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mimzalot · 2 years ago

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started streaming Golden Wildfire! gonna reflect on the route as it unfolds, courtesy of your resident Claude enthusiast.

CURRENTLY PLAYING: Chapter 4

[document version]

if Three Houses glossed over the sort of wild situation that Claude has to survive every day in Garreg Mach then this route has started with a bang by opening with conflict at the Fodlan-Almyran border. bold move! and I certainly am endlessly curious about this impending intrigue - in fact I have spent the last four years (four years!) since Three Houses musing about Claude’s relationship to his home nations, and the nations’ relationships to one another, and what that conflict means for Claude and everybody else.

do I trust the writers with it? not really. am I gonna try and play it in good faith anyway? evidently. so let’s get into it~ 🏹

right off the bat I can tell there’s stuff in this route that’s gonna make me uncomfortable, sometimes in the fascinating and deliberate way, and sometimes in the “oh I feel like an accomplice to/victim of a hate-crime” way. this is not really a surprise when it comes to Fire Emblem but it deserves a mention regardless, as I think Golden Wildfire’s going to be a rollercoaster that will frustrate me as much as it intrigues me. I’ll have the additional challenge of having to articulate how I feel about it off the dome, as a biracial POC playing to a mixed-bag stream audience. so, in short: occasional yikes are inevitable.

but such is the price I pay for Claude. ahh Claude, my beloved. when first I played Three Houses I was drawn to the game by him, not expecting him to be everything I enjoyed in a character. other than just being generally *chefs kiss* impeccable, he also conveyed some nuanced mixed-race experiences rarely expressed in a lot of media I’ve engaged with. that he sprouted from a game that frequently overshoots its own political intrigue and bungles character resolutions like FE3H surprised me, but I was happy to pluck the fluff and dirt off my darlings and make the best of what had been provided -- a bizarrely relatable, endlessly complex nice young man having a terrible, no good, very bad time.

I already got a whiff of this from playing Scarlet Blaze first, and it’s vindicating to see Three Hopes elaborate on something I’ve been clawing at walls trying to convey since the first game: Claude is light-hearted, but his situation is not. it always blew my mind to hear people say that Claude was the “good vibes house leader” in 3H only to play the game and find a character that would flippantly laugh about threats on his life, occasionally mention that he exists at the hostile junction of two warring nations, and ultimately find himself in the impossible position of an anti-war leader operating during a war. across two nations. both warring. yes, yes, he’s quite a funny guy, but his circumstances are abysmal, and a big part of that agony comes from the role he occupies -- that which he is saddled with, and that which he takes upon himself.

this was not a position easily occupied, and I was delighted to find that Claude was intelligently portrayed as a character whose ideals had to bend to the demands of leadership, resulting in morally-grey decisiveness, diplomatic juggling, and one of my favourite things to explore in fiction: the pragmatic, sometimes paradoxical pursuit of “non-violence” during war, and as a solution to war.

already in Three Hopes (I played SB first) I sense they’re leaning a little harder on showing Claude’s struggle with this, including some hints at the unbearably high bar he sets for himself. he doesn’t wear accountability like Dimitri or Edelgard in 3H - it’s always a little more cavalier, something you have to read between the lines to spot and understand. but this game is a tad more forthright with it, pulling back the disguise of “Master Tactician” to plainly show Claude in a perpetual state of, well... this:

and nothing exacerbates this like the situation they’ve started the game with. it’s dramatic irony that makes the first three chapters really sting: we know by now that Claude is Almyran, and are placed in an uncomfortable position of puttering around the camp listening to the people Claude calls his friends talking at length about the brutish Almyrans invading at Fodlan’s Throat.

this is technically good set-up. Claude is here to fix a problem, and this is our first experience of the problem -- lacking communication and education means that neither side knows who they’re fighting, or why, just that they have to. with the Church of Seiros already positioned as a questionable but overbearing presence in ch. 2 (“Why are we being sent here to fight? Church school said so.”) it begs to reason that showing the consequences of Fodlan’s intensely insulated culture starts with these uncomfortable scenes. they are, after all, born from the fear of not knowing. Claude as an antithesis to ignorance-based conflict makes a habit of overcoming fear by knowing everything.

so there are some pretty ick conversations happening around camp, and that’d honestly be something I’d be fine to reckon with as a narrative choice -- if not for the visceral discomfort and sharp drop in faith that came in the form of Shahid’s introductory scene.

let’s get this out the way: I did not spend four years mopping my tears about all these Lords and Royals to see Shahid and not immediately think “bratty king? I can fix him, and/or make him worse.” especially as a foil to Claude, it’s interesting to see a foolish heir working towards the throne in a way that Khalid, and perhaps even the King of Almyra, would oppose. I’m bracing myself for his justifications, for his humanity, because he occupies an interesting political position and he’s the first family of Claude’s that we’ve seen on screen. and yes, he could just be shallowly evil, but that wouldn’t be anywhere near as fun as it being complicated and ugly, the way all the other Lords and Leaders are afforded.

alas, it is difficult to have faith that GW is gearing up to say something interesting when they introduce such a caricature of the ‘evil desert guy’ that I feel like I’m watching a Disney movie. especially when a scene shows a narrow-eyed, ashy-but-darker-skinned ‘evil’ sibling in contrast with our bright-eyed, lighter-skinned mixed-Fodlanian Claude. it’s these sort of artistic choices that threaten to undercut the same cross-cultural intrigue that this route is constructing.

the Three Hopes sprites are a bit awkward, proportionally (shout out to Margrave Gautier’s bizarrely wide mouth) but it’s a long and yucky history with depicting MENA people that makes this particularly egregious. I’m Samoan so not personally affected by this, but it is nevertheless going to take an active effort to just try to look past the way his character is drawn. I spare a wince of sympathy for my viewers that are more personally affected: it sucks, and it’s such a simple fix that it becomes even more frustrating.

he does look slightly less like a hate crime in the animated cut scenes though.��“the only one who can beat me is me!” type rizz.

I actually like that his features might deviate from the typical proportions of most of our main cast, the way Hubert’ or Lorenz’s do. it is a shame to have it pushed just into the realm of caricature when there is something workable there.

nevertheless, 3H optics have betrayed themselves before (shout out, woman-enjoyers). so again, I’m going to try and brute-force past this icky design choice and try and find my bliss, which is thus: sibling drama, please, I beg. I love the garbage mish-mash of family dysfunction and political drama that happens in royal families, and it was high time that we saw a glimpse at what Claude’s other side is going through. I swear the British monarchy convinced people that wild dysfunction is reserved only for the English, but where there is power there is corruption, and where there is hereditary power struggle, by jove do you get problems -- it’s just a matter of flavour.

all that to say: I am hoping that we will be compensated for that abysmal talk-sprite with enough royal family intrigue to write home about. I would like to see Almyran politics that are just as complex as everywhere else, but culturally diverse and interesting without leaning lazily on the same fear-mongering racist rhetoric that Claude’s entire character exists to debunk. that’s my hope. my three hope. ha ha. look I’m not holding out hope for a diamond, I just kinda want a gem-shaped rock that I can polish up myself.

anyway, new spite-induced meow meow aside, let’s get back to Claude. my god! his life fucking sucks!

thinkin about this scene just before the timeskip where Claude expresses his thanks to House Goneril, and apologises for not being of more assistance. it makes my skin crawl knowing that Claude is not just thanking Holst but saying sorry to him after all the micro-and-macro aggressions he’s been weathering, but it makes a lot of sense; Claude is representing House Riegan and his grandfather, not Khalid of Almyra, and not even Claude himself. and what that shows is an important feature of diplomacy: the ability to make connections, and say what needs to be said in order to maintain good relations with his new allies.

better than that, it shows how damn good Claude is at it, despite having every reason in the world not to be. he is, in this moment, House Riegan. and with foresight, this is an interview, and this humble apology operates twofold as a promise, setting the tone for his eventual leadership and securing House Goneril as an ally.

if Claude were more selfish, more proud, more emotional or less wise, he wouldn’t be able to say things like that. it is the humility that makes people underestimate him, but it’s also what makes him so pivotal in creating and maintaining peaceful circumstances. sometimes, peace-keeping means pacifying the people in power. and especially for Claude operating in the alliance, managing expectations is key for a leader. he’s clever, this is strategic, and I’m excited to see Claude juggle the egos and roles of all the nobles around him.

but it’s tough, right? this is a situation that rewards Claude for not behaving like a human ought to. I like to imagine the way his smile falters when the Almyrans are spoken of like barbarians, agitation ticking along in the back of his mind while he forces himself to speak the niceties that will benefit everyone in the long-run. he’s only seventeen. we hear a lot about noble obligation, but there is no greater pragmatic noble obligation in Leicester than managing the other nobles, and Claude has that skill in spades -- hard won, but effective, with an eventual payoff to make all that juggling worthwhile. sometimes. maybe.

speaking of noble obligations, good lord that bit where Lorenz snaps that they must execute Tomas and Claude has to remind him that dead men don’t talk... I’ll inevitably end up talking plenty about Lorenz as the game goes on because he is a fascinating foil, so remind me later to talk about the things that make Lorenz a good noble, bad leader, and eventual good ally later.

and on the topic of fascinating foils...

man. I was not expecting Shez.

for those unaware, my read of Claude in 3H was that he mostly saw Byleth as a curiosity pre-timeskip, then brought them on as a means to an end post-timeskip. room for interpretation about how they develop after that, but generally most of my Byleth and Claude interactions boiled down to this thinly-veiled hostility and how it evolved into apologetic manipulation and mutual care.

Shez is different, right off the bat. I can see Claude working them over, but there’s something very new about the vibes of Claude approaching a peer he finds suspect. it has the same echo of how he treated Byleth, and even Marianne, but there’s a difference that I can’t quite put my finger on, and I suspect it comes from Shez just being a much more talkative character, plus the dramatic irony of vaguely knowing where Shez’s story might be heading. they’re not harbouring the goddess, nor a cursed beast, but a secret third thing :’l (and god I’m so excited to see what’s up with Shez, they’ve been impressing me as a protag since I started this game, I don’t think I’ve liked a FE avatar this much since Robin)

the way I characterised Shez has him coming off a little arrogant and brash, compared to my previous Shez, who seemed mostly daft and down-to-earth and is currently committing girlboss crimes in Adrestia in an alt timeline. I’m so used to overlooking the avatar character that I hardly realised just how much potential Shez holds in this route, as a sellsword brought onto the squad of the guy that wants to avoid bloodshed. honestly I’m pretty astounded by the raw fire of intrigue it’s set alight in my brain. Shez thrived under Edelgard because they always had work. and now they’re struggling under Claude, and we’re seeing just how vile the war machine is that it will make peace an inconvenience to the merc economy.

just before I finished the stream, I played the opening scene of the timeskip: where Shez is struggling to make ends meet by being a mercenary in a peaceful alliance. therein lies the intrigue of this pair-up. Claude wants peace. Shez needs to fight to live. so how do we reconcile this?

already it seems that Claude mmmiiight have just deliberately forced scarcity on Shez in order to easily manipulate them into a) not moving into a different nation when Claude still doesn’t know what’s up with him and b) taking up his first offer of becoming a commander, which is exactly the morally dubious pragmatism that I love to see in my Alliance leader - but who’s to say? it’s not as if it’s the same method he used to flush out Bergliez’s army in the SB route, forcing their hand by starving their troops with hopes they’d choose surrender...

guess we’ll find out next time, eh? but oh, is my spotlight shining on these funny little guys.

and quickfire round: Nader’s still lookin’ handsome, love that Claude’s opinion of Shez rises every time I side-eye the church, and Arval continues to enthrall my entire brain.

and. yeah. that’s a majority of my first impressions of the GW route. not even all of them but this is like an entire essay and I’m only just past the prologue. tl;dr more of the same Claude goodness, something new and tense in Almyra lore, and then something new and unexpected in Shez. and we’ll see where the rest takes us.

thanks for reading, all the best!

my streams | my twitter | ask to join the discord server

#golden wildfire #three hopes #fire emblem warriors: three hopes #claude von riegan #mimzameta #mimzamine

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doomednarrative · 2 years ago

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So this is a thought that I’ve been mulling over as I keep watching Donbrothers, and after finishing episode 44 it’s one that finally fully formed in my mind, and I think I have the words to articulate it in writing now.

It’s a thought about Taro Momoi. As the Red Sentai Ranger he’s obviously going to impact the story a lot, it’s in his nature to from the moment the series starts. But there’s one specific aspect of his character that keeps catching my focus, and it’s his inherent inability to lie about anything and everything.

The thought that I keep coming back to is that if you chose to watch Donbrothers with a queer reading in mind, that specific characteristic has such a farther reaching impact on both Taro and the narrative as a Whole.

(And before I go any further, I’ll put my little disclaimer here that this is not me saying you Should watch Donbrothers with this reading or anything to that effect. It is after all at its base level a sentai show meant to sell cool toys. You don’t have to give it this depth, it’s fine without it. I however am a queer person and I find it fun to do these kinds of readings as a thought experiment and I like writing about it for others to read.)

But anyhow.

Putting the rest of my thoughts under a read more because it got very long ~

The thing that gets me about Taro and his inability to lie and the fact that he has such an obvious tell for when he Is lying - that being that it literally kills him - is that it Forces Taro to go through his life living as his 100% authentic self. There is no way for him to hide from the rest of the world, no shield of little white lies or even a false persona that he can put on to keep himself from getting hurt. And he’s more than aware that A. His inability to lie Does hurt other people, which in turn hurts him as well, and B. It often puts him at odds with others due to how it can make him come off as ruder or more careless than he might mean to be. But it’s not something that he can change about himself. He’s tried, multiple times, and it’s just not something he’s capable of doing no matter what effort he puts into it.

