#i think as long as i explain myself my audience will be understanding

[ghostsprobably]

so

the reason i havent done a mlp humanization video yet is bc while i love love love black pinkie pie, i've always headcanoned her as being from the equestria equivalent of an amish community and thus her human version would be white

i know of course there is no like, official races for them (tho there is that really cool analysis of the regions of equestria and their possible real world inspirations) but when the vast majority of the fandom intensely headcanons her as black i dont want my version to be interpretted as taking away representation, even if there are other characters i would definitey draw as black people.

this is something i will definitely address in the video, but i know some people will still be unhappy with me, and i'm scared bc the internet can be mean ú-ù

but! its important to me to show my own personal interpretations and i really do my best to always be respectful and as educated as i can be about the different ethnicities i depict in my creative works and in my art

[dreamchasernina]

The live action writers hate Aang

I have given myself a lot of time to think about the live action, and reached the conclusion that the writers hate Aang. I dare you to read read this and tell me I'm wrong.

Let me start this by asking you a question? What's the most badass scene Aang has in the first season of the OG show? No matter what you answer is, I know for sure, that scene doesn't exist in the live action. Aang does absolutely nothing to prove the audience he is the right person to be the Avatar, he learns absolutely nothing throughout the show, he doesn't need to look into himself and change his way of thinking. Nothing. Most of the fundamental lessons Aang learns throughout the first season are gone.

The first mistake Aang does in the OG is staying at Kyoshi island too long, letting the attention go to his head, getting too comfortable. He realises he brought destruction to the island and tries to fix his mistakes by jumping onto the Unagi to help the village. That's how he learned the responsibly he holds as the Avatar and finds a unique way to help the village. Well that doesn't exist in the LA. Instead, Kyoshi takes over Aang's body to fight the whole fire nation for him. Aang, himself, does literally nothing.

The spirit world. In the OG show Aang is forced to face his Avatar duty for the first time by trying to save the village that's beeing attacked by Hei Bai. This is his first test as the Avatar and he fails. Not only that, he loses his friend. So Aang has to figure out himself how to get Sokka back from Hei Bai. He figures out who her bai is, himself, understands why Hei Bai is angry and gives him hope, the way Katara gave him hope. So we see that even though Aang failed at first, he kept trying and was smart and compassionate enough to realise what the problem is and solve it. This does not exist in the LA. Aang sees Hei bai in the spirit world, within a second realises who he is and just gives him the Acorn, without having to face him at all!

Another reason I'm convinced the writers hate Aang is the way all the avatars + Bumi treat Aang. Everyone is mad at him for disappearing for 100 years. And look, I get that, you can be mad at him if he ran away from his duties...but he never did! He went to clear his head on Appa and got caught in the storm. And if he hadn't run away he'd be dead, so why are you all so mad at him?! Bumi being mad at Aang could make sense, because in the OG show Aang did spend a significant amount on time of goofing around before he finds out about the comet. But here, it makes no sense! Bumi is mad for no reason. As soon as Aang got out go the ice he took his duty seriously, so please, make it make sense! And the show just glosses over the fact that if Aang hadn't run away he would be dead with the rest of the air benders. Instead of letting Aang feel guilty himself, which he does in the OG show, they just get these characters to hate on him, because they're incapable of making their characters have any emotional depth.

Aang doesn't learn water bending. At all. And there is no logical reason for that. I guess they thought it wasn't that important but please explain to me how you want to make Aang more serious and focused on the Avatar duties but not make him learn water bending? The literal next step Aang has to take to becoming the Avatar?? That is the only clear goal Aang has from the second episode of the show - to find a master and learn waterbending! Make it make sense!

Taking away Aang's talk with Koh. So I assume if most people didn't answer my question above with the Koi fish, they probably said Aang's journey into the spirit world and his meeting with Koh. In the OG show, Aang has to find a way to figure out how to save the water tribe. He does so by going into the spirit world and talking to Koh the face stealer. So Aang had to talk to Koh showing zero emotions so he doesn't have his face stolen. That scene is so creepy and so badass and shows that Aang is really capable, even though he is a kid, he is facing the creepy ass spirit and is doing an excellent job. So when Aang finds out who the moon and the ocean spirits are, it feels deserved, it feels like an accomplishment. In the live action he doesn't have to show zero emotions because Koh is not stealing faces, he's just stealing random people for whatever reason. Koh tells him exactly what to do, bring me a MacGuffin so I can release your friends, Aang just goes to see Roku, no problem, no obstacles to overcome, brings the Macguffin to Koh and he just releases his friends. Wow, really shows us how resourceful Aang is by making him...get an object and give it back to Koh...

And the very last point that I absolutely hated in the show. When Aang goes into the Avatar state and becomes the giant koi fish and wipes everyone out, the live action show goes out of its way to emphasise that that is not Aang in there. Aang is gone. The Koi fish is just rage. and that's that. Taking away ANY agency Aang ever had. Look, I know in the OG show Aang is not in control of the Avatar state either, but we know that's still Aang in there, that's his power he's showcasing. He might not be in control but that's him doing it all, being all powerful. But in the live action, they tell us Aang is gone, that's just his body the spirit is using. Plus Aang does no watebending himself, no gestures like the original where you can see aang in the sphere water bending, controlling the giant Koi fish, showing us how far he's come as a water bender. But in the LA he's just in the sphere...doing nothing because he never learned water bending so of course that's not him doing all this cool shit.

I am so angry over all of this. This is you MAIN PROTAGONIST. and you made him nothing but a vessel to progress the plot. You gave him no character, no growth, no struggles, no power! So no, you cannot convince me, at this point, that the writers of the live action don't hate Aang. Probably as much as they hate Katara.

[antimony-medusa]

Gonna be honest with you though if someone outright says “don’t ship my character with other people” or something to that extent regarding smut or whatever I don’t think there should be any ambiguity

I get your point about the nature of fanfic being inherently encroaching upon people’s images so that levity should be extended to otherwise uncommon avenues but I really believe hardline boundaries should be respected, end of, no discussion. If I see people violating creators’ boundaries for their characters Or themselves (and these can be intertwined, it’s not up to the audience to pick apart their boundaries, cuz I’ve seen people try to do that) I’m not going to judge them fairly and I feel like neither should you.

Lines can be crossed and intimacy (not even necessarily romantic!) is a very different monster than the other avenues of storytelling because of how it involves real life relationships seeping into character relationships. Its’s uncommon for people to be like “I wrote A’s character being tortured because I feel like A is tortured in real life” but they Can and Often do that with ship work. So I don’t know, I feel like you’re not affording this the right nuance.

Alright, so, this is another post I'm gonna slap with a discourse and long post warning right away, buckle in.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying, and this is not an uncommon opinion to have! It's still the opinion of twitter/x so far as I know, and I think it's probably the opinion of the bulk of dsmp fans here, as well. I know my posts get notes once they start circulating in hermitblr, but I don't kid myself that I have the majority view. I am posting to explain my views expressly because I know a lot of people don't agree with me!

And in this case we do have a difference of opinion. There's two sort of points as I see it in your posts— we have hardline boundaries about shipping/nsfw from some people, and everyone in the fandom should be abiding by those no exceptions or be thrown out of the fandom; and we have shipping boundaries but not boundaries for other things because shipping is uniquely boundary-crossing and terrible and invasive, in contrast to anything else we can do in fandom.

Taking the second part first, I just don't think that's true. Let's not forget, boundaries discourse started with SMPLive and SMPronpa, and it was not the shipping that caused the discussion, it was the death games. The first real fandom reckoning we had with the notion of boundaries as mcyt fandom was over gore and murder and portraying people in violent ways. Shipping was barely a blip on the radar. The way the discourse has developed now, shipping is framed as the absolute worst thing anyone could ever do with your public image, and everything else is fine, but that is not the case for everyone. Recently the Pirates SMP creators were asked repeatedly for their boundaries (bothered on twitter, really) until they gave them and thus we saw people being fine with shipping but not wanting family dynamic, or being against both shipping and gore, or being fine with shipping but not wanting to be gender bent or trans headcanoned, etc. Not everyone feels the same way about the same things, despite the us-american cultural viewpoint that romance and sexualization is uniquely bad but gore and torture is fine, that everything else is fine.

Like, if we're looking at DSMP, I think there are a lot of creators who would feel just as strongly if not stronger about fics in which their character died of a terminal illness than they would about a fic in which they kiss someone, for understandable reasons. But I see those tropes in the tags regularly!

I think if we are honest with ourselves, if we are going to hardline boundaries about things that are uniquely invasive or bad to do to a creator's character with the view that we are putting all of this up for the creator's approval, we need to accept that this excludes us from writing anything where a character is abusive or is tortured or dies of a terminal illness or is psychologically broken or is age regressed or is neurodivergent or is queer if the cc is straight or trans if the cc is cis or cis if the cc is trans or straight if they're gay— the list of things that would be weird to do in the face of the real guy is really long. And it has most of our favourite tropes on it!

I love writing autistic philza. It would be really fuckin' weird to go up to Philza and tell him about how I write his character as whumped and autistic. Come on now. (But that's within boundaries, so that's— fine? I really don't think it's fine!)

Which is why my stance is that we should be thinking critically about these things, and keeping the fandom seperate from the creators. Some of these things are just not for the creators. They're fine but they shouldn't go on twitter. Y'know?

The idea that shipping draws uniquely on the real person and leads to invasive behaviour but nothing else does— that nobody does "I wrote A being tortured because I think A is tortured in real life"— Look. I have been in the fandom a long time. I remember how all the abused tommy narratives fed right into people assuming his family in real life were abusive— and talking about this on twitter! Where he and his family could see! People did this with WIlbur and Techno too!

I remember people reading about trans tommy and then truthing that the creator either was transmasc or was going to come out as transfemme any day now, publically, on twitter and in his chat. I have seen people she/her tubbo to his face on twitter, with fancams. I have been in chat when people who have clearly assigned Phil "dad" start asking WILDLY invasive things in TTS. If you think that shipping is the only fandom behaviour that can lead to people drawing directly from the streamers for their work and treating the creators weirdly about it, you simply have not been paying attention.

The way the fandom insists on treating benchtrio as children despite the fact that they're almost twenty and viciously attacking their friends for treating them as adults and chiding tommy and tubbo and ranboo for inappropriate behaviour. The list goes ON.

So. The recieved DSMP wisdom is that we should TTS the streamers to check if it's okay if we write a fic in which they die of cancer. We should DM them on instagram to ask if it's okay if we write them as a gender or sexual identity they don't share. We should show up in their twitter mentions to ask if it's okay if we write them as a physically abusive parent.

No????????

My view on that is that it is frankly bizzare it is that we have decided that "asking creators for detailed instructions regarding porn or gore" (especially in TTS! When they're fucking at WORK and can't step away! Stop doing this to the hermits!) is normal and fine and responsible but "post your shit in appropriate places and leave the creators out of it" will make you a monster.

Once again, the experience of someone coming up and saying "i think of you as age regressed" and someone saying "i found this fic where you're age regressed" and someone saying "can I write a fic where you're age regressed" is not that different. In all cases you know that the person has been thinking about it and putting it out there, and in all cases you didnt seek out this information, it was brought to you. In all cases it's weird. Just do not bring this information up to them!

If you just think about it for a while, you see that there is an entire host of things that would be weird to force into the view of a creator, especially when you consider that half the time we got these clips from TTS information when we have no idea if the person answering knew the context of what they were being asked, if they were specifically aware of the creator/cc divide that the fandom works with, or if they felt pressured into it. Oh yeah, let's take a TTS clip from Tubbo when it was 2 in the morning for him and he was deep in a minecraft mod when someone asked him about alters and delusions and he was like "oh you mean like— when they can't help it? I guess that's fine." That definately counts as freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic and specific consent to show him anything we want at all times forever. That's never going to make him uncomfortable.

Think a little here.

