#image of . of the problematic child from the problematic show

[peekychu]

No way did I just see a dni banner with eric cartman on it 💀

[artbyblastweave]

ask game; Victoria Dallon, aka Glory Girl aka Antares

I've always thought that Victoria's first appearance is quite the bit of deft needle-threading.

The thing about Interlude 2 is that Vicky is our first example of one of this setting's established heroes actively fighting crime- not just swooping in to vulture up the accomplishments of an up-and-comer- and a therefore a major goal of the sequence is to ensure that the audience comes away structurally unnerved by what counts as business as usual for the heroes, set the stage for the hurricane of ass-covering to come. So we have a sequence where she lords her power over a baseline criminal who has no realistic chance to fight back or get away, where she cripples and nearly kills him in a display of excessive force, where she uses her connections to other capes to duck out on the consequences of her excess once she realizes that she's crossed certain moral and optical Rubicons. All of this is gross, all of this speaks to an alarmingly cavalier attitude amongst even the most ostensibly accountable heroes. And from a protagonistic perspective, all of this serves to soften the blow of Taylor's actions at the bank in act three, because we're predisposed to see Vicky as an arrogant, overprivileged loose cannon who'd actually have a significantly higher body count than all of the Undersiders put together if not for the cushion afforded to her by her status as a superhero. A golden child up against the already put-upon underdog.

But. She also does all of that to a Neo-Nazi, who was fresh off committing a hate crime. I mean, if this was violence against a purse-snatcher, a drug-dealer- It would be very, very easy to block this sequence in a way that would set her up as a villain and nothing else for the rest of the work. In The Boys, for example, Homelander debuts by incinerating one bank robber's hand and throwing another a thousand feet into the air to land hard on a parked car, and the dissonance between that casual brutality and his chumminess with the onlookers is the thematic backbone for... basically the entire show, because he was in such total control of the situation that the only reason to do it that way is that he fundamentally doesn't care. In Super Crooks, it's made abundantly clear that the superheroes trying to arrest the titular supervillains are significantly more destructive to the city than the villains are, because their institutional backing removes any incentive to do anything but pursue the flashiest arrests possible for the sake of ratings. But Glory Girl? She's a sixteen year old putting her money where her mouth is on the unconsidered-dilettante suburban-left-ish tumblrite rallying cry of punching a Nazi. She's living out a near-boilerplate superheroic fantasy of righteous violence against an uncomplicatedly righteous target- likely a fantasy entertained at least once by the median cape fan, if we're being honest- and then, in the aftermath, blood on her hands and on the pavement, staring down the full weight of the prospect of actually having killed a person in an unconsidered spate of rage, is very much a panicked teenager about it, scrambling for a way to walk it back.

Which, independent of the specifics of whether this particular asshole had it coming, is the problematic element of this that generalizes- that superheroism in this world is a system that puts the social license to use concrete-shattering power in the hands of a kid with the judgement and attitude of someone scheming up ways to dodge curfew. She's done this before, she's gonna keep doing this, she's gonna keep being two-faced about it with her public-facing golden-girl image. But she wasn't wrong to be angry. And the fact that this is the kind of thing she gets angry about is hard to separate from later beats where she tries to do right by people, hard to separate from her willingness to put herself on the line against Endbringers and the Slaughterhouse 9. It's a bad situation, a horrible system that's guaranteed to incentivize bad behavior, they shouldn't be assigning any of this shit to a 17-year-old. But later on, when things go south for her, the seeds are planted so that she can retain audience sympathy in a way that she likely wouldn't be able to if this story was a banal hatswap, with unfairly maligned "villains" who do no real wrong against supervillains who happen to call themselves superheroes.

[sarahjacobs]

“If I’ve done my job right, it makes a statement that’s bigger than the newsies,” [Fierstein] said. “It’s about a bunch of kids changing the world, about handing over the world to a new generation.”

[source]

i find this quote fascinating because fierstein seems to imply that the 92 film didn’t “[make] a statement that's bigger than the newsies,” which is why he changed the framing of the strike from being about the rich vs the poor to the young vs the old. from a class struggle to a generational divide. and i really want to take this opportunity to think through newsies through a politically nihilist lens, keeping in mind that a) i don't think the film is a perfect political text either, nor do i believe such a thing is possible, and b) this is a springboard of sorts to critique a broader pattern of how leftist movements and history are represented and talked about.

katherine often unfairly catches a lot of flak when this thematic overhaul is critiqued, but the issue doesn’t lie in katherine’s inclusion. it’s more about how she was written to say things like “their mistake is they got old,” in conjunction with how the writers cut out every adult ally who wasn’t medda and roosevelt (and slotted in hannah to replace seitz as the sole advisor who pushes back against the price hike). denton was cut, of course. and sure, the trolley workers still serve as inspiration for the newsie strike, but we don’t actually see them like we did in 92. mayer, who is similarly used as a reason to strike (“if your father had a union, you wouldn’t be out here sellin’ papes right now”) but isn’t shown. the mention of his overwhelming support for the strike was also cut.

it’s even in the little things. compare and contrast the small moment in which, after denton bails the newsies out, a waiter tries to refuse when denton gives him money to cover their food expenses, to how on broadway, jacobi still charges two cents for seltzer, then shoos the newsies away to make room for paying customers.

(also i would be remiss if i didn’t at least briefly talk about how sarah was cut entirely, not even a passing mention reserved for her. and while her potential was never fully realized in 92, the fact that sarah, a child laborer who worked in the garment industry, helped produce and distribute the newsies banner feels significant to me in further marking the transition from a purely newsie strike to a more generalized children’s strike.)

additionally, more dialogue and lyrics that criticize adults were written in. and to be fair, there’s a trace of this in 92, as they sing, “and the torch is passed,” as well as “and the old will fall / and the young stand tall” in twwk (i believe these are the only instances of this). but on broadway, it is wayyy more recurring and explicit. i’m not going to list them all out because the only instance i actually want to talk about in depth is this —

ROOSEVELT: (recognizing this historical moment) Each generation must, at the height of its power, step aside and invite the young to share the day. You have laid claim to our world and I believe the future, in your hands, will be bright and prosperous.

— which is a deeply revealing line, one that shows the progressivist heart of the broadway production. and by progressivism, i mean the myth that history is a linear story of progress, and no matter what, we are always marching towards a brighter future. as bædan argues, politics revolve around futurity, which revolves around the image of the Child — think of how often children are evoked in politics as an unassuming, blank slate that deserve unique protection from evil. in left wing spaces, this is often expressed in the desire to improve the world for future generations; “the future is kid stuff,” as lee edelman claims.

but the Child, futurity, and progressivism are all problematic — it's a kind of cruel optimism. these ideas ask people to be content with horrifying conditions today, and with bitterly disappointing reformism, because progress is slow while simultaneously being certain. and yet the future, and the utopia it promises, is always hovering on the horizon… but never within reach. all of this points to a general “[misrecognition of] promise as an achievement.”

i would also argue that anything that uncritically valorizes youth movements, or the Youth more generally, plays into this. and don’t get me wrong, youth liberation is a real thing, and the age of the newsies and katherine does play a role in how they’re perceived (“i'm young, i ain't stupid”). but resistance is always delegitimized, most often by discounting them as violent, illegal, or outside agitators... and flatly rendering the conflict of newsies into a matter of age obfuscates precisely what they are struggling against — complex power structures that privilege the upper class and men. as mayer and the trolley workers show, it doesn’t really matter if they’re kids or adults, the newsies would still be crushed under the heel of the boss because they’re workers, doubly so because they’re poor.

and being young, just like the future, doesn’t guarantee anything, least of all a kind of politic. young people aren’t exempt from engaging in and replicating harmful dynamics. many are privileged in some way — because of their whiteness, class, gender, etc — or they’re desperate to attain privilege. and as a result, they have a vested interest in the uninterrupted existence of varying systems of domination, rather than its abolition. take the delanceys, who are around jack’s age, and yet they’re actively involved in breaking the strike. their age doesn’t automatically guarantee their allyship; as hired muscle, or “rent a cops,” they act in favor of protecting capital and the state, as all cops do.

too often movements populated by young faces are turned into feel good spectacles of how “the kids are alright,” that these so called revolutionaries are going to be the leaders of tomorrow, and how the future therefore looks “bright and prosperous,” to borrow roosevelt’s words. but implicit in this messaging is not only the continuance of the current social order, which is fucked and rotten to the core and needs to be destroyed, but the Youth assimilating and integrating into these systems.

take a look at how the skills jack used to rebel (his charisma and art) were met with repression at first but praised and rewarded at the end.

PULITZER: (to JACK) I can’t help thinking… if one of your drawings convinced the governor to close The Refuge, what might a daily political cartoon do to expose the dealings in our own government back rooms?

it’s worth noting the framing of this job offer — jack is not only being given a chance to climb the professional ladder, but he's specifically being hired to use his artistic skills for what essentially amounts to activism. and i use the term activism critically; it packages resistance, something anyone can do, into a specialized/professionalized role, a class of people separate from ordinary people. this makes it similar to a job, or, in jack's case, an actual salaried position. and as “give up activism” points out, all of this renders activism an “accepted form of dissent.”

additionally, jack using the world as an outlet for his discontent with the current state of affairs automatically defangs him. after all, how much social change can jack really push for in the inherently exploitative context of a worker-boss relationship? how effective can jack really be when his ideas are mediated to the public via a company like the world, which ordered a news blackout of the strike and used its wealth and power to violently crackdown on the newsies? that concerns itself with whether or not its papers are marketable to the masses and therefore profitable? anything jack publishes will have to go through a process of approval, filtered through a boss who derisively calls roosevelt a socialist, then a communist. this means jack can continue to publish his drawings, continue his activism, so long as he’s not threatening the interests of the world. what a huge constraint!

more broadly speaking, integration and assimilation can be seen in the recurring idea of power being transferred throughout newsies — from “just look around at the world we’re inheriting / and think of the one we’ll create,” to “you’re getting too old, too weak to keep holding on / a new world is gunning for you, and joe, we is too.” and finally, roosevelt claiming that the future “in your hands,” as in, under your leadership, is bright. but i take issue with the very notion of power, of leadership itself. as katherine quotes, “power tends to corrupt,” and while she proposes that corruption can be avoided so long as “[we] stay young forever,” having youthful, friendly faces in positions of power is meaningless when the very systems that facilitated any abuse of power are allowed to persist.

i want to close this out with an excerpt from serafinski's blessed is the flame:

The “progress of society” might be better described as the “evolution of systems of power,” and as Bædan reminds us: “any progressive development can only mean a more sophisticated system of misery and exploitation.”

think of the differences and similarities between the 1899 that newsies portrays and where we stand now. how history has been an unceasing transfer of power between generations, by virtue of the previous one dying out. and yet misogyny still prevails in the workforce and in everyday life, workers remain exploited, police continue to be employed against any social unrest, and the prison industrial complex has only expanded. have we really improved?

[drop-dead-dropout]

Fuck's a pro shipper?

We've got a new one boys try not to scare em off /j

Okay but seriously, I'm more than happy to explain. I assume that if you're asking this question you're not aware of the proshipper vs antishipper, uh, "conflict", I guess. So, here is what both of those terms mean, to the best of my descriptive abilities:

Antishipper (often just "anti"): someone who vaguely believes that consuming problematic fiction (usually specifically problematic sexual fiction like lolicon or incest) is either a true reflection of them as a person or a corrupting force that will cause them to play out these desires in real life, onto real people. Basically, if you read age gap, you touch real kids in real life or secretly want to.