And this has been a persistent issue for him since early childhood. It’s this very fact about Taro that makes an entire village move away when he’s still a young boy because in his attempts to help people by being honest and upfront with them, he drove them to hate him for his perfectionist streak instead. He couldn’t soften his words or tell them that they were doing just fine but that he wanted to help them, instead everything comes off blunt and matter of fact and over time it drove people away from him, until only he and Jin were left in their little neighborhood.

Taro’s inability to lie is something that the rest of the Donbrothers challenge him on throughout the entire series. It’s something that they actively either try to work to get him to break on, or they bemoan the fact that it’s not something he can fix about himself. Sometimes this is played for laughs, but more than a handful of times it’s also the cause of actual annoyance or even a level of anger from Taro’s teammates directed at him for this thing that he cannot change about himself. Over time Taro has learned a good bit how to at least supplement his blunt honesty with some careful phrasing so that he’s not as rude to people about things, but this still doesn’t change the fact that he cannot lie, and therefore cannot change a core part of himself or use lying as a way to shield himself from things like the others can.

That’s exactly why its such a huge deal to him when Sonoi is the first person to show up in his life, very early in the series, and tell Taro upfront that not only is his honesty a fine trait that he has, but that it’s also something he likes about Taro. Sonoi, before their shock at finding out each others true identities, literally calls Taro his hope and reaffirms when Taro comes to him about this issue more than once that he thinks Taro is fine as he is. This is something that I think ends up being a huge part of why the two of them end up still being close even after all of the fighting and literally killing and reviving each other that goes on through the series. Even after the many shocks and betrayals, the fact that their relationship (whatever you chose to view it as/whatever the narrative might imply it is) started with such openness and honesty makes for a very good foundation for the two of them. There’s already so much out in the open at that point that neither of them can pull back for long. Sonoi’s efforts to do so barely last more than a few episodes, and Taro never stops being anything less than genuine with him in all of their interactions from the first time they meet.

And speaking of Sonoi and his fellow Noto companions...

Sonoi may not have a problem with lying in the literal sense like Taro does, it certainly doesn’t kill him at least and he can lie with his words all he wants with no repercussion physically. But as the series goes on, you start to see that he’s lying to both himself and his teammates about a lot of things, and it slowly stops working and starts becoming something that is an actual roadblock for not just himself but for Sononi and Sonoza as well. And Sononi and Sonoza are also lying to themselves and each other as well, and it’s not working for Any of them! Sonoi has to be called back to the purpose of their work multiple times in the beginning of the series because it becomes clear to the others that whatever fascination he has with Taro is beginning to impede their goal of wiping out the Hitotsuki, and then post the first time he kills Taro, he visibly Wilts and states that he does not like himself for what he’s done. He becomes unable to lie to both himself and to Sononi and Sonoza that he’s happy with this outcome even though he should be. He’s a Noto who just took down Don Momotaro! In any regular circumstance, this would be something that he’d be proud of, no matter the method he used to do so. But because he did so by exploiting Taro’s inability to lie to him, something that he told Taro multiple times he liked about him, his victory rings hollow, and instead becomes something he’s actively upset that he did, even when the others think he did just fine. It’s why he helps to bring Taro back, it’s why they both agree to a fair duel that they won’t regret, it’s a catalyst for so many things later on down the line.

Sonoi’s inability to lie to himself and keep going with his duties as a Noto general without interference is what eventually leads to his realization in episode 44 that he and Sonoza and Sononi are all alike in the fact that they’ve grown attached to or become fond with humanity, and this fact puts a target on all of their heads and makes them enemies to their own people. Sononi got so caught up in the love affairs of Tsubasa and his search to bring the real Natsumi back that she fell for him in the process and took multiple hits to protect him, and it almost kills her! And Sonoza, who only ever wanted to understand human emotions and how they work, ended up as the manga editor to a teenage girl who he genuinely wants to see flourish in her work that brought him such joy and who’s respect he’s earned in the process. All three of them start off the series as very serious in their duties to take out the Hitotsuki (and later the Beastials) and slowly over time it gets so put to the back burner due to the connections they’ve made that even their superiors had to intervene to remind them of who they are and what their purpose is. And in the end even that doesn’t work. Not only can they not lie to themselves after a point, but they can’t lie to Sonoshi either. And he makes it very clear what kind of mark that puts on them and their fates before eventually leaving them to their own devices again.

Sonoi, Sononi, Sonoza and Taro are all alike in the fact that they end up being unable to lie/hide things about themselves to themselves or others for one reason or another about core parts of who they are. And it’s this fact alone that either puts them in direct danger, or makes their attempts at navigating the world around them a lot harder than it might otherwise be if they could just lie and shove things under the rug.

I don’t personally read Sononi or Sonoza as queer themselves, but in the case of Taro and Sonoi specificallty, especially with how the overall narrative hints at things and all of the imagery and implication and even outright textual statements, I think it becomes very easy to see how this can all be viewed in a queer light. It at least rings true for me as someone who went through the struggle of being unable to hide myself and having to pay the price for it by running from my home and the dangers that staying there held for me.

Seeing as I haven’t finished the series yet I have no clue if this is something that the Noto trio will end up doing for themselves, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they had to do so, and that in itself would lend even more weight to the comparison I’m trying to make here. Either way, it’s been an emotional journey to watch all of these characters come to the place that they are now in the narrative and how they’ve grown and are trying to make their way in the world as they are, and it’s certainly not something I’ll be forgetting anytime soon.

#avataro sentai donbrothers #donbrothers #taro momoi #momoi taro #sonoi #my meta #kief rambles about donbros #god this took me forever to get down so im sorry if it reads a little disconnected or anytging #i tried my best to convey what i was thinking here

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sleepy-vix · 10 months ago

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What makes you enjoy literature so much, and do you think it's something important to learn about?

ooh i enjoy literature for many reasons, and i'd love to talk abt the reasons :D i love literature bc:

it's a form of escapism for me. as someone who always feel guilty for being alive, i like to disappear into the life of somebody else so when i come back to reality i can face it with a new perspective and a calmer mind

it's so interesting to me to read so many different types of characters and personalities and mindsets. i'm really interested in psychology but i'm not good at talking to real peoole so i make that up by reading about people (not really "people" since characters are fictional and ofc dont fully reflect irl people, but its interesting nonetheless to see representations of different reactions to certain situations)

i like to find myself amongst characters. as someone who feels constantly alienated from the people immediately around me, i obviously seek understanding and representation- i want to see someone else feel the same way as i do. i know i can probably just "get out into the world" and "talk to more people" if i want to find people who think the way i do, but i find that it's so much easier and more fun to find myself in book characters (it's also definitely way less stressful, and sometimes i get to see my unknown feelings articulated perfectly into a sentence! it's like my own feelings are explained to me sometimes when i find a character who is like me)

i hate the idea that all i will ever be is a cog in the machine of life, in this gigantic universe that never ever seems to end. of course i have accepted my fate, since i'm largely a realist, and i've never been very ambitious (i strive for good grades but i can't envision myself past that), but it's still a thought that makes me want to die. everything seems so hopeless. that's why i like it so much when i can read a book and enter a world where so many things are possible- literally anything is possible. it makes the repetitive lull of real life a little less depressing when i can escape said real life indulge my imagination.

hmm i think thats all for now actually. maybe i'll add to this later. i really loved this ask, thank you :)

i'd love to hear your thoughts too, if you also love literature?

seriously. i rlly want to hear other people's reasons for liking literature. 🙏

#asks #vix's library

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yonemurishiroku · 2 years ago

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I think another thing to note is that a lot of the TSATS negativity stems mainly from users on tumblr. I’ve been on twitter & Tik tok and the reaction seems to be overwhelmingly positive. Like the first few days the book came out, seeing tumblr reactions versus other platforms was literally like night and day. I’ve even seen some ppl say they cried a lot or that it’s their fav PJO book! (Which is a surprising but whatever 😭) I have seen some criticisms on the other platforms, sometimes about the writing quality or OOC-ness or being underwhelming, but it still wasn’t all terribly negative. The only place I’ve seen VERY VERY harsh vitriol is on here, and I’m not sure why. personally I thought TSATS was okay and I have my own criticisms, but honestly I have that with every PJO-verse book. Imo some of the takes I’ve seen here are valid, but some are also really really mean and honestly a tad overdramatic, but idk why or what it is about tumblr. I think I’ll stay away from here for a while when chalice comes out.

This ask is from May 18th, I'm so sorry for the delayed replies. 😭😭😭 It got caught in a mess for quite a while aksdkdakj---

Ok. So.

You're saying that most of the negative reviews come from Tumblr whereas TikTok and Twitter give mostly good feedback. I think I can offer a few explanations about this.

Tl,dr:

Tumblr allows long posts, whereas Twitter and TikTok have a length-wise limit to their content.

Tumblr is more fandom-centered, a much more suitable place to rant in a book of a franchise.

Tumblr has a different approach, which enables different types of posts to come across you, unlike Twitter.

(Please keep in mind that I don't use TikTok, so most of this would be assumptions based on my limited knowledge about the platform. I have a Twitter account though)

Now. The first point is quite clear. Tumblr doesn't have any limitations to whatever you post on the site (or at least that limit exceeds normal people's capacity of writing/reading per post ajsdhakjdhak), which enables you to give long, complicated, detailed essays on a certain topic.

Which is the best fit if you want to criticize something.

Because unlike complimenting something, when you criticize it, you'd need to give a reason for how and why it is bad (in your opinion). To compliment something, you might just need to say simple things like "OMG I LOVE IT" "This is so adorable I might cry" etc...

Adding to that: sometimes it's just easier to list what you dislike, you know? 🤣🤣🤣 I mean. When you hate something, you'd find it very easy to focus on its flaws to dissect, which results in many rants. Whereas when you love something, you just... love it. Not mentioning sometimes you can find it hard to articulate said love.

In Twitter's case: Twitter has a character limit, which hinders people's need to rant. This appears unsuitable when you want to rant about st in dissatisfaction. Although, it'd be pretty good if you're overwhelmed with love and want to flood the complimenting post with memes.

Yes, there're people writing a whole long ass thread on Twitter. But again, with Tumblr alr providing a function, it's understandable which one would prefer.

TikTok, in addition to having a length cap on their videos - which acts roughly the same as Twitter's character limit, allows only video format. This is just a hypothesis, but I suspect people might be discouraged by the idea of making, filming, and editing a video about something they don't like - rather than just... writing it down. I find the second choice much easier.

Similar to the above, Tumblr is more fandom-centered. The app is literally advertised as for Fandoms and Creators.

When you want to share an opinion on a certain topic, you'd go for those who at least have a semblance of whatever you're talking about, right?

Tumblr is created for fandoms and has its own tag system. This makes it easier when you're targeting a certain group of enjoyers. I doubt that Twitter and TikTok, while having their own tagging systems, would be more effective than Tumblr. (Ppl on Twt rarely use tags when it comes to fandoms......)

Different approaches.

Tumblr, as far as I know, filters content by tag. Which means that if you look into the The sun and the star tag, you'd see everything related to it. If you like something from it, chances are you'd get recommended another post in said tag, regardless of what it is about. Including conflicting opinions.

On Twitter, on the other hand, if you want to see a certain topic, chances are you'd need to:

1/ Follow someone who's active on said topic. Generally, you would go for someone you like/ share some of your sentiments/ you vibe with to follow right? Hence, chances are they would share the same view as you.

2/ Search for the tag. But I doubt people would use tag for this book.

3/ Search for any other keywords. This runs the risk of missing content, which might or might not include the criticizing post.

Of course: This^^ relies heavily on my predictions and assumptions of your engagement. It might not apply that well.

All in all, it all comes down to whether and where people choose to express themselves. I have a Twitter and a Tumblr, and I choose to deliver most of my PJO content on Tumblr. 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️ You don't see me criticizing on Twt, but I'm def there.

About Chalice though, I don't think you need to worry lol. TSATS has its problems because it focuses on already controversial topics and is put on a pedestal before release, so people tend to be more extreme. Chalice, on the other hand, afaik, is about another average quest by Percy? It's not that... extreme, I mean, and there's hardly and complicated plot. I think of it more as a side story, really. So maybe you don't have to worry that much? lol i do hope so. 😂😂

#pjo #toa #hoo #yone rambling #percy jackson and the olympians #nico di angelo #heroes of olympus #trials of apollo #the sun and the star: a nico di angelo adventure #the sun and the star #tsats #will solace #solangelo

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ofmermaidstories · 2 years ago

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Ooh im so glad you enjoy any type of comments because im so so so obsessed with something (just like this) but felt the comments i left on ao3 weren’t showing how much i really really liked it! [which is a lot, i live react to my little fanfic gc about it whenever i read/reread 😭 shout out to them for listening☝️]

NO, listen—I’m the same way!!! Writing big, analytical comments doesn’t come naturally to me (which means I appreciate the ones I get even more, because i know exactly how much time and thought they take 😭), so I understand the knee-jerk worry of, oh no, is this enough? But I do think that it’s a disservice to each other to like, have expectations of how to comment on something. 🥺 I don’t believe in rigidly policing how we aught to interact with each other’s art (beyond not being dicks). It’s—disheartening! Disheartening and fucking rude, actually, because it does two things: it treats those beautifully detailed, loving comments that people write of their own excitement as the only valid form of expressing love and it also makes reading fanfiction and interacting with each other a chore! And it shouldn’t be! It’s not! I dunno how many times I need to say this, but fanfiction isn’t homework—and that goes two ways!! You, as a writer, are not enslaved to it. You don’t need to finish to a deadline (unless you want to!). And you as a reader are not obligated to provide an itinerary of the time you spend with someone’s work!!!

