whole is not one I was rooting for. Here’s Nolan trying to get laid at college:

He didn’t know what to do because there had only ever been Elsa that one time before and Elsa had known what to do.

And then he has a breakdown so bad that he calls Elsa??? For emotional support??? Even though she’s at least 50% of the reason he’s so broken. When Elsa shows up she says ”I drove over two goddamn hours so you could yell at me in person” lolololol every single line of dialogue is so on-point. Oh oh and Elsa biting his ribs and his neck while they’re lying half-naked in bed is another pearl of a scene.

I saved so many quotes from this book and half of them have nothing to do with incest but they’re SENSATIONAL so I’m going to end this review with an assortment of quotes:

that she was afraid to ask for small things like this because the need in them did not seem big enough to draw attention. That she was afraid her small needs would go unnoticed, and so she made plays at bigger ones instead.

Whatever inner thing guided normal people in their choices … Elsa’s was broken. Nolan had been her first wrong choice, years ago, and as much as she’d have liked to pretend she was different now, that it had been a stupid teenage mistake, there was too much other wrongness that came after. Dozens of dubious choices that all seemed to bloom outward from that first moment.

But no, there was a difference between realizing how wrongly he’d been made and the moment the wrongness actually happened.

Because it wasn’t perfect. Because she couldn’t tell the difference between unconditional and infallible.

Maybe the sooner Elsa stopped trying to hunt down some class of people who had all the answers—adults, scientists, Mars missions, Ian—the sooner she could stop the cycle of trying to win. Could look around and decide what kind of game might actually be worth playing.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

another reason jere and chris’s relationship is written well (see always: it’s not that hard!! ugh!!! super simple things to do but no we have to have a zillion horribly-handled empty guy/girl relationships!! why not) is just that like.....it doesn’t do that exasperating thing where the girl who is being crushed upon just needs to Notice the guy in the last 10 minutes and it will be like “wow yeah we’re dating now” like the only way to have a positive relationship at all is to be like well i’m your girlfriend now

but like, jeremy and christine actually have A Relationship Development over the entire course of the musical And there are strong suggestions that they have a very parallel experience in terms of how they Like each other, despite jeremy being the one who starts out with a crush while we don’t have reason to think christine has a crush on him at the start of things, but it sure seems like she does start to have this genuine interest in jeremy the whole time even if she isn’t necessarily thinking of it in that way the entire time

like ilpr is a solid and genuine foundation showing that christine can be herself in jeremy’s presence, not even independently of his feedback either, i.e. if he hadn’t responded as positively as he had she probably wouldn’t have been as genuine and open as she was. and we get to see that jeremy experiences this and totally enjoys it, that Reaction when she gets super worked up with the punches and voice all I!! LOVE!! PLAY! REHEARSAL!! is golden thank you william....and like!! they’re kindred spirits!! christine isn’t ~too good~ for him b/c she’s Popular (since she isn’t even officially in the popular group, not even later on when she’s dating jake and considering Jeremy to be popular), it’s that jeremy thinks Absolutely Everyone is too good for him b/c he thinks he’s fundamentally deficient/inferior just As A Person somehow...”like i’m some Normal handsome guy” is really a hell of a verse....anyways the point is that jeremy is in his heart a christine-esque person in terms of the way christine is So Passionate and weird and dramatic and loud!! but jeremy isn’t really aware of this at the time and trying super hard to repress everything abt himself and in being drawn to christine he is recognizing that Quintessential part of himself w/o realizing it

ANYWAYS and at the end of the rehearsal scene jeremy feels put out like once again there’s been a takedown / i just wanna know that christine is aware i’m alive....but she IS aware he’s alive and he HAS made a positive impression on her, he just like, looks at jake as the Epitome Of Popular super appealing guy, (see: jake/jeremy...), and sees himself as the total opposite end of that spectrum, how could anyone like him when jake’s around, and being in such a negative / failure-expecting / self-loathing place that his perspective is skewed and he can’t see that it Wasn’t a total failure in terms of getting christine’s attention

and then! a guy that i’d kinda be into is all like “oh look here’s this love song between christine and jeremy” but then it’s like “syke!! it was christine and jake” but it’s not Really a psykhe because it’s a love song within a love song with the “i guess a part of me etc” section. and jeremy definitely Feels that in the moment but then again gets such whiplash and the whole thing in his mind is eclipsed by once again having it confirmed for him that she’s into jake. but like, of course it’s easy to see why her relationship with jeremy is developing at the same time as she’s interested in jake, b/c there’s no reason for that to be impossible and yknow, once again christine feels like she can be genuine around jeremy and share her real thoughts with him and she Wants and Likes to talk with him. 

and yknow it doesnt help that the squip steps in and is like “its hopeless christine will never like you unless you totally remake yourself” and such, but still, it’s actually going along okay, and jeremy hasn’t even needed the squip to do it. yeah the one incident of him kinda cheating by getting the squip’s help is saying him having a whole Thing at the mall was performance art, but then really it’s all just cancelled out when the squip has jeremy say that he has no reason to join the drama club save his thespianism, and christine is evidently a bit put out by that “why ELSE would i be here”

and then yknow seeing christine liking jake, the center of the whole popular group, and with the squip telling him he needs to be more like those Most Socially Successful people, natch jeremy believes he needs to figure out how to cut it as a ~popular guy~ and then goes off and does that for the rest of act 1 while christine and jake do their own thing

but then Oh The Couch Scene..........it’s so beautiful. and the squip is off and jeremy feels like he’s Messed Up when his impulse is silly and weird....but that’s what he’s really like!! and christine vibes with it and it becomes most obvious that that part of him, the actual Genuine Jeremy part of him, is what’s led him to have what’s arguably his most successful connection with her, just based on sitting down and talking for a second and making each other laugh......like, it Sure Is Something that jeremy learns that christine already thinks of him as popular but just seems to think this divides him from her......this subversion in which now christine thinks of jeremy, who’s supposed to be the loser geek whatever with the unattainable crush, as the out-of-reach Popular Guy......and i like that christine thinks jeremy’s been getting it on with everyone but it just turns into them laughing about her pun. b/c whether he had or hadn’t it’s nice to know christine would not take real issue with that lmao......it’s a great time for someone to express some respect for jeremy’s autonomy. and well anyways!! they have their heartmelting reprise and like. it’s not that christine tells jeremy she doesn’t actually like him and at that point i’m fairly sure that she’s more Aware of possibly maybe liking him. but like!! similar to him she’s been trying out a slightly different version of herself, and it���s just now hitting this roadblock b/c jake in his element here hosting a party w/ all the other popular kids has to be more like his ~Usual~ self than his “i’m also trying new things” self that led to him dating christine.....and, yknow, it’s a lot at once when she’s conflicted abt her and jake and her own sense of identity in general and like, regardless of how she feels about him, right in that moment still at the party of course she’s not gonna feel confident that yes let’s immediately jump into this new relationship. but that doesn’t mean she Doesn’t like him on her own b/c. yknow, their relationship is slowly developing in the background for her even as she focuses on these other things. b/c that’s how it goes sometimes!!

