#i think a lot of the discussion is about how the movie was marketed vs what it was actually about

[youricariancarrion]

i havent seen blink twice so i cant really speak on whether it had a sufficient trigger warning but seeing some of the people talking about it come to the conclusion that no sexual content should be shown in movies ever is making my blood boil

[impulsivesuperrobin]

i saw a post talking about neverafter slander on twitter so i went to check it out

here are some thoughts: (keep in mind, i’m not calling anyone out or saying your opinion isn’t valid if you agree with one of these points. try to read this as a light hearted discussion, like talking about a book with a friend)

a lot of it is people saying the season wasn’t horror enough and while i agree it’s not exactly as straightforward horror as the marketing suggested i think that that’s a take that is fundamentally misunderstanding what this is. it’s the horror season of dimension 20 which is a d&d show first and foremost. it’s not going to be following the beats of a horror movie because that’s not what they’re doing. when you run a horror campaign you fold in horror elements which they have been excellent at doing especially in the eldritch and existential categories

not to make assumptions but it seems to me that a lot of people making a big fuss about this haven’t played d&d for themselves. the things i have seen suggested the most for making the season more in line with the horror people were expecting involves turning the campaign into a more dm vs players situation (which is joked about a lot in fandom but in more of a meta humor way than is being suggested). this is something that anyone who has ever played in a bad campaign knows makes it a hell of a lot less fun to play and, i’m assuming, not so fun to watch either. the point of playing d&d is to work together to tell a story, if you go into to making a campaign with the goal of making your players lose, everyone is going to be miserable and your story is going to suck.

following that, some people are ragging on brennan for forgetting details and not having the lore entirely fleshed out. as someone who does unnecessary worldbuilding for homebrew campaigns every single time, i would just like to say on behalf of dms everywhere: it’s hard! there’s so much stuff to keep track of and so little time to keep the lore straight if you want the session to keep moving smoothly, i’m sure it’s even harder when you have a limited time to film the episodes/season

and maybe it’s just me, but i love horror movies (and other media) and neverafter is about as scary as most horror movies i’ve seen. it’s definitely better written than a lot of horror movies, we get to know the characters and are fully invested in them when bad things happen. it’s sort of on the level as the hellraiser reboot imo. some people make the point that besides the body horror, there’s not enough gore/blood kinda stuff, but i think gore isn’t truly horror, especially in a spoken format. it’s more of a shock factor thing, like a verbal jumpscare

and i’ve seen people saying that the pcs are too much like heroes/they’re too capable to be in any real danger, but in a horror movie, most of the bad things happen around the protagonist(s), they’re still thrown into the shit but most of the time they make it out. horror as a genre is so ill-defined anyway that people still debate if slashers and thrillers even count. plus, how many times in a movie has a side character been forgotten or something about the lore has been off? and that’s with multiple people overseeing the production.

jumping away from the “it’s not like the horror movie i envisioned” complaints, i’ve also seen a lot of people say it’s confusing??? and tbh i’m more confused about that than the campaign. to me it’s pretty straightforward, no more confusing than starstruck at the very least.

for the big picture: it’s different factions of people with conflicting (but occasionally overlapping) goals than all need to get to macguffin in order to reach whichever goal they’re aligned with

the pcs have their own character arcs which are very clearly laid out throughout the season

the minute details are there because that’s how you make your world feel lived in

and yeah, there’s a lot of potential in the stuff they could’ve done but didn’t. but i feel like that’s the whole point, y’know? this is the story they did tell, and the thousands of other ways they could’ve told the story live on like every retelling of a fairytale.

[harpieisthecarpie]

hey, thanks for your addition to my post. i really loved what you wrote, and as an allo, it all rang true to me. the bit about romance vs erotica was also a new way to look at it that i’m still thinking about.

Oh Im so glad it resonated! Sorry for the very very long tangent in the reblogs, but I noticed my mutual peer reviewed my original tags in my rambliest moment of the day

And your post seemed to be primarily jokey, but it touched upon an attitude among fic writers that I think has surged a lot in the past however many years!

Im really fascinated by it, and how tropes in fanworks reflect on broader fanculture. I just wish that fic writers (and their readers) would give themselves more leeway to explore imperfection without feeling the need to soften, solve, or explain it.

There is so much to learn from stories, including fanfiction. But sometimes the lesson isn't a moral one, or it is but it holds a morality we don't agree with. Even then, we learn something about ourselves and the writer and how to evaluate texts.

But there's a secret other thing we can learn from beach reads, dark romance, fic, and erotica: sometimes we learn nothing substantial at all because that wasn't the point.

Reading a toxic relationship for enjoyment while thinking "man if someone pulled this shit with me I'd kick their ass" is a time honored tradition! Something can be "hot" in a fantasy (ie BDSM scene, erotica) while being 100,000 red flags irl.

A novel titled "My Tormentor, My LOVER" with a very shirtless man on the cover, and a fic with 25 sex-related tags both have many indicators of being fantastical, of being a scene. You just have to know what those indicators look like.

Honestly I think we don't give enough credit to genres like these because of their target audiences. Like, primarily cis-dude oriented spy thrillers don't get grilled nearly as much for their horrible sex scenes!

They'll be made fun of, for sure, but there's a level of internal monitoring (and enforcing) in romance novel and fanfiction circles that just does not exist with dude lit.

Cis women and queer people are treated as both more impressionable AND more responsible than cis men, at least with their reading habits. It's an echo of "boys will be boys" and the slut/madonna dichotomy that has become self-perpetuating in writer-reader circles.

Even when we aren't cis women, or women at all, minorities (and spaces where we congregate) still must "hold ourselves to a higher standard". But that's another debate, I'm way off topic.

Re: the erotica discussion, in Savy's video she was specifically talking about how a lot of Colleen Hoover's works are mislabelled romance when they should be erotica, because her sex scenes treat what are definitely kinks as realistic vanilla sex.

It jars the reader from their immersion, because the novel had heretofore shown no indicators of having those kinks in it. (Except for it being a CoHo book). Not in the description, its marketing, or a content warnings page of the book was Savy made aware these kinks would occur and be treated as normal.

Even just the label "erotica" would have given her more of a heads up! But without any of that, she lacked the informed consent necessary for her to take the scene as the fantasy it is. Leading her to enjoying the whole book a lot less!!

Basically, its about genre expectations and tonal shifts.

If I blind watched the Blair Witch Project because it was advertised only as "a fun parody of ghost hunter documentaries with super relatable main characters" I would brawl a producer for my money back.

If I'm not expecting horror, if I'm not informed of jumpscares, a movie I would have loved has now been made awful and upsetting. I wasn't able to adjust my expectations or be in the correct headspace.

That's what's important about labelling for tone, and why the destigmatization of works called "erotica" would help everyone :D

Oh it's so late and I was rambling again ;---; I had more to say about metatextuality and how being informed of a fantastical scene allows for a safe place to explore what might be unsafe irl. But I have this chocolate to eat

Thanks for liking my og reblog! You have succeeded in feeding 2 Harp rambles!! Redeemable at your local Chester Eustace Cheese

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

I do agree with the general statement of your post (that is, products should include warnings). I also thank you for acknowledging that seizures can cause death. I'm in the epilepsy community (although I am not photosensitive myself) and I can not stress how much negative pushback we've gotten from some spiderverse fans just for pointing out that a seizure could lead to death.

I will argue though that with spiderverse in particular, I think it was negligent on the part of the creators and studio to release those films as it currently is. People can be diagnosed with photosensitive epilepsy at any age but is especially common at the age between 7-19. The spiderverse films are a mainstream product primarily aimed at that age group. No matter what kind of warnings there are for the film, kids that age will probably not know if they are photosensitive until they are watching the film and have a seizure in a public place.

I also find that the inaccessibility of the films to photosensitive people completely undercuts the films inclusive nature. Like I have never before seen so many arguments that "art isn't supposed to be accessible for everyone" and that photosensitive people should just deal with being locked out of the conversation until these films. Not foing to lie, it's a little hurtful seeing it come from the wider disability community too.

i don't really have a response to the point re: it being mainstream and targeted towards a young audience; i think it's definitely a discussion to have, but overall i think that the phenomenon of targeting age demographics as marketing demographics is a bad one, which only evolved for monetary purposes, and the idea that age is a good predictor for taste in art and preferred complexity of topics is fundamentally flawed. essentially: yeah, i get you, but the angle i'm coming at this from is that we should really stop ~marketing media towards minors or adults~ to begin with and let the content of the art stand on its own.

re: inclusiveness: i also get you, but like. any art whose message is inclusiveness is going to intentionally exclude a significant portion of disabled people. there is no possible way for a piece of art to be accessible to all disabled people, because disability is such a broad category that every single access need directly conflicts with at least one other access need, possibly dozens.

i tend to prefer that artists openly reckon with which disabilities they're excluding from access to their art and why. i know it's an uncomfortable thing to reckon with, but like... the idea that all art has the chance to be equally accessible to all people and the only reason it isn't is lack of effort re: inclusion on the artist's part... is just a straight up lie. there isn't any way to reconcile two directly conflicting access needs, much less dozens of directly conflicting access needs, so rather than push that under the rug and act like some access needs are superior and as long as they're fulfilled the art is blanket "accessible" to all, i would much rather artists openly discuss what groups of disabled people they are prioritizing in accessibility and why.

(in the case of spiderverse movies in particular: back when the first one came out years ago, i engaged with some talk in some smaller low-vision spaces about the film's bright colors and overall eye-strain being actually more accessible to some individuals, because it made it easier for them to see the broad shapes and movements than most movies at the time. directly conflicting needs. while it's almost definitely unintentional on the spiderverse team's part, i would rather them know about it and grapple with the difficult decision of who to include vs. exclude publicly, rather than sweep the whole thing under the rug or act like one group's accessibility needs are obviously more important than the others.)

like... it's a difficult conversation to have, because i genuinely have a lot of empathy for being permanently locked out of engaging with a piece of art that i love a lot because of its inaccessible nature (i have a couple of different video game series that i love and Can Never Play, and i also can't mod them to make them easier to play, because the ways they're inaccessible to me are the fundamental point of the art). but i also at the same time have to balance that with my material experience of being a person whose access needs directly and 100% conflict with other disabled people's access needs, the material experience of understanding very firsthand that there is no possible way for some art to be accessible to me, ever, even in a world where everyone cared about accessibility, because other disabled people exist too. and like. idk! it's a weird fucking emotional space to be in! i at the very least would like for everyone involved to tackle it head-on, instead of playing the game we currently seem to be playing where 1) mainstream artists do not grapple with these concepts at all, nor do they clearly label which disability needs are included vs. excluded in any of their art, 2) we in disability spaces act like there is one universal measure of "accessibility in art" and if you are excluded by that measure then your needs are not from genuine disability or your disability simply is not included in disability activism.

[twelvedaysinaugust]

Why would Harry take the month Louis wanted when Harry wasn't even releasing music in September 2022 and Louis had his comeback single out? /

If you don't mind, mod, I do kind of want to lay this out, because I've seen a lot of people say something similar to this anon, and at least to me, the answer is very obvious and not at all anything controversial or scandalous or upsetting, if people took the time to think through it.

Harry wasn't releasing music in September 2022, no. But DWD was coming out in September, followed by MP a month later. It wasn't like Harry had nothing to promote - he was very clearly promoting his two upcoming movies and his tour. And around the same time, iirc, Gemma Chan, Florence Pugh, and Olivia Wilde all had covers of different publications, which makes me think the DWD marketing team was in the lead here (and probably paying for it).

I don't think it's nearly as simple as being able to request a different month, but even if we entertain the possibility that it was and Harry and/or Louis could've just requested a different month to make room for them both, there was a combined July/August issue, which was likely way too early to be effective promo for either of their purposes, and Megan Thee Stallion was on it discussing her shooting, so not something RS would want to let another publication get the big interview on. October cover featured Stephen Curry, who you could maybe argue could've been bumped, but, one, I doubt RS would want two former 1D members on back to back covers (and to be perfectly honest, I don't think the obvious invitation for comparison would've done Louis any favors - "new king of pop" vs "comeback single"), and two, in January RS got an exclusive first look at Steph Curry's documentary, so it seems pretty likely that was part of his cover deal. Again, not something RS would want to give up easily. November is too late for Harry's promo, almost too late for Louis' promo, and the cover went to Pharrell and RM from BTS, talking about BTS' break and making solo music. Again, huge get, not likely RS would give it up to give the cover to Louis instead.

Like mod said in the tags, I really do not think that Harry and Louis personally are the ones arranging these covers. They help set the overall strategy, I'm sure, but they have marketing and promo teams who decide how best to execute that strategy and make the calls and arrange opportunities. And even if Harry had wanted to somehow give that opportunity to Louis after hearing about it, what is he supposed to do? Tell his promo team and the DWD promo team to walk back the negotiation with Rolling Stone so his ex-bandmate could get the cover? First off, they're closeted, so that would've been extremely suspicious behavior (and honestly would've been weird even if they were openly dating... which brings me to my next point...). Secondly, while I absolutely do not actually know Louis Tomlinson, from everything we've ever seen or heard about him, I cannot imagine he would want to get major career wins like a Rolling Stone cover because of a favor from his partner. I feel pretty confident in saying he'd like to get these things on his own. I have a lot of issues with the recurring undercurrent in fandom discourse that Harry should somehow be using his success to help Louis' career, but one of my biggest is that it takes away a lot of Louis' agency. He's talked a lot about needing to find faith in himself as a solo artist and performer, and I think that's more important to him than any magazine cover he could've gotten through a favor (much less Harry giving something up for him).