It’s not the only way to love something. Like you saying that you live react it to the group chat—I don’t even know how to articulate what that means to me, to hear??? Lmfao. Because it’s so cute and it’s so fun!!! And it’s relatable, because I do the exact same thing with fics I love, to the friends that I love. 🥺 If anything, I find it easier to like, lay out what I love in a fic to a chat, if that makes sense? Because I’m not worried about the author! Like—I’m not worried about impressing them, LOL. Or accidentally hurting their feelings if I’m maybe a little confused about something, or am just extra opinionated that day. I can just say, “OH MY GOD [insert writer here] UPDATED [insert fic here] IM LOSING MYS HIT OH MY GOD ITS SO GOOD OH MY GOD!!!! [insert plot twist here]!!!!!! NOOOOOOO OMG WHY WOULD THEY DO THIS TO ME IM TOO DELICATE FOR THIS I HATE IT HERE” etc etc.

We forget that fanfiction communities are built, in large part, because of readers—readers silently reading things, or privately sharing them. Readers making tiktoks about their favourite fic (and then it blowing up and the fic getting deleted because people are mean to other fics in that same community that share the same tropes LMFAO go on, ask me about attackonfic). There’s one user on AO3 that I adore, literally, they are so precious because I see them so often in the comments of the fics I’m reading and every time it’s the same, short and sweet sentiment of how much they love whatever it is they’ve been reading, and sometimes they’ll add emojis and sometimes it’s capitalised but it gets the point across so well. They’ve commented on surrender before; it now lives in my folder for comments, on my phone, because it made me laugh when I first got it.

I promise you, Anon, if you have commented on SJLT then not only have I read it—I’ve screenshot it and saved it to that folder. Because for all I write, I don’t think I can ever adequately express what any comment means to me. 🥺 The sense of relief and—safety, almost? In being seen. It’s just—it’s there for all of them! Every comment!

If anything, I owe you an apology—I’m not good at replying to things in any timely manner 🥺 It’s never malicious, it just—it takes energy, no matter how big or small the comment (or tumblr ask!), because I want each reply to mean something, to return that sensation of hi, i see you too! It’s not an excuse. But I promise, Anon—I see you, too. And I want you (and everyone!) to know, no matter what you’ve said to me on AO3—whether it was an emoji, one word, a couple of sentences or paragraphs that took half an hour to write—it found me just when I needed it. And it meant so, so much. 🥺 Thank-you for reading, Anon. Thank-you for being here. I hope I can give you a finish story that makes those comments worth it. 🥺🌷📖✨💕

#ofmermaidstories-asks #i hope you’re having a good weekend anon—filled with stories you love 😌#shoutout to the groupchat! hi!!!!

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donnerpartyofone · 8 months ago

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I'm not going to make any empty threats of deleting or even taking a break, I think at this point it's actually too late for me to ever reach escape velocity, but Tumblr is driving me fucking crazy lately. I keep thinking of different ways of articulating the problem/s and then I don't type them out because they start spiraling out into this convoluted system of caveats and disclaimers, which is actually a big problem in and of itself. There's that Simpsons joke from like the year one where Marge is suggesting baby names and Homer keeps thinking of insulting rhymes that other kids could make, and then *hilariously* he can't think of anything mean that someone might rhyme with "Bart" so that's what they pick; sometimes making a post on Tumblr feels exactly like that, like you have to cycle through every single possible negative reaction or exception someone might come up with--and maybe even if you really don't care, part of your brain is still habituated to waiting for the moment that someone comes up with a really stupid obnoxious misunderstanding of your very clear and/or innocent personal statement, and very often that's exactly what you get. The right choice is to not let this control you, but it can instill this state of frustration and paranoia just the same that makes posting less fun in general. But, as suggested, this is just one of many problems that I am (wisely, I hope) preventing myself from listing in too much detail. Like. It can feel important, nay, obligatory to help circulate urgent political information, and yet Tumblr is pretty much proven to be the worst place to receive and discuss political information; no matter what you do it feels like it's too much, or not enough, or both. Or like, I feel like I'm in a rut and I think that it's time to diversify and follow more different kinds of people, and then I realize I'm starting to feel pissed off and anxious all day because my dash is flooded with stuff that I don't want to see; I make myself stop every time and ask Who is posting this because I should just unfollow them, but then it's like...oh, that person posts nice nature photos 70% of the time, oh I actually like that guy as a person, oh that one is a good source of info on [x] so I just have to be patient with their bullshit...and then it's like, I let all these guys in and I can't figure out how to get rid of them anymore because I myself am making excuses for them. And I mean sometimes the people creating the noise are actually posting interesting and rational arguments about [y] and I theoretically want to read them, but they're contributing to this nightmarishly contentious and fraught atmosphere in my brain and I realize that I'm losing track of what I was ever even doing here in the first place.

For the first several years this was a place I came to hoard media and express myself, mainly for my own amusement, and I also found this little community of people who had some shared interests but who were all individually unique, and it was really fun and cool. And like during those same exact years there was bullshit going on in other parts of Tumblr that I could never care about AND that I didn't even have to know about! For various reasons of mass and volume or whatever it was still possible to really manicure your dash and not constantly be within two degrees of separation from something you hate, posted by someone you wouldn't give the time of day to. And I know I have to take responsibility for what I've done to my own situation here, I'm the one who is in control of who I follow/block/etc, but I guess for me it just became really easy to let this get out of control and I'm not sure how often I'm even enjoying myself anymore. This used to be an escapist activity to distract from IRL tortures, and now it just feels like its own, separate form of torture a lot of the time. I feel constantly bombarded by people screaming out their bad taste, or screaming in each other's faces, or both, and it's just stressing me out. And I don't know if everyone perceives this, but it also feels to me like the personalities are gone, the individual voices are extremely rare; most people all talk the same now, they're all mindlessly repeating the same punchlines and imitating the same cadence and phrasing that worked for some popular user, and I don't even have the same sense of Tumblr being full of freaks and weirdos. Even the trolls all sound the same, there's like this suffocating conformity going on and it seems to be what people aspire to because their main purpose for being here is a fantasy of abject public acceptance.

I mean don't worry, I "touch grass", I literally stop and smell the roses, I ride my bike, I have some friends, I do activities. That's not necessarily the problem. It's just Tumblr, like how did I even let it get like this. I think there's a pretty good chance I'll start a Neocities site, but I'm pretty sure that what will happen is that I'll be cross-posting here, and then I'll still be here checking out interactions and stuff, and nothing will change. But who knows, maybe I'll like co-host or whatever and I'll finally be able to make myself stop complaining. Stay tuned, if you enjoy this sort of thing.

I've asked this before and I'm sure I'll ask it again, but do you/have you used any of the proposed Tumblr alternatives and do you like any of them?

#PS if we have had actual conversations and/or are friends this is not about you

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tottymatsuno · 3 years ago

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I just wanna say despite all the jokes about Totty hating me it's 100% canon he is a (male)wife guy and my is equally in love with me.

#Open_mouth.exe #Someone: Can you tell me about your partner?#Todomatsu: Hmm.. He's kinda a shitty person and really hard to deal with and is moody and extremely mentally unwell. I've never met someone #T: who's so afraid of being alone and yet rejects kindness so strongly. He's also kinda annoying and quiet if you don't know him and he #T: never shuts up and just stares at me all the time and I know he's thinking and analyzing all of my behaviors so it's kinda creepy but at #T: the same time ik it's bc he really loves me so I don't hate being perceived as much as I should. I think sometimes it's a good thing tho #T: bc it brings us a level of understanding? If I don't have an easy way to articulate a feeling he tends to know how to say it. He also #T: reads in between the lines of our interactions so there's less drama and hostility plus he tries to teach me how to understand him too #T: and it's easier than I thought it'd be because he struggles with similar issues. A lot of people don't explain things that are supposed #T: be common sense but for me I don't get them so I ask questions and then people think I'm manipulative but Robin sees past that so we #T: communicate better than most couples. Plus I love hearing his voice talk! We talk about a lot of stuff bc hes so interesting and funny #T: and we always have a good time with each other. And he's so soft and squeezable and he's kinda helpless so I feel really reliable with #T: him around. We always are laughing and I really enjoy spending time with him because we have similar enough of opinions but not exactly #T: the same so its not boring. Plus we have common hobbies and he doesnt really mind all the weird stuff I like I can show you a pic of him #Someone: no its alright #Todomatsu: Look here he is!! Isnt he just the cutest person you've ever seen? I mean yeah he's fat and usually I dont go for that type but #T: there's something about him I guess? Like okay so he's fat but he's so cute I don't even care? Like I think if we break up I'll never #T: again about that sort of thing? It made me realize I was being shallow and he's so hot it's insane like you wouldn't believe -#Someone: Todomatsu I thought you said he was a difficult person?#Todomatsu: Yeah. He is.#Someone: But you don't really seem to mind.#Todomatsu: No why would I?#Someone: Well... The impression you gave earlier by saying all of those bad things made me think you didnt like him very much.#Todomatsu: No I'm obsessed with him to the point where I should probably seek professional help. He's my moon stars sun and sky.#Tottyra #<3 wifeguy

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harcove · 2 years ago

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Well, i saw this on someone's else's tumblr and I wanted to see what you think Billy's reaction would be like.

Soulmate stuff, people see only in black and white until they saw their soulmate for the first time. It can be a glimpse, just a little something in the corner of the eye and BOOM! Colors.

The idea: billy saw his soulmate for the first time in the school hallway, lots of people, no idea who it is and he just gets punched in the face by colors and colors.

A/N: okay so I hope you read this because it's important to say I kinda took this in a direction that maybe was less fluff, more angst? Because I really feel Billy would not like the idea of being bound to someone he didn't pick- like another part of his life is controlled. I think there would be a lot of mixed feelings from him. As you'll see in what I wrote. So I hope this is okay! I'm sorry if you wanted some fluff 😔 i got carried away with my characterization of Billy ily anon AND ik u said like u wanted to see how I think he'd react which is what I'm doing I JUST FEEL BAD ITS NOT FLUFFY- ily

Pairing: Billy x soulmate!reader (no interactions)

Length: 1.3k

Warnings: angst, Billy is depressed tbh, Billy has complex contradictory emotions, mentions of abuse, self-hate kind of, no dialogue just text

Not A Soulmate - B.H.

Billy hated the idea of soulmates.

It was stupid, he didn't need a better or more articulate word to describe it because the simple word was good enough, it was exactly what he thought it was. Stupid.

Seeing everything in black and white suited him just fine. Why did it matter if he were to see colour or not? His entire life had been black and white, literally and figuratively. So he never yearned to see colour.

He didn't like the idea that there was something out there, maybe an other wordly being, trying to dictate who he was meant to be with. It was already enough that his own father kept his foot down on him at all times, pushing him around and hurting him, but now even the person he was "meant to be with" was decided for him too?

No one told Billy Hargrove what to do. Not outside of his home. That was when his life was his for a few fleeting hours.

To be frank, he was almost positive that he didn't have a soulmate anyways. He wasn't meant to be with anyone, and God forbid someone was meant to be with him.

It wasn't that he thought himself to be unattractive; he'd had relationships. He'd done things in a night with people that he'd never talk to again about it. But that wasn't love. That wasn't having a soulmate, that was just lust. And that's what he knew about. Lust. Not love.

His father never found a soulmate. Not his mom, not Susan. Maybe there were people who were never bound to find that person. If it was true, he was glad that his father hadn't found a soulmate; he would ruin them with one touch. And maybe he would too if he found one.

It was so glaringly obvious when someone had a soulmate.

People would quite literally glow. It was annoying; the way they smiled and acted like their life before their soulmate had been worthless- as if life before hadn't been actually living till this person came into their life.

And the way they talked about colours? Sometimes forgetting not everyone had a soulmate yet?

God he despised it.

But Billy was fine where he was in life. No attachment to the people he had sex with; black and white walls, black and white everything. Nothing had deeper meaning, and it didn't need to have deeper meaning. This was fine.

He'd die seeing the world in black and white, and that was fine.

It was what he deserved he supposed.

The schools hallways were jam packed. They always were in the morning. And if Billy didn't have to drive his sister also to school next door, then he wouldn't even be here this early.

There had been times where the moment he left with Max, he drove just far enough, kicked her out of the car (she usually didn't react badly- she likely hated being with him just as much as he did) and made her skate while he fucked off somewhere else. Coming to school later.

That happened less often nowadays. His father had been harsher lately. He hoped it might pass.

It never passed.

Billy kept his head down at first when he entered the hellish hall; something inside him beckoned him to look up and scan the halls but he wouldn't do it. Not yet. He didn't want to look around and people he hated, people who wanted to be near him for the status he held. People who were more akin to lost sheep than human beings.

He wanted nothing more than to be away from here. Not just the school, but Hawkins in general.

Billy Hargrove was made for the sun and the ocean- he believed that. He was made for something that wasn't Hawkins. Hawkins fit wrong; like a pair of jeans that were loose. It wanted to be right, but nothing was right. (He couldn't admit that sometimes California fit weirdly too. Maybe he had no where; belonged no where.)

He wouldn't give it a chance, not a real one at least. To him, Hawkins deserved his ire, it deserved not even a single chance to cage him in. To take away the only thing he had left- California.

But it already had, hadn't it? It took the beach, the sun, the friends he actually did have back in California. It took his mother. (His father did that. But California was where he saw her last. It was as close to her as he could get. And now that was gone too.)

If he tried maybe he could grow to like it in Hawkins. But months had gone by, and he was no closer to letting Hawkins try to grow on him.

Billy Hargrove was just angry. Even if he couldn't see colour, California felt colourful. He had no idea what that meant but he felt it. He didn't need a soulmate, he didn't need anyone, he only needed himself. He could only trust himself. And even that was a challenge.

An arm brushes into his own as he pushes down the hall, lost in thought; no, not brushes- it's more like a shove. Likely not on purpose; likely someone in a rush. But he doesn't care.

He's angry. He's always angry. And that's just the thing he needs: something to channel it into.

"Hey, watch where the fuck you're going-" it forces him to look up so he can yell, scanning his eyes for the person in the crowds. Yell at the person who did it.

But he stops. It all stops. Like a ship stranded at sea; no wind to guide its way and make use of the masts. Completely and utterly still.