So I think there's a lot of the fandom that we should not be putting up for the approval of the creators, and if we don't have a firm answer on if they would like potential edge cases, we should probably be thinking about it and keeping it away from them (and I would err on the side of caution), we should NOT be showing up in the TTS to ask them about narratives in which they're institutionalized, or making them a GOP conservative in fiction, or if Wilbur was canon about seeing them as a bottom, or whatever bizzare thing someone is cooking up now. Honestly if you think to yourself "I don't know if the creator would like seeing this", I would be much more comfortable if the two choices we were picking between there were "simply don't write it" or "write it but keep it away from them", and "harass the creator for an answer on this subject and only write it if they say yes" never entered the equation at all.

And to return to your first point, if we already have a class of fiction that we are keeping away from the creators because basic intellectual curiosity would show that it would be weird to show someone, I don't think it's the end of the world to go "okay, creator doesn't like NSFW, so we also keep the NSFW away from them, keep this shit off twitter, block them if you create it, don't show it to them" and then we archive lock it and continue on our little weirdo on the internet ways.

Now, I don't expect to convince you of this, the phrasing of your post does not indicate that you're open to discussion on this topic. That's fine. Nobody has to agree with me. But I grew up conservative christian, and I have already had people try and get me to throw people out of the community for their perceived sins where I was like "well, I really don't think this is that bad", and I'm really resistant to being forced to do that again. I don't think it's a healthy way to run a fandom, to be shunning people for what they're doing in fiction. Harassing creators in chat? Sure, I will block them from my events as untrustworthy. That's hurting someone in the real world. Writing something that I don't vibe with privately on the archive for an audience of 50 people? That is not doing harm to real people. As long as they're not showing it to the creators, I don't count that as offensive.

How's that for nuance.

[what-gs-watching]

"You can be beautiful or you can be ugly, but you can’t be plain."

Soooo I’m pretty sure I died over Christmas; my entire family got a stomach bug that was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced, and now I have a head cold and I’ve lost my voice and I’m convinced this is some weird limbo and I’ll never be healthy again.

BUT! Before all of that, my dad and I got to indulge in our favorite holiday tradition: going to the movies. He and I have been sneaking off in the afternoon once everyone falls into a Christmas coma to see something for like, fifteen years. That man hates holidays because my mom goes insane trying to make them perfect and he just wants to escape and I appreciate that he allows me to go with him. 

This year, I was especially excited - the first time I saw the trailer for A Complete Unknown in September, I called him immediately screaming about it. Bob Dylan’s music was a huge part of my childhood, another thing that my stoic father shared with me, and could not wait to see it with him. Honestly, I’d been vibrating out of my skin about it, shrieking at the tv every time the commercial would come on.

Gang. It was so worth it. What a beautiful fucking movie.

Wherein, 19 year old Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) heads to New York City in 1961, befriends Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger (Ed Norton), breaks into the folk scene, falls in love, has insane on and off stage chemistry with Joan Baez, writes songs that define a generation, puts the Newport Folk Festival on the damn map, learns he doesn’t really love fame, and then eventually goes electric. 

I do realize this movie isn’t going to be for everyone - it’s specific. Like, were you alive then and you’re wanting to relive that time and the way Dylan’s music made you feel? Perfect, you’ll dig it. Or, are you a super weirdo like me that WISHES you were alive during that time and just deeply loves the 60’s aesthetic and longs for what you think was a simpler era but it really was not, and you just want to romanticize the whole thing and feel wistful about it? Amazing, get your ass to the theater. 

One thing I appreciated about this movie was that it wasn’t really shoving anything down your throat, what was happening wasn’t overly explained, there were no ridiculous voice-overs or forced understanding, and honestly, Dylan was fairly mysterious. It didn’t feel like it was from his point of view, you’re not going to come out of this feeling like you finally GET him. He’s still this weird mythical genius, just doing what he’s driven to do. He never explains himself and he never wants to. So is this really a biopic? Or are we just seeing a snapshot in time, take it or leave it? I don’t think it matters; it’s wonderful, either way.

Also, like, DAMN, Chalamet. He was fucking incredible. Dylan is a hard guy to portray, he’s always been kind of aloof, withdrawn, he’s never seemed like this larger than life personality and to pull off that demeanor in a way that’s still endearing to the audience is NOT easy. He really encapsulated Dylan’s confusing charm, it was pitch perfect. And I had to laugh to myself a bit - last year’s Christmas movie was Wonka, also starring Chalamet. What a hilarious dichotomy from one year to the next. 

I’m going to be watching all of the award shows just for this. Give this dude all the flowers. 

As much of a fan of his music as I am, I never did a deep google dive on him and so I really enjoyed seeing his relationship with Joan Baez unfold. The scenes of them performing together were honestly beautiful, their voices blending and complimenting each other. Her song “Diamonds and Rust” unsurprisingly was also a large part of my musical upbringing and to learn she’d written it about their relationship - fuck. I listened to it again after we left the theater and it was devastating in an entirely new way.

Here’s the thing. I absolutely cried big fat tears a few times sitting there. It’s not a sad movie in any way, shape or form. But when he performs “The Times They Are A-Changin’” at the festival, just him and his guitar and his harmonica, and the crowd starts singing along with him, having never heard it before, I sobbed, smiling. 

When I was a senior in high school, my dad - who notoriously never put effort into gifts for us kids, relying on my mom to know what to buy - sat down and  made me a bunch of mix CDs of the songs he’d always been sharing with me. One of them was his 12 essential Bob Dylan tracks. The rest of that year, I lived in those tracks. The agenda pad I used for that school year was littered with Dylan lyrics, it’s my basement even now, “don’t criticize what you can’t understand” scrawled all over it.

So I was 17 again, sitting there, or 8 or 21 or any of the ages I’ve been where Dylan has kept me company. “It Ain’t Me Babe” is deeply ingrained in my mind as part of the dumpster fire that was the relationship I had with the first boy I ever fell truly in love with, and watching his long-time girlfriend Sylvie (Elle Fanning) witness him singing that with Joan Baez was like a punch to the gut. 

I’m not 100% sure what I’m driving at with all of this, but what I can tell you is: A Complete Unknown is beautiful. If you have any connection to Dylan’s music, it’ll light your soul on fire. If you don’t, it’ll still immerse you in a time or place you really should visit. It’s fascinating and visceral and glimmering, and it just might change you, a little bit.

HOW does it FEEL?

[sobasluuurp]

Ok. About Tenko.

I understand why so many people are angry that he's dead. I really do. I would've loved for him to live as well. I cried when he died.

However.

Just because he's dead doesn't mean his character has been handled poorly. In fact, all things considered, this ending (even though it makes me real fucking sad) makes the most sense for both his character and his story. Let me explain.

First and foremost, there's the matter of Shigaraki's characterization and arc. It goes without saying, but he's an angry, used, and abused child who grew up into an adult who wants nothing more than for everything to end. His goals have always been destructive to an extreme and honestly, the logical end to "let's destroy it all" is LITERALLY everything, including himself. He's also had absolutely zero agency since the moment his parents even thought of conceiving him, and has been struggling to become his own person since the beginning of his arc. He, against his abuser, who covets immortality and eternity.

What better a way for a person such as himself to assert his agency is there than to go out the way he did? To shift his focus away from the faceless masses and to the (similarly faceless, lol) abuser who caused his pain in the first place? To destroy the control AFO has held over him and prove to him that he was always his own person? To say, this is who you molded me into. And because I am who I am, I will now kill you, and take myself down with you, and be glad for it.

(and in the process, destroy the worldview AFO showed us in the Star and Stripe arc, that the ones who survive are the victors. AFO has completely and eternally lost, but Shigaraki is victorious to his last.)

It's his first moment of complete agency in his life -- acting entirely against anyone else's wishes for himself or his actions. And he uses it to do the one thing he's been itching for his whole life -- to destroy the source of his pain.

It's a negative character arc, in a way. It's not what any of us would've wanted for him. In a perfect world, he would be able to recover and readjust, building a life for himself and his found family in peace. He'd be able to experience life fully for the first time, and see that the world is not so bleak after all.

(I'm choking up just thinking about what's been lost. It's a fucking tragedy.)

But not every character arc gets to end happily. Sometimes people do slip through the cracks. That's always been what Shigaraki's character is about.

....and what every other member of the League's characters have been about.

Because here's the thing. The story of Shigaraki's life and death would be incomplete without his relationship to his found family. He's their leader. Their symbol. Their All Might.

Shigaraki's death is not the grimdark, fuck-the-audience, senseless kind of tragedy. He is a martyr, yes, but the people he stood for will in all likelihood survive. He died for the League. His life -- his existence -- brought them together, gave them purpose, and showed them a bright future. It is my steadfast belief that he will be the only death among the main villains. Because this is a story about saving to win, after all. And given that My Hero doesn't like to kill characters off too often and each one of them still has a path to recovery, I think it's a safe assumption to make. Especially since (especially in Toya's and Toga's cases) each of them had a moment of reconciliation at the end of their fights -- the kind of thing that can help them move forward.

And to be honest, we've known for a very, very long time that BNHA is the kind of anime that likes to turn old cliches on their heads. Kacchan did not become a villain during Kamino. La Brava's literal power of love was not enough to win the battle. Deku fought tirelessly to talk-no-jutsu Shigaraki into redemption, and while he did get through to him, he still couldn't save him after everything that happened. It's nuanced and messy in a way that I've come to expect from BNHA.

So yea, Shigaraki died. But Shigaraki also lived. Despite everything that AFO and Kotoro wanted from him (despite the fact that he was never meant to really be alive in the first place), he lived on his own terms and fought so that the people he cared about would be seen. Because he lived, the old world was destroyed, and from his ashes, a better one can be built. He achieved everything that no one thought he could, and reclaimed his life in the process. What better ending could you ask for a tragic character?

[akookminsupporter]

Namjoon gave a good interview to Vogue Spain and in it he said a few things that I thought I'd share with those of you who may not understand Spanish.

This was at the end of the article but I want to write it first:

One thing that needs to be made clear about this album is that, no matter how much the rumour mill is trying to spin it, it is by no means the end of the successful band. "Oh, I'm not leaving BTS. Absolutely not. This is the first time I'm launching a solo project like this, so I'm trying to stand up and take my first steps. But I'm ambitious and I have willpower. So I don't want to miss the opportunity to do both. So I will try my best not to lose control and steer these two ships at the same time. A lot of bands split up and fall apart, but I hope that doesn't happen to BTS. I just love the music, I love my job, I love the band members and I love myself. If I can keep both projects going, I think it can be something legendary in the long run".

Other important parts of the article:

"The k-pop industry hasn't stopped growing since we debuted with BTS [in 2013]. It's become a lot more complex and has brought a lot more people into its structures. I think there are a lot of lights, but also some slippery shadows. Many of us started our careers very early as a group: we slept and lived together as teenagers. We became a real family, which is great, but this culture has also affected me a lot, because sometimes I find it difficult to be treated as an adult who has autonomy in his decisions. I'm perceived as just another cog in the crew, in the context of a mass phenomenon",

Did you ever feel like you were getting completely lost in this delirium of success? "I used to think so, but the funny thing is that I am fully aware that it was my own choice to devote myself to the k-pop industry. Nobody pushed me into it. But yes, I have lost myself at times. Although perhaps saying this is an excess of 'self-empathy'. There is no answer. Except that, if k-pop is about recharging the batteries of a mass audience and I'm responsible for doing that recharging, then I have to keep my feet firmly on the ground. As an adult, as a musician and as a human being. And these ten years of my career have helped me define who I am and learn to love myself. But I'm still in that process, you know? All these internal struggles will be recorded on records and videos," he explains.

"Music is really necessary for the world, but, when it comes to my music, sometimes I feel like I'm producing something unnecessary. If I were to die tonight, I don't think anything would change. It might matter to some people for a while, but a farmer or a street sweeper is more relevant to the functioning of society. When I ask myself about the role of our generation in historical terms, when I look at all the digital platforms and communities out there, I am overcome with confusion. There are a lot of people who don't want to think. They have frenetic lives and turn to music or television to escape, so the last thing they want is someone trying to lecture them from a pedestal. In that context, I wonder how I can make my music matter. I haven't found an answer yet, but I keep trying to bring my own perspective to it.