and then yknow the house burns down and everyone’s even more conflicted about everything and jeremy telling christine abt being squipped just freaks her out b/c like, surprise, and b/c yknow, now all these interactions between them which felt very genuine (and were!! the squip doesn’t really direct jeremy at all even if part of the time knowing that it was there gave him this confidence he wouldntve otherwise had, but ilpr / the couch bit was a wholly unsquipt affair) seems like maybe jeremy was just parroting the squips instructions the whole time, and it’s easy to see how that feels like a betrayal, have i said this exact thing before? idk. and then, yknow, her kind of being like “jeremy wtf” is a moment of calibration for him but oh no the squip’s going rogue!! etc. but the fact that it upsets her means her interactions with jeremy held real value to her

and then yknow The Play......first of all? jeremy having the squip for a while means that it’s glitching him up, screwing with his voice and movement, but its still not capable of entirely overriding jeremy’s own commands. thus, presumably, it’s not possible that christine’s 30-second-old squip would be able to force her to do or say something she didn’t want to at all, despite the fact that like, clearly it’s not natural, i really doubt it’s just like the squip mecha-piloting christine’s body and voice. it’s all a bit fuzzy b/c yknow, jeremy’s squip is at the center of the network and everyone’s is being synced to his, and so it seems like jeremy’s squip could tell other ppl’s squip what to do maybe, but it’s hard to say how it truly operates b/c a) chaos and b) jeremy’s squip, a Known Liar, c) is now lying more than ever to try to drag jeremy past the finish line of its plan

but anyways my point is that like. obviously without everyone being squipped, christine at that point would not have just suddenly declared her love for jeremy, and jeremy always Reacts to the weirdness of this and that it doesn’t seem right. but! a)! totally think christine does have her own crush on jeremy at that point. and!! wildly relevantly!! b) the squip just beamed lore from rich’s head (his locker combo) right into jeremy’s via their link, so? if the goal of jeremy’s and christine’s squips was to convince christine asap that Being With Jeremy Would Be Ideal?? why NOT give christine access to jeremy’s real actual feelings for her. she would need convincing anyways, clearly she was just mad at him 3 seconds ago, clearly she was questioning whether any of what she might have thought jeremy felt for her was real!! so it would only work in their favor to let her Know what jeremy’s actual thoughts and feelings are. and then, yknow, if she’s got THAT issue of thinking he wasn’t genuine resolved, and if having her own squip has her like, immediately able to understand why jeremy wanted to have/keep one, and if she’d already had her own Real Feelings for jeremy in the works, and with how she’d probably be questioning her own judgment extra hard anyways thanks to the stress and confusion of the whole Fire problem on top of the vulnerable place she’d already been in re questioning her relationship which she got into while questioning herself.....not super wild to see how she could be convinced vs the squip must totally be forcing her and doing a total system override

but anyways even if, yknow, it IS all of christine’s real feelings at that point like the squip assures him it is in some versions, jeremy recognizes that he doesn’t think it Should be happening this way even if it is supposedly working out in his favor. and then he proves that he’s not gonna let christine stay caught up in his mess and that he prioritizes her like, being allowed to be her own person vs them getting to Be Together, and just icing on the cake that he’s willing to sacrifice himself in a very real way to do that, b/c natch he doesn’t know that the chain reaction thing will happen.........and well then anyways vimh very obvious and even though it’s The Next Scene jeremy’s been legit comatose for however long and christine’s had some time to reflect on events w/o even having the pressure of it being possible to interact with jeremy and been able to make up her collective mind......and anyways the point is that in a lesser piece of media it’d be like “wow thanks for helping me out jeremy, i’ve truly never noticed you but now i’m like cool nice let’s kiss”, but instead it’s that the play and the moment of truth between them and the aftermath is all possible b/c of the way their relationships been developing and the way their individual journeys and their feelings for each other have been awfully parallel in many ways and it’s fitting b/c of that kindred spirits thing and what’s the point of this post? idk. it’s me saying imo christine lowkey has a crush on jeremy already and that this is a way better story than doing the “i didn’t even consider us friends but One Thing happens in the last 20 min to make me go ‘jerry??’ and yeah let’s date now”

what’s my conclusion.......uhhh.......they’re Valid

[riverforasong]

Climbing Through the Wall

TW: Self Harm, Weight issues, and family instability, oh and nudity, I guess. It’s a non-fiction thing so if that’s not your bag, thanks for coming anyway!

It’s never really been a secret, per se, but I’ve only just now started to freely admit to people that I’m a nudist. Be it out of fear of how people would react, or embarrassment stemming from a, now that I think of it, weirdly conservative upbringing, I never talked about it. I would drop hints here and there, but never much explicit, even with super close friends it remained a non-topic, despite the fact that it was, and is, a very big part, and honestly, fundamental part of my life. Hell, I’m literally naked right now (Probably, depending on when you’re reading this and what time of day it is, I could be at the store or at work or something, but it’s like a solid 90 percent chance). When the topic does come up, especially with people just learning about it for the first time, I get a lot of questions about it, which is absolutely to be expected, and I don’t mind it one bit, mostly because I love talking about this kinda stuff. One of the questions that always trips me up a little bit though, is “Why?” Why choose to go naked all the time? Which seems like an easy answer, being naked is awesome, it’s more comfortable, it releases stress, and makes it easier to sleep, and it honestly baffles me why anyone would choose to wear clothes if they didn’t absolutely have to. For me at least, it’s the only time I’m ever really comfortable, clothes and I just never really gelled. But it wasn’t until recently, and I’m talking within the last 3 months recently that I realized how important it was to me, and the recovery of my self image. My self esteem has always been low, and a lot of that stems from how I physically look, but it goes even deeper than that. From here on out this story gets kind of intense,TW: Self Harm, Weight issues, and family instability, oh, and nudity I guess, but you should have figured that out by now,  so if you’re not into that, maybe skip to the last paragraph? Or you could bail out here, the whole gist of it is being naked makes you feel better about yourself, you and your friends should give it a try sometimes. Got it? Good, and here we go.