Colour. Too much colour.

It comes in from the centre of his vision and it spreads like water colour on paper. It's too bright, too colourful- he can't even begin to describe the colours because he never knew what blue looked like, red, green- he doesn't know what they look like. All he knows is black and white.

All he knew was black and white.

It makes his head pound. His stomach churn. He feels like he may actually vomit on the now coloured floor; something that once was grey is now a colour he can't name. It forces him to take a foot back because it feels like someone has quite literally just tried to run him over in a freight.

His heart aches. And his body feels heavy. And now he's just standing there. In the middle of he hall. And no one gets mad at him for blocking the dead centre because he's Billy Hargrove, and right now, he looks scary. Scarier than usual.

This isn't happening.

He repeats it like a mantra in his head. Because this seriously could not be happening.

No. He was only meant to ever see black and white. He had decided that for himself- he wasn't meant to have a soulmate. He was a man doomed to a life alone; finding pleasure in nameless people with forgotten faces. He was the dictator in that part of his life. He could never be someone's soulmate.

He would only ruin them.

So why?

His head whips around. He's looking; navigating the new colours in the world, but he's looking for them. The person who did this to him. The person who took the black and white away; that safety away, and painted it with colour.

The person who had him scared for once in his life away from his father. The person that he... Wanted to find but at the same time he wanted to never see.

His world was off kilter. And he didn't know how to navigate it.

It felt nice. But horrifying all the same. And he was angry, at the unknown person, at himself, at the world. He was a ticking time bomb in that moment and he hated it. He wanted them but he wanted nothing. He was nothing.

For once, Billy Hargrove, was truly, completely, utterly lost.

#mine #billy hargrove x reader #billy x reader #Billy hargrove #stranger things #stranger things fanfiction #billy hargrove fanfiction #my writing #amy writes

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coming-of-age-witch · 1 year ago

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yooooooooo

i studied today in the morning (sudden motivation ikyk)

the lack of emoji-use in my replies makes it look so thesis-ish but thats good for eye concentration (telling this to myself)

pata h, once i wrote 3 paged answer for a 3 marks literature question (the skill of stopping and ending articulately when required is lacked.) and got 0 because of is length, that was traumatic, that is traumatic (atleast i flaunted my then- recently gained- english skills)

oh i see how your ability to observe people made you go so deep through that guy, that even though he left you could see his potential, his ability to succeed, his lost glory ah, thats wonderfully tragic. broooo i'm bit crooked emotional too, like i just feel bad for anyone that goes through stuffs. and you know the most unfortunate thing is, is when you play news and like 9/10 of the topics are of things done to woman, like thats infuriarating and not just that sometimes just thinking of the pain the family members go through is just- scary.

that guy's incident was just a month ago?? so the wounds are afresh, i really hate when people say that those who take their life are cowards, like they aren't cowards, they battled all so much they could've battled all so more too, they didn't see the string of light or were unable to visualize the end of the tunnel from their depth of darkness (like its so subjective, how can people generalize it to cowardice)

i just hope he becomes a good memory of yours, the sooner it is, the less dreadful will be his passing away

****

I AM GONNA NOTE ALL THOSE TIPS YOU JUST DROPPED, LIKE

YOU ARE MY MENTOR

i mentione dthings that even i didnt bother to notice it, slayyyyy ALSO YOU'RE SO RIGHT sometimes you know it when you see something that the person itself hasn't noticed it, and if you tell that person, depending upon how close you are, there are 2 reactions, them feeling special and acknowledged or.....creeped out. in those complexified murder case dramas and books, one thing i've seen surely is how the criminal has a certain sense of oddity in them, it depends on the eyes that are looking for the criminal and how fast the eyes can latch onto the hints, because there are always hints, always, some so surfacial and some hidden in the bedrocks of the earth (ok i detracted so baaaaad) (ehehehe) (but you know i loooove psychological books) (i literally read them to give myself the thrill and see how different minds (of the detective and the criminal) work, llike its training myself in the basic ethics, although im not growing up to go anywhere in police, if i were to find myself in such a situation- ever-)SO YEAH AL THOSE READING BETWEEN THE LINES THAT OUVE MENTIONED ARE TOP NOTCH , i assume its a perfect part-time hobby isn't it

shhhhhoooould i speak more about the tall guy?? (im gonna start and i wont assure you where it ends) (BECAUSE HE APPEARED IN MY DREAMS.)

ok so you see ive had many crushes before . i have this verrryyyy verrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyy unsaid unspoken untold desire (peepeeepooopooo) to experience teenage love , like not those instagrammified once, i have the simplest desires- holding hands if ever possible and consented and if the other person is okay with it, and idk- honestly- talking ??? (i really dont know what to expect), but brooo ive seen a classmate of mine have a fairytale-ish trope with her crush, basically she liked him first, he dgaf, she made themoves, somehow it worked and they started dating, but it was non-existent , she told me he never replied to her texts, they barely talked, she used to give him cute notes, there were any replies to it, he didnt show any sort of response to her overjoyed giddy self. then. she felt her mom got to know about it (indian parent classic) and scared she was, she told him they can't continue. i think atp bro went through a mental metamorphosis because after this sudden request to break up, he changed, and like he's responsive, they talk alot during recess and afterschool, hold hands, she gives him notes and while he doesnt respond, its a well known fact that he has a keep for them (THE BEST PART IS THEY KEEP IT SO LOWKEY) (like, its just so normal, none of them are bloody possessives or cocky about it) (to me they seem like normal teens enjoying their peek teen love through a little rose tinted glass, while being aware that the glass is rose tinted)

IRDK WHY I TOLD YOU THIS STORY but like, i want something like this, they're so cute, and i wish them all good health. i want something like this, but like it never happens to me, i am not comparing myself but he didnt like her at first and slowly fell??? ajskdhsjks. i've had this one guy , who was my arch academic nemesis in middle school (in one year, he had higher grades than me, and i disliked him so much that i started like him, and NOW ALL OF MY FRIENDS AND EVEN RANDOM PEOPLE KNOW HOW BADLY I LIKE HIM) like i've liked him since 6th grade and now its 9th, that makes it 3 effing years. im tired of liking him, i could care less if he's in my class, but whenver i see him i get a sudden boom of joy and at the end of the day he's like my defaulted crush. but bro, i think ive made it so clear to him i like him (or i didnt idk but there were certainc ircumstances for sure) , this exam he got more marks than me ( :(sed ) . idk ive heard once he liked some girls, but for my own sanity and delusions <3 , never paid much heed to it. also it seems he's recently getting aware of all kinds of crush stuffs BUT THE TALL GUY, he knows it (all his bsfs are into it, well except him)

idk what to do with this crush on the tall guy, i dont want to tell my irl friends for some reason (they alr know how easily i fall for guys, idk why i'm not telling them, perhaps i do know, and perhaps its because i want them to think i no longer have any crush on anyone, for a timebeing that'll feel good) also like i have had 4 proper crushes (the 1st one is that middle school smart guy who i just told about, i interact with him almost daily because well altho he;s not in my section, he comes to my section early morning )

-CRINGE ALERT- -CRINGE ALERT-

, there was another one, this crush, this was the first time the idea of "dating" was put in my head (by a friend of mine) and DO YOU KNOW HOW GULLIBLE I AM??? like for a second i actually had a thought about having a boyfriend?? like i didnt' even like this guy ok (calling him riri from now). this same friend of mine (he's my bestfriend, lets call him sid) sat with riri and sits with riri, and just once i told him riri looks good, and in midst of their whatever convo sid told him that i said he looks good, and then urged him to date me, and during that particular time (this year, middle of may i think) i was crush-less (my crush on that middle school smart kid goes away from time to time, intervals you see) and he urged me to date too, and last year me and sid and riri were in the same sections, me and riri didnt interact much but he didnt seem bad to me. but like after all those urging, one day he said to one of my friends (jokingly or not) something, which was darn ass rudeeee and like i lost all of my wishes then and then (later there came many instance of riri being a jerk ass)

this riri one was so sudden it scared me. basically, i dont think my luck will work out right , because for a second i just felt that gleeful teeny cheeky giddy happiness you know?? it all went down tho. this tall guy is fun okay, ive made my share of observations on him and i'll keep observing him because as i said i dont intend to do anything, i dont want to face a stupid realization again (that i was just goofed up and that the idea is shitty)(like i am balancing my studies well and good, it isn't going terrible, can't i have a little bit of those stuffs?) we have a mutual friend , and one thing ik is that , that guy is good and FUNN and he'll prolly tell me wholesome things about tall guy (but they're almost like bestfriends so erm---) idk what i am expected or what i want even. i am just so confused. he's good in studies, so am i, he gives speeches, so do i, we spent a whole month prepping a project and had so much fun, idk idk idkkkkkkkkk , like its so good for now, idk want to do anything that turns the fun off, but i have the slightest of feeling that (can't put it into words, too cringe, help). those fun adventures of having a crush are creeping on me, pushing me to accept that i like him and like do think about him but ermmmmmm im hesistant, past experiences were just dull)

LOOK I TOLD YOU I WOULDN'T STOP IF I START SPEAKING, SOME DAYS IM JUST A TAD BIT EXTREMLY EMO ABOUT THE STUPIDEEEST STUFF LIKE IT WONT EVEN MATTER TMR WHEN I WOKE UP BUT FOR NOW ILL JUST THINK ABOUT IT , ALSO WHEN I WOKE UP FROM THE DREAM I HAD OF TALL GUY , MY FIRST THOUGHT WAS -IM GONNA TELL BROKOALA- (yes i'll call you brokoala, sounds a fine name to me) andddd look i said to you everything apart from that dream ehehehehehehe

i'll go take a break cause i really infodumped you with the MOST UNNCESSARY shittalks , i am so sorry i went about talking about myself , THIS HAPPENS WHEN SOMEONE SHOWS TAD BIT INTEREST IN TOPICS THAT IM USUALLY RELUCTANT TO SPEAK DIRECTLY ON LIKEEE help. i like having these goody giddy moments sometimes, and i just got hyped up todayyyyy

*****

back from the break like a boogeyman (idk what a boogeyman is) (idk what this means)

you know in that last paragraph where you talked about insecurities, i swear that part where you told about invisibilizing oneself I'LL GET IT NOTED DOWN ( i have a journal with advices i find from wise stranger-turned-friends and thats perfect for it) LIKE ITS SOMETHING I NEEDED TO HEAR, you put it into words so perfectly, i adore you, you're wise, pls share wisdom, ehehehehhe. they're telling you about laugh???? yoooo- laughter, in accordance to my belief, is the prettiest part of a person, so unique so individualistic and so unintended , like you kno you can guess when someones faking their laughter (which is sad because they're attempting to sound themshelves or like to appeal others- but i understand) , laughter adds onto character of a person, I LIKE YOUR PERSONALITY, that stance you took to keep your laugh unfiltered is so stronggg, i admire you for that okayy, like you handled all those comments and stood up for what was and will always be yours??? its brilliantttt. "as long as their annoyance doesnt make sense" like- real so real, some people be complaining for the sake of complaining, its not like your laughter is giving them brain tumor or stuffs. YOU KNOW IM GONNA RE-READ THAT LAST PARAGRAPH OF YOURS SO SO MANY TIMES, because????? every part of it, every effing part of it is so authentic and i just, i cant express how impactful that is. the fact that you told everything we do will effect people r,l & c. and its not selfishness to keep fixed like- that made me think okay, i love youuu

yk i go to school with my hair oiled a day a week or 2 days a week, i really dont care about how i look, but sometimes i do, and a girl last year kept asking why i put oil (like repeatedly, after telling hr so many times she'd keep asking), and while it didn't have an immediate effect on me, i got kinda tired and started getting those -look-wise- concern (now i dont take shit from someone who isnt even my friend but i swear i dislike her so much) since i'll be putting oil either way, might as well focus on making myself look good with it (i wear less oil nowadays tho- aftermath ig) THINKING OF THAT PARAGRAPH MADE ME THINK ABOUT THIS THING I JUST TOLD LIKE WOW, ONLY IF I KNEW IT EARLIER honestly its not late, i loved that adviceeee ahhhh

sidenote : i talked less about that friend of yours because like if you still feel gloomy about him, it'll go gloomier. and i see how you share an emotional depth with him, he's no longer there, so there's no receiver on the other end. this is like a scene when the caller dials up a deadtone. this shattering incident of that guy just enhanced your skill of feeling deeply, like sometimes do you go back to your memories and feel a hollow warmth? i mean with all that you told me about him, and how differently you perceive him, i know you see so much more ,its hauntingly incredible. you can't help him anymore, or your thoughts wont reach him but like maybe among the stars he'd feel good realizing all along someone saw his true uncut self, the potential that perhaps wasn't visible to him, someone willing to help out of what drained and perished him, it'd make him happy and seen. and it'd be good if he soon becomes a healthy comic relief, his presence will still be in around you, in a way thats not gloomy ig

(also , my humor is pretty questionable and troublesome too, no worries , the more you get to know me, the more cricket noises you here in your daily life) (its not a metaphor, its me asserting my presence)

i spoke aloooot ik ik ik

also like, ik that part where i talked about my little floofy wish is cringe, and trust me i dont talk that irl apart from my bestfriends, i physically can't talk about it, its embarassing ik. but online we're all in our unseen selves and idk it takes 1 (one) matchstick to ignite a nice bonfire so like , that part, is a beautiful representation of how dumb i can get, forgive me m'kay, tall guy will prolly go into my list of highschool crushes who gave me entertainment for a time being

i thinkni am attracted to people who have such grandiosity in their range of knowledge and just smart in general, such an admirable trait