As to whether he is afraid that the army he has on Instagram (42.4 million followers) might one day turn against him for a silly mistake or a blunder, RM answers bluntly. "Yes, it scares me. It scares me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. When I was younger I tried to come across as a cool guy who doesn't give a shit what other people think, but I don't think that's right anymore. I care about the publicity dimension of my career and the influence I can have on others. It stresses me out, yes, but I think I can handle it. That's why I don't retire or do things like go out and drink the night away and then drive drunk. I'm human, I can make mistakes, but I will do everything in my power to be the best version of myself. One of the keys is to treat this job for what it is: a job. I don't think artists have any special rights or status.

Note: if you would like me to translate another part of the interview, let me know.

[fjordline]

ok i've been thinking about how to answer The Color Asks for so long now. Once I start talking about colors I never stop, it seems. This is just me attempting to explain my personal thought process and not any universal rules or anything like that.

None of this is going to look very realistic at all. You need to exaggerate a little. That being said, having fundamental knowledge on how shadows and ligh tsources work is very useful. Know the rules before breaking them and all that.

Boiled down to its basics, what I think of is: if a lightsource is cold toned, make the highlight bright blue. if a light source is warm, make the highlight bright orange. Then contrast the light with a complementary shadow color that does not compete for dominance with the light. Or alternatively make the light source more neutral with a complimentary tone for the shaded areas and then add a highly saturated color in the deepest shadows. Having both a highly saturated light source and a shadow color will compete with each other, instead choose one to be the dominant and one to be the um. submissive i suppose.

Just using a random doodle from my sketchbook for the purpose of throwing some color on:

^^^ Here the midtones and the areas in the shade are predominantly of a low saturated cool blueish tone, while the highlight is stark and warm with orange and red light bouncing off. The orange and red hues you often see in skin that is lit by a strong light is called subsurface scattering (sss), one of the most important concepts in art IMO. It livens things up so much.

^^^Opposite from image 1, here the shaded area is a saturated golden color while the light source is a dull blue with hints of more vivid blue throughout. the blue balances the strong yellows and browns. Since the shaded area is bigger than the highlighted area, the subject matter could look quite monochromatic without the blue hints.

^^^Get wild with it. Lets say your highlight is blue toned: instead of just using a blue, introduce purple, teal, turquoise, ultramarine, cyan, etc around where the light is hitting. Add several light sources in different colors, make it not make sense, get crazy.

Though what is important above all else is that the image reads clearly. Unless you're doing abstract art then you'd probably want the audience to understand what they're looking at. That's where values come in, probably the number one cause of confusing pieces of art. If you can turn the painting black and white and still see the subject matter clearly then the values are good.

I find that i love using colors that most people find garish, especially when they're on their own, for small highlights and points of interest. When paired with other more neutral colors, a bright orange or a chartreuse etc can really brighten up a painting. And colors are never what they seem, the human eye will interpret colors differently depending on what color they are next to. Make full use of this.

Hope this long ass post helps anyone who is struggling with color, I know I used to struggle severely myself xoxo

[willowwee]

Just random rambling to try motivate myself to hyperfixate on audio rp🧚‍♀️🧚‍♀️ (alternative title: Scythe's, Escaped's and GBA's stories as artstyles)

(Of course, these are just my views and opinions)

Yk what I rlly love abt audio rp?? Each creators that does audio rp has their own plot and characters that showcases the writing of the story that made people compelled to listen and understand the story despite not having a visual media. But that's also the fun of it, it leaves the audience free space and use their own creativity and imagination to think of how the entire thing plays out. This might be the art student inside me talking, but I really love how every audio rp creators I've known has different "audio styles" to the point that I can almost see what art style their story would have.

Like take Scythe Audio for an example. It is already obvious that Scythe can change his range of voice, whether in terms of the accent, or the manner of speaking, or the pitch of his voice. That alone, gave me an idea that if his stories were to animate, it'd be the same style as The Amazing World of Gumball (TAWOG). Similar with Scythe's wide range of voice change, TAWOG is known for having different artstyles in their cartoon, such as 2D, 3D, claymation, SFM, etc. 'But!!! It's not a scary style!!!' I honestly understand that, but since we're talking about TAWOG, let's be honest you can just jammed in scary artstyles and it won't look out of place and that's what made me think TAWOG artstyle would look great on Scythe's stories.

For Escaped Audios' stories, I can honestly see Regular Show's style on his stories. Regular Show has this 'average normal life' art style but the art style is so fitting for non normal life too it's scary 💀 I don't have much to say on why I think Regular Show's artstyle fits Escaped's stories, other than the fact that Escaped's stories has this same feeling of 'Hey this is normal life' but it is also so obviously not normal life, lIKE IDK HOW TO EXPLAIN IT BUT REGULAR SHOW'S ARTSTYLE WOULD FIT AS ESCAPED'S STORIES💀💀

Now, I've thought over GBA's style of audio and what artstyle would fit his stories WAYYYYYY long back, and it's decided that GBA's stories' artstyle would definitely be Ghibli Studio artstyle. Ghibli Studio's visuals and GBA's godly audio editing are a perfect fit that not only suit GBA's story world (how do you english this), but the style overall would capture the lore and the raw emotions perfectly.

Anyway enough rambling now I ran out of brain juice and I wanna finish drawings now byebye thanks for reading to my rambling

[lostcauses-noregrets]

Lost, I think Erwin was only in 65% of the manga/anime, yet I don't think anyone has ever left such a long-lasting impression on the audience. He ranks higher than the mc in the character polls, and he even once ranked higher than Levi. People still love and praise him even though he's been dead for years. Why do you think this is? What makes him such a compelling character?

I’ve been sitting on this ask for months because it feels like such a huge responsibility to answer it. What is it that makes Erwin Smith such a compelling and enduringly popular character, despite having been written out of the story years ago? 

The most obvious reason is that Erwin is a well written character with considerable depth.  He is a brave and inspiring military commander who leads from the front and dies heroically, laying down his life to ensure the main characters live to fight another day. He plays a pivotal role in the story and, long after he dies, continues to be a motivating force for several other characters. He’s also pretty easy on the eye, which does no harm either. 

However characters like this are ten a penny in manga and anime so I don’t think this is enough to explain Erwin’s enduring appeal.  There’s a very interesting interview with Isayama from 2016 where he talks about coming to understand Erwin’s character, which I think gets to the heart of the matter.  

“...for Erwin, there’s no person I can easily compare him to…The main reason for that is probably because I didn’t have anyone in my life who was an “insightful leader” like my initial portrayal of Erwin. Of course, I’m sure there were people who were “insightful leaders” to a certain degree around me, but—and this is likely due to a quirk of my own personality—the grander a person, the more my eyes are drawn to the places where they’re frayed, or are coming apart at the seams. Armin once said of him, “If a person existed who was capable of bringing change, they would have to be able to sacrifice things that are important to them.” Erwin is certainly someone who can do that, but because I had no one in reality to model him on, and because I, the creator, had no shred of an “insightful leader” within myself to use either, I think I ended up making Erwin more and more human as I went along. Lately, though, I’ve started enjoying drawing Erwin. To put it simply, I think it’s because I am now able to write Erwin not as the “insightful leader,” but as he is inside my heart, an Erwin who is very complex inside."

And Erwin is a very complex and conflicted character.  He’s also a deeply unreliable narrator who sees his own actions in the very worst possible light. He has the ability to motivate others to great feats of heroism, but at the same time he sees himself as a fraud and a conman.  He carries a huge burden of guilt over his father’s death, yet he isn’t driven by vengeance, what drives him forward is the pursuit of knowledge and his desire to prove his father’s theories were right. He is a ruthless commander, willing to sacrifice countless soldiers to achieve his goal, but he also devised a Scouting formation that saved numerous lives. He is also quite literally haunted by all the men and women who died under his command.  He’s incredibly insightful and intelligent, always thinking several steps ahead of everyone else, but he isn’t invulnerable to being manipulated by unscrupulous characters like Zackley, who was able to spot his weakness. He believes that he alone is pursuing his own selfish dream, despite all the characters having their own dreams and motivations. Yet despite his misgivings, he is able to set aside his dream, and lay down his life for the greater goal of saving humanity. He presents an implacable facade to the world, yet he privately admits to wishing he could end his life.  So many deeply human contradictions. 

Although Erwin is a hugely compelling character in his own right, I don’t think we can overlook the importance of his relationship with Levi, who of course is the most popular character in the series (sorry Eren).  Regardless of whether you ship them or not , it’s impossible to ignore the importance of Erwin’s relationship with Levi (and vice versa). I’ve written reams over the years about Erwin and Levi’s relationship, which I’m not going to repeat here, but I am going to point the famous quote from Ono Diasuke who described Levi as the last stronghold of Erwin’s humanity, because that’s what is really important.  

Ultimately Erwin is a complex, contradictory human being and it’s his humanity, rather than his heroism, and the emotional conflict at the heart of his character that continue to fascinates and move people.

[yuseirra]

Final Analysis: "Oshi no Ko" is indeed a story that reinterprets mythology (the story progresses with both surface-level and deep-level narratives running in parallel).

Just why didn’t they explain this beforehand?

I REALLY hope this is my last time bringing up this subject! I'm doing this for myself mostly, because I want to understand things and form a proper closure! If you disagree, I understand! But I'd like to say I really am fully believing the idea after having given this series a proper close read and examined the work with care. I did my best.

In my opinion, the only way to explain this work and understand why its narrative unfolded the way it did is truly just that—it’s based on mythology.

But the creators didn’t fully elaborate on or explain this, so is it fair that readers are left to figure this out on their own over months, scouring articles or even research papers? And even then, because they didn’t definitively establish this, I’ve now reached the conclusion that there is no other way to explain this work than by interpreting it as mythology. The story doesn’t just reinterpret mythology; it reaches a level where the ending is essentially swallowed by the myth itself. And yet, it feels like no one around me—aside from me—is thinking this way. It’s incredibly frustrating, suffocating, isolating... My head honestly hurt so much because I wasn’t even sure if my interpretation was correct.

Still, since the work itself is so chaotic and spiraled into complete disarray near the end, I felt the need to solidify what kind of story it actually is. After all, we need to at least understand what this story is about to form any kind of judgment. If things remain unresolved like this, the story remains incomprehensible and unbearably unsettling, so I felt I had to tie up the loose ends myself.

I considered myself a relatively diligent reader who followed the story closely, but there were so many events happening in the narrative, and yet the reasons behind them—the explanations for why things unfolded that way—remained utterly unclear and confusing. (This is why I often criticize the story as incomplete or poorly written.) I don’t think I lack reading comprehension or the ability to grasp context. Usually, I can figure out what a story is trying to convey. But with this work, it’s simply impossible to explain unless you bring in mythology. On the other hand, if you do bring mythology into the equation, then it becomes explainable.

That’s why, even if one wouldn’t be able to fully understand the story, there'd be the need to examine those elements to make some sense of it. From the moment the narrative introduced gods, missions, and similar motifs, it became clear that those elements weren’t insignificant. After all, the protagonists themselves reincarnated to fulfill their missions from the gods. But even this concept of “mission” wasn’t clearly defined in the story—it was left ambiguous, merely hinted at. Readers are forced to figure out what it might be on their own, but the story doesn’t even provide proper clues. This lack of clarity and consideration for the audience is why the manga feels so unkind and perplexing.

This manga, in short, simultaneously unfolds with two narratives: a surface-level narrative (表層叙事) and a deep-level narrative (深層叙事). This will get long, so I'll put everything else under the read more.

The surface-level narrative is the storyline we see directly in the manga. It can be summarized as Aqua’s journey for revenge.

The deep-level narrative isn’t intricately crafted or detailed—it’s simply mythology. The deep-level narrative of this manga is a reinterpretation of Japanese mythology. However, it’s only faintly alluded to and isn’t treated as a significant element. But by the time we reach the conclusion, understanding this deep-level narrative becomes necessary to explain and make sense of the events in the surface-level narrative. Despite this, the creators didn’t even acknowledge the existence of such a layer, leaving readers confused and unable to understand.

And yet, even if readers were to figure all of this out, it likely wouldn’t fundamentally change the evaluation of the work. Perhaps that’s why the creators chose to leave it as is.