Proshipper (sometimes "profic"): someone who does not believe the above, and believes that fiction is not the same as reality because it doesn't harm anyone and therefore people should be left alone as long as you have no reason to believe that they would ever do something like that irl. Often hand in hand with things like anti censorship, kink positive, etc, though being a proshipper does not necessarily mean you have a problematic ship or kink yourself (example: me).

You're probably asking this question because you saw me day in my bio that I am a proshipper. I've tried to stay neutral in this initial description, but obviously I probably didn't manage to be completely unbiased considering that I believe myself to be right (most people do) so if you want to ask further questions after this that's perfectly fine. That being said:

Why am I a proshipper?

So, to understand this, let's first look over the issues within both communities— every group has issues, after all.

What problems do proshippers have?:

- sometimes 4chan assholes co-opt the label "proshipper" just because they're lolicons, even though there's good evidence to suggest that they would do or even have done criminal sexual acts in real life, or that they possess actual csam (child sexual abuse material, a term being used in favor of "cp" these days as porn implies consent). Proshipping has nothing to do with the harmful idea that you should be allowed to exploit and abuse real children.

- there are still many gray areas which proshippers themselves don't agree on. For example: I've seen a bunch of arguments about if writing fanfiction of live action shows or movies changes the equation. The general consensus of proshippers is that writing fanfiction of a character played by a child actor is definitely a more delicate situation and should not be sexual as it's inextricably tied to the image of a real child, but there are others who believe differently.

- I'm genuinely struggling to come up with more of these. Um, sometimes lolicons are really shitty people, like in point 1. This isn't SUPER relevant though cause in reality the overlap between predominantly queer or female proshippers and Reddit incels who just wanna jerk off to a petite anime girl is pretty small, though I'm sure it exists somewhere .

Now, what problems do antis have? (Fair warning, this is gonna sound even more "biased" but I hope my logic is still sound from the outside :p):

- I don't have any statistics on this (haven't exactly been many research papers on fandom drama), so you're going to have to trust me when I say that antis are absolutely NOTORIOUS for extreme harassment campaigns. The first time I was exposed to the word "antishipper", it was attached to a story of a former animator committing suicide because antis had gotten them fired by "exposing" their porn alt on Twitter and they could no longer afford medication for their disability. So, hell of an intro!

- their opinions are, in pretty basic ways, not backed by science or even practical common sense. The human brain can distinguish between fiction and reality after around age four or five

and people certainly aren't trying to hand nsfw content to children that age so I think it's safe to say that the people who are reading these things won't be "confused" by them or whatever. Also, even just using your brain and talking to these people, you find out most of them project onto the YOUNGER character.

- they claim to support victims but often simply don't. I won't keep dragging threats into the spotlight because I know there are probably antis who aren't as violent, but it's honestly astonishing to me how often they jump straight to wishing death and terrible things on people, and this has included more than once telling a rape victim they hope they get assaulted again just because they're a proshipper. See, a lot of these "taboo" sexual fantasies like age gap and incest actually themselves stem from a traumatic experience, and any therapist will tell you that fiction is a much healthier way to explore intrusive thoughts and urges than more dangerous coping mechanisms like self harm or substance abuse. And when confronted with this, in my experience and many others', antis will simply ignore that fact or say that the therapist is some sort of evil enabler.

-the general cognitive dissonance of believing an incest fanfiction will make you "forget" that incest is bad vs being fine with horror movies and slashers speaks to a deeper and honestly kind of worrying anti-sex mindset. I'm not sure I'm qualified to tackle this particular topic, but I definitely agree that it's a thing; after all, I have no idea how else those two things could coexist.

Anyways, I'd like to close this off by saying not everyone is as crazy opinionated as I am, I'm just autistic and like talking lol. A lot of people who id as proshippers just have a sort of minding their own business, ship-and-let-ship mentality, and a lot of antis are unfortunately just teenagers who were told proshipper = evil pedophile groomer and thus they put "proship dni" in their bios just cause they don't know and don't really care what it means. It is undeniable that many antis are kids themselves, and that does worry me, because fandom drama (especially Twitter fandom drama) is dangerous and vitriolic and also they're putting extremely serious threats on their digital footprints at the tender age of 14! But whatever, I'm not their parents, that's just my worry. Sorry for rambling this long lol, I wouldn't blame you if you dropped out halfway through but this is basically my summary of this whole thing. Do with this knowledge what you will! Or, you know, don't! I'm not a cop!

[jackgoodfellow]

"Grace" here is being used not in the Christian sense, but rather to broadly refer to the incredible power of human kindness, patience, and love. ❤

High-res closeups:

high-res full image (Google Drive link)

Flower language (or at least the flower language I am using):

Forget-me-nots: these little blue flowers are symbols of memory and remembrance, as well as true love, devotion, and, occasionally, senility

Baby's breath: these tiny white flowers symbolize new beginnings, everlasting love, freedom from corruption, happiness, and thankfulness

Dandelions: A cursory google search says these flowers represent "hope, healing, and resilience," which is apt. But I've included them here as a reference to their symbolism in Fionna & Cake. In this illustration, the field of dandelion puffs that Simon wakes up in at the end of the show has become a field of yellow dandelion flowers.

More analysis, if you're into that kind of thing:

1. I'm never going to get over the fact that Simon saved Marceline for no other reason than to save a child who needed his help, and in doing so - in showing up for his adopted daughter not just once but constantly and for YEARS - he basically saved the world. I think it was a brilliant move to use the narrative to further validate his actions in "The Star" episode of Fionna & Cake.

Marceline is the narrative opposite of Dean and Sam Supernatural.

2. Kindness has a way of spreading and coming back to us in ways we could never predict, which is one reason why I'm ALSO never going to get over how Simon saving Marceline eventually led to Marceline convincing Finn and Jake (and BMO and even Bubblegum) to be more empathetic to the Ice King, who becomes way safer and happier once he is not isolated in his madness.

Finn's kindness towards Simon, both before and after being cured, is a huge deal to me. It's a vital part of his character growth, and I like that Fionna had a parallel moment of growth with the Candy Queen.

Like, yes, it is big and important that Betty saved Simon. But what she couldn't do is love him in his madness. She was unable to love him if it didn't also cure him, and this destroyed her.

And so it is beautiful to me that because of Marcy and her friends, Simon was not left to suffer alone in the darkest depths of his senility. And I really love all the ways the show demonstrates how this deeply affected him even if it didn't make him remember who he was.

I believe this kindness shown to Ice King led to him having the confidence to stand up for himself and accidentally save the world AGAIN when Betty tries to kill everyone to "save" Simon in the Elementals finale because GOD FORBID WOMEN DO ANYTHING.

(Betty is our problematic Queen, and I absolutely love how she's written. The CW could NEVER. The MCU would sooner DIE. 90% of all prestige dramas can only DREAM of having such a complex and dynamic female character.)

3. And finally, there is that most recent and possibly most vital instance of grace of all in Simon's story: the kindness, patience, and forgiveness that he finally learns to start showing to himself.

Simon's is a tale of people being kinder than they have to be and the way that changes everything. I am extremely grateful that his story culminates in him learning that kindness and self-sacrifice are NOT the same thing, and that he deserves his own kindness as much as if not more than everyone else.

[mhsdatgo]

do you like Aemond ?

Henlo anon <3

Depends which Aemond we're talking about 😭😭😭 Book!Aemond had me clutching my pearls like how can someone be so infuriatingly bad at the job he was nearly at his bro's throat for is so over me like I wanted to curbstomp him so bad. No you don't get it I was tweaking every time that bitch boy's name popped up.

Show!Aemond?? Much better. He's interesting and intriguing, there is so much to his character that despite being left unexplored can be filled in if you're creative enough. His dynamic with every character is worth analysing, he steals the spot in almost every scene he's in (if this was the showrunners' goal then I'd say they succeeded) he's one of the characters I'm the least disappointed in.

I DO feel like he's about to fall into the unnecessary shock value hole like many characters before him and it feels like a slap to the face to be honest 😭 I've got quite mixed feelings about shock value as a whole like there are some instances where I praise it but you'll never see me doing so with shock value in HOTD specifically. It is all linked to sexual traumas somehow and either don't make sense or look more like rage (and problematic fans) bait than shock value.

For example since we're talking about Aemond, we could talk about how he seems to have developed this morbid Oedipus complex (a child's unconscious attraction towards the mother) towards Alicent. Literally the only thing that's missing is the hostility towards the father who is cold in his grave by this point and he's not even worth bringing up. It (supposedly) manifests through Aemond's feeling of entitlement to Alicent's forgiveness, which he doesn't get and thus takes to calling her BY NAME and a fool. Apparently guilt is something Aemond feels only when he's sure Alicent is willing to forgive him, love him and cherish him no matter what he's done. This is a version of Aemond that is so out of touch with reality that he cannot for the life of him comprehend when he's gone too far. (or better, HE DOES, he's absolutely sure the answer to his "I messed up" will always be "I forgive you and I'll move on". When that doesn't happen and Alicent is indeed chilly because he indeed went too far, his guilt turns to bitterness.)

Do we even know what brought him to develop such a mentality?? Is it because, in his eyes, Alicent has always been the one to defend him from whoever? Because we as viewers know for a fact that is NOT TRUE. Like I'm sorry I'm saying this as an Alicent lover but I heard her say the following phrase with my own ears:

"You may cuff him about as you wish at home, but in the world, we must defend our own."

There are A LOT of implications here. The main one being that image is the most important thing to her and should something like Aegon becoming the ringleader of a pack that is SET on treating Aemond like shit come out, it would soil the family's image. Doesn't mean this cannot continue as long as it isn't known. One could argue that it's not like Alicent could know how much of a toll the bullying was taking on Aemond but the way the whole instance of him going to his mother was treated tells me it wasn't the first time, and that therefore, she pretty much knew.

Moreover, that's her child covered in dirt and ash crying about how he was humiliated before the whole Dragonpit, there are no subtleties, there is no way to be mistaken. But that's beyond the point.

What kind of sick fuck came up with this jealousy? Entitlement? How to call it? That Aemond feels towards Alicent and what good/efficient does it do to either of their characters. That's the question, and the answer is NONE THAT'S RIGHT. Doesn't make sense, and was added in because they just wanted more sick fuckery in the show. (because Dyana's rape and future arc isn't enough)

Moving on to the other greatest problem I have with Aemond's characterization: THE INFAMOUS BROTHEL SCENE. COMING UP ON YOUR SCREENS IN A FEW HOURS. ASKERS: NONE.

OOOOUFFFHHHHHHH I've got so many problems with this scene. First of all, what kind of coping mechanism is that? I'm fully convinced this scene is made for nothing else other than fanservice because the implications are nasty. He likes older women, that's fine, valid, relatable and all, but WHY make it the consequence of yet another sexual trauma?

If the streets are right the woman that is cradling him as he lies in her lap naked is the brothel madam that is seen in ep. 8 "The Green Council" (Michelle Bonnard)

Which may or may not be woman he was brought to by his brother at the age 13 to be sexually assaulted by. Look, having Aegon bring his 13 year old brother to engage in sex he's clearly not an enthusiastic party in was already a bad choice, it felt like another bad quality given to Aegon the showrunners didn't know what to do with. But their ADAMANCE on making some kind of subplot out of this because you added it, why the fuck would you forget it? Feels so forced and makes me feel the topic should've stayed that way, unexplored.