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wistfulrat · 3 years ago

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this tiresome genre of Oedipal essay in which they decry the status of contemporary gay writing as being too serious or not serious enough, too sad or too happy, too focused on trauma or too irreverent, too ironic or too sincere, too much about sex or not enough, not realistic about apps and hook ups or too realistic about apps and hook-ups. Contemporary gay fiction is a place where one can arrive and leave satisfied and by satisfied, I mean, with sufficient cause to be annoyed online and in their little Google docs across media. --- when these people are arguing about gay fiction being humorless or gay fiction being too sad, they are not arguing about, like, a genre of gay fiction that includes my work or the work of someone like Bryan Washington or James Hannaham or Saeed Jones or Robert Jones. Jr, even. They are arguing about depictions of white gays. Cis white gays. And they dress it up in concerns re: what is bourgeois or what is not bourgeois enough, etc. Black people. Blackness. Does not figure into their critique or their arguments, because in their minds, the general case is a white case. this Brandon Taylor essay my god. more excerpts of all time under the cut but cc: everyone on this site

"I got into this in the essay on the trauma plot, but people really do seem very suspicious of responding to the brutal urgencies of life with ambivalence, exhaustion, sadness, terror. Like, sometimes it is okay not to laugh at hard things. As a move, that’s actually kind of played out at this point in history. There’s only so much laughing at catastrophe that a person can do before it’s no longer irony and instead it constitutes an emotional imbalance. Which, again, could be funny. But also, some things are just fucked up. And that’s okay. This allergy to sentiment, to meeting sentiment head-on and trying to bear witness to it, to articulate the exact parameters of the brutal shit life threw your way. I don’t know why we got this idea that if something is serious, you laugh at it. And if it’s not, you take it seriously. Like. I understand that we all had the 90s and the 2000s, hysterical realism, irony, etc. But we live in the world. And irony has gone cold on us. We can’t keep trying to counter-intuit our way into some fresh new sensation. We can’t keep trying to jolt ourselves back to life by taking the unexpected play. The unexpected has become the expected. What’s harder to do now is to face up to shit. And not in the cloak and guise of irreverence. But take shit seriously. That’s what makes the best moments of Girls good. Those moments when there’s no way to funny your way out. When there are no more jokes. When it’s just you and your apartment. And a splinter in your ass. And a ruptured ear drum. And all your friends hate you. When you can’t laugh your way out. Why the fuck are you still laughing?

Gay fiction isn’t humorless. It isn’t overly morbid. Or if it is, it’s always kind of been that way. Gay writers have been weird for a long time. And I can see being irritated that the books selling many many many many copies are not your favorite weird Genet derivatives or whatever, and, like, okay. But that is a frustration with commerce, not art, as my friend Garth likes to tell me.

Also, I feel like when people make arguments like this, what they mean is, I did not enjoy my experience reading Garth Greenwell or Ocean Vuong or Hanya Yanagihara, or, perhaps, now, Douglas Stuart. In McAdory’s words:

The mainstream critical success of books like Shuggie Bain, Cleanness, and On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous bespeaks, I think, a discomfort on the part of certain readers with affective complexity. And complexity, or its artful representation, can be a joyful thing.

Like, you’re not annoyed at “gay fiction.” You’re annoyed or disappointed in like, three or four writers, my friend. Maybe you should read more. Or better. Or both. Either way, grow up. I mean that both in the sense of “what a fucking loser” and also in the sense of “mature psychologically, please.” All I feel when I read sentences like this is a discomfort with directness and a discomfort with sentiment. The snappy, snide retreat into irony is such a clear indication of an inability to deal with emotion and feeling in a direct way. And what happens is that a personal discomfort is manufactured into an aesthetic discomfort. That is, your personal problem becomes an aesthetic problem that you project onto everyone else and their work. Because. Well, that’s between you and your therapist."

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stillness-in-green · 3 years ago

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MVA In Memoriam (4/5)

The Comprehensive Account of the Butchering of My Villain Academia

(Introduction and Part One, Episode 108: My Villain Academia) (Part Two, Episode 109: Revival Party) (Part Three, Episode 110: Sad Man's Parade)

Part Four, Episode 111: Origin: Shimura Tenko

Chapter 233 – Bright Future

• Twice clearly having arranged a Skeptic puppet to where its arm can be used as a pillow for Toga’s neck. A cute little character detail while also being kind of disturbing? Very on-brand for the League! A not-immediately-plot-crucial visual of a member of the League demonstrating obvious care for another member? The guillotine awaits!

• A little explanation about how clones’ physicality and memories work relative to the last time Twice saw the people the clones are based on. This is a very useful little nod of explanation to something that remained unclear from the dialogue of Mr. Clone-press last chapter. Twice’s quirk is pretty arcane in its ins and outs, frankly, and the clearer those details are, the fewer plot holes you’re leaving for later.

• The scene of Skeptic being right on the verge of confronting Twice. Skeptic has, oh, about five moments where he’s obviously a big tense neurotic who’s unpleasant to be around if things aren’t going his way, and the anime deleted or downplayed all but two of them. As ever, it’s obscenely damaging to the characterization of the MLA cast, who we have little enough time with as it is. Further, it was a particularly weird choice to make with Skeptic, who is as of this writing the only major MLA character who’ll emerge still free and active from the War Arc. Why shaft the characterization of the one of new characters who’s going to be getting the most attention out of any of them in the next arc, with yet more scenes yet to come after?[1]

• A full page’s-worth of Spinner’s rationalizations on targeting Trumpet and ordering the Twice doubles to do the same. This lays out the details on why targeting Trumpet stands to relieve some of the load on Shigaraki. It isn’t because Trumpet’s quirk makes the crowds more dangerous, though that is true. Spinner targets Trumpet because he’s seen enough to know that attacking the MLA’s leaders gets them crazy riled up; he knows that if he makes himself a threat to Trumpet, then all Trumpet’s followers’ attention will shift focus to Spinner, leaving Shigaraki with less to deal with. Spinner also knows that that is ludicrously dangerous to him personally, given his weak quirk, but he actively makes that choice anyway, because that’s how much he’s devoted himself to Shigaraki without (yet) quite articulating the nature and reasons for that devotion. Targeting Trumpet without any of that reasoning made for a perfectly sound tactical decision, but it missed the regard Spinner shows the unnamed mobs of the MLA, and it really missed the probable savage beatdown and even possible death that Spinner consciously chooses to risk for Shigaraki’s sake. Of course, a chunk of what the episode deleted is flashbacks to scenes the anime also cut, so they couldn’t figure into Anime!Spinner’s reasoning. This does not excuse yet more cuts to Spinner’s arc and characterization; it only adds to how badly the anime maimed him. Also, on a less salty but still confused note, deleting all the Twice clones from the beginning of the scene and just having Spinner running along a wall past mobs of people instead of laboriously fighting his way through the street to the van was really dumb. Why did all those MLA people just stand there and let him run by? Where did all the Twice clones that just helped save Spinner from a huge flurry of long-distance attacks disappear to? Come on.

• Trumpet’s thought that using Sevens Loud will draw every bit of strength from their warriors, but that it’s necessary. Setting aside that it looks far less necessary when there hasn’t been a crowd of Twice clones fighting Trumpet’s people this whole time, just Spinner by his lonesome, we still lost quite a bit to this cut. Firstly, a nuance on the trade-off Incite gives—that its stat-boost is temporary, and that it’s borrowing from the future to pay for the present, a stock that is limited and a bill that will come due when the effect wears off. Secondly, it’s another demonstration that the MLA leaders aren’t just thoughtlessly wasting their followers’ lives; they’re very consciously doing cost/benefit analysis on how much danger their people are in versus what stands to be gained by the potential exertion or outright deaths those people will suffer. It’s cold reasoning, yes, but that’s how the Liberation Army operates: not for the personal gain or lackadaisical ease of the people on top—Trumpet would just have been in the tower speaking through city-wide loudspeakers, if that were the case—but for the advancement of the group’s ideals. It also just grants Trumpet some interiority, but of course the anime can’t have that.

• The note in Trumpet’s meta-ability explanation that the more his voice causes the air to vibrate, the stronger Incite’s effect. This is—good god, it is literally the entire design mentality behind Sevens Loud! Sevens Loud purpose isn't to make his voice louder so more people can hear him (which I would think is the most logical assumption an anime-only person would make as to why he puts it on); it’s to make himself louder because being louder enhances the boost. It’s about the quality of the effect, not the quantity of targets. This is why Trumpet has the thought about how using Sevens Loud will drain the strength reserves of his people. There’d be no correlation there if Sevens Loud were only about boosting his range.

• When Spinner got porcupined in the anime, they did a close-up on his face, possibly to avoid the gore of showing the spines piercing through his forearm. That’s fine, but they also emphasized the reaction by having him lose his grip on the huge fuck-off knife he had clutched in his teeth. In the manga, sure, he yells in pain, but he doesn’t lose the knife. Indeed, he gets the guy off him by slashing at him with it—a shot the anime dropped. So Spinner doesn’t even get to keep displays of his pain tolerance, a trait he doubtless improved during those six weeks against Machia. Why does the anime hate Spinner so much, you guys? Why did it go out of its way to make him look lamer, when Dabi and Toga were out there getting anime-original flourishes to make them look cooler?

• Spinner’s thoughts, “When I get inspired to act, I don’t know what the heck I’m doing! I’m just a loser jumping on a bandwagon. Or at least that’s what it looks like.” A humorous bit of self-awareness from Spinner here. The anime got at the self-awareness. The humor, as we’ll see, not so much.

• Spinner’s thoughts, “Look at me. Look at me!! With all that prejudice in your eyes!” Hah hah, laughed BNHA the anime nervously, what prejudice are you talking about, Spinner? No idea what you could possibly be referring to there! This one’s particularly annoying because, while one might think that the anime was just dodging the heteromorphobia angle it eradicated all references to back at the beginning of the arc, the prejudice line isn’t even about heteromorphobia, not really. See, the Japanese line there literally translates to, “With those colored glasses!”—to see with colored glasses being a Japanese idiom for seeing something from a biased viewpoint. So aside from being a wordplay jab at Trumpet’s choice in eyewear, it’s also about Trumpet’s expressed view that Spinner, having been a shut-in with a weak quirk who decided to take his resentment out on the world, can’t possibly amount to anything much. So, what, did the people in charge of making those cuts think Trumpet was right? Why even keep the line where he disparages Spinner if you’re not going to let Spinner call it what it is? He’s not calling out fantasy racism there, anime! He’s calling out the bias against weak quirks that even the good guys in this world sometimes partake in! Possibly it’s because non-villains in the world[2] sometimes use reasoning that leads logically to quirk supremacism that the anime got gunshy with it, or it was more reluctance to give the villains—and the Too-Real Iguchi Shuuichi especially—moral ground for accusations against their society that get too close to real life. Whatever the motivation, it’s a bullshit cut.

• Shigaraki calling RD “Detnerat,” presumably because he neither knows RD’s real name nor cares to dignify him by using his code name. The anime, again, made neither the connection nor Shigaraki’s recognition explicit, so it lost the specificity and pettiness of that little snub.

• A little exchange between Giran and a Twice clone as they flee. It doesn’t give you much you wouldn’t assume just from seeing them flee, but it always feels more immediate and empathetic when the characters talk and you can see their expressions, instead of just a quick shot of them from behind as they run away in complete silence. Heck, running away in complete silence is actively out of character for Twice!

• Because the anime has some kind of aversion/restriction on showing hand-related violence, it radically changed how Shigaraki lost his fingers,[3] resulting in the loss of several important shots. To the best of my parsing, in the manga, when Re-Destro makes that first big jump to avoid Shigaraki’s decay wave, he comes back down specifically aiming for Shigaraki’s outstretched left hand, spread wide and flat on the ground. Shigaraki tries to evade (you can see the blur of his left arm in the panel where RD lands), but either RD does manage to clip the hand or he simply hits the ground with so much force that the sheer explosive burst of rock shreds Shigaraki’s hand and part of his coat sleeve. Being so much larger, RD then simply snags Shigaraki by the wrist before he can get out of range. It’s very fast, a burst of speed and violence, and very different (read: cooler) from Shigaraki flipping end over end in slow motion in a way that seemed to imply visually that he was thrown well out of RD’s grabbing range. As to the shots we lost? I counted three. First, Hana’s hand crumpling amidst all the flying debris. Second, that big dramatic panel of Shigaraki’s maimed hand ribboning blood into the air as the narration box finally drops Re-Destro’s identity and code name. Third, the shot of him catching Shigaraki, almost delicately, between one thumb and forefinger and delivering the, “Was it this hand that committed such evil acts?” line—a clear threat to what of that hand Shigaraki has remaining—as we find out what his meta-ability is. This is all hugely dramatic in the manga, because, of course, readers always assumed Shigaraki needed all five fingers to activate his quirk, and here Re-Destro nigh-effortlessly robs him of fully half his capacity to use it. It’s a shocking turn-around and instantly ups RD’s threat level by allowing him to permanently maim Shigaraki in a way that no one, hero or villain, has done before or since. Robbing Re-Destro of the immediacy of that seemingly devastating blow—inflicted within moments of meeting the real Shigaraki—did immeasurable damage to his credibility as an arc boss. The shot in the manga is also just arresting visually, with RD finally getting to properly loom over Shigaraki. Most of the shots up to this point have been framed such that, while RD is obviously bigger, he and Shigaraki have still been moving and fighting in a pretty level way. This is the first place where the viewer is situated so squarely behind Shigaraki that they can really feel how massive RD is in comparison. It’s certainly a more impressive visual than this mess—thanks, anime; thanks, whatever broadcasting standards forced overworked and uninspired animators to undertake a redraw of RD’s quirk reveal panel when every other member of the MLA brass had theirs carried over directly from the manga.