Unless you're anyone with even a moderate understanding of Japanese mythology, it's impossible to figure out, “What is this? What kind of story was this?” But if that’s the only way to understand it, then it’s the creators who failed, isn’t it? I happened to have a faint understanding, so I thought, “Could it be this?” and started looking into it. As I became more interested, the things I discovered fit together, allowing me to interpret the story. But ultimately, the material that should have been fully shown and explained within the work itself wasn’t properly addressed. That’s the problem here.

Using the interpretation I pieced together, everything can align perfectly. The hints are subtly present in the work, and when you connect them, you can explain what kind of story this is. But the problem is, the balance shifts in a strange way.

Can this balance really be considered “well-handled,” or does it feel more like, “The narratives we thought were important turned out to be irrelevant, and this is what it actually was”? Seeing the resolution, I’m leaning toward the latter.

The parts involving Aqua and the two heroines (Kana and Akane) are the surface narrative. Most readers, while reading this manga, probably thought that this was the important part and rooted for this aspect of the story. Aqua lived as a doctor, was reincarnated as the child of his favorite idol, and entered the entertainment industry seeking revenge after that idol’s death. Along the way, he formed bonds represented by the two heroines, and through these relationships, he experienced change. Most would think, “This is the main plot of Oshi no Ko,” and the story indeed presents it that way.

But when you reach the ending, this narrative doesn’t hold as much weight as expected, and that’s bewildering, isn’t it?

The weight of the story shifts to the deeper narrative rooted in Japanese mythology, that's why.

It's characters like Ruby, Ai, Kamiki, and Tsukuyomi who are deeply intertwined with this deeper narrative.

Ruby was supposed to fulfill the role of a dual protagonist and occasionally received key episodes. But for some reason, it always felt like Aqua was the true protagonist. Looking at it now, I think it’s because Aqua and Ruby had different roles as “protagonists” within the story.

If Aqua was a character involved in the “human side” of the narrative (which made him seem incredibly significant, leading us to follow his journey as if he were the main protagonist, with his story appearing to form the core plot), Ruby was more deeply connected to the “divine side.” (She was loved by the gods, received their help, became entangled with the crow, and even at the end, it was said the gods sent her. She called herself Amaterasu and prayed to the gods. While Aqua had some involvement in this aspect, his role was more about supporting Ruby, making her far more significant in this context.)

But this “divine side” ultimately took all the narrative weight. Ruby survives, and everything Aqua achieved through the story is discarded in the end.

The storylines involving Kana and Akane? If you consider the ending, they were peripheral and not truly necessary. While their parts were enjoyable, and one might have hoped for an ending where Aqua survives and builds a future with those friends, those relationships don’t significantly affect the plot or the conclusion. Whether Aqua met them or not, the crux of Aqua’s story was about confronting the presumed murderer of Ai (his father), seeking revenge, and eventually killing Kamiki, who posed a threat to Ruby’s future. Aqua then sacrifices himself for this cause. That’s how it unfolded. Unfortunately, neither Kana nor Akane played a major role in influencing or changing this outcome. Strictly speaking, their presence wasn’t necessary for the story. Which I feel pretty sad about, but it's true. Aqua could have straightforwardly found his father and killed him, and that would have been the end of it. This is what makes it feel so hollow.

And this is why I concluded that the divine narrative overshadowed everything else. Aqua’s personal growth and relationships in the story were all consumed by this.

It does seem likely that the author decided on the ending first and then built the story to fit that framework.

The story became what it is because they decided to “follow the framework of mythology.” That’s why so much of what Aqua did all along ultimately felt pointless. The mythology’s ending was already predetermined.

This story opens by saying it’s fiction. Isn’t mythology the quintessential example of fiction? If that’s the case, the creators should have at least made it clear that this was their intent. That would have been understandable. But this work doesn’t even do that, nor does it adequately present the knowledge required to grasp the mythology. Instead, it forces readers to put in extraordinary effort outside of the work itself to do it (I’m not even Japanese, so this wasn’t easy for me).

You can still read the story without knowing these things, but fully understanding “What was this story really about?” becomes impossible. That’s a problem. Without resolving that, the story remains incomplete. It feels unfinished.

So, what conclusion have I drawn about the deeper narrative of this manga?

Ruby is Amaterasu. Her mission is to become a radiant being (as shown in the final chapter).

Aqua was born to protect Ruby. That is his mission (as stated by himself).

It was hinted from the very beginning that these two were born with missions. The concept of reincarnation itself is presented as highly unique, and Tsukuyomi, the god appearing in the story, repeatedly suggests pondering the meaning of their souls inhabiting their bodies and their purpose. From all this, it seems correct to say they are beings with predetermined missions.

However, Aqua only realizes his mission is what he's stated at the very end, moments before his death. Up until that point, he clearly lived with a different goal in mind. His stated objectives throughout the story were: avenging Ai by finding and killing the person who caused her death (his biological father) or making him suffer unbearably.

But can that goal naturally shift to protecting Ruby? Can killing Kamiki really lead to that outcome?

If we accept this, it means Aqua’s “mission” as hinted throughout the story was ultimately connected to Kamiki.

The mission to kill or capture Kamiki was always there; it’s just a matter of how it was rationalized.

Aqua’s purpose shifted from avenging Ai to protecting Ruby. The actions required to fulfill these purposes, however, remained the same.

Aqua often says things like, “I’ll go to hell” or “I don’t deserve happiness.” I strongly feel that this sentiment stems from the nature of his mission—to capture or eliminate someone.

Recall how, when Aqua believed his father was already dead, his expression softened, the black star in his eye disappeared, and he seemed at peace. It was because he felt freed from the burden of his mission. But as soon as he discovered that his father was alive, he became ensnared by it again.

Aqua’s mission was likely to take down Kamiki, or to accomplish something related to him. And perhaps, in carrying out this mission, Aqua knew he would have to die.

That’s why Tsukuyomi warned him not to form emotional attachments to others.

Now, let’s ask: why is taking down Kamiki such a monumental task, one deemed significant enough for the gods to assign as a mission? Why must it become the life’s purpose of our protagonist, requiring him to sacrifice everything he has?

The reason is that Kamiki is no ordinary human.

If he were to be just human, they could simply have him arrested. Just file a report and be done with it. So why does Aqua have to die for this?

It feels as though that’s not an option. Somehow, things just can’t work out that way, right? And the events surrounding that character are deeply unsettling. It's unnatural. I'm not even sure if it's controllable.

It’s ambiguous whether Kamiki causes destruction intentionally or whether it spirals out of his control. His seemingly small actions lead to catastrophically disproportionate consequences. Furthermore, there’s no evidence left behind. The incidents surrounding him, in my view, aren’t something that can be carried out or resolved within the realm of human capabilities.

Kamiki’s involvement is so significant that the gods decided it warranted reincarnating two individuals and assigning them a mission.

When you piece together the identities of the gods mentioned in the story, you’ll uncover what Kamiki truly is.

If we analyze it closely, there are two distinct groups of myths woven into the story.

First, there’s the mythology surrounding the death of the creator gods Izanagi and Izanami. Their children, Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi, are explicitly referenced.

Second, we have myths related to the Sun Goddess and the descent of the Heavenly Grandchild, involving Amaterasu and Ame-no-Uzume. These deities are directly mentioned by name in the plot.

In the myths about the creator gods, Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, and Susanoo are triplets. If Aqua corresponds to Susanoo, the god of storms and the sea, we can identify thematic parallels. In the myth, after Izanami’s death, Izanagi descends to the underworld to retrieve her but fails. When he returns to the surface, Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi are born from his eyes, and Susanoo from his nose. While Tsukuyomi is the one that is related to the eyes in the original myth, along with Amaterasu, Aqua seems to have inherited the star-related motif instead.

This influence from mythology is evident. Susanoo is said to have cried for his mother, leading to a conflict with his father, reflecting Aqua’s own struggles with his father and his longing for his mother figure, Ai. The star motif in the twins' eyes could also stem from this myth.

Additionally, the creator god myth includes the father’s failed attempt to resurrect the mother—a narrative that echoes the dynamic between Ai and Kamiki.

The Sun Goddess and Heavenly Descent myth introduces Ame-no-Uzume, the goddess of entertainment and dance. In myth, she uses her bold and honest nature to coax Amaterasu out of the cave where she has hidden, frightened by Susanoo. This parallels Ruby’s transformation from Sarina, who was inspired by Ai’s performance, to becoming a radiant idol herself. If Ai corresponds to a deity in this myth, she would align with Ame-no-Uzume.

Ame-no-Uzume plays another crucial role: she escorts Amaterasu’s grandson to Earth and encounters Sarutahiko, a deity of light and the Earth who guarded the passage to Earth. His body is said to sparkle brightly with light. Sarutahiko initially opposed Amaterasu’s grandson’s descent because it would diminish his authority. However, he fell in love with Ame-no-Uzume, who seduced him. They became a couple, and while there’s no explicit mention of their marriage, they lived together on Earth, had children, and were revered as a couple. Their descendants were known for performing "Kagura," sacred dances.

The shrine the characters visited in Oshi no Ko, the Aratate Shrine in Miyazaki, is dedicated to commemorating their meeting. Aqua references Ame-no-Uzume by name, saying he knows her well. However, the shrine doesn’t honor her alone but enshrines her and her partner Sarutahiko together.

As for Kamiki, the parallels he has with Sarutahiko are undeniable. It's no joke, I keep finding new things that I find they share in common every time I look up the god.

= Kamiki is the deity Sarutahiko Okami, the husband of the goddess of entertainment (Ai). This has to be it. Every time I read this work, I keep coming to this same conclusion. There’s even foreshadowing to back it up.

Sarutahiko is said to have the power to fulfill the wishes of others, a power that only manifests when he is with his wife.

Most importantly, Sarutahiko is a guide, leading people toward a brighter future, into goodness. Under normal circumstances, this is a benevolent role.

However, something has clearly gone awry. This "flaw" is explicitly referenced in the lyrics of the songs featured in the story.

The source of this "flaw" is rooted in Kamiki’s past, which the story has partially revealed. And as stated by the songs, the "lack of Ai"'s what's been intensifying, amplifying, or the major cause of him unable to be helped out of that state.

While much about Kamiki remains ambiguous, if he is that deity who can "twist the future," all attempts to rationalize his character become unnecessary.

Imagine such a deity descending into madness. Aqua’s mission to stop him suddenly makes sense.

It becomes a divinely mandated duty—worth sacrificing one’s life for—because this is a calamity beyond human intervention.

Notably, this deity is said to meet his end by drowning, a detail consistent with the story’s thematic elements.

So ultimately, the narrative of Oshi no Ko can be understood as a fusion of various myths centered on Amaterasu (Ruby).

The myths include:

The story of Amaterasu’s parents and the failed resurrection of the deceased (echoing Ai and Kamiki).

Amaterasu’s emergence from the cave (paralleling Ame-no-Uzume’s connection with Ai and Ruby).

The Heavenly Descent myth, where Ame-no-Uzume meets and seduces Sarutahiko (amalgamated with the creator god myth, having Aqua, the Susanoo, the sea deity who;s in bad terms with his father, playing a role in Sarutahiko-Kamiki’s demise).

Thus, Ruby suddenly emerges as the central figure of this intricate tapestry of myths.

To elaborate a bit further, Sarutahiko was also a native sun god, meaning he likely served the role of the sun deity before Amaterasu.

Therefore, if he wasn’t in good condition, the gods might have sent Amaterasu, the new sun god, to replace him. This is a plausible interpretation.

As for Ai… Kamiki is her divine husband, isn’t he?

Kamiki is originally a guiding god who leads everything in a positive direction. Ai might have unconsciously known that the situation would improve if he were set back on the right path. That’s likely why she entrusted their children with the task of helping her with guiding him back if he's gone lost.

Sarutahiko and Ame-no-Uzume are known to be an incredibly harmonious couple, they are very loving together.

It seems to me that the author of this story really loves mythology. Considering that this is a narrative about the entertainment industry, it feels inevitable that the story of these deities—protectors of the entertainment world—would be incorporated. Their tale is actually rather charming and heartwarming. A goddess descended from the heavens and, upon seeing the radiant god of the land, fell for him. She persuaded him to guide her, and they instantly hit it off. The two eventually became a couple and jointly protected the entertainment industry. After that, Ame-no-Uzume took charge of love and romance, while Sarutahiko became the god who guides everything toward good outcomes.