I’ve always been the fat kid, right from the get go, in school that’s how I was pegged. Like a lot of fat kids, we learned to be the funny one in the group, because humour is a damn fine way to mask any and all insecurities you’re hiding within yourself. I’d always told myself that it doesn’t bother me, people are gonna say what they say and you can eiher take it personally, or let it roll off your back and make a joke about it, and that’s what I always did. Or at the very least, tried to do. It worked, or so I thought, but I’d be lying to you right now if I said it never got to me. Late night when no one was listening, it would replay over and over in my head, about how that’s the only thing people ever see in me. That’s always going to be their first impression. I will never be loved if I look like this. Now this is a batshit crazy way of thinking in retrospect, but that’s how m'brain works when it’s back on it’s bullshit. Later in life, what I now know to be an anxiety issue and mental illness, went unchecked for too long. In my family, I always had to be the level headed one, parenting the parents so to speak. My brother had sever Social Anxiety Disorder and would lash out in increasingly terrible ways that he can talk about in his own damn story, but my parents were not… I dunno, mature enough? No that seems silly, equipped to? Equipped to take care of this in the way it needed to be. Yelling begat more yelling, violence begat more violence, you see how things roll. I would always have to step in and make sure things don’t escalate any further than they already had. Taking pieces of myself and shoving them in the holes of the levee to make sure the whole place doesn’t flood. It would work, things would calm down and merrily we’d roll along until the next disaster hit. This worked for them. It didn’t however, work for me. Being the person who took care of these issues took a toll on me that I didn’t expect. See, I was just as sad and angry as everyone else, but I couldn’t express it in any way, because I needed to fix the issues before they became worse, but unlike everyone else, I had no one to check on me. No one to make sure that I was doing okay enough to function, which as it turned out, I was not. The anger and the sadness and the overall  negative emotion swelled inside of me and remained bottled up until it could no longer stay. I began to cut myself to release it. I couldn’t find someone to help, and I couldn’t take it out on anyone else, so I took it out on the person who mattered least in the house, myself.

Still with me? If so, here’s a puppy.

Cutting may have relieved the emotional pain and stress I was feeling, but it also left something in it’s wake. Big, obvious, ugly, red scars. Crisscrossing my arms and legs. New ones would pop up every couple of days or so. A couple people would ask about it, I’d tell them it was my cat, which if you knew my cat made sense, ‘cause that little thing’s kind of a bastard, and the situation would be left alone. This went on for a while, longer than I’d like to admit, but the important thing was I got help. Help from friends who are truly invaluable to me in ways I could not possibly convey because I don’t know that many words. I’d love to say it got better immediately, and I never even thought about doing it again, but shiiiit, you know that’s not how life works. I still struggle with it to this day. I was however, on the road to healing, both physically and mentally. The problem remained though, these scars would be with me forever. You can still see them if you look close enough at my arms, and it’s been a solid ten years or so since the first major incidents. Now, as someone who already had a pretty low vision of himself, this did not help at all. I hated going outside, I hated putting myself out there in the world. I hated what people might think, might say, might point out. It was an awful ouroboros of thoughts leading to actions leading to thoughts leading to actions. I was disgusted with who I was and what I looked like. From the fat, to the scars, to the fact that I thought my head was too big, and my feet too small. Now, as a guy, you don’t know that you get to feel this way. We don’t talk about how men can obsess over their looks and how it makes them feel as much as we really do. There’s not a lot of self help books for that kind of situation, or if there is, I sure didn’t find any. Mostly 'cause I didn’t look that hard, mostly because I was afraid to ask for help, mostly because I didn’t know I was allowed too. There’s that ouroboros again.

This is where the whole nudist thing kicks in. See, my whole life, I always kinda hated clothes, getting dressed, shopping for them, gah, I just hate it. I was always more comfortable naked than anyway else. My parents on the other hand, wanted no part of anything like that. I remember as a 4 year old getting told I was too old to walk around without being fully dressed. Socks, Pants, Underwear, Shirt, the whole 9 yards. I remember bring up the subject to my mom, who was so horrified at the concept of me being a nudist she actually started yelling despite herself. We once watched a documentary where one of the characters was raise in a nudist family, there weren’t even on screen, and my parents would rally against them, talking about how it’s sick and why have these people no shame? I always gave a half-harted  affirmation, but on the inside, it was killing me. I never drank, did drugs, had underage, unprotected sex, got into fights, that wasn’t really my thing. My rebellion was being naked. Naked inside, outside, sometimes with friends, sometimes in public, for as long as humanly possible, down to the last millisecond I could. But during the rough patch, I hated how I looked so much I stayed covered up, to a ridiculous degree. I’m talking long sleeve shirts in summertime, wearing shorts in the bathtub kind of covering. It was a mess. I figured the whole thing was a phase and it was time to outgrow it. It was time to repress some feelings and urges, and get back shoving my emotions and feelings of inadequacy back down my own throat.

I know it was a stupid idea. I’m also in the future.

This went on for a while, although I can’t remember how long. I felt miserable, and couldn’t figure out why. I kept wearing increasingly baggy clothes to hide what I though deserved to be hid. But I wasn’t getting any better internally, it just looked like it. I didn’t feel any better about the way I looked, I just stopped looking. I don’t know what changed, eventually. Something did though. Maybe I just cracked through the shell I had formed around myself. But for the life of me, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I may have hated the way I looked, but I hated clothes more, I guess.

When you’re naked for a long amount of time, a few things happen. At first, you’re highly aware and tactile about every single thing around you. You’re aware of every imperfection on your body, from love handles, to acne, to scars, to weird ingrown hairs, to what you need to shave, to how dry your knees are. Everything, Every. Damn. Thing. And then? You forget about it. You focus on something else, you watch TV, you play video games, you clean the house, you check your garden, whatever it is, and you forget about what little things bug you about you. When you do it over and over again, that first part where you obsess about everything becomes shorter, and shorter, until it eventually disappears altogether. Nudity helped me come to peace with who I am, and what I look like. I may not like a lot of the things about me. But I don’t obsess, it doesn’t ruin me, it doesn’t encapsulate all I am anymore. The biggest change was seeing it happen to other people, the first time I ever went to a nude event, it was the Portland Naked Bike Ride in 2016, and you realize how diverse we all really are. I saw fat people, skinny people, trans-gendered people, men, women, children of all shapes, sizes and colours hanging out and talking to people. I was horrified about what they would think about me when I came walking in, but no one batted an eye. We talked, we laughed, we shared stories and jokes and videos about whatever. I finally realized that the only person saying these terrible things about me and they way I looked, was me.