Now his relationship with Alys is going to feel like a trauma response too! And that's if they don't go with the "Alys bewitched Aemond and brought him to his death" storyline. (Honestly would be better at this point)

When Aemond and Madam first meet on screen (supposedly for the first time since that nightmare of a birthday) Aemond is clearly CLEARLY uneasy. So fucking uneasy. And it's in the script too:

[creds: @darksvster]

It's something neither her or him have forgotten, and clearly a weak point for Aemond (understandably so.) Yet apparently, in season 2, we'll see him in the arms of the same woman AGAIN! CUDDLED UP LIKE A BABY EVEN!!!

I'm projectile vomiting so hard the recoil throws me out the window and rolling on the road below. There are problems here. A LOT of problems. Who decided it would be good? WHO?

So basically yep. Aemond's characterization appeared solid up until this new season, it seems. There's much more to cover up and I'm ready to RANT about everything I will be seeing on screen but things are looking grim. I just hope I won't have to watch Aemond come back to the woman that traumatized him for more than five minutes at best.

Thanks for the ask anon <3

[anchesann0]

Shugo Chara is better than Miraculous Ladybug

My opinion that I wanted to put out there. Clearly Miraculous Ladybug was heavily inspired by Shugo Chara that came out years before Miraculous Ladybug and the manga is better than the anime.

Mind you, everything I say is about the Miraculous series NOT the movie.

I just had to get this off my back since it's been bothering me for a while. Over the years, there are a lot of similarities between Shugo Chara & Miraculous

similarities:

MC that heal some form of corrupted spirits

little fairies that support main character in multitudes

black cat boy counterpart/love interest

dream prince that MC admires

But it goes even further into sometimes disturbingly minute details:

MC loves fashion

MC is shy, only confident in counterpart

MC has lucky symbols associated with her

Has unlucky black cat as counterpart

MC and black cat boy have artifacts that help them and others transform (highlighted in SC manga)

Artifact is given by a mentor (Tsukasa & Wang Fu)

dream prince crush only likes hero counterpart

Cat boy doesn't feel free due to family circumstances

cat boy has one missing parent

cat boy has substitute parent

Spirit corruption happens to someone experiencing a level of doubt

MC is a ms. fixit (Su/Amulet Clover only)

side characters have some action

Spirit corruption can be dumb (SC anime more than manga high-key)

It's disturbingly similar to me. Yes, I know inspiration is not plagiarism. And I normally wouldn't care of this since nothing is original in the world of art, but what irks me is that the product (MLB) SC inspired wasn't done well. It's not to say SC isn't problematic with age gap and child abandonment or that MLB is awful, but... there are problems in MLB that SC just did better.

First: Show not tell

SC did a lot of show, not tell. From the image alone, you can see that Amu loves fashion. She always had a different outfit or altered her uniform (since Japan enforces uniforms). And there was a purpose to it. Her fashion was a form of expression that she struggled with. How much of herself could she show without being judged? She herself struggled with change, and her clothes reflected that. It also reflected how she didn't know how to best connect who she was inside and express in a way that leave her feeling vulnerable to society's criticism.

Marinette, from France with no enforced uniforms, wore the same thing everyday. Only her room expressed that she loved fashion. That and the episode with the hat that had her signature. We also only got that she loved it. And you know, anyone could love whatever they loved just because, but as a story, it didn't really make sense on why it was a big deal.

To me, unfortunately, I saw her love of fashion as a connection to her crush, the model Adrien. And at that point, she could've been anything else, like a photographer or a fellow teen model. (I haven't watched it in a while, so maybe I'll eat my words.) The message of that for young girls so far isn't that great.

Second: Corruption

(Manga mostly) SC had pretty understandable reasons for corruption. A girl was moving to a different country, so she felt scared and overwhelmed about learning a new culture, making new friends. A girl thought her dreams of being a ballerina were over from an ankle injury. A man lost his dream after his mentor (the only person who supported his dreams) retired as a teacher to care for his sick wife. As an adult, I liked that SC showed all the very real circumstances, fears and insecurities that come with trying to fulfill your dream. Yeah, some in the anime were silly like the ramen one, but there are plenty of others that still resonate with me. Some of the motivational speeches that Amu gives do make sense.

^^THESE WORDS^^ have healed something in me and motivated me towards my new dream. And I'm saying this as an adult whose changing career goals after getting my college degree and work experience.

For Miraculous, there were some good reasons, like Stormy Weather not getting the job. But I think it's safe to say there were more weird and shallow reasons for some that outweigh the reasonable ones. Like the pigeon, the kid who wants to play, your friends not coming to a party... You know.

Were there some silly ones for Shugo Chara, of course, were there more understandable ones than silly ones. Yeah. When the anime caught up to the manga (that was in development while the anime was running) the producers put a reasonable OC villain Lulu deMorcef (approved by manga creators Peach-Pit) that preyed on people who weren't sure what their dream was. Season 1 was filled with people/victims who were working for their dreams but met roadblocks like performance anxiety, AI replacement (I see you corporate), and the ever-present doubters of society). Season 2 filler villain was literally victims of uncertainty, being pushed to choose a career course at a young age. Some weren't sure of taking over their parents' flower shop, some weren't sure they could handle the downsides of being a teacher. It makes sense to adults and children. Plus, they're making kids aware of these trials at a young age, like excuse me, thank you for treating kids with respect as thinking, developing beings.

Third: Romance

The romance. There is so much to be said about the love square of MLB and the friends to lovers trope (which is not my favorite). but at the end of the day, my biggest problem with the romance in Miraculous is that it dragged other people into it.

It was already bad that they liked each other's alter egos. It was worse that after so long (at least until the movie), they did not recognize who the other was behind the mask. It's a very problematic message to me, even now. Because shallow romance isn't love, and I really think that's important to say in today's dating atmosphere of swipes. Not only is it shallow, but Luka and Kagami got mixed up in their confused feelings. In their doubt, the two heroes said "I'm going to figure out my feelings by dating someone who has sure feelings for me. Maybe I can learn to love them." instead of "I'm going to focus on myself, be more confident in my skills, then see if my crush enriches my life."

No, they had to drag innocent people in along the way. My heart felt for Luka when he discovered Chat Noir and Ladybug's identity. You can literally pinpoint when his heart breaks.

SC, the predecessor, was better than this. Tadase, who fell in love with Amulet Heart the counterpart. By this time, Amu has been between two boys. Dream Prince Tadase and Cat Boy Ikuto.

BIG HEALTHY DIFFERENCE:

Tadase admits his mistake. He admits that he liked an ideal version of her, and that he liked one-fourth of who she was. He owns up in not seeing her for who she really was and wants a chance to make it right by getting to know the real her.

In turn, Amu admits that she liked the IDEA of Tadase just as much as Tadase liked the counterpart of her. She is incredibly aware of how shallow that is by the end of the series.

We, the audience, see her real connection with Ikuto, who understands her, the real her. Both Amu and Ikuto have been plagued by what other people say about them, and when they interact with each other, it comes from a place of "What do your actions say about you?" Not to mention, they met each other literally yelling, crying, and awkward, but still connect and are attracted to each other.

SC manga did not hesitate to let us know that the best relationship is the real one not the ideal one.

Don't get me wrong, the love square is new, unique, and different, making it a refreshing value of entertainment, however what does it say about how young people should approach doubt in relationships?

SC gave an answer. Go for the real, not the ideal.

Fourth: The villains

Straight up. One of the things I feel like MLB did right was Hawkmoth's motivation for corrupting all these people: to bring back the person who really mattered to him, Emilie.

Dark, romantic, tragic.

And it makes sense. Society can suck. It's impersonal, and not always fulfilling to just serve in society. There's that one person who enriches your life with happiness and laughter, who'll go with you when things get rough and hard, and will be there at your most vulnerable.

And then they're taken away from you by something no one can control.

He made it very clear that Emilie is that person to Gabriel and no one in society can replace her, that's why he doesn't mind destroying buildings and stadiums, etc. He's the foil to Marinette who loves everybody and wants to save everybody.

One of the failings of Shugo Chara is the big boss, who turned out to be a kid who lost his parents, suffered neglect from his grandfather, and his grandfather trying to get his grandson pretty things so he wouldn't have to deal with the emotional fall out of loss. AKA He was someone who didn't want to change, but this really could've been done so much better.

HOWEVER, I LOVED THE ARC BETWEEN AMU & UTAU

To me, that was the real creme de la creme of foils opposing each other, and how neither was really wrong or right. They are next to Ash Ketchum and Paul foil rivalry from Pokemon.

Utau is someone who values her own dreams. She is someone who thrives and improves because of competition. The best often come from people challenging others and themselves to be better. For example, Disney consumer make their own Mickey ears. Disney responds by expanding Mickey ear designs. How do consumers respond? By making more unique, possibly moving, designs. And it keeps growing and expanding.

Utau understands that people have the same dream as her, but not everyone gets to stand under the spotlight. Not without effort and struggle and endurance to keep going even when it's hard. She works hard for it and wants it so bad that when others fall to corruption she reasons that they just didn't want it as much as her.

The best kpop groups, athletes, and artisans thrive in doing better than others or better than who they were before. Utau represents the competition between dreams that create progress for something better. Progress is made by understanding something needs to be improved.

Bad part of consistently endorsing competition, the struggle to remain on top and going too far to remain there. Which is ultimately what Utau does, losing sight of why she was there in the first place and struggling with a sense of becoming a sell out.

Amu is someone who believes that everyone's dreams. She, herself, is insecure, doubts if she's making the best decision, and can only move forward doing her best. Because sometimes that's all you can do. She believes that every dream has a place, and destroying those niche dreams can create more harm than good.

Real world example: a person literally wanted to make a system that could better identify bear claws, next thing people knew, the same system could better identify cancer cells.

Right now, people are making SignAloud gloves, a glove machine that voice sign language so when a person signs, someone who doesn't know sign language can hear what that person is saying.

All niche, not focused upon, and often not supported. But when people do, amazing things can be brought into the world. That's what Amu represents in healing those dreams. Because to crush it would create an equal amount of stagnation where we would never enjoy this progress because someone else crushed it.

She has her own pitfalls too because of this quality. Amu spreads herself out too thin trying to help everybody, which eventually leads to her getting hurt too. She gives in too easily when things don't go the way she wants and that causes her to lose her diamond egg to Utau.

Amu and Utau literally force each other to grow.

Utau makes Amu realize that she needs to work on herself. Amu then proceeds to challenge herself to be more honest when admitting she lost her egg. Amu steps up in healing others' dreams while confronting people who make her uncomfortable. Amu even learns how to get the fuck back up instead of feeling sorry for herself as seen by Amu reconnecting with Dia.

Amu makes Utau realize that not everything is a competition. She doesn't have to compete for love (her own Shugo Chara and her brother's love). Utau remembers the core reason of why she loved to sing. Through Amu, she learns there is power in vulnerability and healing (by finally being able to transform with El and accessing El's healing ability).

Amu learning how to be resilient from Utau and Utau learning that there's strength in softness through Amu.

What a redemption arc! Women helping women grow? Showing how both ways of living can be correct and wrong at the same time? Beautiful!

Chloe from Miraculous did not do this for Marinette. I don't really think Kagami did this for Marinette either.

Fifth: Side Characters

MLB has sweet side characters. Luka and Kagami are the real ones. Alya and Nino are cute. But unfortunately, they never really get their moments in the spotlight or character growth.