In any event, the NME cover was still a huge get, and they gave him an album review too, which he might not've gotten from RS. Arguably, it worked out better this way.

All good points.

[emeryleewho]

I actually agree with you. I think we're looking at this from different angles, though. I'm not talking about broadly discussing the way media interacts with contemporary culture. For instance, if I'm comparing say the way My Hero Academia is in conversation with Marvel and DC, I'm obviously going to mention things that one has and the other lacks because that's the entire basis of comparative analysis.

But I'm talking about critiquing individual pieces of media purely on their own. So it would be nonsensical to say "What My Hero Academia lacks as a series is the ability to follow multiple protagonists through their own journeys and reunite with them for crossovers". Like, you may really like that about Marvel movies, but that isn't actually something My Hero does poorly. It's just not something the story is aiming to do. On the other hand, if you feel like the problem is that My Hero doesn't give us enough time with the side characters and it would be better if they were protags of their own stories, you can easily say "the side characters all have a lot more potential and teased subplots that are only ever exposed in curt snippets". This shows a critique of what is there, not what isn't.

As far as the "romance without an HEA" thing, I agree that it's definitely worth pointing out when a piece of genre media deviates from genre expectations, but I also feel like that is totally doable by a "what is there vs what isn't" rubric? What I mean by this is I can just as easily say, "Despite being marketed as a romance, the story defies genre conventions with an open ending, breaking the HEA rule". And it's fine if this structuring reads clunky to you and you don't want to write your reviews this way. The point of this is as a thought exercise, not a style guide. So saying something in the negative is fine, but flipping it into a positive structure can help pinpoint what you're really trying to say and show you if the critique is leveled at the media itself or not.

More than anything, the point of this post was to offer a different way of looking at story critique, and not some sort of restrictive rule that's being enforced on any person who stumbles into the post. The point is that when you reevaluate a potential critique to determine if it's actually critiquing what's there vs. what isn't, you start to realize how a lot of critiques can actually be pretty baseless, so this was just a way of looking at things differently.

I used to work for a trade book reviewer where I got payed to review people's books, and one of the rules of that review company is one that I think is just super useful to media analysis as a whole, and that is, we were told never to critique media for what it didn't do but only for what it did.

So, for instance, I couldn't say "this book didn't give its characters strong agency or goals". I instead had to say, "the characters in this book acted in ways that often felt misaligned with their characterization as if they were being pulled by the plot."

I think this is really important because a lot of "critiques" people give, if subverted to address what the book does instead of what it doesn't do, actually read pretty nonsensical. For instance, "none of the characters were unique" becomes "all of the characters read like other characters that exist in other media", which like... okay? That's not really a critique. It's just how fiction works. Or "none of the characters were likeable" becomes "all of the characters, at some point or another, did things that I found disagreeable or annoying" which is literally how every book works?

It also keeps you from holding a book to a standard it never sought to meet. "The world building in this book simply wasn't complex enough" becomes "The world building in this book was very simple", which, yes, good, that can actually be a good thing. Many books aspire to this. It's not actually a negative critique. Or "The stakes weren't very high and the climax didn't really offer any major plot twists or turns" becomes "The stakes were low and and the ending was quite predictable", which, if this is a cute romcom is exactly what I'm looking for.

Not to mention, I think this really helps to deconstruct a lot of the biases we carry into fiction. Characters not having strong agency isn't inherently bad. Characters who react to their surroundings can make a good story, so saying "the characters didn't have enough agency" is kind of weak, but when you flip it to say "the characters acted misaligned from their characterization" we can now see that the *real* problem here isn't that they lacked agency but that this lack of agency is inconsistent with the type of character that they are. a character this strong-willed *should* have more agency even if a weak-willed character might not.

So it's just a really simple way of framing the way I critique books that I think has really helped to show the difference between "this book is bad" and "this book didn't meet my personal preferences", but also, as someone talking about books, I think it helps give other people a clearer idea of what the book actually looks like so they can decide for themselves if it's worth their time.

[narutogwriting]

Before You Go

Pairing: Sasuke Uchiha x Reader

CW: angst

Length: 3.6k+

Summary: You play it through your head. Every moment, every interaction you ever had with Sasuke before he left. Was there something you could have done? Could you have made him stay?

Inspired by: Before You Go by Lewis Capaldi

Looking at Sasuke hurt. That’s all you could think about for the longest time. To look at Sasuke was to be punched in the stomach, all the air leaving your lungs. It was like someone’s fist tearing through your chest, grabbing your heart and crushing it in their fingers. Looking at Sasuke left your entire existence battered and bruised.

You remember hearing the whispers. Adults whispered a lot, always telling each other secrets. “I’ll tell you when you’re older.” That’s what they always said when you asked them what they were talking about. So much of their conversations were too hard to follow along with. You made a mental registry of all the questions you would ask when you reached this elusive “older” age.

You were nosey, of course; always wanted to hear the ins and outs of things. But the first time you remembered the whispers really catching your interest was when you were seven years old.

“It’s horrible, what happened to the Uchihas.” “I can’t believe he could do that to his own family. “Just tragic.”

Uchiha. A boy in your class had the last name Uchiha. Sasuke. He was really popular, by far the strongest kid in the academy. You never talked to him, but you always noticed how happy he would get when his big brother would come pick him up at the end of the day.

“Did something happen to Sasuke?” You asked, crawling out from underneath the table, earning a startled gasp from you aunt.

“What have I told you about eavesdropping!?” Your mother snapped at you, but she didn’t look angry like usual. She looked worried almost. With a sigh, she pat your head. “Don’t worry too much, okay. It’s nothing. Sasuke is just fine.”

It was natural for a parent to want to protect their child’s innocence. Even at your parent’s age, the Uchiha Massacre was a horrific occurrence; it was too hard for them to process; it would be even harder to try to explain it to you. Ignorantly, your parents thought that if they hid it from you, you would never have to deal with it, but of course that wasn’t true. People talked and word got around. It only took one or two kids in the academy finding out some details for the story to grow and spread.

Sasuske wasn’t at the academy for a month after you heard your parents and aunt whispering about his family, but the next day at school, word was already beginning to get around. Sasuke’s older brother, the one he’d adored so dearly, that he’d smiled so happily at every day, had murdered his whole family, leaving only Sasuke alive.

It would have been better to hear it from your parents, the toned down, soft version of the appalling act as they tried to explain to you for the first time that the world could be a cruel place. But instead, you had to listen in horror while your classmates gossiped, lied, and exaggerated the whole thing, discussing the most traumatizing moment of Sasuke’s life as if it was a new movie playing in the cinema. You’d gone home crying almost every day that week.

When Sasuke finally did come back, he talked to no one, and no one talked to him. He kept to himself, arms crossed and a blank, cold stare on his face that would soon become his signature. You couldn’t believe that such a beautiful smile had ever crossed those icy features.

“Stay away from Sasuke.” Your mom whispered as she walked you home from the academy. When you questioned why, she’d simply shushed you. “Do what I say.”

Parents always know best. That’s all you know when you’re seven years old. They always do and say the right thing, and you always listen because you never have a reason not to. Your mom told you not to talk to Sasuke, so of course you wouldn’t because there must be a good reason not to.

You never told your mother that it was this very command that later shattered your innocence; the first moment when you realized that your mom was not always right.

It wasn’t immediate. You never really talked to Sasuke in the first place, so it was nothing new to ignore him now. But now that you’d been told not too, of course everything in you wanted to go say hello to him.

There is a theory of development that categorizes the age of seven as industry vs inferiority. It’s the first time you’re independently integrating into society and trying to figure out your place. The major question of children this age is “How can I be good or bad?”

And you were no different. This appeared in a lot of ways. When you struggled to hit the target with a kunai, you felt like a failure. When you were corrected by your parents, it felt like criticism and hit you to your core.

But you were moving further than your peers. You didn’t just wonder if you were good or bad based on your skills; you wondered if it made you bad to ignore a person that everyone else seemed to be purposefully isolating as well.

Can I be a good person if I let another person feel miserable?

Sasuke had lost everything, was living on his own in the place his family had been murdered in front of his eyes. Even you could understand that that must be traumatizing. Of course he was angry and cold and closed off. How could anyone fault him for that?

It started slow. “Hi, Sasuke.” You would greet him every day when you got to class. It took him off guard the first couple of times. Once he got used to it, he just “hn’d” in response, but that was okay with you.

Then you started asking him if he wanted to sit with you at lunch, offered him an extra dessert that you would sneak into your pack just for him.

He always told you no, so you would leave him alone and just offer again the next day. Not to be annoying; just to let him know that you were there.

Things changed a few weeks after Sasuke had come back to the academy. You were still saying hi and being ignored, and a few kids had begun to slowly start trying to interact with Sasuke in response. You never really saw him outside of the academy except for this one day you were out with your mom running errands.

You’d never considered how he got food or supplies he needed. You didn’t know where he got the money, but there Sasuke was at the market just like you were. You watched from your mom’s side as he walked up to a fruit stand where there was a group of people examining the different produce. Sasuke reached past someone, grabbing an amaou to put in his bag.

The person next to Sasuke glanced down absentmindedly, but you saw the way their eyes widened as they settled on him, realizing who he was.

“Oh shit,” the guy muttered, dropping his fruit and hurrying away from the stand. One by one, every other person around did the same, looking at Sasuke with an expression of shock or discomfort before speeding off.

You couldn’t see Sasuke’s face from where you were, only his back, but you could see the way his shoulder tightened. He froze completely before his body began to tremble just slightly. Sasuke’s fingers tightened and the fruit was crushed beneath his fingers. He dropped the pulp and the bag with all the other fruit he’d been planning on getting and in a moment, he was gone.

It was the first time you could remember hearing a heart shatter. You just weren’t sure if it was his or yours.

Your mom’s attention was elsewhere, so you took the opportunity to sneak over to the fruit stand, grabbing the bag Sasuke had dropped, examining the produce inside. When back at your mother’s side, you grabbed her hand. “Mom, can I get some fruit?”

Later, you snuck the fruit bag from your kitchen, slinging it over your arm as you walked around the village. You finally found Sasuke sitting under a tree on the outskirts of town. He had his back to the trunk, arms crossed as he stared off. He didn’t look at you, didn’t acknowledge your presence as you approached, but he didn’t tell you to leave, either.

So you slipped down next to him, leaning against the trunk and placing the bag of fruit silently between the two of you as you crossed your legs. With nothing else to do, you began to pick the flowers in the grass, weaving their stems together until you had a small bracelet formed.

What came over you, you weren’t sure. But confidently, you turned to Sasuke where he still sat, staring off with his arms crossed. You reached out, gently taking his arm and untangling it from the other. To your surprise, he didn’t fight you, so you took his hand, sliding the flower bracelet around his wrist.

When you looked up at him, you found that he was already staring at you. He wasn’t smiling, but for the first time in weeks, he wasn’t frowning either.

~

You hated him. You hated Sasuke Uchiha! After everything, the past five years that you had spent together… Had it all meant nothing!?

It was a blow straight to your heart hearing the words when you had come home. “Sasuke has defected from the village.” Sasuke had left to train with Orochimaru, all for his revenge. He hadn’t been kidnapped or forced to go; he left willingly. Just like that. One day he was there, and the next he was gone.

You hadn’t even had the change to go on the retrieval mission. You just had to have gone out of town that day. He’d already been gone for days by the time that you were home. Naruto was the last person that got to see Sasuke before he disappeared; maybe forever.

Even thinking the words had you in hysterics. You sobbed violently into your pillow, the sounds being ripped from your throat. You sobbed so hard your body shook. Your cries were so vicious that you began to vomit, not even able to make it to the trashcan.

That’s where your mother found you hours after you heard. “I told you to stay away from him…” Your mom tsk’d softly.

You would never forgive him.

~

Was there something you could have said or done? You thought you’d been a good friend to Sasuke. You’d always tried to be there, listen in those rare moments that he wanted to talk to you. Ever since you’d given him the bracelet…

That moment was so pivotal in your friendship. Not just that you’d given the gift, but that Sasuke had accepted it. It was the moment that your one sided pursuit of Sasuke had become mutual; the two of you were now friends.

And it wasn’t a normal type of friendship really like your other relationships were. This one was quieter, built around so much that was unsaid, only felt. In Sasuke’s loneliness, you were there standing by and sitting next to him through it all.

You couldn’t take away Sasuke’s pain or hurt, but you could walk with him through it.