As for their inherent abilities: Ame-no-Uzume was associated with entertainment (dance and song) and was also the goddess of dawn, while Sarutahiko was a great deity of light, the land, and the sun.

When they became a couple, they gained additional abilities. Ame-no-Uzume, worshipped alongside her husband at shrines, began granting blessings related to love, marriage, and romance. Sarutahiko, after guiding Ame-no-Uzume and Amaterasu, gained the ability to lead others' futures in a positive direction—a power to guide others' fates.

Don’t these characteristics align with the abilities Ai and Kamiki would have if they were deities?

Their abilities also correspond to those granted by the white and black star eyes: eyes that convey love, and eyes that influence and sway others.

Ai and Kamiki correspond to Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto and Sarutahiko-no-Ōkami, respectively. By nature, they would have been a deeply loving couple.

Sarutahiko, in particular, was convinced by his wife’s words, let go of many things, and agreed to marry her. This indicates that he was likely a devoted husband. Furthermore, he is such a powerful deity that he’s referred to with the honorary title Ōkami, placing him among only seven supreme gods, including Amaterasu.

After his wife’s death, he seems to have gone mad and caused disasters. There’s no way this god would have wanted his wife to die. I think he didn’t realize at first that he had the ability to twist others’ futures. Hints of this can be found in the lyrics of the first ending and the second opening of the series—lines like "I’ve forgotten who I am" and "creative fall" are highly suggestive. Also, in the first opening, which focuses on Ai, she’s referred to as the reincarnation of a star. This suggests that Ai is literally a "star"—in other words, a kind of deity.

The white and black star eyes possess power and exert influence over those who have them. Kamiki, who was gathering white stars, was essentially searching for Ai. He was looking for his wife.

Now, let’s summarize the deeper narrative of this story:

Ai and Kamiki are not ordinary humans but are reincarnations of gods—specifically Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto and Sarutahiko-no-Ōkami.

They were somehow born as humans, met, and became a couple, but the darkness of the entertainment industry drove them apart. At this time, Kamiki was in a very poor state.

Kamiki, as the god of light, could not restore his light. The key to recovery, based on clues from the story’s ending, appears to be "love." This is also essential for Ai as a deity. Both characters lived longing for love because it is central to their function as gods.

Kamiki, a guiding god, became fixed in a state where his eyes were black stars instead of white ones, leading him to unintentionally twist others’ futures negatively. This likely wasn’t intentional at first.

The gods gave their children a mission. While the children were originally not supposed to be born, Tsukuyomi (the god of fate) intervened to place suitable souls into their bodies. In other words, the bodies are the children of reincarnated gods, while their souls were specifically chosen by the gods. This is what Tsukuyomi means by "you should realize why your souls are within those body"

Among the children, Ruby is Amaterasu (confirmed), and Aqua is likely Susanoo (suspected). Tsukuyomi watches over them (Izanagi’s triplets).

Ruby’s mission is to shine, while Aqua’s mission is to protect Ruby as she fulfills her role/get his dad.

Amaterasu, as the sun god, overlaps with Sarutahiko’s domain. In one myth, Amaterasu replaces Sarutahiko, after which he drowns. If Ruby is Amaterasu, she may have been sent to replace Kamiki, who was no longer functioning properly.

Ai dies. Aqua becomes convinced that avenging her is his mission. Kamiki is somehow involved in Ai’s death, and he blames himself for it. Whether it was his intention remains unclear as of the story’s conclusion.

Kamiki wanders in search of Ai and her love. Based on the lyrics and narratives in the story, he initially wanted to bring Ai back to life. Realizing this was impossible, he seemed to shift his goal to becoming like Ai or getting closer to her. At the same time, his self-hatred intensified, leaving him indifferent to his own survival. Yet, he couldn’t give up on Ai and continued pursuing related endeavors.

Kamiki, realizing that his children are seeking him, guides Ruby and Aqua to find him through his powers as a guiding god (lyrics of Mephisto). Ruby’s rapid career rise, seemingly aided by divine intervention, is likely due to his influence. He is also the one granting wishes, as seen when he asks Ruby what she wants to become or wishes for.

Tsukuyomi observes the situation and prompts the twins—especially Aqua—to approach Kamiki. From the gods’ perspective, Kamiki is dangerous and must be replaced and removed. Ruby, as Amaterasu, is capable of both replacing him and fulfilling Ai’s role. Aqua is pushed to protect Ruby’s fate and eliminate Kamiki through extreme measures.

Ultimately, Aqua sacrifices everything, including his own future, to achieve this goal. Kamiki, as a guiding god, cannot influence someone with no future, making Aqua’s choice effective. In the process, Aqua realizes that his mission was to help Ruby shine as Amaterasu.

Ruby, as Amaterasu, fulfills her mission and shines brilliantly. She continues to live, carrying out the role assigned to her by the gods.

This is probably how peculiar elements like gods, reincarnation, missions, wishes, stars, etc., have been underlying this story all along.

And if you look closely, these are the decisive elements that have driven the narrative. Without these, there would be no reason for the ending to unfold this way, and interpreting the progression in this light feels more natural.

But why didn’t they properly explain this??? Are there many people who understand this story as such? I think there’s no other way to unify and explain everything in the story except for this interpretation, and yet, even I have never seen the story explicitly touch on this properly, so I’m confused myself. I honestly think the storytelling failed here.

I usually write posts like this all in one sitting, this time too, so I ended up completely drained... LOL. But if I can sit down and write all this at once without any outline, it means I’m not bad at writing, right...? haha..

The writers didn’t do their job properly. I haven’t been able to find any other way to interpret this. Over the past few months, I’ve been wondering what on earth is going on because the most basic elements are presented in such a vague and peculiar way that it’s hard to grasp. It was so frustrating.

This is it. This must be it. Writing it all down like this helps me move forward a bit.

I don’t know if there’s any other way to interpret it, but interpreting it this way makes everything fit perfectly—even down to the characters’ names.

Kamiki, that guy, is the god of light. Ai is "the love of the stars", in this manga, stars = gods, and the light of love (Ai) resides within the white star in the eyes.

That’s why Kamiki, after Ai’s death, went looking for her through gathering them. Even the lyrics of the songs align perfectly when interpreted this way—it all comes together cohesively.

Seeing their father go mad, and act this way - because he’s a god gone mad- the other gods used their children: one to replace the roles of their parents (the god of light + the god of love substituted through Amaterasu) and the other to capture and possibly kill the mad god and prevent him from causing further catastrophes.

That’s the core of this story.

But then, what were Akane and Kana? Why did they include those narratives if they didn’t influence the ending? It’s so frustrating and infuriating because, on the surface, it seemed like Aqua and his friends were the central focus of the story. Looking at the ending, though, they were treated as side plots—parts that could have been left out entirely.

Should we think of them as subplots? But then again, Aqua hurt those girls so much. It’s heartbreaking when you think about it. I wish he just stayed as a pal and hadn’t gotten entangled with them or played with their feelings. Why did he leave things ambiguous with them...

Hey, but Kamiki, at least, was sincere toward Ai. About his concept of love... sigh. He’s got a lot of issues, really, but despite all those issues, he genuinely wanted to give everything and devoted himself entirely to her. To me, it seems like he loved Ai so much that he went mad, and because his powers went awry, Ai ended up dying. So he roamed around, trying to retrieve her and bring her back to life to reverse it.

I don’t think he ever had malicious intent. I know, clearly, at this point, he’s completely insane and needs to face punishment still, but... his life was just total misery and the story doesn't explain anything about him so that he can be took as what he actually is in a fair sense.

This person… It’s not that I can’t analyze characters, and it’s not that I’m unable to read into their psychology, but I think this person really is kind. They act and speak kindly even when there’s absolutely no need to do so in a given situation. It’s not pretense—it’s genuinely their nature. That’s why I’ve been so unsure about how to perceive them. Why would the writers portray someone like this? Without delving into the deeper narrative layers, it’s impossible to grasp this character.

If Kamiki hadn’t ended up in this situation, he would’ve been an incredibly good person. Not just ordinarily good—exceptionally so. There’s not much evidence for this, there isn't much we see about him in the first place, but if they’ve shown him to this extent without directly portraying anything that proves against it, it actually makes sense in terms of narrative causality. It means the events unfolding the way they did are somehow justified even without explicit proof. That he's kind, but there's still something about him that can cause immense malice and destruction at the same time. From what I can see, he would’ve been one of the rarest and most genuinely good people, in the top few percent. That’s why I found it so baffling that he could commit such actions.

He’s likely a god,—a god who couldn’t handle the grief of losing his wife. He really is a god. Rather than a person being evil, he’s a god driven mad by his wife’s death. I wish Ai could come for him somehow... He should go to hell, he's committed so many unforgivable sins yeah? but on his way there, I hope she could at least see him off one last time. That is, if she didn’t lose all affection for him after witnessing his actions. I don't think she would have, but he'd still have to pay for his wrongs though. That's why I kept drawing comics with that kind of note.

It’s unclear whether he intended such extreme outcomes or whether his powers acted on their own. That ambiguity comes from the fact that there were definitely points where it seemed like he couldn’t control himself. He speaks so softly, and he’s kindhearted—but he’s no longer in his right mind, and it seems like everything other than Ai has completely disappeared from his view.

It shouldn’t have come to this. If he remained the kind of person he should’ve been, this wouldn’t have happened. But we’re not just seeing a change in personality; this is a fundamental corruption of his very essence. It’s the kind of transformation that happens to someone who isn’t human, and there were clues all along suggesting this. That’s why interpreting it this way feels right.

When you view it through this lens, the entire story comes together. It explains why things have unfolded the way they have.

I need to go read some books. Honestly, while following this work, I seriously questioned myself: Am I the one who doesn’t get it? Is it my reading comprehension that’s lacking? I agonized over it because the plot was seemingly sailing smooth, but the ending threw me into complete confusion. I started wondering, Can I even read books properly? and felt a bit of existential dread.

But this works. This must be it.

It’s not about couples or pairings; ships, otps, I'm serious!!! It’s about how the story unfolds in a natural flow and leads to this kind of conclusion. From that perspective, this kind of organization was necessary.

Now, I really don't want to keep talking about this anymore. I don’t want to. I just want to organize my thoughts, understand, and conclude, Oh, this is what the story was about, and then move on to something else. I want to shake off this lingering discomfort. This work kept bugging me because it felt so unexplained and I could sense some sense of underlying layer just hanging but never discussed.

I was really anxious, but I’m confident this is it. Even if it isn’t, I don’t think the writers could have wrapped it up in a way that makes more sense than this. That’s how certain I am.

But seriously, how could they make me piece this all together through independent research on my own? This is just too much… it was so exhausting, truly.

[anticmiscellaney]

I absolutely adore your work! What's your process been like for writing NewOldRare and developing Neil and Louis? Your art and character writing feel so genuine and realistic to me, so I'm really curious how you go about it!

Thank you! I've always been obsessed with character-driven stories and interaction, so I guess this is the result of years of practice and observation, and dismantling stories that do and don't work to see why.

Unfortunately, there isn't a clear way to explain it. It's one of those "you know when you get it right" things, requiring an eye developed over a long time. I will redraw things if I don't feel like I've captured the nuance I wanted to, and a few months later I'll look at it and see where I could have done better. Same with writing. I'm obsessed with pacing and page design, I had a moment of "that's how I think about it too" when Will Eisner described comic panels like music.

The technical approach is I make notes about stories I want to write, then I expand that into outlines, then scripts, then thumbnails, then I draw the comics and colour them and finalise the dialogue. At every stage I'm asking myself if it feels right, if I'm getting across what I want to. That's not to say there aren't surprises and things don't develop organically, but every stage is an attempt to solve as many problems as I can before the next stage. My thumbnails are quite detailed because it makes pencils easier, and I spend a while on them.