Whenever I finally tell people that I’m a nudist, I get one of two reactions. One is always someone showing a ton of interest, but not wanting to admit it, so they ask a lot of questions, but try to do it superstitiously, and two, people who say stuff like “That’s so cool, but I could never do it myself,” and that one always bums me out. We have taught people from the time that they’re born to the time they die, that being naked is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing, and is only to be reserved for taking a shower no longer than ten minutes, and having sex in the missionary position only for the purposes of procreation after marriage, and for the love of all that is holy never speak of it, or practice it outside of these two times. It’s terrible to shame someone for something so simple and natural and helpful. To tell people right out of the gate that their body is shameful and should be hidden away because “No one wants to see that.” We kick their self esteem in the chest before it even has a chance to get started

I’m getting kind of soapbox-y and that’s not the point I’m trying to make. The point is, I fully believe that nudism saved my perception of myself, and I feel like people need to give it a chance. Separate it from it’s sexual connotation and invite your friends over for a naked movie night or something like that. I even ran a naked DND session once, and it went over like gangbusters. It helps folks who t think they’ll be uncomfortable for the first time focus on something else, and realize life is just that much better. Getting people naked and watching their faces go from assuming it’s going to be awkward to genuine fun and comfort is one of my favourite feelings in the world, because we stop putting so much pressure on ourselves and what we wear and what we look like, when no one has anything to hide..

[gliitchedwitch]

May I please have 1-45 with whatever you haven’t already answered for Aranea? I’m so gay for her.

1. Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with?

-Nah, none that she would remember anyway.

2. What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like?

-She doesn’t have a relationship with her mother anymore. A very long time ago, when she was a different person, she very much resented her mother.

3. What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like?

-She never knew him. Even before her flesh warping, he was never apart of the picture. She would have hated him though.

4. Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know?

-uhh,, she kind of failed a coup on a noble house and was literally changed into a drider with no memories of her past self. And yeah, a good chuck of people are aware of this. I’ll give you a twofer tho, since I like ya so much. She also met this really funny human man and because of him, she’s slowly regaining parts of who she used to be. She could probably never express this to him, but she’ll be forever grateful for having met him.

6. Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams?

- she doesn’t really have these.

7. Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares?

- lol but she has tons of these! Her dead husband and children, parts of her past life and her current masters. All of it’s like walking in someone else’s skin and living out small snippets of a life that doesn’t exist anymore. it’s real wild dude.

8. Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target?

- Yep! her primary weapon is her rifle. As for that first target, that would a literal target during training. If you meant live target… that would be her husband and children.

9. Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up?

- yeah, you could say that. She was a dirt poor kid. Now she’s a fairly well provided for slave :U

10. Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing?

- She doesn’t actually care? Like it doesn’t matter if she’s nude or fully clothed, doesn’t mean anything to her.

11. In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been?

-there have been a few but I’ll go with the first time she become fully conscious after her flesh warping, having no idea of where she was and who or what she was for that matter.

12. In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been?

-This lady doesn’t know peace very often. But before everything hit the fan, she will admit a casual business day with Rinnill was never bad at all. Now it’d prolly be late night rooftop sits.  

13.Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way?

- No, it comes with the job.

14. Does your character remember names or faces easier?

- uhhh, names prolly?

15. Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not?

- not really. She’s no need for it.

16. Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success?

- “Happiness” doesn’t seem like a truly obtainable thing for her. Success is something she can set her sights on though.

17. What was your character’s favorite toy as a child?

- She didn’t have much of anything as a child save for this somewhat fancy looking doll that her best friend stole as a gift for her. She cherished that doll and had passed it down to her daughter. Where it is now is anyones guess and she has no memory of it’s existence.

19. What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before?

- In the past she was overly ambitious and perhaps a lil’ power hungry and it not only destroyed her but her whole family :) Now she is VERY emotionally stunted. 10 years of repression and brainwashing will do that to you but we’re working on it.

21. If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others?

- She puts everything on her own shoulders and she knows for a fact that she was the cause of all her misfortunes.

22. What does your character like in other people?

- competence, someone that can hold an intelligent conversation with her. Tell her a good pun and she’s done for.

23. What does your character dislike in other people?

-Mmm,, people that are overly self absorbed or just flat out unreliable.

24. How quick is your character to trust someone else?How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person?

-It’s hard to trust when you live in a society that values deceit and betrayal.

26. How does your character behave around children?

- She’s actually very protective of children? Got a soft spot for ‘em for some reason.

27. How does your character normally deal with confrontation?

- usually a bullet will do the trick.

28. How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation?

- shooting her problems away seems to work pretty well so far.

29. What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true?

- As a child all she ever wanted was to make something of herself. Be more than the gutter trash she came from and she was willing to do nearly anything for it. It did come true… for a time.

30. What does your character find repulsive or disgusting?

-Not a whole lot? Maybe sticky stuff? Like the nasty kinda mystery sticky stuff that tends to get on floors randomly and you know how when you walk over it it the soles of your shoes make THAT ONE NOISE, maybe that.

31. Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable.

- She’s very comfortable doing what she was trained for. Gun in hand, target in her sights and that moment right as the trigger is pulled. It’s second nature now.

32. Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable.

-When she finds herself overwhelmed with feelings. It’s been a long while since she expressed and felt exceptionally strong emotions and with all that’s been going on with her lately, it can be very draining.

33. In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve?

-Willing to improve, unless she thinks that she’s absolutely right in the decision she made then she’s a lil’ defensive.

34. Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method?

-If one method doesn’t work, try another.

37. Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status?

- hmm, she doesn’t have much of an honor to speak of and her status as a slave isn’t much to defend.

39. Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)?

- probably at some point. I think she might have been bitten by some spore rats? Really didn’t affect her.

40. How does your character treat people in service jobs?

-lol indifferent. Sometimes she intimidates them into not answering funny lil’ bard’s questions. ;)

41. Does your character feel that they deserve to have what they want, whether it be material or abstract, or do they feel they must earn it first?

-… even if she earned it at this point she doesn’t feel like she deserves much of anything. It’s perhaps a little bit selfish but she works for it anyway.

42. Has your character ever had a parental figure who was not related to them?

-mm, sort of? There’s a running joke that the party has about her masters being called “Mom and Dad”

43. Has your character ever had a dependent figure who was not related to them?

-hmm, hard to say. I’ll get back to this one another day.