Or at least, that’s what you had thought. It’d been stupid. You actually believed that you could help Sasuke, make him feel better when he’d experienced the most appalling sort of loss. Maybe that belief had only made Sasuke feel even more lonely.

Did you ever understand at all? No, you hadn’t, and you knew it. You’d tried your best, done everything you could, but you were just a kid too, and you’d never experienced anything like Sasuke had. How could you have known what to say to make it better?

Despite this, the guilt that you felt was consuming, taking up every part of you. You felt as if you’d drown in it, felt the way it filled your lungs until you couldn’t breathe.

You’d been in denial when you heard the news, felt the anger when the retrieval squad had failed. In the weeks that followed Sasuke’s defect, you’d switched between the two stages almost constantly.

Now, finally, you’d moved onto bargaining.

If Sasuke just comes back… If he just came home, you would be better! Whatever he needed, whatever he wanted, you’d give it to him! Somehow you’d have the right words this time. You would tell him exactly what hear to make it all stop hurting. Whatever it took…

And you bargained hard. You bargained and bartered and you petitioned and you pleaded. You begged whatever god that was listening, tried to sell your soul to the devil, if only, if only it would bring Sasuke back!

But if god existed, he wasn’t listening and the devil had no use for a spirit like yours. You were alone, screaming to the sky.

~

“Sasuke! You’re awake! I was just gonna stop by to see you.”

Sasuke could see that you were in a rush even if you didn’t say it. You were dressed, running your fingers through your hair to throw it up into a bun. There was a dumpling hanging delicately from between your teeth, signaling your quick breakfast you were trying to take on the go.

At this point, Sasuke knew you well.

It wasn’t often Sasuke came to you when he was struggling, at least not outright. There were plenty of times he’d sought your presence to simply suffer in silence, but at least he wasn’t suffering by himself.

This time, he didn’t want to suffer silently. Not right now at least. He’d been thinking hard, struggling all week since Itachi had put him under the Tsukuyomi. Tsunade had been able to bring him back from his comatose state, but hadn’t been able to mend what Itachi had broken and bent in his mind for the second time.

You wouldn’t find out til later, but Sasuke had come straight from the hospital not after waking up, but after challenging Naruto to a fight. Kakashi had broken the two up just before they’d about blown their arms off.

Naruto was surpassing him. That much was so clear, so obvious to him now, but no one wanted to admit it. If even Naruto, the worst of the worst in the academy was getting better than him, at this rate, how would he ever be strong enough to kill Itachi?

Kakashi had lectured him heavily about losing the friends he had left in his mourning of the family that was long gone. It was what Sasuke had wanted to talk to you about. Somehow, he knew Kakashi was right, but when he’d spent the last five years thinking of getting revenge on Itachi, he didn’t know how to reconcile what Kakashi was telling him.

“Stop by? Are you going somewhere?” Sasuke asked the obvious as you finally fixed your hair. You grabbed the dumpling, taking a bite as you nodded.

“To see my aunt,” You said through a mouth full of food. “In the village of the hidden rain.” You tilted your head, peering at him curiously. “Everything okay?”

Sasuke considered the question. You were going out of town, would be gone for a few days at least no doubt. Now probably wasn’t the best time to bring this up, but he wasn’t sure if it could wait until you got back.

As he began to respond, your attention was taken by your dad yelling from inside the house. “Finish packing your bag so we can go!”

You glanced behind you back into the house, rolling your eyes with a sigh. “Hold up!” You snapped before turning your gaze back to Sasuke. “Sorry about that. We’re running behind now, not that it’s my fault.” You gave a small laugh.

Sasuke knew he could have pushed it, and you would have dropped everything to listen to him. Your parents be damned. It’d just been a moment you were distracted from him because of your dad yelling. But now, suddenly, the words left Sasuke. He had nothing to say.

“It’s fine. I just wanted to stop by since they discharged me.” He lied easily, the words slipping off his tongue without dilemma. Even so, you usually would have picked up on it. You would have known that something was off, and you needed to pry.

It was just one time, one moment where you didn’t push him. You were in a rush, afterall, and you’d be back in a couple of days.

It was only hours after you left that the Sound Four had appeared to Sasuke, and minutes after, he was gone.

That moment would replay in your mind constantly in your mind, on repeat until it drove you insane.

You should have noticed. You should have noticed. You should have noticed.

You should have stayed.

~

Time heals nothing, but it gives you more things to worry about. You never thought it’d be possible, but Sasuke was no longer on the forefront of your mind at every moment. Every day, sure, but you were able to function in society, get stronger and attend to your duties.

You were no longer drowning in the sorrow of missing Sasuke, though that was where you’d been for so long you never thought you’d escaped. But finally, you’d hit the last stage of grief.

Acceptance. Sasuke was gone and there was nothing you could do.

You could have lived out the rest of your life in that acceptance, pushed the dull, ever present pain aside and pretend it wasn’t there, but you couldn’t do that. Naruto Uzumaki wouldn’t let you.

Hope was alive and well in Naruto’s heart and thus he stirred it in yours. “I’m gonna bring Sasuke back. Just you watch.” He’d grin at you.

You didn’t know where in the stages grief you were now, but you believed Naruto. He’d get Sasuke home even if you couldn’t.

You wished he never gave you that hope.

Kiba had picked up Sasuke’s scent. You were almost there. Almost to Sasuke…

That was when the orange masked Akatsuki member intercepted your team, keeping you from reaching Sasuke. You were desperate, feral almost as you attacked the man. To move him, killl him, it didn’t matter to you. You just needed to get past him, to get to Sasuke!

Another Akatsuki member appeared then, taking the attention from the masked man. You were about to make a break for it, but that’s when you heard him.

“Itachi is dead.”

The words settled on you, blood rushing to you ears and drowning out everything else. That was what Sasuke had always wanted; he’d finally done it. He’d killed Itachi, gotten his revenge. This should be a good thing.

You couldn’t explain it, but something was settling in your gut, a horrible, nauseating feeling that this was wrong. This wasn’t how things should have ended. Despite everything you knew and believed, you suddenly had the certainty that Itachi wasn’t the heartless monster everyone had believed he was.

Was it intuition, coincidence, or some unexplained connection you had to Sasuke? Glancing at Naruto, you could see he felt it too.

None of you noticed the masked man had disappeared. You followed Kiba as quick as your feet could carry you to where he tracked Sasuke’s scent, but by the time you got there, it was too late. He was gone.

“This is as far as I can smell him… We lost him.” Kiba told the team reluctantly.

You dropped to your knees, hand clutching desperately at your chest. You couldn’t breathe. It hurt; it hurt so fucking much you were sure you would die. The pain in your heart seized every part of you, knocking the air from your lungs and causing you to convulse.

Dropping to the floor, you began to sob. Those heart broken, anguished cries you thought you ran out of years ago.

“Sasuke…”

How you knew, you couldn’t be sure. But it wasn’t your own pain you were feeling. It was Sasuke’s tears that flowed down your cheeks and his aching regret that filled your heart. Where was he? You wanted nothing more than to be there with him now, to wrap him up in your arms and never let him go.

The team winced as you weeped so brokenly, the sound shattering their hearts.

You’d never understood, not really. As much as you wanted to, despite your best attempts, you never could grasp the layers of Sasuke’s pain. If only you’d been able to. If only you knew the storm that was building inside of him, leaving him restless and agitated, desperate for the carnage to end. You wish you knew that he couldn’t stand it, the way that every beat of his heart left him in pure agony.

Was there a way you could have made his heart beat better?

Every night, you saw Sasuke in your dreams, his back to you as he left. You lived it over and over and over again.

”Sasuke,” You called for the first time, watching him pause, but not turning to look at you. “Before you go… Was there something I could have said or done? To make it all stop hurting?” You waited for an answer that never came. Sasuke stood there for a few more moments before he walked away, disappearing into darkness.

You guessed you would never know.

[terubakudan]

This may be an old article from 3 years ago, but these cultural aspects/observations still apply even today. And though this is strictly a Chinese perspective, a lot of these everyday life bits are observed in Overseas Chinese communities in countries such as The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc. as well as countries heavily influenced by Chinese culture like Taiwan, Japan, and Korea.

I've always liked learning about other cultures and making comparisons between how things are done East vs West. Which probably stems from growing up with two cultures and Mom raising me on American movies xD

So the irony is if you asked me how many Chinese, Taiwanese, or Hong Kong actors I know, chances are I know as much as you do xD Like Jackie Chan, Andy Lau, and that's about it. But if you asked me about Western (specifically American and British) actors, then I have a useless brain dump of movie trivia and who was with who in what movie xD

Hmmm, both Taiwan and the Philippines are two distinct cultures but both look up to a certain country and are fascinated by that. In Taiwan's case, Japan and the US for the Philippines. In both cases, this is due to being under the rule of those countries in their history. Taiwan being under Japan for 50 years, and the Philippines being under Spain for 300+ years, followed by periods of American and Japanese rule. To put it simply though:

Taiwan is "mini-Japan with a very Chinese culture".

The Philippines is "former colony of Spain with lots of American influences".

But unlike the author, I've never set foot in any Western country, so my understandings are strictly what I've observed in media, which while it can be accurate, doesn't compare to actually experiencing the culture.

Some further elaboration on most points:

#1 We quite literally use chopsticks for everything. We use it to pick rice, viands, vegetables, fruit, smaller desserts, almost all the food you can think of.

But where do you put your chopsticks when you're not using them? Just put them on top of your bowl or flat on your plate. But do not ever stick them vertically. It's taboo, since it looks like incense sticks, which we use to pray for those who have passed, like our ancestors or during funerary services.

#3 The majority of Asia is obsessed with fair/white skin. In my time at the Philippines, I grew up watching all these Dove Whitening commercials and my classmates often commented on how fair my skin was, how they envied it etc. In Taiwan, girls often say they don't want to 變黑 (biàn hēi) 'become dark'. Japan and Korea too are not innocent of this either (if their beauty/skin products weren't a dead giveaway).

People here at Taiwan often mistake me for being from Hong Kong or Japan (as long as I don't speak Mandarin with my heavy accent xD). A Taiwanese classmate of mine joked that she often gets mistaken for being from Southeast Asia due to having a darker complexion. And while I laughed it off with her at that time, looking back, I now realize she was lowkey being racist. xD

And believe me Filipinas have mentioned literally being told 'your skin is so dark' here in Taiwan, or being given backhanded compliments like 'you're pretty despite having dark skin' and...*facepalms*

My point is, beauty is not exclusive to skin color. People who still think that are assholes.

#5 Not to say we don't have salt and pepper, but yes soy sauce and vinegar are the classic condiments you see on the table, be it at home or at a restaurant.

And if I may add, Taiwanese love their pepper. xD If you ever get to eat at a night market or a smaller "Mom n' Pop-style" restaurant here, some dishes/soups tend to add quite an excessive amount of pepper. Not like anthills, but quite liberally and way more than average. Enough that you see traces of pepper at the bottom of the food paper bag or swirling in your soup. xD

#6 I know this all too well from personal experience. In my years of studying at Taiwan, I always had roommates. 3 in my first school (I graduated high school in the Philippines pre K-12 so I had to make up 2 years of Senior High), followed by 2 in college, with the exception of 1 in freshman year.

My college did offer single person dorms but at around 9000 NTD ($324) per month compared to around 6000 NTD ($216) per semester. Because I wanted to save, the choice was obvious for me xD. But ah, this doesn't mean I don't value personal space, in fact I love having the room to myself, and since both my roomies would go home to their families every weekend, weekends were bliss for me xD

And you don't have to be friends with your roommates (that's an added bonus however), you just have to get along with them. I was quite lucky to have really great roommates all throughout my schooling years.

#9 In the Philippines, we do. Owing mostly to American influences and maybe being predominantly Catholic? xD

#10 *sigh* Chinese parents and parents from similar Asian cultures tend to put too much emphasis on grades, so much that kids could get sent to cram school as early as elementary. This is because what school you get into could literally affect your future job opportunities, and while that's not exclusive to any particular country/culture, I feel it's especially pronounced here in Asia. I'm really lucky my own parents weren't that strict about it. However, if your parents don't point the mistakes out to you, chances are you'll do it yourself, if you're an Asian kid like me anyway. xD It just becomes a habit.

#11 My family is an exception to this. xD We do say 'I love you' directly, but complete with the 'ah eat well ok?', 'don't scrimp on food', 'sleep well' and similar indirect words/actions of affection. We were doing 'Conceal, Don't Feel' before it became popular. xD

#13 I'm kind of confused about this but this has sort have changed over the years in which eye-contact is now more encouraged. But don't stare, especially at elders and authority figures. Sometimes it's just shyness though. xD And I've observed this with my own Taiwanese friend, especially when I'm complaining or ranting to her about something. xD I'm a person who likes to express my opinions strongly, which tends to scare/alienate some of the locals here, as doing so is kind of frowned upon. Thankfully, she does listen and offers her take on things.