Alya still reports. Nino is still best friends with Adrien. Everyone sort of stays the same. If not that, they get into relationships with each other. I truly see no lie in this statement.

Whereas, for SC, I love Rima and her moment of standing up to her parents who have been keeping her locked away due to the trauma of kidnapping. What a great exploration of seeing the aftereffects of trauma and how it affects the victim and the people around the victim. We see it in how Rima has a hard time making friends, in how her parents fight about who's fault it is, and how everyone holds onto it due to the remnants of love. And after all this Rima shows what people/children should and shouldn't do.

Instead of hiding away from the world, she wants to participate in it. Yeah the world hurt her, but she found people that makes her overcome her fear of the outside world. Her parents want to continue hiding her away, they continue to act in fear and love, which ends up hurting her more. Society will still exist even if it upsets us, and she says I'm going out there, even if it scares me because losing the people I love is scarier.

A girl full of bravery. Bless her heart and dreams.

I love Kairi confronting himself and taking responsibility cause men holding themselves accountable is chef's kiss.

Not to mention the unfortunately brief gender identity crisis of Nagihiko/Nadeshiko who saw himself as both man and woman and the internal struggle of how limiting gender roles actually are. Women can play basketball and men can dance. Period.

We all know this king^ didn't need to change.

I just hate how some arcs were so brief in the manga and anime because it was just too ahead of its time. I felt like they really could have done more but Peach Pit was really wrapping it up considering they were making other mangas synonymously with Shugo Chara. I get it.

Sixth: Main Character growth

The root of all this ranting: Character growth.

Ladybug's goals was to save the city from Monarch. That sort of bleeds into Marinette's personal life. Outside of Ladybug, her personal goal is to be a designer, graduate (I'm assuming), and get closer to her crush, Adrien. A lot of focus is her getting closer to Adrien. A lot of the series advances on her beating Hawkmoth and thinking about how to handle his growing power.

Outside of the hero goal and crush goal, I see her becoming a designer, but I don't see many episodes of her growing as a designer other than the hat episode.

The movie in gaining confidence is the exception. Which is really sad that the actual source of Ladybug didn't do this.

Amu's character arc from beginning to end has been her internal struggle to cope with change. She wanted to change people's perceptions of her so she could make friends, but she also wanted to be comfortable changing (which is impossible). And this is without the love triangle and the hero has to heal and fight bad guys. A lot of the series is her struggling with change.

It's struggling to fit in after transferring. Then she finds a place of friends among the guardians, which she hoped for.

But that changes too. She struggles making new friends out of Rima and Kairi. She eventually does while losing her new egg to Utau.

After learning to be resilient from Utau and regaining her egg, she struggles changes in relationship dynamics with Ikuto and Tadase

After that's sorted out, she has to deal with Ikuto leaving to chase his dream. Along with the amusement park being taken down.

After that, she has to struggle with the change of losing her Shugo Chara and accepting how her dreams will always be a part of her, even if she can't see it (wait here while I cry my fucking heart out)

SC provides the message that CHANGE IS CONSTANT. And that's ok. Because you're resilient enough to overcome those changes. Because you can change without losing parts of yourself. Because people who love you will come back to you.

I don't know what message you really get from Miraculous or Marinette. Cause we have Peter Parker sacrificing his personal life to save others. We've seen that in Batman, Wonder Woman and Steve, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, etc... It might just be the same message, just delivered... well.

I don't know what MLB is delivering about romance, I don't know what's it delivering about dreams, or saving the city and seeing the first episode to the most recent, I don't know how she's grown. Other than lying to Adrien about his father. Yeesh.

SC isn't better in terms of things, especially fathers. Again, I acknowledge the questionable age gap, but the other concern is the cat boy's father abandoning his family to pursue music. Yeesh. Souko should not have waited for him. They were allowed to marry because cat boy's dad agreed to take over the company (Nepotism and refusing female daughter to take over is problematic). Dad leaves with favorite violin after father-in-law dies. I'm like ma'am, "Your husband left you with two kids the day your father died."

Obviously flawed background. Could've been better. Ikuto & Tadase's background could've been conducted better with more reasonable stakes. Again, a lot of problems as the story was trying to wrap up so it's aight.

While Miraculous Ladybug, as far I know, is still sort of going on with this unfortunate lack of growth as a series. The movie was pretty great.

All in all: So many of my feelings truly stem from the fact that if Miraculous was inspired by Shugo Chara, then I don't think it was done well. To the point where I think MLB is a bit offensive to skew the messages of SC. If it isn't, then MLB is clearly similar and doesn't match the lesson/philosophy of growth.

Heartcatch precure (And certain precure series like Yes Pretty Cure 5 Go! Go!) happens to be a similar and better story. Corrupted hearts, heroines, surprisingly handsome men. Some hints at relationships.

Princess Tutu, Magical Lyrical Girl Nanoha, have the best form of storytelling and unexpected loves.

[bonny-kookoo]

I have a feeling that yoongi liked her from the start

Like they'd start having conversation with just eye contact 💞💞

It's clear to staff that Yoongi is the most problematic member when it comes to you. Mainly because he doesn't particularly care much for the complaining or even angry comments of staff and management whenever he 'kidnaps' you- he just shakes it off, doesn't let it touch him, does what he wants whenever he wants.

In fact, if anything, he makes a game out of it for himself.

To the fans, it's thoroughly amusing to see- how he 'steals you' whenever you're told to sit out of sight somewhere, how he feeds you snacks whenever he can, how he lets you pet his ears and sit on his lap with no embarrassment whatsoever about it. The other bandmembers love it too-

But staff, management? They hate it.

And especially his mentioned 'kidnappings'.

He simply enjoys having you all for himself, and so he's started to take you to his studio with whenever they 'lock you in' in your little apartment at the company building. He's got the keycode from Taehyung, and the backup keys are staying with the wolf too- so no matter what, the rapper always seems to find a way to get his hands on you.

It's gotten to such a state that his studio is now littered with blankets and pillows and snacks specifically for you. It's where you're both laying in right now; you bundled up after showering and getting ready for bed, but Yoongi had been feeling a bit touch starved tonight, so he'd 'stolen' you again to spend some time with you. You're yawning against his chest while he taps away on his phone, hand running up and down your back as he locks the device and holds you properly now.

"Tired?" He wonders, and you nod. "Lets get you to bed then-"

"Stay." You mumble, moving to cling onto him. "Yoongi stay." You almost order, and he chuckles.

"I can't stay honey." He denies calmly. "I gotta go home and shower too. I'm not here tomorrow, remember?" He reminds you, and at that, you cling to him even more, whining in complaint.

You know they're having the weekend off. You know they're only there for you when the cameras are on. You're not stupid, or a child, or whatever they all think you are- you're perfectly capable of understanding that you're just a toy to show off, that you're just there to polish their image. But that doesn't mean that you're not feeding off of any attention you get- especially when it's as kind and gentle as Yoongis. He feels as if he means it, as if he genuinely likes you, doesn't find you weird or stupid or childish or anything bad at all. He treats you like an equal- and it's something you've never experienced before.

"You know what-" he suddenly chimes up, standing up and walking towards his computer to shut it off and to grab his things. "-fuck it." He shamelessly swears, before he takes your hand to help you stand. "You've never gotten to spend a time with the pack, right?" He asks, and you nod. "Well that's no good. How are you supposed to be a part of the pack if you're not with us?" He teasingly complains, watching how you excitedly wag your tail, already buzzing and re-energized it seems at the prospect of staying with all the guys.

If they're already mad if he steals you for an afternoon-

Let's see how mad he can make them if he steals you for an entire weekend.

[kandyzee]

What do you think fionas childhood was like 💓

I HAVE SO MUCH TO SAY thanks for asking :pp.

I used to be a reallly big fiona fan, so I've thought about this a lot.

I imagine fionas upbringing was similar to Debbie's in alot of ways. They both find themselves in problematic relationships, forced to look after their siblings.

Fiona is mentioned to have a LONG sexual history as early as s1, where she's only 21. Given the lack of attention and validation she was getting, I think fiona has been having sex since she was a child. She probably fell into the "mature for her age" group. Her parents were neglecting her, possibly physically abusing her (we've seen Frank hit his kids in the show), and she wasn't able to get academic validation because she had to drop out. It wouldn't surprise me that this led her into having older bfs and stuff like that.

This makes even more sense to me given how she reacts to her siblins minor /adult relationships. Fiona didn't have anyone to tell her that her relationships were wrong, so when she saw her siblings going through the same thing, she saw nothing wrong with it. Like when she says that ned and Ian is "just sex"

We also see that she , like Debbie and a lot of the other female characters, is scared of abandonment. She tells Jimmy Steve that everybody leaves and keeps going back to Jimmy even though she knows he's bad for her because she's desperate for someone to stay. She rushes into relationships, remember when she married someone after like a week of daiting ?? Fiona has a hard time accepting love even though she craves it. She cheats and ruins one of her most stable relationships. I think that all comes from the way she was treated in her romantic relationships as a child. Of course, a lot of her abandonment fear comes from Monica, too.

Okay moving away from guys.

We know fiona ran track in school and that she was really fucking good at it. This was probably one of the most stable things in her life, an activity away from her siblings and the stress of home. Running is a good way to feel in control. I think fiona developed problems around running ? I'm not sure what exactly you would call it. Fiona would push herself too hard on the track so that she was responsible for the aches she felt instead of them being stressed. I can also imagine having an ED around this time. Her siblings are young, so they're struggling even more with money than normal. She starts to skip meals, and eventually, she finds control in what she eats when she's forced away from track.

I imagine fiona to be relatively popular in school, mainly with guys, but she struggles to keep real outside of school friendships. This changes when she meets Kev and V. I think they probably met after she dropped out of school. V is like 23, I think, in the first season and Kevin 25 ish ? I'm not really that sure, but we know fiona didn't go to school with them. Kevin and V helped fiona a lot, and she definitely needed them. They started to help her with the kids, and for once, she had people on her side. Things get better for her when she meets them.

Baby fiona (5-12) was definitely the in ur face demanding respect, kinda kid. She was sassy and always trying to seem as strong as possible. She will haggle prices for anything and isn't afraid to scam and cheat to get what she needs for her family. But I also imagine her being good at acting sweet. She's a great sweet talker. This is a prominent trait Ian has, and I think he got it from his big sister.

Teens, she's all about drama. Boy drama petty teen girl drama, watching reality TV when she can and stealing gossip magazines. I think she latches onto the typical teen girl image hard. She definitely has a short phase of always getting dress coded. I don't think this lasts that look tho.

Same as in the show, she's always got a new job, sometimes working 2 or 3. She's stressed ofc but learns a lot. She has little hacks and tricks for almost any job. She's resistant in the way she will do anything. Nothing is too dirty or hard for her.

Her relationship with Frank is complex. Fionas Frank's favourite, but she's also the oldest and likely the one he takes his anger out on most. When ur someone's favourite, it hurts them even more when they feel you messed up. I don't think Frank was consistent with his abuse, but it was definitely there. Frank was a 'good' dad sometimes. Fiona gets to know Frank when his alcoholism and drug use wasn't at its peak (He gradually gets worse with age) So fiona got more good dad moments but also felt the disappointment harder as she watched him get worse.

Fiona tells lip (pretty sure it's him) that he's always been Monica's favourite in s1, and I think she has always thought that. Later on in the show, u obviously see Ian and debbie are monicas favourites, tho. I don't see Monica and fiona ever being particularly close. Fiona was hit hard when Monica leaves for the first time, Frank's a mess, and now she has the unfortunate job of explaining that she's gone to her siblings. Unlike her younger siblings, who are probably too young to fully understand what's going on, fiona feels the abandonment full force.