44. How easy or difficult is it for your character to say “I love you?” Can they say it without meaning it?

- It is an extremely difficult emotion for her to process and even more difficult for her to be able to say the phrase to someone if she truly meant it. If she had to say it to trick someone for whatever reason, that would be easily done.  

[themysterioussilence]

I cried multiple times today. I'm not sure whether it's because of those hormones (period) or i was really feeling it. My take is that these emotions and thoughts have always been there, I just never addressed it and when I did realize it, it made it real.

I attended a career talk, and I started crying realizing that I'm very close in having to find a career which means that i would officially be an adult. I'm never excited to be an adult, but i am excited to see what the future stores for me and that costs me being an adult. I feel like this is because I learnt that adulthood are boring, some adults are dull and your inner child has to be repressed. I dont want to end up like that, I would want to always have that inner child and I want to embrace it as much as I can. I guess this is why I want to work with kids, so I can always be reminded those feelings. Of being kids again. Other reasons are maybe because my childhood was relatively happy, although I gotta admit there were some bad moments too but my happiness were overweigh the bad moments. And I feel like thats what you childhood is supposed to be, full of joys, and I want kids experience that too, or at least assist them in achieving it without limitations. (another post i guess for elaborations)

After being overwhelmed with the adult stuff, I brought um out to have a coffee with me and do our work out but it ended up me opening up to her about my mommy issue. I didnt want to tell her initially, i didnt plan to, but what do I have to lose? So I told her. I told her how im not close and feel uncomfortable sometimes with my mom as we are not very close. How I wish sometimes that things had been different, how I wish my mom was there for me when I needed and need her, how I wish I didnt have to go through so much things all by myself, how I envy people who are close with their moms, who treat their mom like their friend. I can never relate to that, and sometimes I wish I could. But as I grow up, I am starting to accept the way it is and that lessens the resentment and envy. It's kinda unfair for me to put the blame solely on my mom, considering that she must have not known and was raised the way she was. Thats why I dont hold any grudges against her, she may be my mother, but she is also a daughter, a wife, a sister, a woman and most importantly a human.

I was also reminded the time that someone that I wanted support from criticized me for not knowing what I was doing. We're talking about my future that time and how could i be one if i dont know how to. That really hurts me and made me question my ability. Even though we might have clarified this and I justified that all that person was doing giving me a constructive criticism and thats one thing that I should take note. Maybe i got hurt a lot because thats not what i wanted from someone who I expected to be fully supportive, maybe I wanted that person to be my boyfriend at the time not someone who harshly drops critics, maybe I wanted my effort to be acknowledged and appreciated, its all of these reasons. But Jared helped me to realize that im the one who actually knows myself better and what others say: Fuck it!

I also felt like some people dont really have respects for me, specifically my youngest sister. Maybe its because of me being childish which made me seem like an easy person and irresponsible. This made me beat myself thinking that i should have been more assertive. How I am actually the one who allows this to happen because I dont respect myself in the first place for allowing people to disrespect me. Then I was considering that maybe I should just be a cold person to demand respect but i know thats not me now. As I let this all out to my friend, Jared, he said that being assertive doesnt mean i would be a changed person and I will still be me. He also assured me that I do know the answer to this which is right. What I have to do is make my boundaries clear, because the reason why people easily cross the non-existent boundaries is because I never really make it clear. And lastly, stand up for myself when I need to.

On a different note, as I mentioned that I attended a talk and what stayed with me when she said that personality cannot be changed but we can modify behaviour and gain skills or abilities. I know that I know that but i just never thought about it, how personality cannot be changed. Maybe because I have mistaken attributes with the whole personality, as attributes can be developed. And motivation is the most fundamental thing to have within a person.

[shitter]

I keep on getting upset about victoria and i being broken up now but then i talk to her and remember that shits still super chill and…almost kinda normal between us and it honestly makes me feel so much better…..it kinda makes me realize how much I really did value her as a friend even while we were dating… And like it’s still really sad that the romantic part of our relationship had to end but like it also makes me realize how much like….more there was BEHIND IT, SUPPORTING IT, like if you take out the romantic aspect there still like such a solid foundation of stuff BEHIND it, you know? Like there’s this whole fully fleshed-out friendship. Take the cherry out of the Cherry Coke and it’s still coke, ya know?

I guess one of the biggest worries I have is that she’s not taking it as well as she’s letting on or that she’s secretly suffering, or bottling things up, or simply going with it because it’s what I want. I’m worried that continuing the friendship as if nothing has changed is just rubbing it in and making it harder for her and the thought of that like literally tears me up inside because it’s not like there’s not still shreds of the romantic feelings I have for her left in me, and I still do like sincerely care for her and her emotional well-being more than I do for most people. And like even I’m not 100% sure if this was the right move!!! I still feel like it was for the best but I just really want to know how she truly feels about it but I don’t want to pry because the wounds are still probably fresh and she’s dealing with MAJOR jetlag and post-travel depression and I don’t want to make things worse on her. Our love really was more on the platonic end of the spectrum (still love), but there still was obviously romantic aspects of it. Like I said, a point on the SPECTRUM. It was a predominately platonic love, with romantic aspects, and i feel like our dynamic just wasn’t really fundamentally cut out to be the robust, fully romantic relationship that I wanted it to be, which is why when I would push for it to sort of fit that mold, it just wouldn’t work. But it’s still weird because it’s like our dynamic still DID have some earnest, not forced, romantic aspects to it! It’s just that…that’s not what I need, I dunno. I was left wanting something MORE, like something MORE on the romantic side of the spectrum, and I kept denying this want for a large portion of our relationship and repressing it for the sake of the relationship and it started manifesting itself in unhealthy ways because I was so afraid of the fact that my feelings weren’t completely romantic for her that I projected it onto her and basically was really needy. I keep thinking that my feelings would change once we reached the next milestone, but it honestly wouldn’t have helped! And it was also getting to where I viewed her in such a platonic light that it was harder for me to get into it when we were doing stuff sexually. We also probably wouldn’t be very compatible living with one-another and doing so wouldn’t just make these things disappear. I idealized the idea of living with one-another, thinking that everything would be perfect if I just shoved my reservations to the side for the sake of the relationship and just held it out but like…I was lying to myself man. I wanted something more out of the relationship that it couldn’t offer, and it’s not Victoria’s fault or mine, it’s just the nature of our dynamic. It’s just weird having to adjust to this after being together and planning our future together for two straight years.