#14 Ah this. xD In the Philippines, this is a common greeting known as beso-beso, and I freaked out too when an auntie did that to me. xD Needless to say, Mom lectured me later on what that was. ^^"

#16 Along with #3 another crazy beauty standard. In my view, people always look better with a little meat on them and when they're not horribly thin. Asia still has a loonng way to go with accepting different types of bodies if you ask me. This combined with modern beauty standards has made the pressure for women especially to 'look beautiful' higher than ever.

I know many people love them but please, starving yourself or glorifying eating disorders is never OK just to get this kind of 'ideal' body. I'm not part of the Kpop fandom, but even I think when idols get bullied just for gaining the least bit of weight among other insensitive comments, that's really going too far.

#17 'If you want to make friends, go eat.' <- I couldn't agree more. In the Philippines we have a greeting: 'Kumain ka na ba?' (Have you eaten?) . Similarly in Taiwan, we have 吃飯了沒? (chī fàn le méi), both of these can mean that in the literal sense but are often used as greetings instead. By then which invitation to having lunch/dinner together may or may not follow. Food really is a way for us to socialize and to catch up with what's going on in each other's lives. Not to say we don't have regular outings like going out to the mall, going shopping, etc. but eating together is a huge part of our culture, be it with family or friends.

And while I'm at it, some memes that are way too accurate good to pass up xD

Parents, uncles, aunties alike will fight over the bill xD

Alternatively:

You just space out until your name is called xD

My parents are guilty of the last one. Logic how? xD

#18 True. xD I like giving compliments out to people but I have a hard time accepting them myself, though I've learnt how to accept them much more now than before. We're kind of raised to constantly downplay ourselves so we often say things like 'ah no no' or 'I'm really not that good'. The downside of this of course is that it can come off as somewhat fake. xD

Again from personal experience, that same classmate who made the lowkey racist remark, she was good, she was on the debate team, was a honor student, knew how to mingle with people, but she downplayed herself way too much, while praising me but I honestly thought that she never really meant it from how she treated me. She wanted to keep me around her yet make backhanded compliments at me and she didn't want me socializing with my other classmate who is now my friend. *sigh* It was only after discussing this with one of my roomies did I realize how this 'excessive downplaying' might come off to people like me who more or less grew up with a more 'Westernized' mindset. I'm not saying brag about your achievements but don't be overly humble about them either, which can also be a turn off.

#20 We do tend to be a lot more realistic on how we view things, neither entirely optimistic nor pessimistic. We try to think of things practically and often analyze things on pure logic. A downside of this however, is that Chinese people can be overly practical. Taiwanese for instance don't like to 'find inconveniences' and generally keep to themselves, meaning, they won't help you in your hour of need even when they do have the capabilities. Sounds really harsh I know, but in my 6 years of living in Taiwan, while this doesn't apply to all the people, a lot of them really do only find/talk to you when they need something.

So for some people saying Taiwanese are 'friendly', that's BS xD If you ask me, Filipinos are infinitely more friendly, and again while not all, generally make more of an effort to help you when you need it. I really felt more of a real sense of community during my years growing up in the Philippines compared to Taiwan.

#21 Children do tend to stay with their parents well into college and adulthood, since Chinese families are indeed very family-oriented, in a lot of cases, grandparents often live under the same roof as us as well! And it really does save a lot of money. I see there's a real stigma in the US when it comes to "living with your parents", but that's starting to change especially because of Covid and having more and more people move back in with their parents.

Housing unfortunately is pretty much hella expensive no matter where you go, and Taiwan is no exception. Steep housing prices and the very high cost of raising a child (schooling + buxiban fees, etc.) contribute to a very low birth rate and thus an aging population like Japan. It's not uncommon to see both parents working in Taiwan.

#23 I'm an overthinker myself, but I totally agree with the author that the best is to strike a good balance between these two. Which I guess is why I love drawing or any other related creative attempts, it helps me be more spontaneous or well, creative! I like to remain intellectually or artistically inspired.

#24 Is French high school really like that? xD My friend did watch SKAM France and more or less got a culture shock from what was depicted on the show. I can confirm however that most high schools both in the Philippines and Taiwan require students to wear a uniform, only in college is everybody free to wear casual/civilian clothes.

#26 Ah this is part of our Asian gift-giving etiquette xD We always open gifts later after the event/meeting and in private. Never open them in front of the person who gave it to you or in front of others. This is to prevent any 'shame/embarrassment' that may result both to yourself and to the gift giver. I know this may come off as something weird since some people may want a more honest response or immediate feedback when it comes to gift-giving, but that's just how it is in our culture. You're always free to ask us though (in private) if we liked the gift or not ^^"

#28 I want to say the same goes to drinking, partying, and drugs however xD Those are things which are still frowned upon in our culture. And to be honest, whenever I see those in movies, it does kind of turn me off xD It doesn't mean that we're "uncool" or "boring", we just think that there are much better or healthier ways of "having fun".

#31 Is this true in France?! Man I would kind of prefer that instead of people being on their phones all the time xD This kind of goes with #20 in that Chinese are overly practical or logical, and don't read fiction as much as nonfiction. My Taiwanese friend is an exception though, she's a bibliophile who loves the feel of paper books compared to e-books, and it's a trait of her that I like a lot. Both the Philippines and Taiwan however have a huge fanbase when it comes to manga and anime though.

I'm all for reading outside of "designated reading" at schools especially. Reading fiction improves your vocabulary too, and can be quite fun! It helps you imagine and really invest in a world/story, and if you ask me something that I feel Westerners are better at, they're more in touch with their emotions and creativity, and are thus much more able to write compelling or original stories. Believe me, I've seen a fair amount of Chinese movies that rip off Western movie plotlines xD

#33 Nothing much to add on here..except that since I'm a "weird" person, Mom often jokes that she got the wrong baby from the hospital. xD

#35 True. While I agree with the care and concern that your fellow community can give you, the downside of this is we tend to only hang out with our own people, e.g Chinese with Chinese, Taiwanese with Taiwanese, etc. I've seen too that it's especially hard to make friends in Japan and Korea as a foreigner. Not only is there the language barrier, but the differences in culture too. In a way, Asians can be pretty close-minded on getting to know other cultures or actually making friends with people from other countries. I know this all too well being half-Taiwanese/half-Filipino, being neither "Filipino" enough nor "Taiwanese" enough. xD It's more of people here being too used to what they're comfortable with.

#36 Oh this is something I feel that Chinese students and other students from similar cultures should really improve on. xD How will people respect you if you don't speak your mind?

I felt bad especially for my Spanish teacher in college, granted it was an introductory course (Spanish I and II) but the amount of times that our teacher had to prompt a student to recite/speak even with clear hints already made her (and me too) extremely frustrated. The thing is, these are college students, I personally feel they don't have any reason to be so shy of speaking and technically by not doing so they're slowing the pace of the class too much and a lot of time is wasted.

Unfortunately you can't always be very vocal with your thoughts and opinions in most Asian cultures. I would say strive for that, but at the same time, play your cards well, especially if you're in a workplace setting.

If you made it to the end, thank you for reading and here's a cookie! 🍪 I'm not perfect and there's bound to be something I missed so please let me know if you spotted anything wrong. Feedback/questions are very much welcome and please feel free to share about your country/culture's differences or similarities!

[angel-princess-anna]

APA Speculation Sunday

Yay, more interviews for me to read too much into!

(My mind is muddled atm, so sorry if this is a bit muddled too)

One interview comes from Simon Curtis, the director (and Elizabeth’s husband), with Total Film. He calls the new movie "entertaining, emotional", and that make me curious. I don’t remember if DA 2019 was called “emotional” in promo because, well, I blocked a lot of that out of my head (for my new followers, I am not fond of the first movie because I feel like the majority of the characters were OOC and it was a farce vs. a drama with some humor). Being that this is the director though, I feel like this is a good sign that this film is more in line with the TV than the first which was, imho, goofy.

The ‘making a movie’ plot seems to "descend upon Downton while the Crawleys are soaking in the sun”, but again, this makes me question the timeline of the scene we have in the trailer because even if Mary stays behind, and thus Anna... why is Baxter in that scene?? She should be with Cora...

Curtis also says that there's a suggestion at big changes, but my guess is a few foreshadowing lines to the upcoming Stock Market Crash. The movie is supposedly set 1928, not 1929, and in the TV show, Fellowes foreshadowed events before with dialogue and not covered them.

Again though I cycle back around to Violet and her health but idk.

And while the film is subtitled “A New Era”, is seems that that doesn’t come into play until the end. "It ends with a new era emerging" Curtis says. The article ends with "prepare for the closing of a chapter", but I don’t know if they are just paraphrasing him or...? How much of an new era are we ushering in?? This is more questions than answers at this point.

Meanwhile we got an interview with Hugh Dancy, and I’m just curious it 1) he’s reading this (jk), and 2) if there’s a reason he namechecked “Mr Bates.” In the early days of DA, “Mr Bates” was like the “Mr Darcy” of the TV series period drama world, but then, not to mince words, sadly his popularity sank like a rock. So either my man had some staying power in the minds of the general public... or Hugh Dancy’s character has scenes with him? or maybe that’s all who Hugh D remembered from trying to watch it back in the day? (also I hope that Fandom Wiki’s bios are more accurate in 2021 than they were in 2016. I never really use it because there was a lot wrong back in the day, I know it’s lead to discussions here about Thomas’ age etc. because of conflicting info).

But yeah, to think we’d be getting the second film this week had the not pushed it back O__O

[mysticdragon3md3]

Ranma ½ is GENIUS. Here’s Why by  Bonsai Pop

The thing I really appreciated about Ranma ½ when I was younger, was that it was a discussion about gender without getting sidetracked by sex, the way most “sex comedies” did, especially at the time.  At the time, publishers tried to market Ranma ½ as a “sex comedy” in the vein of raunchy college-setting Hollywood movies or fanservicy Male Gaze series (compare “Futaba-kun Change” or the proceeding “harem genre” that Ranma ½ started).  But Ranma ½ felt more like a discussion about gender more than sex, or even more than sexuality.  And being an AroAce kid, who didn’t know what AroAce was at the time, but was very confused about my gender, I really appreciated Ranma ½’s focus on gender over sex, fanservice, and heterosexuals navigating (sexual) relationships—which, I *cannot* express enough, was the saturated majority of all anime/manga, that even came close to discussing gender, at the time.  I just wanted a discussion about gender, gender roles, complaining about presumed traditional ideas about gender, and how to define one’s own gender despite society’s pressures about gender.  I wanted a discussion about Strength, that the martial arts genre did so often, without an advocation for sexist ideals, toxic masculinity, stereotypes about “feminine” being weaker (even as warriors), fixated only on romance, or any number of female stereotypes, etc.  I feel like I can’t remind people enough of how it was back then, when not only were these toxic mysoginist ideas portrayed frequently, but they were also portrayed as good, true, “right”, or unquestioned.  At least when Ranma Saotome was being a sexist jerk, he was punished for that terrible thinking or eventually had to reconcile with his dissonance.  And Akane Tendo was revolutionary at that time too.  It used to be that on the Shonen genre side, we had only hyper fem, passive, romance-fixated, love interests, OR nagging, cold female characters that really felt like the author was conveying all their horrible views on women in general, OR sexy eye-candy that had close-ups on their boobs or butt so frequently, that it completely made their lack of focus on romance or anything else in their personalities, secondary.  Then on the Shoujo genre side, we had girls who were fixated on nothing but romance, constantly jealous and possessive—and often over guys who hadn’t even proven themselves worthwhile to pursue romantically.  Let’s face it: A lot of Shoujo leading men were often jerks, treated their female love interests badly, and for some reason, she was just supposed to play the devoted “Lady Murasaki” and be totally “in love” with him.  Whyyyyyyyyyy?????????????  Even worse on the Shonen genre side too, because he treats her badly, it doesn’t get portrayed as bad treatment, he doesn’t understand why she’s angry, so she just looks like a volatile nag all the time, often existing only to be objectified or serve as a flimsy motive for his character arcs and actions. It was a pretty bad time.  Not that now has eliminated those problems, but when Ranma ½ and Akane Tendo seem like the shining lights of something different, maybe then you can understand how much I sorely needed Ranma ½ and Akane Tendo at that time.  

Really surprised that this video essay didn’t mention Jackie Chan.  The thing that differentiated Ranma ½ from so many martial arts battle anime/manga at the time, was that Ranma ½’s style of martial arts was inspired by Jackie Chan.  Meanwhile, all the other Shonen martial arts manga/anime were so serious and based more on “cool”, “action” genre toned martial arts movies.  