I have total aphantasia so I am operating off feeling rather than any mental images. I have no idea how it works and no idea why I pursue this when I'm missing what many visual artists describe as a crucial component. I just do it and I have better things to do (art) than wonder about something I can't change. I don't think it's made me a better or worse artist, though I think it has given me different ways of approaching/developing things. But also, literally everything about you makes your work different to everyone else's work.

You need to care. If your character is into music, listen to that music. If they have an old car that keeps breaking down, read up on common problems for that model. If they work as a film projectionist, watch a training film about using the machine. The characters care about things, have things in their lives that matter, have skills and interests and challenges. If I don't care enough to understand them, why should anyone reading it care, and also why am I writing it if I don't care?

So I do, and in caring I understand them better. This helps me develop characters/story but it also gives me so much more to write/draw. Understanding how things work and how they are done from a physical standpoint makes writing/drawing them easier too. The more you put into your head, the more you can get out later. I'll do way less for a 12 page short than for a 300 page graphic novel, obviously. Pick your battles, a little can go a long way.

They tell artists to collect visual references - solid advice - but you should collect substance too. If you pay attention, you will hear and see things you could never in a million years make up.

I find online socialising difficult, so I go out regularly and talk to people, or just hang around and observe. Chatting with strangers mostly involves listening to them. No one in gay spaces is interested in flirting with me (I'm rather homely and queer men assume I'm straight) but I think an audience is just as appealing sometimes, and maybe even harder to find. You'd be amazed what people will tell you if you're genuinely interested and listening. I once spent forty minutes at a sci-fi con talking to a guy who'd recently gotten into fisting. While I have zero personal desire to partake in that activity (and he had no interest in being fisted by me), I'm engaged, I'm invested, I'm asking questions, spare no detail.

I collect behavior and movement and the ways people interact too. Reading stories on reddit or whatever is one thing, but the words might not be as interesting as the way they're standing, the way their hands move, the way they respond. A guy in a bar once literally humped my leg like a dog because he felt I wasn't paying enough attention to him. I would never think of that as a response to that situation, but he did, and he followed through. Fortunately my friend had just tried to drunkenly sit down and missed the chair, otherwise I would never hear the end of it.

I see the leghumper around sometimes, he's got a boyfriend and avoids making eye contact with me, thank god.

[stelly38]

‘Rivals’ Showrunner Talks “Bigger, Better, Bolder” Season 2, ‘Bridget Jones’ “Naughtiness” Appealing to the U.S.

"I've had messages from friends saying it spiced up their sex life — they reckon the British and American birthrate is going to go up as a result of this show," Dominic Treadwell-Collins tells THR.

Di5ney+'s beloved Jilly Cooper adaptation Rivals took the U.K. by storm this fall — but showrunner Dominic Treadwell-Collins always had his U.S. audience in mind, too.

“When we were thinking about the Americans — I grew up spending a lot of time in the States because my grandparents lived there — so I grew up in American television, and I understand the American obsession with how odd the British are,” Treadwell-Collins tells The Hollywood Reporter. “This show celebrates Britishness and class and peculiar sex and joyous sex. We talked a lot about it being Bridget Jones in tone.”

“That Daniel Cleaver naughtiness is very much Rupert,” the award-winning producer, known for work such as A Very English Scandal and EastEnders, continues. “I think that’s what is appealing to the U.S., and the word-of-mouth is growing that, ‘Oh my gosh, this show is dirty.’ It’s a more modern Downton [Abbey] that’s filthy and more cut-throat.”

Rivals – already confirmed for season two — landed on Hulu in the States in October. The story follows Cooper’s novel on the infamous scoundrel and old money MP Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) and his rivalry with Tony Baddingham (David Tennant) that seeps into the 1980s-set world of Baddingham’s Corinium independent commercial television station, located in the fictional county of Rutshire, the Cotswolds in southwest England.

Baddingham hires a dynamic Irish newsman named Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), husband of actress Maud (Victoria Smurfit), away from the BBC. Declan is plunged into the outrageous lives of the Rutshire elite, featuring beloved characters such as Lizzie Vereker (Katharine Parkinson), Freddie Jones (Danny Dyer) and Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams).

At the center is a love story, however, between a young and inexperienced Taggie (Bella Maclean), daughter of the O’Haras, and Campbell-Black, who are drawn to each other amidst the raucous landscape of sex, mischief and shoulder pads.

Cooper, whose bestselling Rutshire Chronicles made her a household name in the U.K., was integral to Treadwell-Collins’ process. “We were very key all the way through to make sure Jilly was happy,” he says. “Jilly signed off scripts. She gave notes. I remember we’d written that Rupert asked Declan for his cutlery back, and Jilly went, ‘He would never say the word cutlery! He would say silverware.’ That’s authenticity.”

The showrunner explains that he’s been desperate for a long time to adapt Cooper’s work. “Over the years, lots of people have laughed at me and ridiculed me a bit for [wanting to adapt them],” he says.

“Other television people said, ‘Oh, they’re a bit slap-my-thigh silly.’ And I said, ‘No, they they’re about Britishness and class and love and longing!’ I knew how great they could be.” It was only when he set up the production company Happy Prince, part of ITV Studios, Treadwell-Collins finally felt Rivals had found a home.

It is clearly a passion project, telling by the enthusiasm in the producer’s voice. “The reason I started with this book is because the Rupert-Taggie romance,” he says to THR. “That’s the main thrust of it, but [Declan O’Hara] as well. He’s an Irish immigrant who comes into this posh world. My father was also an Irishman of farming stock that came to England, sent me to [boys’ private boarding school in England] Harrow, which is the school that Rupert attended. I’ve seen these people. I know Ruperts. I was at school with Rupert, and I understand this class system as an outsider myself.”

Cooper’s fanbase is notoriously predominantly women, but Rivals the program has seemed to disrupt that. “It’s become a show that people are watching together,” he adds, “I’ve had messages from friends saying it spiced up their sex life — they reckon the British and American birthrate is going to go up as a result of this show.”

Treadwell-Collins is not at all coy when discussing season two, rather he is fervidly excited, as word of mouth travels farther and international audiences grow. “Our hope has always been the Jilly Cooper-verse,” he says. “And what I find fascinating is quite a young U.S. audience are reading ahead now, comparing Rupert and Taggie to Twilight! This is a universal story.”

“Of course, I’ve got the ghost of season one on my shoulders,” he admits. “I’m writing as someone who’s a type A overachiever. That’s a challenge to have. So looking ahead to season two, it’s bigger, better, bolder, stronger. We know we want to keep coming back with the show.”

“We’ve already started working on scripts. We’re laying down little Easter eggs for the viewers,” the Rivals boss teases. “We’re being really rigorous. But what’s great is the team are fans. We watch telly, we are the audience, so we’re going to be harder on ourselves than the audience ever will.”

By Lily Ford for the Hollywood Reporter, December 23, 2024. Here's the link if you want it with the ads and pop ups.

[lazzarella]

Peaceful Property rambling incoming! I wrote it in like ten minutes, so it’s a mess, but I’ve been meaning to write this since ep 6 and I just wanted to finally get some of my thoughts out. This really is more for myself than anything I guess 😅

TL;DR I’m finding the writing in Peaceful Property really good and satisfying, especially when it comes to tropes I sometimes find frustrating or offputting or that are often poorly executed imho

The writing in Peaceful Property has been so good and so satisfying to me so far! The pacing in general is really nice, and there's been some nice misdirection/red herrings (I kept forgetting to write about this and now I can't remember what they were lol) and I think the pace of the reveals has been really good too. Like, if we knew from the outset that Peach was hit by a car and died for a while, I feel like it would've been easier to suspect Home's involvement? Similarly, if we knew that Home had been involved in a hit and run earlier, I don't think the audience would've sympathised with him as much (of course, some people have lost sympathy with him now, and that's understandable)

But the writing is also a good illustration of how tropes that aren't my favourite or can be frustrating for me can end up enjoyable in certain writers' hands. Obviously, this is just a personal preference, but I often find the 'person wants to confess something and takes their time doing it because they're nervous and then, when they're finally ready, the person they want to confess to finds out some other way with disastrous results' trope frustrating at times. But it worked SO well here! I think the frustration sometimes comes from it not fitting characters, but it fits Home and Peach so well and the setup worked well to make it believable for me too!

Like, Home has never had to take responsibility for anything ever. Of course he doesn't know how to own up to what he's done wrong! Especially not to someone he truly cares about! (Which also seems like a rarity in his life). Like, he literally has no precedent in his life to draw from as far as we know. And he has a family and he doesn't want to risk it and he wants the apology to be perfect. So, it makes sense to me that he would hesitate and take so long!

And, of course, Peach's devastation is believable, but him jumping to the conclusion that Home knew all along when he sees the video makes sense too! Yeah, he's learnt to trust Home, but seeing that video would just really mess you up, right? That the worst thing that's ever happened to you was done by this person you now see as family? I think it's easy to assume he'd known who he hit. And Home's family stepping in before Home can explain also makes perfect sense because they've done it before. So, yeah, where I can sometimes find this setup frustrating and annoying because it doesn't fit the characters or it's just sort of weak, I thought it was really strong here

(As a sidenote: I'm not necessarily mad at Kan, but really really curious about what's going on with her, so that's another nice piece of writing for me personally. I'm not saying she's not out of line, but she's so mysterious that, yeah, I'm just SO damn curious more than anything)

I can also go either way on the 'poor person rejects rich person's money out of pride, etc.' trope. But, again, I thought it worked perfectly here! There were a couple of other posts that went over why it made sense for them, and it definitely worked for me too. Peach is still very emotionally raw, he believes his friend—his family—has been lying to him all along, probably using the money to assuage his guilt, and now this attorney says he's there on Home's behalf, so he's reacting emotionally on some level. (I mean, we see him not long after sobbing on the bathroom floor) He feels used and betrayed and the money—even for the work he's already done—symbolises that to him. 

So, yeah, like a lot of the writing in the show, his rejection of return of the money is symbolic of severing ties with Home and rejecting what he sees as corrupt ideals, or whatever. He wants Home to know, without a doubt, that he wants nothing more to do with him. And, because Peach thinks Home cares more about money than anything else (and has good reason to believe so), this feels like a 'hit 'em where it hurts' thing to me too? 

But, yeah, sometimes I hate this trope, but it worked well for me here as well because of the way it was written

Anyway, I'm repeating what others have said, and I don't know where I'm going with this, but, in conclusion, I'm finding the writing SO satisfying. I could probably do a breakdown of every ep, but I won't because I'm lazy and also just parroting what's been said already haha

[kingmagnificoofrosas]

Why I don't "ship" them

Ok, before anyone comes running me down, please hear me out! I have solid points to make here! I Promise!!!!

Btw, I'm absolutely ok with people disagreeing, but please, if you want to critique me in the comments, do it nicely! I won't tolerate any rudeness. My blog is a safe space and it should stay that way 💙

‼️Now, of course, like with all my analyses, this one is also based on my very own observation and my personal opinion. Also note, I don't hate Amaya! I hated her actions and dislike her for it. And I have very high standarts when it comes to romance‼️

We are told that these guys are married. Ok. Good. Nice. Naturally you then expect to actually see solid poof that tells us (audience) that this is true. After all, disney has a veeeery long history of displaying true love/soulmates, so this should be no different right? Right? Wrong! Let me tell you why!

I payed very close attention to Magnifico and Amaya throughout the whole movie and there was 0 romantic tension whatsoever! Love is displayed in actions and words, and actions there were none. At least none that had me believing they are more than close friends the least. Even my Mom was utterly confused as to what they even are to each other. In my Mom's words : "Anything but a married couple! More like brother and sister."

Let me explain why I believe that we have a marriage of convinience here.

First of all, Amaya calls Magnifico "Mi Rey" all the time. This is spanish btw and means "My king" And she doesn't even say it in a romantic way, she calls him that like any other person in the kingdom would.

Now, my Dad made the point that back in the days people of high status didn't call each other by surnames, but Magnifico does! He calls her Amaya. So that arguement falls. Also, others are all calling Magnifico either by his name or they say "King Magnifico" so her not calling him by his surename in private is odd.