• A chapter-ending cliffhanger of Slidin’ Go helping direct traffic on the outskirts of Deika and the warning rumble as Gigantomachia approaches. Aside from being a nice little tension boost—Will Gigantomachia roll up just in time to see Re-Destro making a mess of Shigaraki? Who will he target? Will Shigaraki ever be able to win him over if he sees a scene like that?—it’s good foreshadowing for what the news reports will eventually be saying. Remember, the claim is that a bunch of villains lured Deika’s heroes away and then attacked the city while it was defenseless; that’s why we never see any of the MLA’s heroes involved with the fight once it starts. And now, here, we find out where they’ve been the whole time: making sure no outsiders get in who might be able to undermine that narrative.

Framing Shifts

• Once again had an MLA member using their Detnerat item say its name out loud, when it’s clear in the manga that they’re just thinking the names internally. Once again, it was kind of silly.

• When Spinner flashes back to watching Stain on TV and being inspired, the manga uses a shot of Stain’s face, snarling and defiant. The anime used—a shot of Stain from behind, only visible from the shoulders to the knees, hunched so that his lower back and ass were towards the camera. Bones… What exactly were you implying lit Spinner’s fire there? Or did you just not have the time or budget to go pull Stain’s reference sheets for drawing his face?

• A tone issue, but a major one: Spinner should be grinning, face alight with accusatory challenge, as he hurls his accusations of the MLA/Trumpet being the same bandwagon-jumping nobodies that he is. This is the moment in the manga where we see Spinner truly throw his hesitations and his doubts to the wind and embrace Shigaraki’s nihilistic fervor and the beauty, value and profundity of emptiness. So what if I’m empty? So what if he wants emptiness? Who cares about other peoples’ ideals if their ideals leave no room for me? It’s not a heroic triumph, but it’s a triumph all the same, and losing Spinner’s smile made the moment far too bitter.

• Meanwhile, in exactly the opposite problem, Shigaraki by this point is not smiling. In fact, he’s barely on his feet, swaying violently in place with accompanying sound effects. While his words are openly mocking, he seems to wholly lack the energy to back them up with his usual verve. The anime didn’t have him smiling, admittedly, but the whole time the ‘camera’ wasn’t directly on his face, his voice actor was reading the lines with an uneven, chuckling cadence that suggested Shigaraki was seconds away from breaking into howls of laughter. He was also, of course, impossibly clean, at a point at which his manga counterpart is muddy, bloody and tattered from the horrifically extended combat he’s been living for six weeks. It’s stuff like this that made it so impossible to take the Army or even Machia as much of a threat in the anime, when, other than the red cords on his hands being broken, Shigaraki looked absolutely no different than usual.

Additions

• Gave Spinner a tiny bit of new animation when he got mobbed by people hopped up on Incite. It was nice, but if they were going to give him a flourish, I’d rather it have come when he swipes Porcupine Dude off him with a combat knife. Or, you know, just kept the bit of him telling the Twices to attack and his reasoning on why.

• Cut inside briefly to show a ballerina girl dancing through a darkened apartment right before she sliced a neat circle out of the wall. I love it, A+, exactly the kind of expansion on the action of the manga I wanted to see. My only complaint is that her manga self looked more like Pearl from Steven Universe.[4] XD

• A quick new shot of RD when Shigaraki was hounding him about his feelings. His teeth were visibly gritted, the corners of his mouth pulled down. It stands out because there’s only one shot of RD there in the manga, and in it, he’s smiling, close-mouthed and calm. The anime copied said shot, smile and all, then cut away, and when it cut back, Re-Destro had a totally different expression on his face. Baffling. Anime!RD having a dour scowl everywhere manga!RD is smiling in a tight, controlled way was all over the fight scene, and it detracted from the sense of RD’s menace every time.

Chapter 234 – Destruction Sense

• The illustration(s) accompanying Re-Destro’s, “Let’s not judge people by their quirks,” line. The pictures are cute, but the real loss there was the note informing us that they’re excerpts from a children’s book published by Shoowaysha—Curious’s outfit—called Quirks and Us. That’s a very concrete illustration of the kinds of things the MLA is getting up to in the world, and an equally concrete thing an anime-only viewer lost. Of course, that viewer never even found out Curious was in publishing, so it wouldn’t have meant anything on that front, but there is one other thing I think is notable: the way that book implies that the only people explicitly pushing a “don’t judge other people by their quirks” message are the radical Liberationists. See, the rest of the story touches on the virtues of a nonjudgmental attitude here and there, but actually finding people willing to say it out loud is—unprecedented, I think. Deku comes across situations where he could say something like that multiple times and he never, ever does—not to Shouto, nor to Shinsou, nor to Eri, nor to the giant fox lady. And that’s not even touching on Shouji’s mask, or the discrimination Spinner faced, or the CRC “losing support” without being declared illegal. I think the manga itself is against judging people by their quirks, but it’s interesting that it doesn’t make its characters into mouthpieces to say as much. This is because its characters are thoroughly enmeshed in a society that very much does judge people by their quirks, regardless of whether or not it will say that doing so is bad or rude or prejudiced. Re-Destro and the MLA aren’t immune, of course—Re-Destro himself says that quirks are linked to personality—but they adhere to a different set of values than the larger society does. While Hero Society talks about quirks in terms of being heroic and/or useful versus villainous and/or useless, the MLA spectrums instead emphasize how capable a person’s quirk is of helping them exert their will and how ambitious the quirk’s bearer is in that exertion. That is, their ethics are less about morality and utility-to-society than they are about aspiration and utility-to-self.[5] Both worldviews have their pros and cons, but that, I think, is what the children��s book is getting at when it says not to “judge”—don’t assign an arbitrary moral value to a quirk; judge a person by their actions. And isn’t it interesting, that the only explicit verbal statement of that value comes from the leader of a radical cult descended from a famous insurrectionist quoting a children’s book published by a member of selfsame radical cult? The value is not ever stated by a member of the heroic cast, so are we to assume that the heroes don't actually believe it? Do people profess to believe it but everyone knows it’s only for courtesy’s sake, with only the MLA willing to breach that wall of “things we don’t talk about in polite society” to actually talk about it in anything other than platitudes? Obviously, you lose this entire line of discussion when the "don't judge people by their quirks" value is just never mentioned at all.

• The phrase, “In that case,” from RD’s, “You will never measure up to me.” It establishes continuity to what RD was saying before. He’s not taking breaks from talking while Shigaraki has flashbacks; the two are happening concurrently.

• RD’s, “Cracking apart…?” reaction to his Decayed fingertip, and the dripping blood from the injury. I’m not hugely fussed about the former, but I like the latter as indicative of what Re-Destro’s Stress powers actually do. That is to say, he isn’t covering himself in a thick shell of Stress power or something; his Stress powers make him physically larger, infusing his body and swelling his size. That’s why he bleeds when Shigaraki touches his fingertip. Admittedly, the size distinction was more obvious in the anime, where the audience watched RD’s shoulders inflate like balloons last episode, compared to the manga, where you don’t get in-between animation. Still, given that RD still has that wound even when he goes back down to normal size, and is still wearing bandages for his speech a week later,[6] it’d be nice to mark the severity of the wound with a bit of blood. Oddly, the anime did keep the wound for the crater scene, visible red slices opened in the flesh along the length of his finger, very obviously the sort of injury that would have bled upon being first sustained. Maybe RD ran afoul of whatever the studio mandate is on when Decay has a dust effect and when it leaves gore? (More of that later.)

• Shigaraki’s, “Mother!” for the first panel we see of her. It’s obvious enough who she probably is, but odd that we got a whole bunch of narration for Hana, and likewise an acknowledgment of his grandparents, but not even a single word for Nao.

• Very significantly drops the grandfather’s, “Eating yummy things helps make the sadness go away.” Grandpa’s not just randomly handing Tenko his favorite snack in that memory—he’s trying to treat some kind of grief or wrong without actually addressing the wrong, opting to just put a flavorful band-aid on it. That could be fine if it were something outside Grandpa’s control, but we’ve already gotten some early hints from Hana’s phrasing that things are not okay in the household, and thus the grandfather’s attempt to bribe Tenko with sweets is just as ominous a sign of what’s to come as the grandmother’s attempt to guilt him into not crying lest he make her cry too.

• A little shot of Shigaraki stirring in the rubble when RD answers the phone. It’s a nice demonstration of their size difference, especially comparing both of them to Machia, who we just saw tearing through buildings like the kaiju his theme music declares him to be.

Framing Shifts

• When Shigaraki narrates that Hana always took him by the hand when he got weepy, she actually does take his hand in the manga, her fingers wrapped around his, his clasped over hers. It emphasizes that this is what he can’t do anymore, simply hold hands with people, the innocence lost aspect, and it suggests the closeness he once had with his sister. In the anime, she reached out a hand but wound up taking him by the wrist instead, his hand splayed open beneath hers. This suggested, albeit very implicitly, that maybe that innocence was something he never had from the beginning; it also suggested less reciprocity in his relationship with Hana. Even though Tomura said in narration that their hands were joined, what we saw was that Hana just pulled him where she wanted him and he didn’t fight her on it, not that he held her hand in return. Alternatively, the anime could have been drawing a parallel to how her hand would eventually be gripping his wrist in a much different context (a more necrotic one, for starters) later in life, though if that's what they were going for, they could have stood to tweak the dialogue so it actually matched the onscreen action. (Credit to @robotlesbianjavert and @aysall respectively for these two theories!)

• Shigaraki still having his fingers when Re-Destro squeezed his hand made RD look like a real moron. I assume the intention was that he assumed he’d done enough damage—broken bones, torn ligaments, etc—to prevent Shigaraki from being able to move his hand in more than spastic twitches, but like, if all it takes is a hard enough spasmodic clench to dust you, you are playing much riskier games than the MLA is generally portrayed as favoring. (Not that the anime kept many of the scenes that demonstrated all the planning and prep that the MLA did as groundwork for their attack, as I have complained about at length.) In the same sequence, Anime!RD turned and bodily hurled Shigaraki away from him, while Manga!RD threw him a similar distance with nothing more than a flick of a finger. Anime, why you gotta make Re-Destro look so lame all the time?

Additions

• Just one episode prior, the anime managed to turn in an entirely reasonable assemblage of swiping and dodging between Shigaraki and Re-Destro while RD was rambling on about the Mother of Quirks. What the hell was the excuse for this episode’s ridiculous shot of Shigaraki literally running circles—big, broad circles—around RD multiple times in the time it took RD to finish one (1) thought? For heaven’s sake, if you don’t have the budget for flashy, just use slow motion or more flashback animation or something. I know there’s more leeway for long thoughts in manga, where the reader understands that thoughts are moving far faster than action, and that it can be hard to bridge that gap for anime, where motion is motion but voice acting still has to rattle its way to the end of a sentence. I understand that measures have to be taken to account for that. Still, I promise, something that just looks a bit padded is much preferable to something that looks outright dumb.

• I admit to having found huge Stress monster RD pulling out a teeeeeny-tiny cellphone very funny—even more so the distinct cracking sound it made when Skeptic reported in bad news and RD’s fingers tightened infinitesimally—but the manga suggests fairly strongly that RD’s just answering on some kind of earpiece or micro-receiver, the same kind of thing Ujiko hands out and that Skeptic is associated with on multiple occasions. It’d be nice if RD could have kept more of the jokes he actually makes, the ones that stem from his native good humor, rather than the anime making up new ones based entirely in the contrast of Re-Destro and the viewer’s expectations of Re-Destro.

Chapter 235 – Shimura Tenko: Origin

• The man at the door, whom Nao is apologizing to at the beginning of the Tenko flashback and the apparent reason Tenko got busted for playing hero. I don’t love the way deleting this obscured that Tenko, in some fashion, troubled someone to lead to Kotarou dragging him down the hall (the anime also dropped Kotarou’s subsequent line, “Causing trouble?!” that’s supposed to supplement his, “Playing hero again?”), but it’s not like the manga doesn’t imply that the same thing would happen for any hero-based rules infraction, regardless of whether it troubled strangers or not. No, the much, much funnier thing to me is how it just fuckin’ torpedoed the most obvious thing people point to when they posit that All For One gave Tenko Decay, kicking off the entire tragedy: the man at the door with the conspicuously shadowed face and the even more conspicuously AFO-like suit and dress shirt with the top button unfastened. Listen, I hate that theory and what it would do to the narrative of Shigaraki Tomura/Shimura Tenko as Hero Society’s long-overdue reckoning, the villain they can’t put down and the victim they can’t silence, so watching the anime summarily cut out the scene that really kicked the theory into overdrive was very validating! Conversely, I still can't deny that it's a plausible theory, so if it does turn out to be true, that means the anime shot itself in the foot on the most obvious bit of foreshadowing this side of AFO addressing Tenko by name when he finds him in the alley. The schadenfreude of that would also be very funny. Really, unlike every other cut this season, I regard this one as win-win for my personal experience with the anime. Incidentally, I was very prepared to complain about the anime dropping all the changes of clothes the Shimura family goes through over the course of the flashback—I regard the timelapse as one of the major points against the AFO Gave Tenko Decay theory, since it’s never taken a quirk bestowed by AFO multiple days, maybe even multiple weeks, to kick in before—but it turns out I’m a lot less bothered about them not taking the time to change the side characters’ clothes when the anime also deletes the dude at the door who is the only reason I care about clarity re: how much time the flashback covers! But just for the record, while they had more outfits than I was expecting them to, the family did go through fewer changes of clothes in the anime than in the manga.

• The full echo of the line about kids being sneaky and simple in favor of Narrator!Shigaraki just letting out this exhausted, rueful, “Ahhh, kids are…” I actually rather like it. It’s a clear reference back to the earlier line without having to restate the whole thing, and Uchiyama Kouki’s delivery is really excellent.