I’m intrigued by this video essay’s idea that Ranma ½ the series isn’t sexist, but rather, characters within the series are sexist, and are so in order to make a point about how them being like that is messed up.  I need to grapple with this because one of my problems in looking back at Ranma ½ is that it can be a little transphobic and/or homophobic at times.  Like, I’ll never forget when Tsubasa Kurenai was introduced and, Akane, this character that we’re supposed to completely sympathize with during this series, just keeps screaming in Tsubasa’s face that they are a “pervert”, simply because it’s revealed that Tsubasa identifies as a boy but dresses as a girl.  I think the episode just ended like that, and that was supposed to be a joke, but I don’t know whether the reveal’s shock intended on the audience was supposed to be conveyed through Akane and we were expected to have the same reactions as her, or if we were supposed to be shocked at Akane’s reactions and her reactions being ridiculous were the joke.  I dunno; it was a long time ago, I don’t remember much context, and I really should look it back up.  But frankly, there’s a lot of Ranma ½ to sift through and that’s more time than I have, writing this post.  Akane does seem to repeatedly have instances of being perfectly nice to characters, but when she discovers they’re actually guys, she spends a lot of time yelling “pervert” in their faces.  Sometimes I don’t know if we’re meant to see how ridiculous Akane is being or if we’re meant to agree with her.  Again, I watched/read the series a long time ago, and maybe if I re-watched/re-read it now, it would be clear to older me.  Because, when it happens between Akane and Ranma, Ranma has a specific line, grummbling about how Akane was perfectly nice to him, up until she found out he was actually a boy.  And Ranma was a bit nice in his characterization up until that early line of dialogue, so maybe we were supposed to be on his side in that thought.  So maybe Akane spending the rest of the series yelling “pervert” at Ranma (repeated so often it’s essentially their running gag), is supposed to be a joke laughing at how irrational Akane is being.  o.o?  I’d hate to think we’re supposed to be on Akane’s side, repeatedly calling Ranma a “pervert” over a curse that he had no control over getting, and early on was portrayed as a misfortune that the audience was supposed to sympathize and pity him over.  Maybe the whole thing is supposed to point out Akane’s flaws, since everyone in the series is pretty messed up.  (Even Kasumi unsettled me a bit when I was younger, in that she dropped her entire life, to replace her mother’s role when she died.  For me, being a young girl who didn’t buy into those traditional female roles, that were still at the time, strongly pushed onto girls in society, that was a little unsettling.  Still love Kasumi as a person though.)  Akane did have reason to “hate boys”, as the series specifically states early on, but I’d like to think that she was given this flaw as a point to grow away from.  Just as this video essay calls to attention Ranma being sexist and, over the series, eventually growing out of it.  But back when I was young and initially into Ranma ½, I feared that some of these sexist or even homophobic ideas in Ranma ½ were actually reflective of thoughts that Rumiko Takahashi advocated.  After all, there’s a point in Maison  Ikkoku where Kyoko berates herself by saying all women are fools.  Maybe I was too young to see the nuance in a character berating her own mistakes in her love live, vs the implication that all women are “properly” stereotyped into being obsessed with love and end up acting foolish for it.  Nowadays, I can see how we can berate ourselves whenever our specific actions can slot us into generalized stereotypes, and we curse ourselves for falling into proving stereotypes true on occaision.  But back then, when I was younger and watching Ranma ½ for the first time and reading Maison Ikkoku for the first time, I was afraid that such lines were reflective of Takahashi believing such stereotypes as truth.  Which is why I was so happy when sometime after Ranma ½, Inuyasha had a canonically gay character, and instead of Inuyasha calling him a pervert the entire time, he just got exasperated with his non-stop flirting, the way that all the female characters from Ranma ½ are tired of guys who won’t take “no” for an answer.  At the time, I thought, “Yay!  Takahashi has evolved to a less homophobic stance!”  But maybe, all this time, she was always against such things, and merely portraying them, even through characters we were supposed to sympathize with, merely to show how messed up such ideas are.  I really like that thought which this video essay presented.  

But I will disagree with this video essay on 1 thing:  The manga is better.  I’m not trying to be elitist.  I realize that comedy has a very subjective sensibilities, and the anime leans into awkward silence type comedy, whereas I am sick of that type of comedy.  But so many visual gags and jokes in the manga, and Rumiko Takahashi’s style in general, involve panels that are almost completely re-drawn, with only 1 element changed—the gag element—suggesting that the eye is supposed to read from panel to panel quickly (since the human eyes/brain filters out a lack of change, and is hard-wired to focus on changes from previous conditions).  To me, this suggests quick punchlines, whose sudden oddity is supposed to shock, implying an intended fast pacing to the jokes.  And yeah, Takahashi will draw seemingly normal scenes, detailed with all the normalcies of a commonly recognizable environment, then suddenly the next panel is exactly the same except a character is contorted into a silly pose or an absolutely ridiculous creature with an intentionally nonsensical facial expression has suddenly appeared, amid that completely “normal” scene, with all its “normal” details _redrawn_.  It’s why the “evil oni” episode in Ranma ½ had a ridiculous face, despite its supposedly ominous background.  In fact, anywhere Takahashi can fit a gag face, especially if it contradicts the surrounding scene’s/story’s serious tone, she will do it.  She has even said in interviews that if scenes are too serious, she will try to put in a gag in the corner.  I remember reading Maison Ikkoku during a depressive episode (for both me and Godai) and suddenly Yotsuya had poked his head through a hole in the wall, into the scene, shining a flashlight onto his own face, like a kid telling a ghost story, all while he made funny faces and Takahashi’s typical gag with the sign language “I love you” gesture.  The woman cannot let things stay serious (except for Mermaid Saga, parts of Inuyasha, and some short stories), and I love her for it!  ^o^  But the way she suddenly injects ridiculousness into scenes and character designs, suggest, at least to me, an intended fast paced delivery with the jokes.  That sudden shock when you notice Yotsuya making faces in the corner of a depressing scene. That sudden shock, when Ranma is hiding from his mother, and is clinging to the ceiling or futons like Spiderman, and Akane is just supposed to act natural so Ranma’s mom won’t notice where he’s hiding.  To me, this suggests the punchline is supposed to come at you like a sudden punch, unlike awkwardness that hangs in the air.  So when the anime tries to make the joke linger, I just don’t enjoy it as much as when my brain can dictate the faster pacing I want (and believe better fits) while reading the Ranma ½ manga.  

Also, the manga is better because those manga filler episodes were not as well written as the manga.  Rumiko Takahashi is a master of short stories.  And that shows when you run into the less-effective filler anime episodes–even when you don’t know they’re filler episodes!  I remember watching the Ranma ½ anime before reading the manga, before there was even internet lists of which were the filler episodes, and coincidentally, all the filler episodes did not make me laugh out loud, whereas every episode up until that point, had made me uncontrollably laugh.  I feel like the anime thought that because Ranma ½ was an episodic, very silly series, they could just insert anything and it would fit.  But clearly, only  the manga-based episodes—and even individual scenes!—had the nuance of Takahashi’s writing and pacing, to make even an episodic, ridiculous series work.  

  Also, I love how this video essay just lavishes the love on Rumiko Takahashi.  ^o^  

Another thing this video essay pointed out that I appreciate about Ranma ½ is how indifferent Ranma is to all the advances of his suitors or even accidental fanservice.  All the consequential “harem genre” series that tried to emulate Ranma ½ always seemed to include male protagonists who were surrogates for the audiences’ intended horny reactions.  But Ranma was neither turned on, enticed, nor tantalized by even accidental fanservice falling into his lap.  (As Mother’s Basement has noted, harem genre protagonist have a penchant for accidentally falling and grabbing a girls’ boobs, or their face falling into her boobs, or accidentally put into a position to forcibly see up her skirt, etc.)  If anything, he’s more embarassed that he accidentally walked in on girls in undress, rather than enjoying the view OR reacting so long, that the scene drags on, fixating on the accidental nudity/groping/fanserivce.  And I was about to postulate that maybe because most harem genre and fanservice series are usually made by straight men for an audience with a Male Gaze.  But Takahashi wrote Maison Ikkoku’s Godai, right before she created Ranma ½, and he very much enjoyed the view, took peeks, and fixated on any accidental fanservice.  So it’s actually Ranma himself who had reactions and a perspective that were very agreeable to this asexual.  

I hadn’t noticed before this video essay said it, but Happosai really is condemned much more for being the “pervy old man” archetype, whereas other series are very permissive towards that same archetype, even when they’re being sexual predators.  I’d like to attribute this to Takahashi bringing a woman’s perspective, but Sailormoon was also written by a woman and (if I remember correctly) Rei’s grandpa’s pervy ways were reprimanded in only 1 episode then permitted as a running gag in the rest of the series (thankfully, not often).  Then again, lots of the Shoujo genre also advocated for many toxic traditional ideas about gender (like girls picking romantic partners who don’t respect them, and girls being fully devoted/invested in such guys, because they “once” meet the bare minimum for human decency by being nice to them once).  So maybe it was uniquely Takahashi’s prerogative to not let the “pervy old man” archetype slide as supposedly “endearing” silliness.

[raindancer2004]

Blended Family

Word Count: 3,187  Demetri x OC - Part Six Warnings: Fluff

December came round quickly and Sophie got excited as she loved Christmas and was looking forward to her first Christmas with Demetri and their children.  “Do you celebrate Christmas Dem?” Sophie asked “Yes, we celebrate Christmas but probably not in the way that you do” He replied “What do you mean?” “We do Secret Santa every year, it was introduced by one of the secretaries a few decades back” He replied “What about a tree?” “Heidi puts one up in the family room every year. We put the gifts under the tree. How do you celebrate Christmas?” “We put up a tree every year and decorate it and place the wrapped gifts beneath it. We also put up decorations to make our homes look festive” She replied and he smiled at her “I was hoping we could celebrate Christmas this year as it’s our first one together as well as Nico and Ellie’s first Christmas.” “That sounds like a plan cara mia. How can I help?” He asked as he stepped closer, wrapping his arms around her “We need to decide whether to get a real or fake tree and choose a colour scheme for our decorations. Then there’s the shopping of Christmas gifts for the children” She answered looking up at him “What about gifts for each other?” He asked before leaning down and pressing his lips to hers “I’d like to buy you some gifts too” He kissed her again “Ok, but we have to set a limit on the money we spend on each other and the children” She replied before pulling him down for another kiss “I’m making no promises mi amore” He replied smiling and she shook her head smiling.

Following a discussion where they weighed the pros and cons of a real tree vs a fake tree, they decided to buy a fake tree. Demetri bought a large fake tree for his Sophie’s room along with blue and silver decorations to match the colour scheme Sophie suggested. Sophie also hung a wreath on their door, decorated to match their tree colours. Demetri bought a smaller tree for the children’s room after Nico said he liked looking at the lights on the tree of an evening, that tree also followed Sophie’s colour scheme at Nico’s polite request.

Sophie and Nico went shopping for gifts for Demetri and Ellie, leaving Ellie with Sulpicia and Anthenodora as Demetri was on guard duty with Felix and the twins. During their shopping trip they purchased stockings to hang on the fireplace along with some personalised tree decorations; Nico’s chosen decoration was two snow people, as he called them. One wore a blue scarf and hat and the other wore a pink scarf and hat. Nico and Ellie’s name were written above the snow people’s hats. Sophie also bought two baubles and had them personalised too: one saying ‘Nico’s 1st Christmas’ and the other ‘Ellie’s 1st Christmas’. “Nico you can’t tell daddy or Ellie what gifts we have bought them ok?” Sophie asked Nico softly “I promise mummy, it’ll be our secret” He replied smiling “Good boy.” They made their way to a coffee shop for a short break; They had a hot chocolate and a gingerbread man each “I like the gingerbread man mummy, thank you” “You’re welcome sweetie and I’m glad you like them.”

Demetri returned from a shopping trip a few days later with a personalised decoration for him and Sophie; his one was a couple in winter clothes with their names written above their hats. He also bought his Secret Santa gift for Jane; a MAC make-up set along with a few gifts for Sophie and Nico.

Sophie had explained to Nico who Father Christmas was and what happens on Christmas Eve and Nico seemed really excited so Demetri decided to take Sophie and the children to Volterra’s Christmas market one Saturday afternoon, knowing that Santa and his reindeer were there. “Look daddy it’s Santa” Nico said excitedly “So it is” Demetri replied smiling “Now I know why you wanted to come to the market today” Sophie said low to Demetri “He seemed interested in Santa after your talk and I thought he might like to visit Santa’s Grotto. I know it’s a human thing as it happens here every year and I plan on bringing Ellie when she’s old enough to understand about Santa” He replied as they joined the queue. Nico sat on Santa’s lap “Hello, I’m Santa. What’s your name and what would you like for Christmas this year?” “Hello, I’m Nico and I’d like a train set please, like the one in my story book” Nico replied with a smile “I think I can do that. Is that all you want for Christmas?” Santa replied “I’d like to ask for something for my sister Ellie too, if that’s ok?” Nico asked politely and Santa nodded “Of course, what would she like?” “A new teddy bear please as she really likes them” Nico replied pointing over at Ellie “Of course I can do that. You are a very good big brother” Santa told him “Thank you and Merry Christmas Santa” Nico said as one of the Elves stepped forward and handed Nico two gifts “One for you and your sister” “Thank you Mr Elf.” Demetri and Sophie couldn’t help smiling at their son “He’s so thoughtful and polite. I love him so much Dem” “I know, me too.”