Fiona is 4 / 5 yrs older than lip, right? (Their ages confuse me so bad) so she I'm guessing she was always in a different school than him. Correct me if I'm wrong, but if he's in elementary school, she's in high school. Fiona has to miss school to run all over the place and collect her siblings from different places. She might have to be the one to unroll her siblings in school, too, a couple times.

Finally just some random things

She has a purple flip phone at one point that she's super protective of

She loves family movie nights and would try to do as many as possible.

She cried when Debbie was born cause she was so excited to have a sister.

Similarly she cried when Ian was born cause he was a boy and she wanted a sister.

She really wanted a pet when she was young

She has 100s of diary's from yrs and yrs of writing in them (we see Carl read one)

Would always struggle with her hair cause it's curly and v helps her learn how to style it even tho she hardly does

She's the kind of person who finds comfort in sitting on the floor, in the bathroom, bath tub

Had a pink hating phase

Had a collection of different fake IDs by the time she was 16

Definitely got in at least 1 fight in school cause of boy drama

Hated cooking

ANYWAY I love fiona

[welurklate]

In defence of Ron Weasley - or: why Weasley is our King!

I have noticed that in the last decade so-called Ron-bashing has almost become a sport in the Harry Potter fandom, or at least in certain corners of the fandom. And that makes me quite sad, because in my eyes it is unjustified and a product of circumstances that have nothing to do with the canon character. People depict Ron as a laughing stock, a truly incompetent wizard who is nothing but jealous and petty. Even in fanfics where Ron is an adult he rarely outgrows his teenage character. I believe this has to do with a few thing I will get into here.

First and foremost, we have to take a stance and decide if we believe that redemption is possible or not. If you think that once a fruit shows signs of rot it is better to throw out than to salvage it, stop reading here. If you think there are parts that can be saved and possibly restored, you are probably a Draco fan as well 😉 and you're welcome to read on.

So first of all, everything we see the characters do in the books they do as children and teenagers. Adolesence is a time of great changes, physically and psychologically. The prefrontal lobe of our brain still develops until our mid-twenties. It is a time to experiment and to make decisions, even if they are objectively the wrong ones, and to learn from that and to evolve into well-adjusted, open-minded and self-reflecting adults. So it isn’t even necessary to ‘redeem’ oneself for what you did growing up, it is just imperative to evolve. I have been working with teenagers my whole professional life and I am always amazed by what happens between the ages of 10 and 20/25.

So Ron is a child in the first books and an adolescent in the final parts and we actually see him grow and evolve. Not everyone is as perfect as Hermione and we sometimes forget that people can be flawed in small ways (not only in big ways such as ‘oops, I’ve taken the dark mark and commit war crimes’). I think people tend to hate on Ron because of this. He is so normal in his jealousy and his envy. We see a lot of ourselves in him and that is uncomfortable. We turn to fiction to experience the extraordinary in both good and bad, but we rarely want to see our very common shortcomings reflected in the characters. Because then we could just read self-help books and do something about it. But we don’t. We just want to escape reality and enter into worlds where everything is starker in contrast, emotions are deeper and stakes are higher.

And Ron is not such a character. He is a mild grey. He is not the hero, but he is also not the villain. Ambiguity and nuance have very little place in fantasy. But I think that is exactly what makes Ron such a great character and the books (despite JKR’s bigotism) so fascinating.

So what I see people do in fanfiction is to push his character to the extremes – mostly make him an antagonist. Interestingly, this usually occurs in in Dramione or Harmony fics. In Drarry fics or others where Hermione and Ron stay together, he usually gets to grow up into a reasonable and well-adjusted adult. And I get it. I love Hermione and I get what she sees in Ron (stability, a deep understanding, loyalty, common values, a wise mind that complements her academic one etc.). But in stories where we pair Hermione with other people we need to get Ron out of the way. Because we cannot, for the love of Merlin, make Hermione be the problematic one in the relationship (she is the queen of the books - she cannot be touched). So of course we have to make sure that Ron is the reason why their relationship fails. And to make their breakup believable, we antagonize Ron so that there is no chance for them to get back together. From a storytelling viewpoint this makes absolute sense. But it does not do Ron’s character justice. Canon Ron is a truly amazing character. The movies did him dirty and depicted him as the slightly stupid one with the punch lines and this has often clouded our image of him. Book Ron holds much more power in the trio's friendship. He is the one who introduces Hermione and Harry to all things in the Wizarding World. He is smart – even though he is not as zealous as Hermione, he is a good student and a brilliant wizard’s chess player. He is genuine, kind and loyal. I won’t reiterate all the smart things people have said about his character before. If you are interested you can check some good arguments here:

here, here or here

Everything he is and everything he goes through makes him a hero in his own way. He is the character with the biggest development and the biggest potential. He overcomes his own shortcomings again and again to stay by Harry's side. Especially in the last books he struggles, makes decisions he deeply regrets and faces his insecurities.

I could go on and on about this… but leave it at this for now. I hope this makes you see Ron in a better light! Fight me in the comments or sing along my praise of Ron!

tl;dr: Ron is a truly interesting character but the movies and fanon have skewed his image in a negative way.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

[Text: Tell me, what do you think of people actually liking the character development in season 4-5 and the show's treatment of mental health? [Redacted] thinks that and she's the mother of a teenager]

Re liking the show: I generally assume that they have poor taste and/or media literacy.

Re the mental health rep: I generally assume that they're incredibly privileged and/or ignorant.

I'm posting this as an image and not an ask response specifically because I will not participate in fandom drama or shaming. This blog exists specifically so that people can actively choose to engage in my content and so that I can post critical thoughts without dragging their source into some petty fight. So I'm not going to talk about the named individual. Instead, I'll replace them with the show's head writer and talk about him in a similar context.*

He's pretty famously denied that Chloe suffered any abuse, ignoring her obvious neglect, which came from both parents, just in different forms. When you pair that with how the show handles people like Gabe and Jagged Stone, we see a clear pattern of the show ignoring the devastating effects that abandonment and neglect can have on a person, especially if they're a child.

Now you could look at that and say, "The head writer condones abuse! He's a monster!" But I prefer to go the more likely route and assume that he's a privileged middle-class cis white man who has never had to deal with those issues or support someone who has, so he has no idea how to handle them properly or that they even need to be properly handled. There's every chance that he's a loving, kind man and a fantastic father who just happens to not be very good at writing a complex topic that he clearly has no understanding of or desire to learn about. I apply similar logic to fans who share his opinions. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence or ignorance.

And all of the above is assuming that we're talking about someone who thinks that the show is objectively good or that the mental health rep is good, which are big assumptions. It's fully possible to enjoy a piece of media that you know is objectively bad or even "problematic" in some way.

Personal confession time: is Loonatics Unleashed an objectively terrible show that you should never, ever watch? Absolutely. 100%. Are Rev Runner and Tech E. Coyote two of my favorite characters who will live rent free in my head until the day I die? Yep! I pulled up a YouTube highlight real as I was writing this and those dorks still make me smile even though the show is terrible on multiple levels and I know that I'm not alone in that sentiment. Those two clicked with a lot of people for some reason.

A piece of fiction need not be good for you to love it and you don't need to justify your love for a piece of fiction if you're not claiming that it's good. Similarly, people hating that piece of fiction or pointing out flaws in it is not a reflection on you in any way shape or form. You can even agree with their criticism and still love the piece of fiction. This approach to media - loving a thing in spite of its flaws - is normal and healthy and I'd really love to see it make a comeback in younger fandoms.

Like, I cannot emphasize this enough, most fandoms consider it perfectly normal to have lots of fans who are critical of the source or who have even lost interest in the source for one reason or another, but they still like some element of the source enough to want to create/consume fan content for it. These more critical fans arguably make some of the best fan content because looking at canon and saying "That's nice, let me show you how I'd do it" often leads to some of the most complex stories that you'll see in fandom spaces. Stories that can often blow canon out of the water for TV shows and movies since fanfic isn't limited by budgets or studio policies or marketability concerns. Fans who think that the source is perfect tend to just write fluff or romcom type fics, which is not a dig! I love bother of those genres! But woman does not live on fluff alone.

Obviously there's some complexity here because who decides if a show is bad? Saying "it's okay that you like a terrible thing" can certainly sound like an insult and prompt a feeling of needing to defend the thing, which is why I don't fight with fans who like the show. There's really no need to convince them that the thing they like is bad. Do I think it is? Yes. Does it matter if they disagree? No, not really. At worst, they create stories with similar issues and, well, they're not the only ones and fighting with them isn't going to stop them. You're much better off focusing on creating your own good media and trying to get that popular. Heck, even if you made the head writer see all of Miracuous' flaws, it wouldn't change anything. The show is already made.

So, yeah, I don't really assume anything bad about people who think that miraculous is good. I know lots of wonderful people who have terrible taste in media and I'm still friends with them. I just don't take recommendations from them.

It's important to remember that, when you're online in a fandom space, a person is condensed down to a very tiny snapshot of who they are and judging a person solely off of their thoughts regarding a poorly written kids show is a dangerous path to tread. Like, looking at this blog, you might assume that I spend all of my time thinking about miraculous and obsessing over its flaws, which is very much not the case. I actually have this blog specifically so that I don't obsess over miraculous' flaws because I've found that, when something is bothering me, writing it down or talking to someone about it is the best way to stop thinking about it. Even then, most of my posts are reblogs of stuff I come across while browsing my tumblr feed, which is not solely miraculous content. I mostly interact with the show by creating non-salty fanfic that I honestly enjoy writing and find to be a relaxing, positive outlet.

It's human nature to judge and it's totally normal to think that a person's an idiot because of something they post online, but be careful to not lean into those thoughts too hard. At the end of the day, Miraculous is just a stupid kids show that will fade from the popular consciousness a few years after it stops airing. If it and/or the fandom are negatively affecting your mental health, then it's okay to step away for a while or use the block button. It really is your best friend. I enjoy being critical about Miraculous specifically because it's not that important. While I do think that kids deserve better media, I don't think Miraculous is some terrible evil harming the youth. I'm not horrified when a kid watches it, it's just not a show that I'd encourage them to watch and, if the kids was close to me, we'd spend a lot of time talking about the bad things that the show showcases from time to time. There are lots of episodes that are fine and I can think of way worse kids shows. Shows that tell their horrifying morals really well, making a kid far more likely to pick up on them and internalize them.

*Note that I only feel comfortable talking about the head writer like this because he's a public figure with an active social media presence AND because I'm not @ing him. If he was a private person or if he was not a professional creator, then I would not talk about him like this and even in that context I try to avoid it whenever I can. You can think that he's a terrible writer, but he's still a human being and, as far as I'm aware, nothing he's done deserves people harassing him.

I absolutely understand how devastating it can be to see a story you love get ruined by the creative team. The first time that happened to me, the life lesson I came away with was, "I will no longer put my happiness in the hands of another creator. I will enjoy stories, but I will temper my expectations and remember that they're just another human being and it's completely possible that their vision for this seemingly awesome story may end up being terrible."

[nesiacha]

in your opinion, what was the most significant mistake the jacobins ever made? (i tend to like them much more than other factions in the frev, but i still want to know how Problematic my Faves were)

Good question. I'm not sure which period you want to talk about regarding the Jacobins, so let's discuss the one after the fall of Louis XVI's monarchy. I will mainly encompass the Mountain faction.