• Kotaro’s first slap of Tenko, the only one directly portrayed on-panel, and Mon-chan’s barking in response. On the one hand, I think there’s an argument to be made for the scene flowing a bit better like this—why wouldn’t Grandpa try to stop him from going for that second slap; why wouldn’t Nao pass Hana off to Grandma and do something instead of just standing there yelling for the entire scene? It makes a bit more sense if they’re hesitant to intervene because Kotarou has “only” grabbed at Tenko’s collar and they don’t yet know how that it’s going to escalate to naked physical violence in a way that it never has before. On the other hand, that first slap is so visceral and shocking. Nowhere else in the manga is domestic violence portrayed more sharply and directly, in greater detail or more cruelly generous panel space than in this moment. It’s in the difference in size between Kotarou and Tenko, the force behind the hit that’s enough to knock Tenko clear off his feet, the pages upon pages of gut-churning lead-up to this moment and what we know will be following soon after. Also too, it makes the family’s failure to help Tenko much worse that no one else acts when Kotarou pulls back for a second hit. The first one, you could almost excuse because no one saw it coming; the second throws those justifications out the window and spits on them afterward. Two hits are important—not only for what they tell Tenko in the moment about his family's inaction, but because two hits speak in ways one hit doesn't to how wildly uneven the power balance is in the house, that Nao and her parents could witness something like that and not only fail to intercede, but then take who knows how long to work up the courage to confront Kotarou afterwards. I understand very well the fear of showing this in a family TV timeslot—the violence is so much more real than any big fantasy beat-‘em-up could ever be—but it’s the kind of thing that really drives home what Tenko needed to be saved from even back then, a social issue that heroes as they currently exist were in no position to address. Far from demonstrating that heroes aren't at fault for what happened to Tenko, though, what this scene truly does is vividly illustrate the flaws in All Might's social contract, in which his power and smile seem to promise that he can save absolutely everyone, only to leave children like Tenko out in the cold with no explanation as to why. It's brutal because it has to be, and the anime shying away from depicting Kotarou's physical abuse undercut that.

Framing Shifts

• There was a bizarre, nonsensical change to the scene at the beginning of the chapter where RD is figuring out how Shigaraki survived/got back up after taking a Burden attack head-on. The manga��s explanation is that Shigaraki didn’t actually take a full force hit because he was Decaying it even as it was blowing him back. This is somewhat silly, given that even a reduced-strength Burden is still strong enough to put him through multiple buildings. It is, however, less silly than the anime’s take, in which Shigaraki touched Re-Destro rather than the corporealized Stress of Burden. How Re-Destro survived a full-fingered touch from Shigaraki’s completely uninjured right hand[7] went totally unexplained; the problem was then compounded by Re-Destro delivering manga-accurate lines about Burden not being an evadable attack despite “evasion” having nothing to do with Shigaraki’s actions. Anime!Shigaraki didn’t dodge the Burden attack any more than Manga!Shigaraki did; unlike Manga!Shigaraki, however, Anime!Shigaraki also did nothing to reduce the impact of the attack. So not only was how Shigaraki survived the Burden attack not explained, the change to the material also opened up the plot hole of how Re-Destro survived a direct touch attack that Shigaraki in the manga never lands.

• There was also an extremely weird decision made to give Tenko dark, gray-blue eyes, obviously reminiscent of Nana’s, and suggest that they became red at the same time as his hair was changing to white. But in the manga, other than the size, there’s no difference between young Tenko’s eyes and how Shigaraki’s eyes have always been drawn—an unshaded iris with a visible pupil and a relatively thick line delineating the iris from the white of the sclera. Tenko’s eyes never matched those of anyone else in his family, least of all his dark-eyed grandmother. His hair changed color because of a trauma response,[8] but his eyes were always red.

• Relocated Shigaraki’s first, “Little kids…are sneakier than you’d expect. And simpler,” to underscore Hana showing him Nana’s picture in the study, squarely centering the line on her. And like, yes, that line does get its bitter echo later when Hana panics in the face of her father’s fury and throws the blame onto Tenko—but that line isn’t just about her; it’s also about what Tenko wanted to hear from the other adults in his life. It didn’t matter that his father didn’t approve; if he could get at least one adult to say he could be a hero, to take his side, then he could feel vindicated. It’s a child’s sneaky, simple reasoning: if an adult’s words are absolute, you just have to get one (1) adult to agree with you. It’s asking Dad if you can do something you don’t think Mom will agree to, and then going to Mom with Dad’s permission held defensively in-hand. Laying the line over Hana obscures that it’s as much about Tenko’s craving for external validation as it is Hana’s (entirely understandable) deceitful streak.

• After half a season full of internal monologue being voiced aloud even when it made little sense to do so, the anime decided to render clearly talk-bubbled dialogue—Tenko’s chatting at Mon about how he feels like he could take on the world—as internal monologue instead. Who talks to their animals in their heads when they could be talking at them directly like pet owners the world over?

Additions

• Added a few extra stills of Kotarou rebuking Tenko and dragging him around. I don’t think they’re inaccurate to the situation, though I wonder if it really needed to be underlined two more times than the manga did. Maybe they were trying to make up in advance for deleting the first slap?

• Added a few new stills of Nana and child!Kotarou. They hurt my soul and I love them without reservation.

Chapter 236 – Shimura Tenko: Origin, Part 2

• Hana’s second apology. What needs to get across was communicated with her first apology, but I do think the second one adds some naturalism to the dialogue. It feels very normal for a child feeling extremely guilty to apologize multiple times, like the more times they say it, the more true/convincing it will become.

• A bit of Tenko’s internal monologue—thinking Hana’s name, and Mon’s, and that he can’t talk. The anime slipped some attempts at verbalizing “Mon” into the dialogue, and it was painfully obvious just from listening to him gag and choke that he was too horror-struck to get words out, in ways that would be a little harder to convey on the page. Also, he thinks again that he can’t talk just as Hana runs away, so it gets across regardless. No real complaints here.

• Some thoughts about how he’s itchy, which, given what his itch represents (or at least what he thinks it does), they probably should have kept for continuity’s sake.

• Tenko’s last, “Hana-chan!” just as he grabs for her. I can imagine it having just that little bit more desperate impact, especially given Sekine Arisa’s great delivery of the first “Hana-chan!” but his delivery of the first one was great—weeks later, I can still remember it clearly—so it’s not a snip I’m inclined to doomsay about.

• Hana’s verbalization as the Decay hits her. Given that they kept Mon-chan’s last whimper, it’s kind of inconsistent not to keep this. It’s grueling, sure, but no more so than the rest of the horror show shortly to follow.

• An echo of Nao’s defense of Kotarou’s anti-hero stance. Frankly, I think anime already over-indulges in echoing dialogue we’ve heard not ten minutes prior, so I don’t mind losing this—in the manga, the moments would have fallen in different chapters, so it makes more sense to squeeze in the little reminder, but that wasn’t necessary for the anime, in which the original moment and the callback happened barely more than five minutes apart. It was obvious what the mental image was meant to draw attention to, since Tomura was narrating about exactly what his grievance was, and the image was followed by the two equivalent moments with the grandparents. (Admittedly, it hurt that correlation a bit that Grandpa’s line about the ohagi being intended to make the sadness go away got cut, but the sentiment was pretty clear from the man’s expression of nervy, abashed guilt regardless.)

• The line of Decay that splits Nao’s eye, one of the more vividly horrific little grace notes in the chapter. It undercut the grotesquerie just the tiniest bit, but the scene’s grotesque as-is, so I can understand that slight edit for TV standards. The discrepancy between Decay-to-dust and Decay-to-gore, discussed below in Framing Shifts, was much more damaging.

• A shot of Kotarou just after he hits Tenko with the tree pruning shears in which he looks, briefly, incredibly distraught, like he’s just realized what a monster he’s become. The anime didn’t make the slightest of attempts to keep that spasm of horror, grief, and regret, and thus lost that last moment of sympathy for a man deeply traumatized by a heroic character’s actions. It’s my only complaint about Anime!Kotarou, who I was otherwise far more pleased with than I was afraid might be the case, but it’s a complaint I must register nonetheless.

• A bit of inarticulate yelling before Tenko screams, “You... Die!!” It helps get across Tenko’s rage overflowing, to have that wordless garble before he can actually wrap words around it. He was still having trouble talking, too, so it makes sense that his first vocalization would just be a long, incomprehensible screech. That said, with the music there to supplement the mood in a way the manga would lack, I don’t think the anime’s rendition of the scene suffered overmuch from its absence.

Framing Shifts

• The anime, of course, has always gone the dust route for Decay because Decay is a little too gruesome for family hour TV, and anyway, when Tomura gets as fast with Decay as he is in Deika, he really is just insta-dusting people, such that not even blood remains. But he wasn’t that fast or that thorough as a child, hence why it’s all so much gorier—and it needs to be, because it’s hard to imagine Hana freaking out like she does if all she sees is a pile of dust instead of, well, dog gobbets. (Also, if his family had gone the dust route, it would have been very hard to convince the audience that Tomura’s hands are his family hands and not fakes provided to AFO by Ujiko.) This obviously put the anime in a difficult spot, but apparently the decision they settled on was—to not decide? Everyone we saw in the active process of decaying decayed into dust as usual, but then once they were done decaying, once that transition from person to ruin was complete, there were all these heaps of gore everywhere. It was a very strange and distracting inconsistency that hurt the scene much more than any of the nearly invisible cuts, and I hope the blu-rays will change it.

• Added Grandpa catching Grandma as she staggered at the sight of things in the yard. Since his body language in the manga (the only non-Decayed shot of him in the sequence) has him leaned more forward, like he’s still halfway through running towards the kids, I thought this was a nice little touch on why he stopped, for reasons other than just the obvious.

---

Episode 111 was about half of a really strong episode. Most of my complaints about the Shimura Family flashback are very minor, and most of the ones that are less minor are still easy to overlook when the rest of the presentation was so strong. Unfortunately, the non-flashback half of the episode had as many problems as ever, and those aren't over yet.

Come back next time for Part Five, Episode 112: Origin: Shigaraki Tomura. Assuming my complaining about the finalized gutting of Spinner's arc doesn't get too out of hand—which it may; if so, I'll tack on one final part to wrap things up—I'll also be running down a quick overview of the Paranormal Liberation Front scenes in the Endeavor Agency arc and some various odds & ends.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Yes, I know the Skeptic Confronts Twice scene goes nowhere, but maybe, instead of deleting it, they could have patched it up by showing Skeptic turning away from the confrontation when the tower went down? You know, actually made an effort to improve on the material?

[2] Bakugou, of course, but also Inko, Kotarou, and, very prominently, even All Might. Deku circa MVA has an entire arc lying in wait for him about how much he’s internalized All Might’s paternalism re: having the strongest quirk.

[3] Indeed, as of the scene in the crater, he still hadn’t lost them at all! He had his prosthetic by the time of the speech, so I guess we’re meant to assume that Ujiko or some MLA doctor declared them past saving and amputated them. I hope I don’t need to tell you how unbelievably lame it is to have a shounen manga character sustain a permanent injury like that off-panel.

[4] It’s the pointy nose.

[5] That, at least, is the best way I’ve found to reconcile all the related-but-distinct values professed by the various members of the MLA brass, from Re-Destro’s focus on liberation and purpose, what exactly Trumpet chooses to cite when he’s talking about Spinner not “amounting” to anything much, Geten’s open extolling of quirk supremacy, and so on.

[6] In the first big double-page spread. Oddly, no bandaging is visible in the other panel that has a good shot of that hand, possibly because Horikoshi was more focused on drawing RD’s empty pant leg. The anime kept the obvious wound during the crater scene, but not the bandages during the speech.

[7] I assume, anyway, that Re-Destro only survives Shigaraki’s first touch because it’s a weaker Decay, coming as it does from only from two fingers rather than five.

[8] The fabled Marie Antoinette Syndrome. Never been scientifically documented as such (hair can whiten because of extreme stress, but not overnight) but it endures in fiction because it’s pleasingly dramatic. Trauma-based eye-color changes, not so much.

#my villain academia #boku no hero academia #my hero academia #bnha #bnha meta #my writing #stillness has salt

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

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Anonymous said: I didn’t know too much about the late British philosopher Sir Roger Scruton until I followed your superbly cultured blog. As an ivy league educated American reading your posts, I feel he is a breath of fresh air as a sane and cultured conservative intellectual. We don’t really have his kind over here where things are heavily polarized between left and right, and sadly, we are often uncivil in our discourse. Sir Roger Scruton talks a lot about beauty especially in art (as indeed you do too), so for Scruton why does beauty as an aesthetic matter in art? Why should we care?

I thank you for your very kind words about my blog which I fear is not worthy of such fulsome praise.

However one who is worthy of praise (or at least gratitude and appreciation at least) is the late Sir Roger Scruton. I have had the pleasure to have met him on a few informal occasions.

Most memorably, I once got invited to High Table dinner at Peterhouse, Cambridge, by a friend who was a junior Don there. This was just after I had finished my studies at Cambridge and rather than pursue my PhD I opted instead to join the British army as a combat pilot officer. And so I found out that Scruton was dining too. We had very pleasant drinks in the SCR before and after dinner. He was exceptionally generous and kind in his consideration of others; we all basked in the gentle warmth of his wit and wisdom.

I remember talking to him about Xanthippe, Socrate’s wife, because I had read his wickedly funny fictional satire. In the book he credits the much maligned Xanthippe with being the brains behind all of Socrates’ famous philosophical ideas (as espoused by Plato).

On other occasions I had seen Roger Scruton give the odd lecture in London or at some cultural forum.

Other than that, I’ve always admire both the man and many of his ideas from afar. I do take issue with some of his intellectual ideas which seem to be taken a tad too far (he think pre-Raphaelites were kitsch) but it’s impossible to dislike the man in person.

Indeed the Marxist philosopher G.A. Cohen reportedly once refused to teach a seminar with Scruton, although they later became very good friends. This is the gap between the personal and the public persona. In public he was reviled as hate figure by some of the more intolerant of the leftists who were trying to shut him down from speaking. But in private his academic peers, writers, and philosophers, regardless of their political beliefs, hugely respected him and took his ideas seriously - because only in private will they ever admit that much of what Scruton talks about has come to pass.