Sophie and Nico bake Christmas cookies and cupcakes in the week leading up to Christmas, Gianna liked eating the treats as the only other human in the castle. Demetri tried a cupcake and a cookie too “Daddy, look at what mummy and I made” Nico said looking at Demetri, showing him the festive treats. “Why are you eating those D?” Felix asked looking confused as he entered the kitchen “It’s Christmas Felix and Sophie and Nico spent a lot of time making and decorating them so I thought I’d try one of each” He replied looking at his mate and son, whilst Ellie sat on his lap putting her fingers in the frosting and licking them “I think the little one approves” Felix says nodding at Ellie.

Demetri sat watching his mate and son start to build a gingerbread house and began to get lost in his thoughts; thinking about how much he loves Sophie and is happy she’s human and that she nurtures Nico’s human side. He hopes she continues to do so after her change and when even Nico’s grown up, as there is plenty of time to nurture his vampire side in the future. He also felt grateful to have a daughter too, one that he can give immortally to when she’s old enough. “Penny for them Demi” Sophie said smiling, pulling him from his thoughts “Hmm, oh yeah…I was just thinking how lucky I am to have Nico and to have met you and Ellie and I am looking forward to spending forever with my family” He replied smiling “Aww Dem” She replied, her eyes getting a little teary “I’m lucky that Ellie and I got to met you and Nico too and I’m also looking forward to spending forever together as a family” She stepped beside him and leant down to kiss him, Nico giggled at the sight as Demetri wrapped his arm around her waist. “I love you Dem” “I love you too.”

They woke up the day before Christmas Eve to see that it had snowed overnight and Sophie decided to wrap herself and the kids up and go play in the snow in the garden below their room “I need to wrap up you warm sweetie, so we can play in the snow and build snowmen” Sophie said to Nico as she wrapped a scarf around him and helped him put on gloves. Ellie was all wrapped too, even though she couldn’t play in the snow. They had been outside for about half an hour when Demetri joined them “So what are my three favourite people up to?” He asked “Mummy and I are building a snowman” Nico answered before looking over at Ellie “And Ellie is eating the snow” He added chuckling “Oh hunny, don’t do that” Sophie says softly but Ellie ignores her. Demetri sits beside Ellie on the blankets and lifts her onto his lap in an attempt to stop her eating the snow “I have an idea princess” He says low and scoops up some snow and shapes it into a ball before throwing it gently at Nico’s back “Oi” Nico says as he turns around to look at his dad and sister “It was Ellie” Demetri replies pointing to her and Ellie just smiles and starts babbling “Of course it was daddy” Nico replies. Demetri throws one at Sophie next “I suppose Ellie threw that one too?” She asked “Nope that one was me” He smiled at her before looking down at Ellie and talking to her. Sophie and Nico threw snowballs at Demetri and as they made contact some of the snow fell onto Ellie who just laughed and tried to eat it. Sophie showed Demetri and Nico how to make snow angels and Demetri laid Ellie down in the snow and made one for her too.

After a few hours of being outside they went back to their shared room and Demetri bathed the children whilst Sophie made herself and Nico a hot chocolate, warmed a bottle of milk for Ellie and grabbed a blood bag for Demetri “So you don’t feel left out” She says to Demetri as the four of them get comfortable on the sofa to watch Christmas movies. “Thank you letting me play in the snow mummy, I had fun” “I’m glad sweetie, I had fun too” Sophie replied as she pulled Nico into her so they were cuddled up “We had fun too, didn’t we princess?” Demetri said and Ellie babbled a reply before yawning and snuggling into her dad for a nap.

Sophie prepared a Christmas Eve box for Nico and Ellie consisting of a new pair of pyjamas each with fluffy socks. She also bought personalised Christmas story books; one for Nico and Ellie as it’s their first Christmas. Both stories feature Demetri, Sophie, Nico and Ellie, the only difference being the story itself.

Sophie gets Nico to leave out a glass of milk and some cookies for Santa and a carrot for Rudolph. “You know you’re eating this stuff, right?” Demetri whispered low to Sophie so Nico couldn’t hear him “You’re helping too Dem” She replied. “Can we do this every year whilst Ellie grows up too?” “Of course, we can buddy” Demetri replies smiling before putting Nico in bed and reading him a story.

The following morning they wake up to see more snow has fallen overnight “I love a white Christmas Dem” “Me too, especially as I have a family to celebrate it with now” He kissed her “Merry Christmas Sophie” “Merry Christmas Dem” She replied kissing him back.

Once the children were awake and had breakfast they sat around the tree in Demetri and Sophie’s room and began opening their gifts “I think someone went overboard” Sophie says looking her mate “It’s their first Christmas ever, our first Christmas together and as a family. I wanted to spoil you all, so I did” He replied smiling “Thank you, it’s much appreciated” She replied and Nico nodded. Nico received a trainset, building blocks, colouring books with crayons and pencils and some new clothes. Ellie received some books that were specifically for children of her age, some clothes, and a brown coloured Build-a Bear dressed as a princess, Ellie squeezed the teddy to her front and upon doing so it spoke “I love you always” She looked confused her as she heard her daddy’s voice but his lips didn’t move; Sophie and Nico smiled knowingly as Ellie squeezed her teddy again and it repeated “I love you always” in Demetri’s voice. She looked between her teddy and Demetri before being scooped up into his arms “Yes, that’s my voice in your new teddy. That way I can tell you I love you even when I am away for work” He told her softly, kissing her head “That’s really sweet Dem” Sophie told him “I can call you and speak to you and Nico, I can’t do that with her yet” He replied “Aww, Daddy’s gone soft” Nico said teasingly, causing Sophie to laugh, Demetri growled low playfully, Ellie turned to look at him confused “Yes Ellie, daddy can growl, but never at you” He told her “Daddy hasn’t gone soft buddy, trust me. It’s just you three mean everything to me and I want you all to know that” He said looking between Sophie and his children. “Here buddy, this is for you too” Demetri says handing Nico a large gift, inside was a brown coloured Build-a-Bear dressed as a vampire “Give its paw a squeeze” Nico did as his dad told him and he heard Demetri’s voice “I love you buddy” “Thanks daddy” Nico said giving him a big hug “You’re welcome” He kissed his son’s head.

Demetri opened his gifts, receiving clothes, hair products, bath bombs, a ‘World’s best daddy’ mug from Nico and Ellie and some new crime and thriller books. Sophie opened her gifts, receiving clothes, a leather jacket, bath bombs, a ‘World’s best mummy’ mug from Nico and Ellie as well as jewellery. Demetri handed Ellie to Nico before moving closer to Sophie “Here, you missed one” He passed her a gift bag and when she opened the little black box inside she saw a white gold diamond ring, Demetri took her hand in his “Sophie, I can’t give you a big white wedding as I’m not human but I want to exchange rings with you whilst we make a promise to always love and care for one another…I’m asking if you will spend forever with me by my side as my best friend, my soulmate…as my wife?” He placed the engagement ring on her finger “Yes” She replied low, tears falling “You made mummy cry” Nico says as he slaps Demetri’s leg “These are happy tears sweetie” Sophie assured Nico “Sorry daddy” “Don’t worry buddy, I was worried there myself, I didn’t expect mummy to cry either” Demetri replies and pulls Sophie onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her “I love you Dem” She kissed him “I love you too”

Everyone noticed the diamond ring on Sophie’s finger as soon as they entered the family room for Secret Santa “Oh my god, look at the rock on Sophie’s hand” Chelsea called out grabbing her hand “It’s beautiful” Heidi added “Congratulations to you both” Aro said shaking Demetri’s hand. Sophie told their friends how Demetri had proposed, including how Nico slapped him and told him off because Demetri’s proposal had made her cry “Oh, he’s so sweet and protective of his mummy” Jane said smiling over at Nico, who was sitting with Ellie and Alec.

Sophie received a €40 Boux Avenue gift card from her Secret Santa “You’re welcome” Heidi said low, winking at her, Sophie blushed slightly. Demetri received a pair of black leather gloves and a shot glass from his Secret Santa “I hear having two kids under the age of one can be stressful” Santiago said smiling as Demetri looked at the shot glass with a confused expression “I’ll bare that in mind” He replied. Jane loved the make-up Demetri got her and thanked him with a hug “You’re welcome Jane” He replied low.

That night Demetri and Sophie read the children their personalised Christmas stories and tucked them into bed “Thank you for our gifts” Nico said to his parents “You’re both very welcome” Demetri replied kissing them both goodnight, Sophie kissed them goodnight too and left the room. Sophie and Demetri cuddled up in bed watching another Christmas movie “Thank you for today Dem. It’s been the best Christmas ever” “Thank you for today too, I think the kids had fun. It’s been my best Christmas too, especially as I gained a fiancé today” He replied “Me too and the ring is gorgeous” She leant up and kissed him enjoying being held in her mate’s arms.

Sophie discovered from Gianna that the city has a New Year’s Eve firework display every year and decided that her and Demetri were going to take Nico and Ellie to see this display. “Sophie due to my vampire hearing I’ll be standing near the back otherwise my ears will be ringing and I won’t enjoy the firework display” Demetri said as he got Nico ready “That’s ok. The noise is likely to be loud for Ellie too, so I bought her some earmuffs” Sophie as she puts a pair of beige earmuffs on her “Maybe you should have got daddy a pair too” Nico says laughing, earning a glare from Demetri. Sophie choked back a laugh and replied “I didn’t think that. Maybe I’ll get him a pair for next year” “Just make sure they’re black” Demetri replied with a straight face “Yes sir” Sophie called out and saluted him “Mummy thinks she’s so funny” Demetri said looking between the children, a small smirk on his lips “Mummy is funny” Nico replied smiling “Little traitor” Demetri muttered and Nico just shrugged.

Once outside in the city square, they found a space amongst the crowd that ensured Sophie and Nico could see the fireworks but that wouldn’t be uncomfortable for Demetri. Ellie appeared to like the colours of the fireworks, the earmuffs doing their job of muffling the loud noise, she kept tapping Demetri and pointing to the sky smiling and Demetri couldn’t help smiling at her reaction, finding it rather cute “What do you think of the fireworks buddy?” “I think they’re cool, the different colours and noises they make” Nico replied looking up at his dad, whilst still holding Sophie’s hand “Thank you for this cara mia” Demetri said low into his mate’s ear “For what?” She asked confused “For giving me the chance to experience a ‘human’ family life of my own, something I never got to have…obviously” He replied low kissing her cheek “I really do have the best of both worlds with you and the children” He added “I’m glad. I just want to nurture Nico’s human side and for him to make as many memories as possible in his accelerated childhood, after all he’s going to watch Ellie grow up at a slower rate, making memories and I don’t want him missing out on anything” She replied “You really are the best mummy in the world and I’m so proud to call you my mate” He responded wrapping arm around her, holding his family close “You are the best daddy in the world and I couldn’t have asked for a better mate handsome” She leant up and kissed his lips “Happy New Year” “Happy New Year Soph” He smiled at her as they continued to watch the fireworks, seeing in the New Year as a family.

[centrally-unplanned]

Medium & Marketing for 90′s Anime Dubs

Today is Hayao Miyazaki’s 80th birthday, which made sure my dash was filled with Ghibli tidbits. A discussion of my personal favourite, Kiki’s Delivery Service, brought up its ill-fated original dub by Disney in 1998. Ghibli still didn’t have the courage yet to put their foot down on changes for international releases, and so there are a lot of alterations - the theme songs are changed to be anglicized, almost any “dead space” or quiet moments in the film have someone (normally animal sidekick Jiji the cat) improv lines over the scenes to liven them up, and in particular the ending is changed to be less bittersweet as Jiji, who in the original Kiki permanently loses the ability to talk to as a sign of growing up, regains his voice.

These changes slot neatly into the zeitgeist of all 90′s anime changes - a disregard for the property’s core appeal as they were bowdlerized for a western audience. Sailor Moon is an infamous victim of a similar process - at least Kiki took place in fantasy Europe, the Sailor Moon dub’s attempts to pretend that the show doesn’t take place in Japan were simply insane as they cut out or blurred every appearance of Japanese writing in the show, leaving reams of animation frames on the floor in the process.

(Tangent time: the greatest scene ever is one where, upon reading a note by Usagi, to prove it was her Minako/Sailor Venus comments “it must be from her, its written entirely in hiragana”, the simpler form of written Japanese compared to kanji, which Usagi as a running gag cannot write. So in the dub they just...blur out the text of the note, and have Minako comment “I had to read it with my imagination. It's all written in funny symbols!". I distinctly remember watching the episode live when I was 12 years old and going “wait what the fuck does that even mean?” and suddenly realizing that the show was changing its own script, it was a trip of a moment)

Like most people I do malign these changes, but I am actually here to partially defend them via contextualization. The idea that American audiences would have cared that the show was Japanese is pretty dumb, but what you often hear are statements like “kids in Japan appreciated Sailor Moon/Kiki’s Delivery Service just fine, they didn’t need to change it”. That is possible, but it mistakes why changes are being made to begin with - its not the “culture of children in the US vs Japan”, its intended market via the medium of distribution.