Regarding tactical errors, according to some historians, including Antoine Resche, a contemporary historian who has made excellent videos on the French Revolution under the name Histony, which can be found on the Veni Vidi Sensi website, leans towards the lack of left-wing unity as one of the errors. And honestly, he's not wrong. Some might think that the elimination of Danton and the Hébertists was a turning point. But it was salvageable (I've already discussed what I thought in one of my posts). Only the Jacobins made the grave mistake of eliminating Chaumette, among others, even though he had refused to participate in an attempt to overthrow the Convention, which showed he was the most reasonable. Keeping him as the prosecutor of the Commune would have appeased some of the sans-culottes. Instead, the Convention has him arrested and executed. I understand that at that time the Convention could not afford an overthrow and was afraid Chaumette might change his mind, but by doing so, they alienated a large part of the sans-culottes. The wave of executions like Gobel or Chaumette was one of the most disastrous moves.

Another one is the non-application of the Ventôse laws, but it is true that some Montagnards blocked this, and the Marais was against these laws.

Also, being a fervent advocate of freedom of expression, there should never have been decrees holding journalists accountable. I don't particularly like Desmoulins, but executing him for his writings… Moreover, it will not prevent opinions from forming and solidifying.

Regarding moral errors: In addition to the travesties of justice I mentioned concerning the Hébertists and the Dantonists, there were other cases. When Girondin deputies were dismissed, most deputies did not want them dead, let alone imprisoned. They were only supposed to remain under house arrest. The problem is, many of them escaped and incited uprisings in the departments, which further exacerbated the already endangered Republic. Despite all I have to reproach them for, some Girondins were honorable people, notably Manon Roland and Vergniaud (even if Vergniaud had an ambiguous attitude, he still remained under house arrest) who stay in Paris. Yet they were judged, condemned to death, and executed along with other Girondins who incited or attempted uprisings and fled Paris. It wasn't even a tactical error; it was unfair.

Another very minor point concerns the Convention entirely, and this is my opinion. Why separate Marie Antoinette from her son? I understand there were royalists in Paris (the assassination of the remarkable Louis Michel Lepeletier by one of Louis XVI's former guards, among other events, will demonstrate this) who would do anything to get their hands on him as Louis XVII, which would have been dangerous. It would have been better to monitor the child's education closely given this context, but why not have strict supervision while leaving him in his mother's care, even though we know her opinions? I don't want to demonize Antoine Simon, executed in Thermidor; he wasn't a brute; he had compassion for the former queen and liked the child, but it's horrible. Being myself a proponent of reforms for jail to ensure the child remains very close to his parents, I protest against this. And the royalists seized upon it to portray an image of an inhumane Republic.

Women's rights were not respected, as I discussed in my post "Women's rights suppressed."

One of the most serious errors was the Prairial Law. When this bill presented by Couthon and later approved by the Committee of Public Safety and voted on by the Convention passed, many innocents suffered. Following the execution of the "Robespierrists," the Convention lied, saying it had not approved it, which was false.

Paradoxically, there was no internal elimination necessary at that time, notably the case of Carnot, who gave orders behind the backs of others to wage a war of conquest, which would have jeopardized the Battle of Fleurus if Saint-Just had not intervened with the order. I don't understand why he wasn't arrested; generals have been executed for less than that. This man doesn't deserve his title as the organizer of Victory, but having eliminated those who had really done the job like Saint-Just, among others, he could claim that title.

I realize I have done a critical job on the Montagnards even though I admire them, so a few lines to rehabilitate them. Most of them refused the irresponsible war of conquest advocated by the Girondins. Finally, fatigue was fatal to them. They put their best efforts into saving France, but most became ill (Couthon, Robespierre; I don't know if Billaud-Varenne was beginning to develop his dysentery or if his illness came after his deportation). Robespierre made a grave mistake by slamming the door on the Committee of Public Safety following a dispute among its members, then a few weeks later making a speech where he designated culprits without naming names (like Fouché, for example), so some wrongly believed they were the ones being designated when they weren't. Fouché and his gang played on this.

I want to say that Jean Clement Martin explained that if the Girondins are seen as victims, it's because they didn't have time to put the Montagnards on the guillotine. There were quite a few assassinations of Montagnard deputies (some think that Barbaroux manipulated Corday to kill Marat, Joseph Chalier was killed in atrocious conditions by the Girondins of Lyon, Isnard's speech). When the Jacobins acted, there was an internal civil war and an external war against the Revolution, plus a depreciated currency. And they saved it. For a while, they tried to accommodate (at least the majority of them) their adversaries. Then the gloves came off. But they remained in democracy, even in the worst moments. The Jacobins supported the abolition of slavery (not just them), and most of the major Jacobin figures fully supported the uprisings by slaves against the colonists.

Napoleon, although praised today for inheriting a better situation thanks to the efforts of his predecessors, through his dictatorial attitudes, betrayal of the Jacobins, and wars of conquest (all the wrong things), left France in a worse state with the return of the Bourbons. Revolutionaries like Marat predicted from the outset of the French Revolution that if the Girondins persisted in declaring war, even if France were victorious, there would be a military dictatorship and subsequently the return of the Bourbons.

All this leads me to think that it was the revolutionaries of the Mountain who were pragmatic and Napoleon the "idealist" in the wrong sense of the term, given his grandiosity and stupid belief (in my opinion) that he could impose hereditary dictatorship, exploit other countries without them retaliating (but that's another story).

Finally, the Jacobins in power were exhausted; they even lacked sleep hours due to their internal schedules. Before the Prairial Law was passed, there was an assassination attempt on Collot, so it was thought that the royalist danger was present. Plus, this law was disfigured by those who presented it; they thought they would only use it against people like Fouché, Carrier, Barras, Fréron, Tallien—des despicable men who dishonored France and the Revolution. It was they who later presented themselves as victims of the Jacobins when they were the worst during the Terror. Contrary to belief, heads rolled after the Terror; just look at the execution of Romme and the other Montagnards, the execution of Babeuf, the fact that anyone who demanded the constitution of 1793 could be punishable by death.

Finally, I want to say that despite my speeches, I don't believe in providential men; if France could have a sense of greatness during this period, it's thanks to the people. In Algeria, we have the slogan: "One hero only: the people."

[ananke-xiii]

Form and Void... Hands and Hearts.

Intro + the post before this you kinda need to read them all or it won't make a lot of sense lol

Dean and Crowley's relationship is not fun.

Full disclosure here: I have no problems in terms of shipping and having fun with the characters outside of what's canon but I personally don't see Dean's canon relationship with Crowley as "fun", it's not something that I particularly enjoy watching. Like, the actors are great etc. but the actual story makes me feel... uncomfortable. I actually find it sad that Dean's still attached to Crowley because, as much as I like him as a character, the King of Hell acts like a total predator towards Dean and this episode highlights this side of their relationship in uncomfortable ways. So be warned that things get a little ugly from here.

Let's see how food is treated in the episode: Crowley is presented as "Father Crowley" while he puts sugar in his tea and calls Dean "a rather scrumptious altar boy". The image I get from this is both that of the sugar daddy and, because of the religious references, of the scandals surrounding the Vatican and its priests (I'm trying to be as sensitive as I can but the show is really not and Crowley literally makes a reference to these events later on in the episode).

Father Crowley is a piece of shit.

He will later pull up in a van and kidnap young Amara with this line:

My, haven't you grown into a sweet young thing? Want some candy, little girl?

If we consider that Amara and Dean are connected (by the mark that's above Amara's heart and that was on Dean's right arm) Dean and Crowley's past relationship doesn't look so much fun anymore (well, it never was fun to begin with as I've written although the show did its best to make it look like it was fun with the karaoke, the cowboy hats and the sex. I mean, on paper it does look like fun if we can just forget that Dean was very much Crowley's guinea pig).

In case you were wondering, Dean and Amara are bound guys.

Crowley here is the preacher/hunter of "The Night of the Hunter". He dresses like a priest but he's hunting for demons (yeah, I know, it's a clear reference to "The Exorcist" too). He happens to find "the child that eats the souls" and proceed to kidnap her. I mean, brrrrr.

And how does Dean feel about it? He still loves him! Poor, poor, poor Dean.

While Sam went for the heart of Poor Guy with the electrocution device, the angels went for Cas' heart (and other parts too) with the angel blades, Dean goes for Crowley's heart with Ruby's knife. Unlike Sam and the angels, he doesn't finish what he had set up to do.

Dean's knife is pointed at Crowley's heart but I'm bad at taking screenshots so this is what you get.

Instead, he pins Crowley's to the wall by stabbing his left hand (the hand of love and receiving) with an angel blade. Visually, it's quite similar (not the same, similar) thing that happened to Cas at the end of S10. It couldn't be more sexual (angels blades are the dicks, also interesting choice of weapon to stab Crowley: Cas' ghost in their relationship is ever present) and more problematic: in a heartbeat Dean goes from prey to predator.

They re-used this very explicit image in S12.

Just like Dean is bound to Amara, he's still bound to his former abuser Crowley. And, I mean, from a storytelling pov it tracks because Amara is very much Crowley's and Dean's baby ("You're very maternal, Dean"). Yeah, I can hear your "ewwww" from here knowing where they went with Dean and Amara but I didn't write the show, they did and I'm picking up the things they've put down. Anyway, Dean and Crowley's relationship will be over only once Dean's not bound to Amara anymore. Or, at least, it should be but like any love triangle writers liked to milk it unti it was dry, i.e. one of the three permadied. This is why, I think, we had the echoes of the same trite trope in S12 too and if you enjoyed it good for you. For me it was torture.

Demons would be the perfect angels. Sam too.

A SPN-related theory of mine is that demons would make perfect angels. Both demons and angels are cursed with the "I get what I want" mentality. Abbadon said it, Crowley says it again in this episode. It's a very angel-like mentality, however demons are unironically more likely to put in the effort, follow the guidelines, work behind the curtains. They would be perfect angels for Chuck.

Ironically this time, angels and demons have hardly ever gotten what they wanted (hello Castiel!). They all tend to work in a certain direction only for the result to backfire in the end or leave them dead. Which reminds of a certain character named Sam Winchester.

"Form and Void" is an episode that explicity parallels Sam to the angels and to Crowley. Sam and Crowley's parallels are my everything. Up until s8 they were quite obvious while after that they're in the story's backbone rather than clearly on screen. If you care, this is one of the reasons why Crowley and Lucifer's power struggle could've been way more interesting if they had thrown in Sam in some capacity instead of doing whatever they did with Sam in s12. *breathes and calms down*

The End (of this rambling post).

"Form and Void" foreshadows how S11 would end: dark and light becoming One. It's something that US tv shows (tended to) do a lot when they deal with Christian themes: when they're going a little over the edge and very close to blasphemy they pull a "Eastern Mysticism" card to signal that they were just kidding! In SPN they did the same thing to Jack in s15. When they deal with God they use buddhist concepts as a cop-out to avoid doing things that may upset Christian believers (and no, canon bisexual God is less of a threat than canon God's older sister who's more powerful, female-presenting and holding a huuuuge grudge or than having a world with no God, no Hell and no Heaven).