Of course, not everyone uses romantic nicknames but I think it's just weird that Amaya never calls him anything but 'king' and later to Asha and the others she says "Magnifico". It makes no sense.

She's hardly ever around him in private.

And if she is, she does what she does when in public as well. She mostly just stands around. The most touch we see her give is her placing her hand on his shoulder! No hugs, no caressing the cheek, no loving gestures. Please, any polite human being can place a hand on someones shoulder or give a smile. My dog shows more empathy when I'm in distress than Amaya does to her husband.

Her support is the worst! Literally!

You'd think she knows her "husband" right? You'd think if he's upset, she'd do her best to calm him down and support him, right?

Well, after "Star" appears, his light floods Rosas and Magnifico panics, all Amaya does is telling him to breathe. No : "Hey, I know you're upset and scared, I understand, lets talk about it and try to find a solution together!" I mean, he's told her earlier that he thinks he's being threatened. (Clear PTSD response here)

We saw how Magnifico reacted to "breathe!" She could have given him a hug and told him something more soothing. She could have taken his hands and shown him, she cares. She should, after all, know that he's traumatized. She should know why he reacts the way he does and help him get through it.

The fact alone that the first thing Magnifico does when he's upset is to withdraw himself to figure his problems out on his own rather than seek his spouse for comfort tells me a lot!

Yes, she asks him to put the book down by telling him it's bad and he needs to protect himself, and he does in the end, but what she does then makes me facepalm myself.

Get this, Magnifico's ptsd causes him to panic, he wants to protect himself and his subjects/kingdom and Amaya tells him "Look at your people, they love you because you're their handsome king."

You good Amaya? Your husband just had a panic attack and your best reply to that is, "Breathe, your people love you and you're handsome." ? What in the good grief kinda advice to panic is "you are handsome" ? And mind you, his subjects are one of the very reasons he even panics in the first place!

But of course he reacts nicely, cause he is a sweetheart.

And her not wanting him to get posessed by the book isn't a solid proof she loves him. It only tells us she cares for him. Not how much. And also, she might know that should he get posessed, things are going down.

So what about the hand kiss then?

I'm tired of people taking this little scene as proof for everything. It's a moment of affection. But enough to make me buy they truly love each other? Nah.

A kiss to the top of the hand used to be the bare minimum form of respect a man could pay a woman. Women would have even held their hands out for men to kiss as a form of demanding respect.

We could have gotten a real kiss. If not on the lips, on the cheek, on the forehead, anything that clearly shows us, yes, they love each other. But no. And also, the patting? He patted her hand like I pat my dogs head and the kiss was more a quick peck. Imagine Magnifico would have lingered for 3 seconds, held eye contact or looked at Amaya a little while longer, now that would have been romantic tension, that would have told me, there are solid feelings there!

Yes, in english he calls her "my love" but in german he says "my dear" which you could call anyone as a form of being nice! And even if he meant it in a affectionate way, his actions don't add up to it.

If you say you love someone, you prove it with actions. If there is no action to prove words, it's just not true. And no, even people who have a hard time expressing their emotions do show they love you in their own ways. So let's move on and examine Magnifico's behavior more.

Again, he doesn't seek her comfort! He rather runs across half his castle to let out his thoughts and emotions than talk to her. That means, he doesn't trust her enough. He doesn't feel safe enough to show his vunerability in her presence, open up, vent, cry and let out his feelings. But he should! You should be able to do that in a marriage. He calls her "my love" but other than that? Do his actions underline what he says? No.

If you didn't agree with the above so far, I have this 👇🏼

He knew she'd betray him! He sent out Simon instead of going on his own.

If she were his true love/soulmate, he wouldn't have even spent a single thought about if she could eventually betray him. If you truly love someone, you don't betray them like a snap of a finger. Of course ptsd people have trust issues but Amaya is said to be his "loyal wife"

Loyal my butt!

The first thing she did after he snapped wasn't try everything in her might to get him back and safe him, no, she immediately ran to Asha and her teenage friends and was like, "Oh, I'm sick and tired of him, I've seen so many horrors, I suffered so bad. Yup, he's evil, let's destroy him." (Yes, literally! I'm pointing at that "trample the cookie to pieces" scene ...)

She sings : I've seen too many bad things that I can't keep count!

Huh? Like what please? All of the sudden she acts as if he'd been abusing her all the time. He never called her names, never threated her badly (until he became posessed by the evil in the book that is) he never raised his hand to her. He even told her he's lucky to have her, which (pfff. What did she even do besides sitting and standing still and look pretty?)

Look at what's going on here. And study the facial expressions, please. Magnifico is tired here. He's tired, annoyed, disappointed and upset at his subjects and Amaya is straight up confused. Look at her. She cannot understand why he's so upset.

The situation escaletes, he storms away and she tells him "they question you because you make them feel safe enough to do so."

*holding my laugh right here* Again, what a way to trample into a wound!

Subjects questioning their king is normal in a way, but right here, Magnifico is on the edge of his nerves anyway and she might have aimed to calm him but in the absolute wrong way! If you as "wife" know that your husband has ptsd, and is venting or reacting to a trigger, you don't go talking about that trigger even further. People with ptsd will understand me here. Even if someone means well, if you keep talking about the very thing that just triggered a ptsd response, you're making it worse!

She could have told him, "They're just as confused about the situation as you are. You are their king and they look up to you. I'm sure they didn't mean to question you in a bad way."

But anyway, he pushes her away, saying he doesn't want to be disturbed. Which, ok, sometimes you need to cool down on your own but he does that every single time. And she just runs along clueless and helpless like some sort of servant.

To be fair, people with ptsd/c-ptsd are difficult to handle. Even in a relationship of true love, it's not always easy. But with Amaya and Magnifico, I'm looking at the whole picture and not just a single moment. I looked at every moment we get in the movie and how they react and behave.

Amaya was all smiles until the moment he snapped. Then all of the sudden, yes, he's an evil monster! And oh, her too ignoring the fact that he got ptsd and that it's the evil that has a hold of him now that makes him go bonkers, nice! So much for : in good and in bad times.

Amaya - "The good in him, I watched it melt."

Yes, that is exactly the problem! She watched! Magnifico was suffering and she watched! Also the good was only swapped because he got posessed by evil, lady Sherlock.

Furthermore, when she and Dahlia look into the evil book, and Dahlia states the book says that once posessed by the evil magic, there is no going back forever. And Amaya doesn't bat a lash. Excuse me? What ever the heck happened to : true love breaks any curse? True love's kiss breaks any spell? We even had true love tears breaking curses! (Tangled and frozen)

Amaya didn't even shed one singe tear. None. At this point, Asha cried more over the situation than Amaya did. Just how quickly she was ok with everything, how quickly she accepted the situation ....

Heck, if he'd been her true love, things would have looked way different. Yes, disney tried to pull the "but he's the villain" card, but I don't buy that for a second. They could have made her heartbroken at least but she even snapped at him after he was on the edge. It's him who betrayed everyone. The evil magic book is suddenly forgotten. No, no, no! Ya'll backstabbing him and ignoring the fact he's got PTSD got him into this shit situation in the first place. And if AMAYA hadn't totally failed at being a good wife, Magnifico most likely wouldn't have even gotten as far!

But, the answer is simple. She doesn't love him! Or at least not nearly enough! When she sang, I was fooled by the love I felt, I was like 🤨? What exactly did you love, dear? His handsome looks? His magic? The only praise we saw her give him was when he did magic. When he did magic and or granted wishes she cheered like a child but other than that? Nothing like, "I see how much you give, how hard you try to protect us all everyday. I wish I could help you more, take some of that burden from your shoulders or at least carry it with you."

And if you're still not convinced, this tops it all! 👇🏼

Again, no tears, no sadness, nothing. She even approaches the whole situation with humor! And then she picks the mirror up like a dead rat on its tail and proudly declares "to the dungeons with him!" Not at all a reaction from a wife who truly "loves/loved" her husband.

She gives the tiny mirror away like a trashbag.

So to add things up. There is nothing to prove they truly loved each other. Cared for one another to a certain degree, yes. Magnifico at least showed a sprinkle of affection but on the other hand, he's a gentleman.

So, no, I personally will never ship them. I love Magnifico and the fact that Amaya wrote him off as easy as shrugging off a bug from your shoulder upsets me. 😬

He deserves so much better! He deserves true love. He deserves a healthy relationship full of compassion, support and guidance. He deserves respect and acknowledgement. He deserves healing!

Give that poor ptsd suffering man a break!

~

[alexjcrowley]

So, I watched Casino Royale (2006), in my quest to rewatch all of the Daniel Craig's James Bond movies and answer the question: "Do I really hate James Bond movies? Or was I just a kid when some of them came out and I didn't care for spy movies?"

I'll start by saying that I liked Casino Royale much, much more than I had expected. It's 2 hours and a half long, which today is the standard running time for any blockbuster, but lately I had managed to convince myself that, during my childhood, blockbusters were shorter and didn't kidnap an audience in a movie theatre for almost 3 hours. I was wrong.

(Now, SPOILERS ahead)

Starting with what I liked.

First thing first: James Bond. I was never fond of Bond's character, I have always thought him boring instead of serious, slimy instead of charming, and generally very annoying with the whole "I'm the man" demeneanor. I was also wrong. I really liked Daniel Craig in this first movie. We see Bond at the very start of his career, he has just been promoted 00 status and he has a lot to learn. He takes almost as many punches as he gives, he is too instinctive and his ego often gets his own way. He is far from perfect and many people give him shit for that, especially women. Casino Royale holds his main character accountable for most of the bullshit he does and that was a welcome surprise.

The plot. I am proud to say I think I understood the entire plot of the movie. I know it might not seem much a of a brag and I swear I can usually understand the plot of a movie- but James Bond's ones are often too convoluted for me. I feel like Casino Royale, partly thanks to chunk of explaination given by M, was fairly easy to follow. There were also many predictable twists- not necesserily a bad thing though, because they did make sense. I really liked how Mads Mikkelsen- brilliant as always in the role of the main villain Le Chiffre- was being hunted both by Bond and by far more dangerous people he owed money to. I think the movie lost itself a little bit in a the last part, but I'll discuss that later.

Vesper Lynd. I have no idea what the press conferences around Casino Royale were like, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them focused on a better treatment of female characters in the Bond's franchise. I was expecting to be bored to death by the umpeteenth only apparently hard-to-get woman falling for Bond's charms, and I am happy to say it was nothing like that. First of all, and I mean it as a compliment, the Bond and Vesper banter is ao3-tier. The chemistry is there, there's equal teasing on both sides, which makes it looks they just work very well as a couple. But the scene I liked the most is right after James Bond loses a really important game of poker. He goes out on the balcony, Vesper follows him and James asks her to give him more money, because he thinks he can win the next game. Vesper says no. James insists, in what you could call the classical "all or nothing" scene of a movie. The one in which the protagonist is like "you have to believe in me, I can do this, look into my eyes, trust me one more time and I'll prove it to you", sprinkled with a little more "If you don't do this, all that money" that he lost "will be in the villain's hands" and grasping Vesper's arm very tightly. And Vesper's response is not "Okay, I will give you the money to save the world, but don't let me regret this, James". The first thing Vesper tells him is get his hand off of her. The second is that she is not going to give him more money, because he lost that game due to his ego (a motif that had already been introduced at the beginning of the movie) and if he keeps playing now, he is going to keep losing. And then she leaves. This, and the dialogue in which she basically asks if she has to worry about Bond's breaking into her room and trying to force himself on her with Bond reassuring her he won't, were moments I really appreciated. The James Bond saga is not exactly well known to be fair to female characters and, especially, James Bond's love interests are often poorly written. They could have gone the easy route, they could have had Vesper trusting James blindly because he is the main character, but, instead, she stood up to him. I really, really like this decision. As James Bond has been cemented as an icon of masculinity, it is shown that not only even he can be wrong, but also that this is rightly pointed out by a woman. In this occasion, he's being emotional and illogical, while she is being the reasonable one. And I feel this is as relevant today as it was in 2006.