Kiki’s Delivery Service was released in Japanese theatres in 1989, and it was the highest grossing film of the year in Japan (about ~US$18 million, man do things change). Kiki’s Delivery Service the Disney dub, was....released on VHS in 1998. VHS releases and movie theatre releases aren’t really intended accomplish the same thing. Remember all those direct-to-video Disney sequels? Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride? Cinderella 3: A Twist in Time? Remember how they were all just garbage? Anyone looking back at them today cringes, with a few exceptions. But none of us cringed when we were 8! My partner is a huge Disney fangirl, and when she was young she didn’t even distinguish between the theatre release and the VHS sequels - it was all Disney, you just lined them up and played them in a row as the complete canon. Yes, these movies sucked partially because they were low budget, but they weren’t actually *that* low budget - and not the throwaways your memory probably tells you they were. Lion King 2? Made ~$300 million in net sales, almost as much as the original Lion King’s theatrical run.

What those Disney VHS sequels and Kiki share is the fact that their intended market was *only* children. That is the point of VHS - you put it on for your kids and then go make dinner. Its the virtual babysitter, the kids can loop it while reenacting every scene with their stuffed animals. Movies released in theatres don’t serve that role at all - the parents are paying $15 a head and they are trapped in their seats for the whole runtime. It has to entertain everyone, or you aren’t going to go, or at least not as often. VHS releases sucked because kids don’t care, they actually do enjoy the constant quippy lines and dumb jokes. That is equally true for Japanese kids - its just that Kiki’s intended audience wasn’t Japanese kids, it was “all ages” - a very different category.

The same is true for Sailor Moon, by the way. The idea that kids in Japan could “handle more mature themes like death” unlike American audiences doesn’t hold up quite as much when you look at Disney theatrical releases like the Lion King - Mufasa’s death pulls no punches, but kids didn’t mind. And Japan does have shows like Doraemon that are just as childish as the 90′s western cartoons you remember. Its that Sailor Moon’s audience wasn’t just kids. 

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon aired in March of 1992 on TV Asahi. Asahi was not a kids network, and Sailor Moon did not air in a kid’s block - instead in its “Anime Block”. It aired on Saturdays, at 7:00 PM. For most of its runtime, the 7:30 slot after was held by Slam Dunk, a hyper-serious basketball anime adapted from a manga in Weekly Shonen Jump. You think director Kunihiko Ikuhara was throwing in queer relationships and even trans characters, and every other villian was a half-naked seductress, because it was gonna really resonate with 8 year olds? Sailor Moon was for 8 year olds, yes...and for otaku. So, 15 year olds, lets not exaggerate here. But still, its hype, its success, came just as much from its teen and adult fans as much as its young devotees. Which was intentional - it was *marketed* that way. That's why it aired at 7:00 PM on a Saturday. 

Sailor Moon’s original dub, on the other hand, aired on UPN at, yeesh, 6:30 AM?? Then on USA’s Cartoon Express at the much more reasonable 8:30 AM, and later on Toonami at 4:00 PM. All of these are kids slots, to watch over cereal or snacks before/after school while the parents are busy. You do not expect the adult in the room to be watching alongside the kid, or for teens to really be paying attention.

And to cut off the logical objection, a show like Sailor Moon was just not going to get a 7:00 PM Saturday slot in the US in the 90′s. Nor was Kiki going to get a movie theatre release in 1998 of any scale. Movie releases are expensive, Saturday slots are precious, the funding just wasn’t there for something so untested as Japanese anime. There was no demand in the west for it - that demand would only be created later, by a generation who grew up on, well, shitty Sailor Moon dubs and Kiki VHS releases. And what success in the media slots these shows and movies did have are shaped by those market niches.

I don’t want to be over-deterministic on this - at some point Cartoon Network rolled the dice on Cowboy Bebop and Full Metal Alchemist and it worked - maybe they could have done that in 1995 with like Neon Genesis Evangelion, who knows! And of course US children’s cartoons are, beyond market forces, burdened with regulatory moralizing that Japanese media does not have. But I do think these 90′s dub efforts should get the proper context for the constraints they were operating under, and why they existed at all, as they are criticized.

[anchoviesinthenightsky]

What’re your thoughts on the impact Luca has had for the queer community and for MLMs alike?

Starting off with some heavy hitting questions today huh? /joking

I really appreciate that I'm a person's whose opinion/ thoughts you'd value enough to ask this kind of question.

I have a couple different thoughts, but let me lay out a framework first so you can see where I’m coming from.

Firstly, I’m not a MLM nor am I in the MLM community, so I don't want to speak to their experience or their thoughts, because I’m not intimately familiar with them.

Secondly, I’m coming at this from an American perspective, meaning that I currently (and for better part of the last 5-8 years) have had a lot of access to television and movies that contain queer characters and/or center queerness itself. I think this conversation about Luca (which is Disney meaning that it’s going to be widely available/ made for an international audience to some degree) and its impact might look very different in a place where there is less queer representation in media. But, I can’t speak to that, so I’ll leave that part of the conversation for someone else.

Okay, the framework is set. Let’s get into this.

When talking about the impact that a story has on a community, often times we’re often talking about a few different things, like: what does this representation do for the queer community? Is there an issue that’s given more attention?

I find that queer stories that leave a larger cultural impact often do one of the following things (and ideally more than one):

represent of queer voices/ queer stories in the story

cast queer people to play a character and incorporate that queerness into the characters

educate about queer issues or identities to the audience

advocate / spread awareness about queer issues

normalize queer topics/ lessen the taboo of them

In an earlier draft of this post, I went on to talk about the show The Golden Girls, and how it did a lot of these things during the 1980s-early 1990s, when most other shows were not doing it. That discussion got kind of long, so I'm cutting it out (but if you want to example let me know).

But the point I'm trying to make is that-- stories that have a positive, long lasting, and significant impact for the queer community in the broader culture, require queerness to be written explicitly into the story. It’s hard to advocate, educate, or humanize a community that you refuse to name.

Luca doesn’t have explicitly queer characters. (We read them as queer, but they aren’t explicitly queer. A good comparison might be The Mitchells vs. The Machines, where being queer isn’t a huge part of Katie’s story, but she’s wearing a pride pin the entire time and is shown to have a crush on a girl.)

I will give Luca some credit, because the movie does feature a voice actor who is bi and who uses they/he pronouns, which is wonderful! And I also wouldn't be surprised to learn if there were queer people in the writer's room and/or queer artists who worked on the film. But the story itself is not explicitly queer, so its impact on/for the queer community will always be limited by that.

But but I think a lot of us queer people often find ourselves looking for queerness in stories that don’t explicitly have it. We want to see ourselves represented in a variety of stories.

I think that’s part of why fandom spaces often end up being queer spaces. I forget the post, but there’s a lovely post by a fandom elder who talks about the way that we steal characters away and make them queer. We read the subtext and the nods, and we create the rest ourselves.

I think that it’s fair to say that fandom spaces are important to queer folks and to queer culture itself, because it’s a community where we can write the stories we want to see without having to worry about appeasing straight audiences (or straight higher ups, or straight networks, or homophobic countries who’s markets we want to sell movies in). There’s just us, and the work we create.

And that legacy goes back incredibly far. It goes back to queer zines of Kirk/Spock Star Trek fanfic in the 1960s and 1970s, and likely far beyond that too. As long as there have been queer people, we've found ways to tell queer stories and to reimagine stories as queer.

I think Luca firmly sits in that tradition. And I think that the queerness we add to Luca in our fan-creations, has the same impact that fan work has always had on the queer community— that it allows us to see ourselves as nuanced, valuable, and loved

And in that way, I think Luca is important.

[dani-luminae]

Who is better in your opinion? Willa or Uma?

Oooh. This is a hard question. I love them both so much, I don’t have an easy answer for this. So I’ll look at it from a few different angles and tell you which is better (in my opinion) from there.

If anyone has anything to add, ask, or debate about this, I’m open to discussion.

Angle 1: Canon writing in introduction movie (Descendants 2 vs. ZOMBIES 2)

First “angle” is the character writing (motivation, etc.) in their intro movie. I’m not counting D3 in this. 

Uma’s original motive was anger at being forgotten on the Isle, mixed with a desire for vengeance against Mal and a will to harm Auradon. I know the fandom has latched onto her “free the Isle kids” point more than the others. She wanted the wand to free her crew and and the Isle and destroy Auradon.

Willa’s writing in Z2 however showed that she didn’t want to hurt humans particularly, she just wanted to find the moonstone and help her pack. We’re sorta left to assume that if the wolf pack found the moonstone without the humans help, the pack would have just taken it back to the forest and probably not bothered Seabrook ever again. They didn’t exactly like the place or show a desire to hurt the humans or Zombies unless said intruders stood between them and the moonstone.

In this angle, Willa definitely came off in the more favorable light. So (sorry Uma) but in this part, I think I preferred Willa here. To be fair: Disney’s half-assed writing was all over in D2, so Uma didn’t get the justice she deserved there, but seems they learned from that with Z2.

Angle 2: Character design

It took me a while to warm up to Uma’s design, although that’s mostly because the first looks we ever get of her were her sitting with Harry and Gil, so her hair combined with her dress just looked like strings to me. Not the best way to show off her design. Also wouldn’t such long hair get in the way during fights? In later promos we see her in movement and her look definitely looked better to me, but still more stylized “VK” more than “practical pirate captain.” I mostly put that down to the costume department really starting to fall down on the job in this movie. Her Cotillion dress was gorgeous, though.

Willa’s first promo showed her standing, posed, perfectly showing off her look. My initial reaction was, once again, very “meh.” I still wasn’t sure what to think of the Werewolves at the time. Fur and claw-marks were obviously the cliché for such a type of character. I’m not sure I actually warmed up to Willa’s style much in the movie, though - throughout her variety of outfits, the only one that actually sticks with me is her Prawn dress, and even then, it’s not all that memorable.

In this part, Uma definitely came off better. Her dress showed up better in the movie than in any of the promos, and the small variations on her main look that we got - jacket on, jacket off, added pants for “It’s Goin’ Down” - made it memorable. And her Cotillion dress was so amazing. Willa’s outfits all melded together and weren’t exactly memorable. (I’m not talking about D3 in this part either.)

Angle 3: Relationship to main protagonist and co.

One of Uma’s original motivations is vengeance against Mal for Mal’s terrible behavior in the past. This continues through D2 and even in D3. It got boring quickly in the third movie, being the source of much useless bickering between Mal and Uma (though Mal, of course, was never any help.) Mal and Uma’s rivalry seemed to be a focal point of the third movie, only to get resolved for no reason at the end, just because Uma forgives Mal after defeating Audrey, for some reason I still have yet to understand.

Willa’s initial reaction to Addison is hostility and disbelief, because Addison is human but has the trademark white hair of the legendary Great Alpha. While Willa is wary of Addison, she still allows Addison to come to the wolf den and seems to let Wyatt hope that she’s the Great Alpha. She trusts Addison enough to allow her to hold onto the Great Alpha moonstone necklace, and looks visibly betrayed and angry when it seems Addison has “lost” it. But after Addison and the others aide the wolf pack in “Flesh and Bone,” Willa seems to renew her trust in Addison, and even gives her the Great Alpha moonstone necklace in the end, after the moonstone has been found.

Overall, I found that Willa had a much more believable “grow to trust the protagonist” arc than Uma did. Mal spent much of her time antagonizing Uma and yet Uma somehow changes her mind about Mal after one good deed that hardly even concerns Uma except for the danger to Celia; meanwhile Addison expressed mostly open-mindedness and a will to learn and help, and while Willa mistrusts non-pack characters, she eventually sees that Addison does want to help and trusts her in the end. When it comes to this aspect of the writing, Willa is the winner here. I’m still angry at the D3 writers for a lot, but mostly their writing of Uma.

Much of this is how I came to make this post.

Angle 4: Original marketing

Let’s be honest, the original TV promos for all the VKs+Ben in D2 were crap. Just them posing and spinning around in a room that looked like a Home Depot basement. It was very underwhelming and it did not make for a good first impression for Uma, Harry, and Gil. I fondly nicknamed them “The Three Villainous Stooges” at least until we had a promo that expressed their actual competence and capabilities, when I promptly dropped that name.

The first TV promo I can recall for Willa was the one where she and the other Werewolves enter the cafeteria and saunter along to some song I don’t even remember. While it was much better than the original D2 promos, it did very little to express Willa’s capabilities either, aside from making it clear she was in command of the pack and was not to be messed with.

In this aspect, I think Willa and Uma tie for this. They both got useless and stupid first promos. Both of them turned out to be awesome and amazing characters because of this. A solid tie.

Angle 5: Current fate

Even including the whole Moonstone Mystery nonsense, so far, Willa is still residing with her pack in the forest, attending Seabrook High School, and friends with Addison and the others. Addison has earned Willa’s trust through hard work and just earnest attempts to help.

As of the end of D3 (and with no mention of Uma in any of the Royal Wedding shorts) Uma is freed from the Isle after apparently forgiving Mal for no reason, and canon says absolutely nothing else about her. Mal earned Uma’s friendship through... lying to her, betraying her, and pleading with her for her help, apparently, and then saving Celia.

Sorry Uma, Willa wins here again.