[toomuchcoffeebye]

Aight so I’m going to drop some bullshit on everyone because I have recently gotten on meds and worked through this, so. It’s pressing on my heart and I wanna vent. Reblog and comment if you want, but, this is personal. 

[TW: suicide attempts (non-descriptive), depression, anxiety, sexual harassment, ignorance, heavy religious reppression, sexism, aphobia, homophobia, and minor allusions to racism (I am white, it hasn’t affected me personally, but it comes up a bit in this via general ignoance)]

K, so, Let’s start with my family background. White, Church of Christ or Catholic, Military, and in general, reliant on both the church and the military economy. I dunno if y’all know anything about the Church of Christ,  but it is exclusionary, insistent on being the ONE TRUE CHURCH and ultimately pretty cultish, in their controlling of information, insistence on maintaining higher level education, and distinctive beliefs that they are following the First-Generation Christians despite being founded in the early 19th century. (http://www.theexaminer.org/volume8/number6/leftcoc.htm for more info [TW:religion and repressive religion specifically.) 

ANd I was raised in it. My grandparents are wholeheartedly involved in one of those huge ones in the buckle of the bible belt, middle Tennessee. My mom likes to tell the story of when I was born, the week dad came home from Iraq so he wouldn’t miss my birth, they tried a new Church of Christ and she felt that I was coming Right Then and they had to leave halfway through the sermon. We went kind of inconsistently, but we lived the way Coc wanted, more or less. We (my family) sang a whole lot, (my dad used to be a member of a military chorus) as the church encourages A Capella worship (if a church has instruments, it is not a church of Christ). Coc encourages the father as the head of the household with a really specific tenant: the father of the household is responsible for the faith of all his children and his wife. and all of their children. ad nauseum. He prays for all of them, and they tell him what they want to pray for. This means, of course, that as a human female, your spiritual connection to god is always mediated by a man. forever. So Coc(k) has a patriarchy problem. ABout SPIRITUAL HEALTH! wtf. I never really understood what god WAS, and I guess the inconsistent church going saved me from their indoctrination, cause I’ve considered myself an atheist since I was like 12 and understood what that meant. I got baptized at 15, which in Coc is in a way signing over your body to god, for my dad. He really looks up to his father, they share a name and lots of features, and he respects G-pa for his spiritual conviction, which for him was broken a little by his time in the military. My dad wants to ensure that all of his children get to heaven, like his father wants to, and he was pressuring me because my older siblings got baptized earlier, at like 13, when they were ‘old enough to decide that’. Personally, I don’t think anyone should be allowed to sign themselves over to a deity when they can’t go on Disney.com without parental permission. I recently told my dad I was an atheist and he didn’t believe me because “you’re baptized!” and tbh I can’t believe I had to apologize for lying to my father about something he very much pressured me into. but Wtv. all of this was just set up for:

For the longest time, (ok, like 5 years wtv) I considered myself Asexual. It made sense, I could describe myself as that with ease, and it felt right. I’m only now beginning to unpack the feelings I held in unhealthily. Asexual is a valid and real sexuality, but I am not asexual. I’m pretty sure I’m bi, but tbh I have doubts about even that. I don’t trust myself to know what I want, partially because my family situation drilling into my head the idea that I have to have a boyfriend until I have a husband, and then I belong to him spiritually at least. I told my mom I was asexual, and explained it, and she first decided everyone felt like that, and when I pressed her that I was VERY sure that wasn’t true, she pulled over and ranted at me for Not Giving Me The Grandchildren I Deserve and it just sucked. I was pretty out at school, but around the time I told my mother I was being sexually harassed by this guy, call him Q, because of it. Q believed it ‘was a waste’ for me to be ace, and ‘no one is like that’, ‘everyone wants it’. He had a habit of grabbing me, touching me but I believed he was my friend. One day though, he slid his hand too close to my actual genitals and I sprained my hand punching him, and my friend reported him for sexual harassment after I ranted about him, and I didn’t press charges, because Q Was My Friend. Along side all that bullshit, I had lots of boyfriends through the years because my parents had made it very clear that I was to tell them if and when I had a boyfriend, and I took that to mean I had to have a boyfriend, and if I didn’t I should be looking for one. You can probably see how all of this compounded to make a bit of internal strife. Buckle up, Bois, I’m not fucking done. 

So, I’m not going to out my siblings, no names, no specifics, but it should be made clear that we were going through similar shit, because not everyone is straight. (Or white, as it were. My sister brought home a Puerto Rican guy (I think? it’s kinda fuzzy by now, but not white) and my dad made a joke about ‘thinning the gene pool’. (caveat: he may have been talking about height, but I’m not sure. Again, fuzzy.) ) I didn’t learn that not all my siblings are straight until a long while after they knew about each other because I’m both a dumb rock and 2nd youngest. So, along with all the secrets being the 3rd of four came with, I was hiding this. I was hiding secrets for each of them, from each other, for my parents, from the siblings, for the siblings as a whole, for my older sister specifically, she had lots of lies for me to hide. And damn, that hurt. My parents focus a lot on honesty, and it’s worse in our household to lie than it is to do something bad. It’s worse to show emotions, though, so I guess it’s just fucked up. So there was I, overburdened by half-clear secrets and the need to shield what was left of my emotional core. This was compounded by the fact that everyone I met when I was little thought I was ‘odd’, if they were being polite. My older sister thought I was insane and I believed her because for no other reason would I be having so much trouble ‘controlling my emotions’ as my father puts it, having so much trouble holding what I assumed were a normal amount of secrets and being told I wasn’t fully human to the God I didn’t believe in. 

This might sound trivial to some people, but it has left me fundamentally scared of expressing cheerfulness, sadness, anger, or anything but blind complacency and fear. I have severe Depression and Anxiety, no one can really read my emotions except for maybe my closest sibling and a few people who read what I write when I write expressively. I am scared to cry when I’m not alone, because I’ve been hit for less. I’m scared to cry when I am alone, for someone might hear me. I’m scared to show fear to the extent I apologize to my friends when I have a panic attack they caused by shoving their hand in my face repeatedly in a crowded and confusing party. 