Hands and hearts are a huge motifs and they signal what the characters will be doing and/or their true intention/identity. In order to see this, though, one must pay appention to the scene shown at the very beginning of the episode, a scene from the movie "The Night of the Hunter". This specific scene tells us that what we see is the opposite of what the writers mean and that the core theme of S11 is not so much God vs The Darkness but rather love. This love, however, lies in cages protected by keys and it's secret and forbidden but, as that scene tells us, love's a-winnin'. To save the day and let Love still win we've got a giant plot-twist in the form of maternal love and the resurrection of Mary Winchester. The heart's needs are met, its wants are still unknown. You can't always get what you want... SPN really did believe that.

[mwdthroughoutdigitalmedia]

Blog Post #3 - The Child Star Fate

Think about how many child celebrities you know. Now think about how many have had “successful” careers (at least by today’s standards). How many did you count?

Bella Thorne—an ex-child star—launched her career on Disney Channel, akin to many other child stars, but these days most of her fame comes from being featured in articles headlined “List of Child Stars Turned Bad.”

During Thorne’s time at Disney, she was adored by little girls. People loved her spunky character, Cece, and loved Thorne just as much because of it. Thorne even released music with Disney and got several songs onto the Billboard Hot 100. She ended up becoming an advocate for children with dyslexia. She did it all, and people thought she was going places. People saw her potential.

When Shake It Up was canceled, Bella Thorne was coming into her late teen years and started appearing in media that was more age-appropriate. She played roles in The Duff, a teen romcom, and The Babysitter, a teen comedy. As she was growing older, her roles were too.

After some roles in films and small parts in TV shows, she had her directorial debut with PornHub, created an OnlyFans account, and began dating/hanging out with problematic celebrities like Tana Mongeau.

How many other celebrities can you think of with a similar path as Thorne? Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Amanda Bynes, Lindsay Lohan, and Demi Lovato just to name a few. As these child stars grew older, they began to make risque, oftentimes illegal choices, that brought them lots of attention in the media.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with Bella Thorne pursuing pornography as a career, however, this is clearly some sort of pattern where these child stars feel a need to embrace their sexuality as they grow older. Everyone goes through some sort of stage in which they embrace their sexuality, but child stars tend to do so in a very overt and often problematic way.

There are lots of reasons why this happens. One major reason can be a traumatic childhood, which Bella Thorne had as she was a victim of sexual abuse and began her acting career to help her family with money. Many other child stars have spoken about eerily similar childhoods. Trauma at a young age, obviously, impacts decision-making and human development in general. This among many other factors can lead to the “child star path,” however, I believe that the MWD is one of the greatest contributors.

When child stars are children, they are treated as Madonnas. It’s completely sick and pedophilic, but people often think of and will treat these children as untouched and therefore “pure” girls. They are innocent and are therefore clean and worthy of respect. They’re young and all potential—and therefore are treated as Madonnas. However, as these girls grow older, they may realize that they don’t want to be treated as Madonnas—which, again, is completely fine—and would rather be seen as sexy and adult. They may look up to celebrities such as Kim Kardashian who is seen by the media to be sexy and beautiful while simultaneously maintaining a level of respect in the media, despite her career having been started by a sex tape. These child stars may want to be wanted; to have people falling at their feet the way Kim Kardashian does.

To be clear, child stars, just like anyone else, don’t necessarily want to be the Wh*re in the MWD; they still want to be treated as humane and may even want to have families in the future. They just want to be simultaneously sexy, famous, and respected—respected in the same way any other human deserves.

However, they’ve maintained a certain image for a very long time—that is, the image of being the innocent, childlike Madonna. However, they are now adults and don’t want to be seen that way. This is where they begin to become overtly sexual to overcome being viewed as a Madonna. This may be because the star wishes to do so, the star’s manager’s wishes, the record label, etc., or a combination. Nevertheless, the outcome is almost always the same.

This is how we get videos such as Wrecking Ball. Not to say that Miley Cyrus created this video purely to overcome being seen as a Madonna—there are many reasons why she would make that video. However, there is little doubt in my mind that the MWD plays a large role in the purpose of the video.

By no means did the public respond positively to Wrecking Ball. It sparked immense controversy in the media due to its highly sexual nature—leading people to call Cyrus “crazy” among many other, oftentimes nastier names. Cyrus’ intention was more likely to be viewed as sexy, but the media began to treat her as a Wh*re. People wanted her to be banned from YouTube. People thought that her embracing her sexuality was disgusting. She was ostracized and lost a great level of respect—something that, in many ways, she is still trying to overcome despite her complete change in style, music, and general character. 

This happens to most, if not all, people who go down the “child star path.” They are told they’re “washed-up” and “child stars gone wrong.” These women make these choices due to the massive influence of society that leads to their desire to be perceived as sexy, yet society criticizes these women for doing so.

After that stage, these child celebrities often end up having drug and alcohol abuse issues, mental health struggles, and other problems. This will often lead to the destruction of their careers. I certainly can’t remember the last time I heard Amanda Bynes’ name in the media.

Not all child celebrities have this path, though. Zendaya is a prime example of a child celebrity who continues to have an excellent career in adulthood. However, she’s one of few and far between. Even Ariana Grande and Selena Gomez, two child celebrities now with highly successful careers, have struggled greatly with mental health issues, Ariana Grande struggling with alcohol abuse as well. 

The MWD is directly affecting the course of many people’s lives, specifically child celebrities who often fall fate to the “child star path” in life, and end up becoming “washed-up.” Society turns on these women, going from treating them with a great level of respect as Madonnas, to treating them as Wh*res, after being the ones to put pressure on these women to become sexier in the first place. If society can change this line of reasoning, then other child stars can be saved from falling to the same fate.

[anime97-99]

NARUTO COMPLEXITY

⚠️Sorry, this is going to be long and I may sound repetitive at times!! I have to say this is my point of view thought I tried to make it as objective as possible!! Hope you like it!! Also I apologize for a bad use of grammar and vocabulary since English is not my first language!!⚠️

This post is dedicated to exploring and analyzing Naruto’s characters through the whole series including Boruto. Starting with Naruto, he is supposed to be a pure and innocent boy, naive who doesn’t understand feelings and seeks acceptance from other people in search to experience those positive feelings such love, friendship and what feels like to have a family.

Since Naruto was young he tried to get attention from other people even if this attention resulted in disgust towards him, he acted out of fear of being alone, just imagine a child living alone in an old flat located on the outskirts of the village which is probably a dangerous area full of criminals arm with swords, shuriken…

Like this isn’t enough he is hated by the whole village without him knowing the reason and the only support came in money from Sarutobi, I suppose being the third hokage took a lot of time and he did what he could with Naruto but at the same time I think you shouldn’t just give money for the rent to only a child and that’s it. I think he wanted to secure his image at the same time protecting Naruto and the villagers from harm (if the villagers noticed that the hokage was supporting “the demon” they probably would have started to distrust Sarutobi and a fight between the higher ups and the villagers to get ride of Naruto would have taken place because of the fear of thinking that Sarutobi is allying with the enemy), so he chose to spend less time with him, which is not the best decision but it was made with good intentions.

Then Naruto has a goal and a dream, to be recognized and accepted by everyone becoming the hokage, that translates to turn the hate into love, the naive dream of being loved by everyone (falling in love with being in love, like Ada said, (fall in love with the love from others, when mother said “you just loved how much I loved you” in the movie Mother, which I recommend, they touched on this topic) Naruto is really idealistic and romantic (romantic not as love but as romanticism), themes that are presented in classic literature and offend end in tragedy, It almost looks like part of Naruto is heavily inspired by Romanticism literature, for example some similarities are that it is really idealistic, it has drama, love, tragedy, though the ending may not be the best it could be actually be considered a happy one.

The definition of Naruto’s personality as a selfless and self-sacrifice person. His worse fear is to be ignore and be alone, that is why he is loud and problematic, to attract eyes towards him. He is not self centered, he is the whole opposite, he cares a lot about what other people say that is why he is explosive since young, he is sad and shows that sadness with anger and a fleeing personality.

The first person that makes him not feel alone is Sasuke and this is really important, we have two kids with problems, they are obviously different from Naruto point of view but then one afternoon he sees Sasuke alone and they meet eyes, this is a really important scene they see themselves reflected in each other eyes that is why Naruto finally recognizes Sasuke and Sasuke sees Naruto who used to be only an annoying child, and with this it shows an union, two children who hates each other because of their differences have a lot in common and ends in them being the only ones to truly understand each other pain and loneliness. Thought this is more complicated since Sasuke knows about love, what is a family, what is friendship and he is popular and loved by teachers and students, but he also experienced since really a young age the pressure to be part of an important clan and to have a genius brother being constantly compare to you by everyone even his family, though his mother tried to calm him down by saying Itachi is different this is really bad to say to a child!! This comment will make him think that he is less that Itachi and will create distance between his brother and family, it will end in an inferiority complex.

Through Naruto’s series he will be so obsessed with revenge he will forget about himself and others, hurting the people that loves him in the process, he is so fixated in revenge that he forgets there’s more than just killing his brother but he is stuck in the past, showing obvious signs of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), OCD (obsessive compulsive syndrome). He could be compare with Coriolanus Snow from the Hunger Games who loved someone, looked like a good person and was loved by his family but his obsession with power made him a villain and someone to be feared. Like Niccolò Machiavelli said “the end justifies the means”, this is their ideology, thought Sasuke is still unable to kill Naruto, his feelings towards him are so big that killing him is worse than committing suicide.

Following Naruto, he is someone who only knows about negative feelings that is why he seeks acceptance an love, he is in love with the idea of love like Ada, he chooses Sakura as his crush because she is really intelligent and a very good student (I believe Sakura has the same fear as Naruto, she was bullied because of her forehead and she wants to be liked by everyone, so she studies hard to be the best student and if Sasuke who is the most popular and handsome boy sees her then those bullies who constantly hurt her about her appearance will shut their mouth, so just as Naruto she wants to be seen and recognized, though the way they act is different, Sakura is really insecure and has to prove herself through others praise this probably because of the bulling even if Ino is there they got separated at some point which made Sakura limit herself even more, she is like a white canvas that change not because of what she likes but what the others want to see on her. Sasuke likes long hair then she will have long her even though she obviously prefers a shortcut, that is why Ino was really important in her life, she was the first to tell her she is beautiful and she doesn’t need to listen to other bullies but Sakura necessity of being recognize through Sasuke and Ino liking Sasuke made them get separated and a healthier development for Sakura to explore herself with the help of someone to support and guide her as an equal was stopped). Sakura didn’t fall in love with Sasuke, she fell in love with the idea he represented.

Also Sakura’s inner voice is totally normal, it is not her having another personality it is just showing her subconscious and unconscious mind who everyone has. Just stop and analyze yourself then you will notice a tiny voice going on an on, it is just your brain thinking, it is completely normal. This reflects real Sakura, what she desires compare of how she acts to be liked by other people, or didn’t you notice for example a friend showing you a dress and you telling them is beautiful to not hurt their feelings but inside you are thinking it is horrible, it’s the same thing with Sakura is very human!!

You can’t analyze Naruto’s characters like Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke without taking account of their closest influence including each other, Kurama, Jiraya, Iruka, Ino, Tsunade, Sarutobi, Kakashi, Gaara, Rock Lee and maybe Sai with the other friends such as Shikamaru and Choji… So continuing with Naruto who works really hard the same as Sasuke and Sakura (even thought he doesn’t know and thinks of then just as genio is), but contrary of them he doesn’t obtain results ending in frustration, (thought he does gardening which is something psychologist recommend, is really good to maintain the mind relax focused and concentrate in just one thing and make yourself conscious of reality, this is to make the brain take a break from overthinking which saturates it, make it concentrate in just one thing at a time will help you to control yourself, it could be through meditation, but also through gardening, doing crafts, reading whatever you like always doing it without pressure just to enjoy, understand your feelings and let them pass being conscious of them but not avoid or succumb to them just taking notice of reality and that those negative thoughts and feelings exist and you can just let the past without judging yourself), (judging is negative while feedback is positive).