-

I love both of these characters so much, but when it comes to canon writing, Willa really got the better end of the stick. However, I definitely love Uma, she has so much potential as so much more than being forced to be Mal’s friend (and that’s what fanfics are for!)

Thank you for the ask!

[ouyangzizhensdad]

Not to disillusion u or anything but mdzs is an online novel that is cold per chapter, so the novel itself is also very much part of that equation. I've got more issues with mxtx not getting the money she deserves for the adaptations than the adaptations being abt money coz the novel was also for money. Other damei novels like addicted have discussed more topics related to being lgbt but untamed or mdzs become hits coz mxtx writes love and longing well. I'm still angry abt wwx being bubbly/soft

Hi anon,

I didn’t mean that MDZS the novel wasn’t part of the investment-art-entertainment equation, although depending on the ways in which it can produce economic value (ie depending on how online publishing works in China and how money is distributed between the players, e.g. if there is no starting bonus on a paycheck but only a cut of the profits depending on the number of views, etc.) maybe I wouldn’t exactly choose “investment” as the economic term for it (maybe profit-making logic/potential?).

My intent was more to exclude for instance fanfics, or to nod to the fact that many people might create something without any consideration of economic factors, and end up self-publishing for instance, so the product enters the market but it was not designed with the market in mind or with constraints imposed by the way the market is configured. 

The point of that diagram is not to say that Because Thing Exists in a Capitalist Society = Bad or that Tv series and Movies Are Especially Capitalist, but to highlight that unlike writing a book for instance, which someone might do in their free time and then later will (try) to make it enter the infrastructure of publishing and be subjected to profit-making and market logics, movies and tv series require upfront investments. Unless you are filming a short, amateur thing, the amount of capital you need to get started is intense. There are rare cases of people investing their own money or using their mortgage to finance their (small) passion projects, and there are grants in some places to help finance movies that have more artistic value than commercial ones--but they are exceptions to the norm. And investors (whether they are media and studio companies, investment firms or individuals) will want to make sure that the movie/tv series will be a “good investment”. So, from the get-go, to be green-lighted, this type of content is shaped by these logics. This might go as far as to include market research and audience tests, or it might rely on trying to reproduce a formula that worked (this show with zombies was popular, let’s make a show with zombies, etc.), but it certainly always include some form of oversight or veto-power over creative decisions. This shapes the product we get as consumers, something we often do not consider when we try to understand why the product is the way it is. 

The thing that gets me with CQL is that a lot of thing it gets lauded for (ie, how much “romance” there is, how “gay” they kept it, the fact that they increased the screen time of female characters vs their scenes in the book) all make sense when you look at it as an investment. Executives often think that they need to shoe-horn in a Woman to make sure Womenfolks will watch something, thus making it a better investment if they have some female characters that the audience can expect to see in every episode or so (yes, even if MDZS was popular with women in the first place). As well, considering CQL is a censored adaptation of a danmei novel, and that what makes adaptation safer investments is an existing and engaged audience that will be happy to pay and willing do word-of-mouth, they needed to make sure that they didn’t alienate that audience--which was very vocal about the fact they were not willing to accept certain things (like a het romance for WWX). How much these things are the result of CQL being an investment, an economic product which primary goal was to turn a profit, is obviously something we can’t know for certain.

[thesharondefenseleague]

mlm imo werent sexualized to the degree that wlw were in most canon media mostly because of the male gaze. Gay and Lesbian relationships or moments got very limited representation. One was probably more sympathetic but also heart breaking like say brokeback mountain. One was explicit but depicted as grotesque or twisted or perverted or immoral in some way. And the last version was the titillating version. In western media because of the assumed straight male gaze lesbians making out to titlate guys was a common thing like say in Jennifer's body. The equivalent of that with guys wasnt really that common not in western media. Not that wlw couldn't like that content but it was made to be fanservice for men .

So thats what I kind of mean by wlw were sexualized at least in western media. This equivalent with mlm in fandom never really existed they never made out for girls to find hot in the same way. It was never marketed like oh look hot guys making out. Fandom did that but not canon.

As for comic book men being sexualized kind of. There is definitely the unrealistic beauty standards but theres that debate of was it for the purpose of titillating women? Or a result of toxic masculinity putting this unattainable unsustainable goal for men. Maybe both? But both in comics and the movies they are based on the posing and clothing and moments with women get made to clearly sexualize them . It especially ovbious with comics with them twisting their bodies so their boobs and butts are jutting out. Or like movie moments like Bruce landing in Natasha's clevage. Or angles where you are staring down a female character's shirt or she has a boob window for some contrived reason. Or just reasons to give full page spreads of them in skimpy clothing.

Its rare men get depicted like this or posed like this. And when they do it often stands out because its not the norm. It's something unique. Not true with men. Even in form fitting spandex they are often posed and framed to make to make them look powerful or intelligent or to reveal things about their character.

Again not that men never get sexualized or that fanservice is always bad. Or that its not a concern that men are having these terrible body image issues. But just that for women for the sexualization its so pervasive and constant was my point.

Its just as bad in wlw in canon as it is for women in relationships with men in canon when it comes to that sexualization but i hear so much more about the problems about the wlw ship than the mlw ship. Like to use DC as a example i hear so much about how people sexualized or mishandle harleyivy but compared to that i hear very little about batcat in comparison even though Catwoman is often just as sexualized in that ship.

As for misogyny in shipping wars yes it definetly exists and is a problem as is racism and homophobia. But my issue is mostly that the problem isnt because the main popular ships are mlm. But so often I see the argument framed that way.

Like shipping wars existed between m/w ships and still do today. And they are still often pretty misogynistic towards the woman in the other ship. I don't even have to look at other fandoms I remember Steggy vs Starton getting real ugly.

Mysogny in fandom doesn't uniquely pop up when mlm are the more popular ship. Its often just as bad in fandoms where m/w is the popular ship. But people just bring it up alot more they make it bout valuing the men over the women .

Well i mean that goes both ways you could say its homophobic for valuing the straight ship as better than the gay one or liking it more. But either way its stupid they dont care bout sexism or homophobia only that their ship is more popular.

Thats the sentiment of all ship wars the gender dynamics and racial make up change nothing. Nothing except the bullshit you use for the ship war.

The problem is that people are being homophobic and mysogynistic and racist not just in regards to fictional characters but towards real people just to win a ship war. It comes out so easily. Thats the problem imo.

Mysogny for example i think isnt discussed as much when its a m/w vs m/w ship war or drama because as both ships have women it can't be used to slander the other ship. But when its drama between fans of a m/m and m/w it comes out alot again not because anyone really cares but because now because one ship lacks a woman it can be used as fodder for what people actually care about. Tearing down the other ship.

Again not that mlm fandom doesnt have mysogny. They definetly do. But they aren't mysogynistic because they ship two guys together. Thats not proof they hate women. Having a ship with women isnt proof that you aren't sexist towards women. There might be homophobia in fandoms of mlm ships and mysogny in fandoms of m/w ships.

But in the drama between a m/w and m/m ships that doesn't get brought up because no one cares if that problem can't be used to show that someone only doesn't ship your ship if they are bigoted against it. Who cares about misogyny if your ship is two guys? Who cares about homophobia if your ship is straight?

No one because they cared about the popularity of their ship not the actual issues.

Gonna under under the cut for length again.

This is a lot to read so I'm gonna respond paragraph by paragraph and hope for the best in terms of comprehension.

When it comes to media made about the LGBTQ+ community, you have to keep in mind when it was made, who made it, and who was it made for. And that it's been shown that straight women have had the same reactions to mlm content as straight men to wlw content. QaF was dumbfounded to find that the majority of their audience was straight women when the show's sex scenes were 95% between two or more men and yet that's what they ran with because hey, it got the views. The views of mlm and wlw content in the mainstream media before then was minimized, despite how fucked a lot of the other content could be. If by "most canon media" being directed at the male gaze being summer blockbusters, and more specifically comic book movies, then sure. If we step out of that box, then not really. The film examples you chose are interesting because BB is portrayed exactly how the author of the original short story wrote it which was meant to be heartbreaking since it was a tragic dramatic piece while JB has a woman who wrote and another woman who directed it while purposefully trying to allow to actress to have a level of sexuality without exploiting her as past directors have (also neither of the main characters are lesbians - one is bi, the other I think is straight but maybe questioning?).

The sexualization of wlw in modern western media is definitely a thing. I mean, the first Iron Man film has stewardesses on the private jet pole dancing if I remember correctly. It took until 2016 to stop sexualizing Scarlett in every movie: the changing scene in IM2, the lowered zipper in A1, the ass shot in Cap 2, the boob faceplant in AoU (in your third paragraph, but mentioning it here anyway). It's a joke that you know when a man directs a wlw indie film during the sex scenes. But the mlm equivalent did exist alongside it, and it's what kicked off the century.

Comics and their movies were always for men. The male bodies are male wish fulfilment for their physical appearance. The women are male wish fulfilment for their dream girls. Funnily enough, one of the least sexualized women in comics I've ever read is Sharon. She's rarely, if ever, drawn to be sexualized for the audience. I'm not even sure she's even been in those swimsuit issues Marvel did years ago. And it shows heavily that Marvel struggles to know how to appeal to women without being aggressively in your face about it. The best example of them appealing without pandering is WV, and the worst is the group shots the Russos did in IW and Endgame, especially the latter.

But the men get those poses in the movies too. Thor bathed shirtless for no reason in TDW. There's a scene in Endgame dedicated to talking about Steve's ass. Pratt in GotG. Rudd in Ant-Man. Most actors are expected to look good shirtless and put themselves through intense shit to look that way. So do the women, but they aren't doing it to have the glamor shots of their muscles. And the MCU is not the only film franchise like this. Most, if not all, franchises with majority or entirely male leads expects them all to look like bodybuilders. And I'm gonna take back that it's just for the male audience, because these bodies are meant to appeal to women who are intended to thirst for these actors too. They think these bodies is what will bring women to the theaters.

None of this will change, as you say, that women's sexualization is "constant and pervasive". The film industry is just a part of the larger whole of media. Television and advertising have a treatment of women that's beyond whatever you or I say because there are decades worth of shit to go through that would take dozens of essays worth of writing to fully divulge beyond "please stop it's gross".

Now DC is a whole other ballgame. They're pretty infamous for their artists' sexualization of heroines and villainesses. Harley, Ivy, and Selina are definitely pretty bad, but when I remember what I've seen drawn of Kara, Kori, or sometimes Barbara... But outside of one artist, I think Harley and Ivy as a couple have been drawn tamely. Can't say the same for Selina, because they just can't not draw every part of her body even when she's fully clothed.

I think it's hard not to talk about fandom misogyny outside of m/m ships because of how often popular m/m shippers have rooted their shipping into misogyny. And even with m/f ship wars, a lot of the time the "faulted" character is always the woman when majority of the time it's the man who sucks. I don't get why everyone is fighting for who should kiss Steve because Steve sucks and they'd be better off without him. But because Steve is the object of affection for our fave, we have to fight off everyone else.

Don't look at other fandoms for m/f ship wars. We don't appreciate how tame we were, even at our worst. I'm serious, I've seen so much worse.

I think why the topic of misogyny comes up more with m/m ships is because they follow a similar principle of the male characters being more developed in canon and fanon so it's who people gravitate towards.

There is definitely layers of homophobia in fandom, but there's many versions of how we see it. Homophobes who won't ship anything that's not m/f. Homophobes who ship m/m but won't support IRL rights. People who love m/m but abhor f/f, and vice-versa. The shippers who use them for personal fodder. But the sexism is more prevalent than the homophobia. And the racism way more than both combined.

And it does cause a lot of ammo, and much of it severely unjustified, in ship wars. Literally the bullshit I've seen pulled out of thin air to accuse Sharon of not being worthy because someone said she's a racist for [they literally had no reason just called her one because we said Sam and Sharon are friends because they are] and other nonsense.

The real world repercussions of the homophobia, the sexism, and the racism in fandom... there's just so much. Like we are all still people, and yet we decide because we hide behind screens to be antagonistic, and use homophobic, sexist, and racist shit to attack each other over ships just because we want to paint the other person as crazy, I guess? If you can't see that there are no enemies in ship wars and that the other side is still people, maybe you need to sit out and log off. It's baffling how often it still happens to people. Then it's no longer about ships, it's about who is an asshole.

I will say that Steve and Peggy vs Steve and Sharon is probably the only m/f ship war I've seen where misogyny is talked about. Is, not was, because it still is. Both sides call the others misogynistic. I don't think either side is, but you can see in individuals. Those who tweeted at a certain actress that she was a slut for kissing her costar certainly are though.

You are right that shipping m/m isn't inherently sexist. But tearing down women in those ships to prop up m/m has made me stop shipping certain characters altogether. People, seriously, we don't have to justify why we like them! We can just like them! And other characters can still exist! It's never been that deep.

And you're right, the popularity of the ship helps people ignore any deeper issues within them and this is a power used to silence valid criticism if it pops up.

(I hope I answered everything well for you.)

~Mod R