Recently, I was upset my sister wanted my company after I was sick and tired form surgery, she broke a promise she’d made, and she invaded my personal space. He threatened to kick me out because I was being so rude to her, he said ‘go pack your bags’ and everything, meaning it fro shock value, and I did. I went and packed my bags. He called me back down and asked the real question: Do I feel loved at home? I answered him honestly, and I told him I’m and atheist, It wasn’t just a phase, and I was serious. I didn’t tell him that I really wanted to leave, for real, because anyone who says that to their child probably means it, and if they don’t they shouldn’t be saying it at all. I didn’t do this because he’s in charge of the funding I get from his military benefits for college and I didn’t know what I would do without those. I was scared, and I lied. My own mother doesn’t fucking want me and she complains that I’m ‘hard to read’ when she has told me I’m an evil, emotionally-manipulative child for crying when she yelled at me for dropping a plate. I’m not sure I feel loved anywhere, to be honest. I guess that’s dumb, but you know. That’s how it is sometimes. My family says ‘I love you’ a lot, a lot- a lot, but I have never been sure they meant it, especially when it is said the most emphatically when dad is holding and comforting a child he just beat. He forced us to cuddle up to him after he beat us and he held us, telling us he loved us. I can’t trust that man saying ‘I love you’. 

Again, I suppose this is trivial to some, but I have attempted suicide six times. I have had to give my knife to my friends, all that stupid shit. I’m not going to describe how, because that would be irresponsible. However, I’m going to do something radical and explain why I don’t want to anymore. Item one: It hurts. I have a high tolerance to pain, but the physical pain of a failed suicide attempt is dwarfed only by the gnawing regret, guilt, shame, and reminder that you’re Still Here. Item two: there are, really, things that I enjoy. They’re stupid and mundane, but I like breakfast. Eggs, bacon, the sunrise and the cool dew. I like baking, though I don’t do it often. Something about sweets and the making something always appealed to me. I like writing and drawing and handicrafts, though I am not very good at any of those things. Something about making something for others or something physical to hold always appealed to me, because it’s proof that I exist and manipulate reality. I never put any stock in that whole every-life-has-a-purpose bullshit, because if you were out here to do something, you can fuck it up, and I believed I had already fucked it all up. Item Three: While, even now, I don’t want to exist, there’s something mathematically implausible and cosmically coincidental about the fact that I do exist, that a consciousness inhabits this collection of atoms that tricked itself into becoming alive. I like the rebelliousness of it. The sheer existential power I’m flexing on every speck of dust that’s not currently alive. I DO exist, and there’s nothing more improbable or insane than that. 

[TL;DR: I had a fucked up childhood and am now broken as a result. Don’t kill yourself for the status points you have above non-living matter.] 

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Rakugo v1 [Manga]

So I recently got this in the mail, and just finished it last night. I’ve been really, really excited for this release since it got announced, and I’m definitely planning to collect the rest, and post my thoughts on them. Rakugo is one of my favourite anime of all time [I guess I’d class it as my ‘objective favourite’, with Yuri on Ice being my undisputed ‘subjective favourite’, if that makes sense], so I’ve been wondering how the manga version works.

These posts are just going to be my initial thoughts on the volume, probably without much structure or anything. Once the manga’s finished coming out in English I might do a more comprehensive review.

I should specify that basically every post I make about the manga is going to be 90% me comparing it to the anime. It’s really difficult to talk about this sort of thing on it’s own terms.

Anyway, thoughts under the cut.

Just to get it out right at the start, I knew from the start that the manga wasn’t going to be quite as fantastic as the anime. I could guess in advance that the rakugo performances wouldn’t be as engaging. And even though it hasn’t become incredibly relevant yet, I know that Miyokichi’s character in particular is more flat and one-dimensional in portrayal in the manga [which still makes me sad to hear].

I might be getting ahead of myself in talking about stuff from later in the volume, but I can at least say for sure that, thus far, the performances really aren’t as engaging as in the anime. Though really the only proper performance we got was Dekigokoro/On Impulse. I guess there was also the one performance Yakumo gave about the ghost painting, but that was sorta skimmed over. It feels weird to call it a proper performance. I did appreciate getting a scene that at least focused on Yakumo’s capabilities at playing female roles, though. I forget exactly when that first came up in the anime, but seeing it shown so early in the manga is nice. I can’t really compare that scene to the anime, though, since they just . . . didn’t adapt it at all, so there’s nothing to compare.

The Dekigokoro performance felt really disappointing, though, even if it was only because I’m comparing it to the anime. I should have guessed that the performances would be heavily edited down in the manga, compared to how lengthy they can be in the anime, but man was it still jarring to see that entire performance go by in like three pages. It felt so lackluster. It’s hard to judge this sort of thing on it’s own terms, but it really did feel like it didn’t do as good of a job at portraying the physicality of the performance, the body language, and Yotaro’s repressed but frantic nervousness. It all kinda went by too fast. We also obviously didn’t get anything like the whole back and forth talking between the robber, the home owner, and the landlord, which in the anime did a fantastic job at showing how a single performer can move fluidly between different roles and simulate an entire conversation on their own. The manga mostly focused on parts where just one person was talking at a time. It’ll be interesting to see how the later performances are done. [I swear to god, if they don’t do justice to stuff like the Shibahama or Shinigami performances I might just lose my mind]

Getting back to earlier in the volume, it surprised me that the first chapter actually makes up like half of the first episode of the anime. In general, the anime only really adapted chapters one and four, and completely skipped over two and three. Which is a bit sad, but eh. I think the extended blu-ray version of episode one probably covers most of it, but that’s not been subbed at all. It was also a bit odd how, since v1 ends on the note of Yakumo seeing Sukeroku’s ‘ghost’ in the car, then I think the only v2 content that made it into the first episode would be Yakumo’s performance, the drama of Yotaro getting nearly expelled, and Yakumo starting his story. I wonder how much that covers of v2, and how much got cut. We’ll see.

Most of chapter one [and four, from what I remember] got adapted pretty faithfully, but certain things didn’t quite make it. Which is fine. The only part that really stuck out to me in this sense was the part where Konatsu literally says ‘oh yeah, he’s gonna try and die and take the art form down with him in a ‘rakugo shinju’‘. That . . . surprised me. I’m pretty sure that’s only vaguely alluded to at best in, like, the entire first season of the anime. We just see him being a grumpy old man. But I forget. This scene was definitely not adapted, though, that’s for sure. I feel almost disappointed that it’s so explicitly spelled out to the audience in the first chapter [the official translation even literally uses the term ‘rakugo shinju’ just to make it even more obvious that it’s a title drop]. I really liked getting to the second season and being like ‘oh hey they finally explained the title, that’s neat, that sure was a bit of a mystery for ages’. But that’s not really an objective judgment of anything.