Favourite scene: the torture. I am not really crazy about torture scenes usually, but I really loved the one between James Bond and Le Chiffre. It's not just that the acting- especially on Daniel Craig's part- is phenomenal, it's what that scene means. According to my interpretation, based purely on how Craig played the character, that seems to be the first time James Bond has ever been tortured and you can see he's fucking terrified. And you see him going from terrified back to that mask of neutrality, even though it is now dented. There are moments in which pain slowly morphs into an exasperated laughter and James is turning to crude humour to deal with the situation because he has already made his decision- he won't give up the code, so he's gonna die there, if he is lucky. If he's not, many hours, if not days, of torture await him. It's a momumental test of an actor for Craig.

So, yeah, lots to love. Let's now move to what I didn't like.

The action. Not all the action in Casino Royale is bad, on the contrary, but a couple of things were simply goofy. Like the first bomber being a parkour God, especially compared to James Bond's clusmy ass? Top-tier comedy, maybe intentionally, maybe not. I know for a fact the dramatic zooms were not intentionally comedic, but alas. And I gotta ask, other than being the easiest way to kill off Vesper, what was the point of that last Venice action sequence? To me, that was really overdrawn and forgetful.

The wife of the first villain. Her dialogue about liking bad guys is very cringe and I don't know who directed Daniel Craig in the scene in which reacts to her death, but holy shit that's one of the worst sequence of the movie. At first he seems indifferent to her being tortured and killed, then M goes on her whole tirade about Le Chiffre, and then, suddenly, when she asks if James Bond can handle the mission, Daniel Craig is looking at dead body of the villain's wife doing the most exaggrated heavy breathing since the stuff you could find of Looney Tunes. And then says "no" in a completely neutral, and accidentally comedic, tone. Jesus Christ. What a shit show.

James Bond's character arc, a.k.a. the romcom act. Yeah, I know, I said I liked James Bond before. But I have beef with the way the character evolved. I would say I pretty much like what we see in 2/3 of the movie. The problem for me arrives post torture, when we are made believe we have finally reached a happy ending. Vesper and Bond declare their love to each other, great, it was to be expected. But the fact that a few days after that- at least it looks like a few days- James Bond is like "Yeah, no, I'm in love with you, I wanna quit my job and spend the rest of my life with you" feels very rushed to me. Sure, near death experiences really bond people together, but let's recap the events of this movie. At the beginning of the movie, James Bond has just become 007. If I am not wrong, Casino Royale is James Bond's first mission as a 00 agent. We don't know how much time he has spent hunting down the parkour-bomber of the beginning of the movie, but we know that something like 2 days later he is sent to the Bahamas, then goes to Miami, all in the span of 2 days, and then he gets sent to Montenegro for something like 3 or 4 days. At the end of the Montenegro section, there's the torture scene, so all we know is that he ends up in a hospital and stays there for an unspecified while (which he spends mostly unconscious) and it's at that point, after declaring his love to Vesper, that he goes "Yeah I don't want to be a spy anymore". Bitch, you have been a spy for less than a month and you have known this woman for 2 weeks at best, and I am counting the time you were unconscious. Am I the only one who feels this is rushed? Especially because, during a game of deduction he and Vesper played, Vesper seemed to rightly deduce James wanted to be a spy because he had a chip on his shoulder about proving is worth- did that just go away? Wow, James, you gotta teach me how to solve self-worth related issues that fast. And the canonical reason why James wants to leave the job is because it's "eating his soul away" or some shit like that, and he wants to leave with that little bit of soul he still got. Once again, bitch, please. You have not been on the job for one month, what the fuck are you talking about. Maybe it's because you're not used to have a job, Mr Bond, but every single job eats your soul away and you live with that, because otherwise you won't be able to pay the bills. Just to be clear, I'm not mad at the idea that James Bond wants to leave his job. I think it feels rushed and I think it's a little bit too obvious something will happen to Vesper at this point because there's no way James Bond is quitting the job in his first movie, but I would have accepted this change of heart from Bond if I had been given a good reason for it. For example, the fact that he has been tortured. To me, it would have made much more sense if James Bond would have been like "You know what? Being tortured is fucking terrifying, much more than I thought during my spy training, I don't think I can handle that again", I would have believed that. But instead, we got some bullshit on the soul. James Bond screenwriters, being afraid of torture doesn't make you any less of a man, I swear. All in all, James Bond deciding to change his entire life goals just because he fell in love seems the kind of shit writing the female lead would get in a shitty romance movie, not the one of the main (male) character of a spy movie. Maybe it's poetic justice, but I think James Bond somehow found himself a victim of what is usually regarded as misogynistic writing. He then regresses to the emotional maturity of a teenage boy who spends too much time on reddit when he feels betrayed by Vesper, while M has to explain as you would to a 5-year-old that Vesper, if anything, tried to save Bond. A very undignified main character arc, if you ask me.

Vesper's death. Why did Vesper basically kill herself? I genuinely thought her death was a Jack and Rose situation- they both could fit on the door! I think James would have been able to save Vesper if she only didn't lock herself in the elevator. The only explaination that I can give myself to that decision is that Vesper didn't want to live with the guilt of condemning her past lover to death in saving James.

I am not good at giving grades to movies, instead I will say this: it's definitely worth a watch if you're into spy movies and the bisexual panic induced by Eva Green and Daniel Craig will not leave you for a good while. If you're willing to be forgiving of a few sequences, it's a very enjoyable action flick.

Onto the last part: my quest to prove James Bond is aro and/or ace.

Why do I want to prove that? I guess if there were more aromantic characters I could just turn to them for representation, but I have to do everything by myself around here.

My reasons to believe James Bond is aro: as someone who, for the moment, identifies as aroallo, I really sympathise with characters that indulge in a lot of sex, but keep romance at an arm's lenght. I don't think they're shallow, I think maybe romance is simply not their thing, just like it's not mine.

My reasons to believe James Bond is ace: I think James Bond may have a pretty fucked up relationship with sex because of his job. His entire body basically belongs to the governemnt: it's a weapon to kill, a disposable dummy to be tortured and, in some occasions, an object of desire, used to seduce, possess and be possessed. You could pretty much say that a fraction of his job is similar to that of a sex worker. Far from implying that being a sex worker automatically fucks up your relationship with sex, I think being forced to have sex with people who you sometimes despise and who might want to hurt you or even kill you is not, like, the best thing ever. And also, while a sex worker can theoretically pick their clients, James can't. He has to seduce who is useful to seduce for the mission, regardless of how he feels about them. And, to top it all off, I like the idea of James Bond being ace because I am tired of the whole "James Bond is so cool because he fucks a lot and which man wouldn't want to fuck a lot". Maybe James Bond doesn't want to fuck a lot, or maybe he doesn't derive as much pleasure from it as people believe he does.

Okay, so. Starting with aro spectrum, even though James falls for Vesper, I think we still have good chances of him being aro, either fully aro or something like greyromantic. After all, aromantics can still, even if rarely, fall in love and I think, for the way the character of James Bond has been presented, him falling for Vesper was quite an unexpected/out of character thing for him. Him deciding ti quit his entire past life to be with Vesper...is truly just bad writing for me, but even accepting it, I don't think it makes him any less aro, because as I explained he could have had much better reasons to want to quite his job and, personally, if I fell in love with somebody after years of that just not happening for me, I wouldn't know how I would react. Maybe I would also call it a miracle and just roll with it.

About the ace spectrum, we see him seducing a villain's wife at some point, but I will be honest. That shit don't count. There is this moment in which the woman is like "I always fall for bad men😏" and James Bond immediately gets out of the sexy mood and goes "So would you say your husband is a bad man? Why? Because of his job?". He does a 180 and goes from wet dream to interrogator in less than a second. Plus, he seems to leave her without having sex with her to go chase her villain husband. Very professional of him, but also makes me think he was never that much into her as he made her believe. The whole thing felt too calculated on his part, I would definitely say he was faking the whole time. James does have very enthusiatic sex with Vesper, though. If I want to stick to what the movie implies, without going off the tracks with something like "he pretended to be enthusiatic during the whole thing but he was faking for Vesper's happiness", I may still go with the fact that he is for sure sex positive and maybe demi-sexual.

Well, if you have read until this point, I am genuinely surprised. You don't have that much to do, I guess, good for you.

Onto Quantum of Solace next, and I am already shaking: I know that movie is bad. I know about the writers strike. God help me.

[bucked-it-up]

That's the thing though bc there would be portions ga who aren't here for the queer storylines are good with buck and hen have queer partners chase those partners aren't mains and so it's sort if a out of sight out of mind things but if you have 3 of the 5 mains as queer (not that more representation isn't good) it becomes a queer show and that would put more people off that it would join bc a lot of the fandom has a fundamental misunderstanding of the bulk of the audience that brings in the ratings

I agree with you ! I'm also gonna use this to bounce off of to talk about how having Buck and Eddie together would change the dynamic within the firehouse which I would say is probably one of the top reasons many people watch this show for. Whether you watch more for the emergencies or the personal moments, the dynamic between the team is the foundation to making those part work as well as they do. Changing this could affect ratings.

Rest under the cut because it got way too long

First, it's very unlikely that in the real LAFD that Eddie and Buck could work on the same shift. There would be a conflict of interest there, as much as everyone should be professional, there is always that chance that they may in times of distress priotise their romantic partner and not on the job. It's like in medicine. For example, it is against most policies to carry out any kind of procedure, examination, or consultion on a family member. Having them seen by a non related professional reduces the chance of bias, thus reducing the chance of harm or exploitation. Having them on the same team could also mean that they bring home life disputes into work, which distracting them and going on to cause harm to civilians, co-workers, or themselves. While yes, 911 is not a perfect example of the real world, I don't think this is something they would necessarily forgo. It's fun in fanfics to have it explained as okay by mysterious paperwork, but irl and in the show, it would not happen this way. (I do understand that in ls Nancy and Mateo are together while in the same firehouse, but they are also under different captains and work in different teams. As such they spend much less time together in comparison to what Buck and Eddie would be doing as they do not exclusively work on the same team and will be going on different calls and in different vehicles compared to Buck and Eddie, who work on the same team and also go to scenes in the same vehicle).

Having two main characters who are within the same team would also mess with the balance of the show. Obviously, bathena are both main characters, but they do not both work for the same service and also arguably the main characters of 911, so they will get more screen time and focus as they bring in the GA audience. Eddie and Buck are both within the fire service, and Eddie is also the bottom billed main. The focus would be off, and with how some fans see it, they want the focus to be on their relationship, ignoring that they are not the main draw of the show and thus turn away GA. The show would not feel quite right as more of the firehouse scenes may feel like there is a focus on those two rather than the whole team, and tbh I wouldn't want that. Also, realistically, as they would be likely working the same shift (in the world the shippers want), they would be around each other a lot. That would put strain on any relationship and also parenting Chris (which I will not go into as i am not a parent myself so do not understand all the nuances of it but as a child of a parents who had to work longer hours and spent time in both breakfast and afterschool clubs its hard to not be able to spend that much time with them and also increases the cost of childcare, once my dad got into teaching summers and breaks were a lot more fun because he was around more. Tldr it would be hard on chris to not be able to see both guardians for long periods if they both worked on the same shifts). Holidays all together would be hard as it is likely harder for both of them to get time off at the same time. There would be a lot of strain and stress in that relationship, of course people could make it work but as Eddie has been shown to struggle to communicate issues that would make it harder to work through issues before they turn into serious problems and Buck also has his own issues when it comes to relationships and would likely burn himself out trying to make sure the relationship worked and likely struggling with abandonedment issues etc.

I think a lot of this would lead to not fun drama to watch on the show or it would have to be handwaved away to make it all work. I wouldn't want that, and I doubt the GA would either. They don't watch the show for Buck and Eddie. I think the change in dynamics would turn away people from the show and would definitely turn away the less tolerant people. The GA also, like Tommy and Buck together they have had a good response to that, so why would they throw it away for a part of the online fandom. Buck and Tommy will be here to stay for a little while due to that alone and I think many people now (including the GA) want to see Buck settled down in a long term relationship and to see Eddie get a partner that he can settle down with, without breaking up Buck and Tommy.

It's amazing how many queer stories and characters we have gotten in 911, and while yes, I would love and be accepting of more, I don't think Eddie will be one of them.