In many ways he was like C.S. Lewis - a pariah to the Oxbridge establishment. At Oxford many dons poo-pooed his children stories, and especially his Christian ideas of faith, culture, and morality, and felt he should have laid off the lay theology and stuck to his academic speciality of English Literature. But an Oxford friend, now a don, tells me that many dons read his theological works in private because much of what he wrote has become hugely relevant today.

Scruton was a man of parts, some of which seemed irreconcilable: barrister, aesthetician, distinguished professor of aesthetics. Outside of brief pit stops at Cambridge, Oxford, and St Andrews, he was mostly based out of Birkbeck College, London University, which had a tradition of a working-class intake and to whom Scruton was something of a popular figure. He was also an editor of the ultra-Conservative Salisbury Review, organist, and an enthusiastic fox hunter. In addition he wrote over 50 books on philosophy, art, music, politics, literature, culture, sexuality, and religion, as well as finding time to write novels and two operas. He was widely recognised for his services to philosophy, teaching and public education, receiving a knighthood in 2016.

He was exactly the type of polymath England didn’t know what to do with because we British do discourage such continental affectations and we prefer people to know their lane and stick to it. Above all we’re suspicious of polymaths because no one likes a show off. Scruton could be accused of a few things but he never perceived as a show off. He was a gentle, reserved, and shy man of kindly manners.

He was never politically ‘Conservative’, or tried not to be. Indeed he encouraged many to think about defining “a philosophy of conservatism” and not “a philosophy for the Conservative Party.” In defining his own thoughts, he positioned conservatism to relation to its historical rivals, liberalism and socialism. He wrote that liberalism was the product of the enlightenment, which viewed society as a contract and the state as a system for guaranteeing individual rights. While he saw socialism as the product of the industrial revolution, and an ideology which views society as an economic system and the state as a means of distributing social wealth.

Like another great English thinkers, Michael Oakeshott, he felt that conservatives leaned more towards liberalism then socialism, but argued that for conservatives, freedom should also entail responsibility, which in turn depends on public spirit and virtue. Many classical liberals would agree.

In fact, he criticised Thatcherism for “its inadequate emphasis on the civic virtues, such as self-sacrifice, duty, solidarity and service of others.” Scruton agreed with classical liberals in believing that markets are not necessarily expressions of selfishness and greed, but heavily scolded his fellow Conservatives for allowing themselves to be caricatured as leaving social problems to the market. Classical liberals could be criticised for the same neglect.

Perhaps his conservative philosophy was best summed up when he wrote “Liberals seek freedom, socialists equality, and conservatives responsibility. And, without responsibility, neither freedom nor equality have any lasting value.”

Scruton’s politics were undoubtedly linked to his philosophy, which was broadly Hegelian. He took the view that all of the most important aspects of life – truth (the perception of the world as it is), beauty (the creation and appreciation of things valued for their own sake), and self-realisation (the establishment by a person of a coherent, autonomous identity) – can be achieved only as part of a cultural community within which meaning, standards and values are validated. But he had a wide and deep understanding of the history of western philosophy as a whole, and some of his best philosophical work consisted of explaining much more clearly than is often the case how different schools of western philosophy relate to one another.

People today still forget how he was a beacon for many East European intellectuals living under Communist rule in the 1980s. Scruton was deeply attached in belonging to a network of renowned Western scholars who were helping the political opposition in Eastern Europe. Their activity began in Czechoslovakia with the Jan Hus Foundation in 1980, supported by a broad spectrum of scholars from Jacques Derrida and Juergen Habermas to Roger Scruton and David Regan. Then came Poland, Hungary and later Romania. In Poland, Scruton co-founded the Jagiellonian Trust, a small but significant organisation. The other founders and active participants were Baroness Caroline Cox, Jessica Douglas-Home, Kathy Wilkes, Agnieszka Kołakowska, Dennis O’Keeffe, Timothy Garton Ash, and others.

Scruton had a particular sympathy for Prague and the Czech society, which bore fruit in the novel, Notes from Underground, which he wrote many years later. But his involvement in East European affairs was more than an emotional attachment. He believed that Eastern Europe - despite the communist terror and aggressive social engineering - managed to preserve a sense of historical continuity and strong ties to European and national traditions, more unconscious than openly articulated, which made it even more valuable. For this reason, decades later, he warned his East European friends against joining the European Union, arguing that whatever was left of those ties will be demolished by the political and ideological bulldozer of European bureaucracy.

Anyway, digressions aside, onto to the heart of your question.

Art matters.

Let’s start from there. Regardless of your personal tastes or aesthetics as you stand before a painting, slip inside a photograph, run your hand along the length of a sculpture, or move your body to the arrangements spiraling out of the concert speakers…something very primary - and primal - is happening. And much of it sub-conscious. There’s an element of trust.

Political philosopher, Hannah Arendt, defined artworks as “thought things,” ideas given material form to inspire reflection and rumination. Dialogue. Sometimes even discomfort. Art has the ability to move us, both positively and negatively. So we know that art matters. But the question posed by modern philosophers such as Roger Scruton has been: how do we want it to affect us?

Are we happy with the direction art is taking? Namely, says, Scruton, away from seeking “higher virtues” such as beauty and craftmanship, and instead, towards novelty for novelty’s sake, provoking emotional response under the guise of socio-political discourse.

Why does beauty in art matter?

Scruton asks us to wake up and start demanding something more from art other than disposable entertainment. “Through the pursuit of beauty,” suggests Scruton, “we shape the world as our own and come to understand our nature as spiritual beings. But art has turned its back on beauty and now we are surrounded by ugliness.” The great artists of the past, says Scruton, “were painfully aware that human life was full of care and suffering, but their remedy was beauty. The beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow and affirmation…It shows human life to be worthwhile.” But many modern artists, argues the philosopher, have become weary of this “sacred task” and replaced it with the “randomness” of art produced merely to gain notoriety and the result has been anywhere between kitsch to ugliness that ultimately leads to inward alienation and nihilistic despair.

The best way to understand Scruton’s idea of beauty in art and why it matters is to let him speak for himself. Click below on the video and watch a BBC documentary broadcast way back in 2009 that he did precisely on this subject, why beauty matters. It will not be a wasted hour but perhaps enrich and even enlighten your perspective on the importance of beauty in art.

vimeo

So I’ll do my best to summarise the point Scruton is making in this documentary above.

Here goes.....

In his 2009 documentary “Why Beauty Matters”, Scruton argues that beauty is a universal human need that elevates us and gives meaning to life. He sees beauty as a value, as important as truth or goodness, that can offer “consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy”, therefore showing human life to be worthwhile.

According to Scruton, beauty is being lost in our modern world, particularly in the fields of art and architecture.

I was raised in many different cultures from India, Pakistan, to China, Japan, Southern Africa, and the Middle East as well schooling in rural Britain and Switzerland. So coming home to London on frequent visits was often a confusing experience because of the mismatch of modern art and new architecture. In life and in art I have chosen to see the beauty in things, locating myself in Paris, where I am surrounded by beauty, and understand the impact it can have on the everyday.

Scruton’s disdain for modern art begins with Marcel Duchamp’s urinal. Originally a satirical piece designed to mock the world of art and the snobberies that go with it, it has come to mean that anything can be art and anyone can be an artist. A “cult of ugliness” was created where originality is placed above beauty and the idea became more important than the artwork itself. He argues that art became a joke, endorsed by critics, doing away with a need for skill, taste or creativity.

Duchamp’s argument was that the value of any object lies solely in what each individual assigns it, and thus, anything can be declared “art,” and anyone an artist.

But is there something wrong with the idea that everything is art and everyone an artist? If we celebrate the democratic ideals of all citizens being equal and therefore their input having equal value, doesn’t Duchamp’s assertion make sense?

Who’s to say, after all, what constitutes beauty?

This resonated with me in particular and brought to mind when Scruton meets the artist Michael Craig-Martin and asks him about how Duchamp’s urinal first made him feel. Martin is best known for his work “An Oak Tree” which is a glass of water on a shelf, with text beside it explaining why it is an oak tree. Martin argues that Duchamp captures the imagination and that art is an art because we think of it as such.

When I first saw “An Oak Tree” I was confused and felt perhaps I didn’t have the intellect to understand it. When I would later question it with friends who worked in the art auction and gallery world, the response was always “You just don’t get it,” which became a common defence. To me, it was reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen’s short tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”, about two weavers who promise an emperor a new suit of clothes that they say is invisible to those who are unfit for their positions, stupid or incompetent. In reality, they make no clothes at all.

Scruton argues that the consumerist culture has been the catalyst for this change in modern art. We are always being sold something, through advertisements that feed our appetite for stuff, adverts try to be brash and outrageous to catch our attention. Art mimics advertising as artists attempt to create brands, the product that they sell is themselves. The more shocking and outrageous the artwork, the more attention it receives. Scruton is particularly disturbed by Piero Manzoni’s artwork “Artist’s Shit” which consists of 90 tin cans filled with the artist’s excrement.

Moreover the true aesthetic value, the beauty, has vanished in modern works that are selling for millions of dollars. In such works, by artists like Rothko, Franz Kline, Damien Hirst, and Tracey Emin, the beauty has been replaced by discourse. The lofty ideals of beauty are replaced by a social essay, however well intentioned.

A common argument for modern art is that it is reflecting modern life in all of its disorder and ugliness. Scruton suggests that great art has always shown the real in the light of the ideal and that in doing so it is transfigured.

A great painting does not necessarily have a beautiful subject matter, but it is made beautiful through the artist’s interpretation of it. Rembrandt shows this with his portraits of crinkly old women and men or the compassion and kindness of which Velazquez paints the dwarfs in the Spanish court. Modern art often takes the literal subject matter and misses the creative act. Scruton expresses this point using the comparison of Tracey Emin’s artwork ‘My Bed’ and a painting by Delacroix of the artist’s bed.

The subject matters are the same. The unmade beds in all of their sordid disdain. Delacroix brings beauty to a thing that lacks it through the considered artistry of his interpretation and by doing so, places a blessing on his own emotional chaos. Emin shares the ugliness that the bed shows by using the literal bed. According to Emin, it is art because she says that it is so.

Philosophers argued that through the pursuit of beauty, we shape the world as our home. Traditional architecture places beauty before utility, with ornate decorative details and proportions that satisfy our need for harmony. It reminds us that we have more than just practical needs but moral and spiritual needs too. Oscar Wilde said “All art is absolutely useless,” intended as praise by placing art above utility and on a level with love, friendship, and worship. These are not necessarily useful but are needed.

We have all experienced the feeling when we see something beautiful. To be transported by beauty, from the ordinary world to, as Scruton calls it, “the illuminated sphere of contemplation.” It is as if we feel the presence of a higher world. Since the beginning of western civilisation, poets and philosophers have seen the experience of beauty as a calling to the divine.

According to Scruton, Plato described beauty as a cosmic force flowing through us in the form of sexual desire. He separated the divine from sexuality through the distinction between love and lust. To lust is to take for oneself, whereas to love is to give. Platonic love removes lust and invites us to engage with it spiritually and not physically. As Plato says, “Beauty is a visitor from another world. We can do nothing with it save contemplate its pure radiance.”

Scruton makes the prescient point that art and beauty were traditionally aligned in religious works of art. Science impacted religion and created a spiritual vacuum. People began to look to nature for beauty, and there was a shift from religious works of art to paintings of landscapes and human life.

In today’s world of art and architecture, beauty is looked upon as a thing of the past with disdain. Scruton believes his vision of beauty gives meaning to the world and saves us from meaningless routines to take us to a place of higher contemplation. In this I think Scruton encourages us not to take revenge on reality by expressing its ugliness, but to return to where the real and the ideal may still exist in harmony “consoling our sorrows and amplifying our joys.”

Scruton believes when you train any of your senses you are privy to a heightened world. The artist sees beauty everywhere and they are able to draw that beauty out to show to others. One finds the most beauty in nature, and nature the best catalyst for creativity. The Tonalist painter George Inness advised artists to paint their emotional response to their subject, so that the viewer may hope to feel it too.

It must be said that Scruton’s views regarding art and beauty are not popular with the modern art crowd and their postmodern advocates. Having written several books on aesthetics, Scruton has developed a largely metaphysical aspect to understanding standards of art and beauty.

Throughout this documentary (and indeed his many books and articles), Scruton display a bias towards ‘high’ art, evidenced by a majority of his examples as well as his dismissal of much modern art. However on everyday beauty, there is much space for Scruton to challenge his own categories and extend his discussion to include examples from popular culture, such as in music, graphic design, and film. Omitting ‘low art’ in the discussion of beauty could lead one to conclude that beauty is not there.

It is here I would part ways with Scruton. I think there is beauty to be found in so called low art of car design, popular music or cinema for example - here I’m thinking of a Ferrari 250 GTO, jazz, or the films of Bergman, Bresson, or Kurosawa (among others) come to mind. Scruton gives short thrift to such 20th century art forms which should not be discounted when we talk of beauty. It’s hard to argue with Jean-Luc Godard for instance when he once said of French film pioneering director, Robert Bresson, “He is the French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is German music.”

Overall though I believe Scruton does enough to leave us to ponder ourselves on the importance of beauty in the arts and our lives, including fine arts, music, and architecture. I think he succeeds in illuminating the poverty, dehumanisation and fraud of modernist and post-modernist cynicism, reductionism and nihilism. Scruton is rightly prescient in pointing the centrality of human aspiration and the longing for truth in both life and art.

In this he is correct in showing that goodness and beauty are universal and fundamentally important; and that the value of anything is not utilitarian and without meaning (e.g., Oscar Wilde’s claim that “All art is absolutely useless.”). Human beings are not purposeless material objects for mechanistic manipulation by others, and civil society itself depends upon a cultural consensus that beauty is real and every person should be respected with compassion as having dignity and nobility with very real spiritual needs to encounter and be transformed and uplifted by beauty.

Thanks for your question.

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