I can see why they cut chapters two and three entirely for the TV version of episode one, since they’re mostly just slice of life character introductions as we see more of the day to day lives of the characters as they go about their jobs. It’s still sad that they cut it, though. It would have made the presence of certain characters in season two WAY more natural. It was also nice to get to see more of Yakumo doing his thing, as said above. We also got a more clear note about how he spends time each day practicing different art forms, which I don’t quite think was said quite so clearly in the anime, at least not this early. It’s nice to get a bit of a deeper look into the day to day lives of everyone.

It was also pretty nice to at least get one or two new scenes of Yakumo and Konatsu being on bad terms with each other. Just to help hammer that in even more. There’s also a few new scenes with Konatsu in general, like when she’s, I believe, flipping through old scrapbooks to do with her dad while Yakumo and Yotaro are out of the house. I also feel like she wasn’t quite as explicit in the anime about saying that she practices rakugo each morning while Yakumo is asleep. I think she just vaguely references the fact that she practices it often.

There was also one . . . interesting scene where Yakumo is, I think, at a theater on his own and sees Sukeroku’s ghost sitting in front of him silently. Not sure what to think of that. Mostly because it was pretty short and not a lot happened beyond Yakumo being all ‘so you’re still haunting me’ or whatever like he usually is. It mostly just feels weird that this is the first time we see the ghost in the manga, and not at the car scene like the anime. Something about this scene here feels sort of . . . unnecessary, almost? But that’s mostly because it feels so similar to later moments in the story, and it obviously lacks any sort of surprise element for me. If I didn’t know to expect something like that, it would have been more meaningful, I imagine. I still feel like the car scene is a more interesting place to see the ghost for the first time, though.

And on that note, it kinda saddens me how the little moment of Yakumo teasing Konatsu about her crying to herself, and her defensively denying it, feels WAY more short and comedic in the manga. It’s literally just one panel long. I’m pretty sure that, even if it wasn’t very long, it at least felt a bit more genuinely emotional in the anime. Part of it’s also that in the manga we just get an exaggerated chibi face of Konatsu crying, whereas in the anime I feel like it doesn’t even fully show her face, which made it feel more personal and private, in a way. It came across way differently when it was shown in such an upfront, silly way. Not to mention Yakumo’s cartoonishly evil expression in the manga, compared to his more casual smirk in the anime. The more silly version isn’t necessarily BAD, it’s just . . . different.

I can’t help but be a bit worried that that might be indicative of at least some element of the female characters in particular not seeming as deep in the manga. If we’re going to potentially keep getting moments like this where the manga opts for comedy where the anime opted for subdued emotions and realism. It’s at least clear that that’s a bit of a blanket statement in general across the entire thing. The manga is way more heavy on the low-detail, ‘cartoony’ faces and reaction shots than I expected. Probably because this is the first Haruko Kumota manga I’ve actually read, so her ‘style’ is new to me. I think I was expecting something, well . . . closer in tone to the anime, which isn’t quite the case here. I expected it to feel fundamentally different, but it still felt pretty damn different. Yotaro in particular has a LOT of specific sorts of silly faces that just don’t quite make it into the anime, and I already thought he had lots of silly faces there. Wow. It’s kinda hard to describe, but it’s really noticeable.

As a whole, this is really making me appreciate and understand just how much the anime added to the experience, and to what degree it handled things in a different sort of tone entirely. I obviously expected stuff like the background art or the character designs or the performances to be less detailed in the manga, but it was certainly a surprise to see that most of the anime’s overall atmosphere and mood was mostly new. And yeah, we’ll see how later performances go, but this is making me appreciate the anime performances even more than before, since they’re clearly almost entirely original content. It’s one of the elements that clearly hinged largely on the director’s vision and his talents.

It makes me wonder if any manga readers felt annoyed or put off by the more ‘serious’ tone of the anime, or the notably extended performances. I just wonder if it’s a case where you naturally prefer the version you experience first, and anything different you see after that feels weird.

I might sound really critical of the manga, which I sort of am, but I still greatly enjoyed it, if only as a way to re-experience such a beloved story. For the most part I really, honestly enjoyed the different atmosphere, if only because it made it feel different and fresh. And there’s a LOT of ‘manga-only scenes’ that were really good content-wise and helped flesh this part of the story out a lot. I’m interested to see how the later volumes go. I imagine that the amount of cut content will probably notably drop as we get further in. I mean, if I’m guessing it right, with how many chapters this volume had, then episodes 2-13 of season one probably covered like thirteen or fourteen chapters, so I could see that feeling very 1:1 in content if not tone. Which would be nice. I’m less sure how the pacing of season two will feel, though. All I really know is that, across it’s twelve episodes, the final three adapted v10, aka the last volume. So that’s probably pretty 1:1 as well, adaptation-wise. I’m less sure how the first nine episodes of it adapted v6-9, though. That definitely feels like there may have been a lot cut. We’ll see.

I’m not really gonna bother rating these individual volumes, if only because I just can’t really judge it as it’s own thing. I might give the entire manga a raitng if/when I review all of it, but we’ll see.

Before I forget, I did enjoy the bonus thing at the back where the author explained a bit about how rakugo theaters operate. You can tell how enthusiastic and informed she is about the entire topic. It was also interesting to see her explicitly state that Yakumo’s whole ‘Rakugo is DEAD’ attitude is completely divorced from reality, and that real-life rakugo is still mostly fine. I do feel like it almost sort of diminishes the pull of that entire central conflict of the rush to preserve a dying art form that Yakumo wants to destroy, to know that it’s exaggerated for drama purposes and isn’t really realistic. But the core concept still holds. Especially in terms of how it’s discussed in the flashback story. Still.

ALSO, as another side note, I was sorta surprised at how certain elements of the translation were handled. Mostly it just felt jarring how basically all of the honorifics/terms/etc were kept in Japanese [ie: ‘shishou’, ‘yose’, ‘hanashika’, etc], but the names of the actual rakugo stories were translated [ie: ‘God of Death’, ‘On Impulse’, etc]. It’s basically the opposite of how the anime was translated, where we had English translations like ‘master’, ‘theater’, and ‘storyteller’, versus Japanese names like ‘Shinigami’ and ‘Dekigokoro’. It was kind of bizarre and took some getting used to. I’m less annoyed at them preserving a lot of Japanese elements, and more surprised that, if they kept all THAT in Japanese, why they bothered translating the rakugo story titles. Feels like a slightly inconsistent decision. They’re obviously not trying to avoid ‘overwhelming’ or ‘confusing’ readers by using Japanese words, so why not leave the story names untranslated, with translator’s notes in the margins [which they used for whenever any given Japanese term was first used]? Oh well. Not my place to nit-pick, I guess.