At the beginning of Naruto, since the first episode, you see Iruka as a parental figure to Naruto who loves him and supports him, who scolds him and teaches him, who protects him and accepts him, and Naruto realizes he is not alone, but also discovering that he is seen as a monster because he has a “demon” inside him. This gives him a reason to prove himself as a separate entity from Kurama and confirms the possibility of being loved and accepted because of Iruka (a villager who feared and hated him from killing his parents, but Iruka realized that he didn’t hate Naruto but the demon inside him thanks to the guidance from Sarutobi), and that is enough for him to keep trying.

Naruto’s goal to be hokage is getting stronger, but he is too worry about it to stop and analyze himself the same happened with Sakura and Sasuke.

The boy wants to love and be loved but he didn’t even know the meaning of this feelings that is why Naruto, the series, is about self discovery, the most important part when people realized what they are or want to be is during their teen years that is why we see the characters going through a roller coaster of emotions!!

Kishimoto has called Naruto too idealistic and naive who didn’t understand Sasuke, Sasuke as a pure and self-centered and Sakura as more than just cuteness!!

If we analyze it I interpret that Naruto love for Sasuke is too pure and he is too naive, someone that doesn’t understand love and is experiencing it, he is supposed to realized that he loves Sasuke in a different way and there are different kinds of love but it is still too early to understand, Sasuke who understands love and experienced all kinds of love realized that what he feels for Naruto is romantic love, that is why he gets frustrated at him when called his brother or friend, but Naruto that at the end explains what means to be his friend, (which is the same Ada said in Boruto to Mitsuke when explaining her love to Kawaki) he realized that he was special and their feelings were the same even if Naruto didn’t notice the difference.

And both, Ada and Naruto called themselves fools because of love!!

Now Sakura is not cute, it was said by Kishimoto, but for real being cute or not is not that important that is why Kishimoto says she is more than just cuteness!! She is intelligent and determined and if she wanted she could be really powerful remember she is the best at understanding and controlling chakra a quick learner, and she is the smartest of the three but her fixation in Sasuke limited her.

Talking about Naruto’s development as a person, for me Naruto puts a lot of limits on himself because he wants to pleased everyone and is scare of what other people will think of him. Naruto’s world is closed minded, with traditional thoughts, the representation of Japan at that time. The same way Sakura chose Sasuke, Naruto chose Sakura. Though I think he realized that what he felt for Sakura is the same he felt for others like Shikamaru or Choji, still since he liked Sakura a lot as a friend he thought it was good to love her, he didn’t understand what romantic love is, he just wanted to experience it, to explore it and to not be lonely.

His self dicovery soon would be questioned in the form of Sai, a sexualize boy who will make Naruto question his sexaulity, Naruto has never show interest in any woman, (he actually show interest in one and that one looked like Sasuke and that’s it) even Jiraya thinks it is strange for a teenager full of hormones to not get interested in beautiful woman or describe porn as boring. But Naruto gets loud and nervous towards Sai, he gets shy and blush when bathing with naked men and protected himself hiding under the water (it reminds me of the bath scene from Mulan), to make it more obvious for the readers Kishimoto makes Yamato say that Naruto shouldn’t act strange between men, showing what Naruto felt and Yamato acting as their society that they categorize his behavior as strange and not normal.

Naruto starts to understand himself and the possibility of being sexually attract to men but is afraid of what other people would say and rejects himself, he is just a repressed boy. He doesn’t like Sai he is a person who doesn’t care about being labelled and shows interest in Naruto without embarrassment (because yes, Sai is someone who doesn’t understand himself not his feelings but being with Naruto and Sakura made him understand what friendship was, the way he act showing it made Naruto nervous overthinking things because he was attracted to him and being too close made him nervous at how careless Sai was). He also got nervous and overreacted with Kakashi when he praised him thinking he likes him, and when ask what he is thinking about, when he is thinking about Sasuke changes and says he is thinking of going on a date with Sakura, which could be also a way to make others don’t worry about him being so upset and depressed about Sasuke or it could be his repressed feelings towards him, which he unconsciously has but is not aware of them and their meaning.

In Naruto Shippuden we see a development of Sakura’s character, in the first part she cut her hair symbolizing breaking through her fixation in being and do everything to please Sasuke, now in Shippuden to me she started to see herself as a whole, with her own identity, separating herself from Sasuke.

The decision of Sasuke leaving was positive for her character, she found a new goal and her feelings for Sasuke became more dull. I would say that see started to see Naruto as a love interest, someone good for her, a good friend that respects her but since she is observant and intelligent realized Naruto’s real feelings at the end and decided to not confess or she didn’t realized her feelings towards Naruto because she was too fixated in Sasuke and was confused at her change of heart.

For Sasukeas I said before, he always knew about Naruto’s feelings that is why when Naruto says that for him Sasuke is a friend he looks angry an confuse, as Kishimoto said Naruto is just too naive to understand Sasuke frustration, he showed it pretty clear, and as a Chinese proverb says “A picture is worth a thousand words”

Naruto is idealistic and naive, in this picture he is oblivious and daydreams imagining his own world without realizing that his world is centered around Sasuke and him, and that makes Sasuke frustrated because Naruto doesn’t understand his feelings. Naruto is obviously drawn in a compromising way, he is wearing shorts and a shirt, or maybe he is not wearing a shirt with the angle we can’t tell for sure, that shows a lot of skin, Sasuke is supposed to be thirsty but he is lost looking at him that he forgot the water, then we have Sakura looking at Sasuke, and Kakashi who is in his own world Xd. The water could be a representation of arousal, sexual deviance and the repression of desire.

Even thought at the end Sasuke understands Naruto, the guilt overtakes him and he decides to leave the village for redemption hoping that when he returns Naruto will be there for him but he is not, Naruto moved on and is getting married and Sasuke distanced himself from him too hurt to attend the wedding, also sending a poor congratulating letter which feels more like a mocking than anything else, though we don’t know what happened for two years, from Sasuke leaving to Naruto marrying Hinata, so maybe many things could have happened, I say this because Naruto seems to have changed, he looked serious when marring Hinata and he sleeps in another room separate from her, he is a workalcoholic and spends little time with his kids, he is a bad father.

People will get mad saying it doesn’t make sense, Naruto doesn’t understand love in The Last and he is a bad father but they forget that he never had a father or mother and he doesn’t understand the different kinds of love so through his adulthood he realized his feelings for Sasuke, that is why when Kurama said that Sasuke and Naruto are like brothers he said that he never felt it that way, Sasuke has Itachi and Kurama is like a brother to him not labeling his relationship with Sasuke.

Remember I said that he didn’t fell in love with Sakura but since he liked her as a friend and wasn’t able to differentiate the different types of love he confused it as a crush probably because he liked her (as a friend) and she was a girl.

Sakura was confused because she knew about Naruto’s feelings for Sasuke but at the end decided not to comment on it showing her dislike and opinion as a reflection of Naruto’s closed minded society, which is a critic to Japan’s society at the time, maybe it was not that and she just thought that Sasuke could hurt him again as she saw Naruto suffered during Shippuden. So instead of making him realized his feelings she encouraged Hinata thinking that she would be better for him, I believe she did it with good intentions but the decision she made was made based on her values and that wasn’t the correct decision for Naruto.

This way of thinking also shows in Iruka, his parental figure, and Kakashi, they know but they don’t say anything, this is obvious when Iruka gets mad at Naruto deciding to marry Hinata but doesn’t encourage him to talk with Sasuke, Iruka suffers in secret and thinks he did wrong not talking with him but at the end he will just observe (we are talking about Iruka, he is extremely strict, diplomatic and a person who always follows rules and he didn’t prepared anything to say in the wedding day that should be enough in what he truly though of it), Kakashi also knows but he never served as an emotional support at that scale those were Jiraya, who died, and Iruka who is part of the same village, maybe he is just afraid of what they will think and how could affect Naruto’s reputation since his “dream” is to be hokage, which actually was to experience love and be loved (like Ada) and not feel lonely.

The last two pictures compare a Sasuke’s card vs a formal card to give in a wedding and if you notice the villagers card is like the formal one but Sasuke is different, like making fun of it!!

As this quotes says, “hell is paved with good intentions not with bad ones. All men mean well”. George Bernard Shaw

“For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing.” Simon Wiesenthal

“Bad decisions made with good intentions, are still bad decisions.” James C. Collins

A little poem reflecting Sasuke losing Naruto;

what's it to me

if you love me or

miss me or need me

when you are doing

nothing to be with me

if you can't allow me to be

the love of your life I will be

the loss of your life instead By Rupi Kaur

Japan at the time practiced arranged marriage, a marriage without love is not hard to imagine happening in Naruto’s world, even more between people with high occupations to unite important families. Hinata also commented on it.

The people that loves us can hurt us even if they have the best intentions.

Actually there are a lot of things that I didn’t say but I decided to stop here because if not it would be too long and for being repetitive!! Thank you for reading, hope you enjoyed it and feel free to comment!!

Also if you watched Shang-Chi and the legend of the ten rings you may notice why Kishimoto is so excited with Destin Daniel Cretton he really likes him because he is open minded, but actually the film when watching it reminded me a lot of Naruto!!

[sshbpodcast]

Character Spotlight: B’Elanna Torres

By Ames

Get ready to have an honorable day as we swivel our character spotlight over to the Voyager’s chief engineer this week on A Star to Steer Her By. Every day is an identity crisis for B’Elanna Torres, whose half-Klingon, half-human pedigree serves to frequently explore mixed heritages, familial disputes, and issues of self loathing as the series goes on. But mostly, Torres is just a wildly creative and intelligent character who is so frequently pushed to the brink, as is this show’s wont.

So grab a fork and dig into a whole freakin’ blood pie as we take a deep dive into Torres’s complex character and rich backstory. Read on below for some choice moments and listen to our recitation of the Klingon plea for the dead over on this week’s podcast episode (warp over to 54:21). Qapla’!

[Images © CBS/Paramount]

Best moments

Did we just become best friends? Early in the series, Torres has a lot to prove, both as one of the Maquis terrorists that joins the integrated crew and as a character who clearly has a permanent chip on her shoulder about all things Starfleet. So it’s a wonderful moment of bonding with Janeway when they work together in “Parallax” to escape the event horizon of a quantum singularity using science!

Me, myself, and identity crisis It always amazes me that “Faces” is slotted in season one of Voyager because it is so successful at exploring the dual nature of Torres’s makeup while her character is still getting her footing. When she is split into her Klingon and human halves, she really gets to take a closer look at herself (literally!) and how her two identities make her whole (also literally!). Early character work for the win!

Nothing, just talking to myself For the first (but not last) time Roxann Dawson voices a homicidal computer, we are treated to Torres figuring out how to disarm the Dreadnought in “Dreadnought.” She’s prepared to sacrifice herself to stop this weapon from taking out a planet, but it’s a triumph to listen to her argue with herself until she succeeds, even if she did create the weapon in the first place…

Prototype Unit 0001 is ready to accept programming We totally missed mentioning this one on the podcast, so I’m squeezing it in now because it’s such good work from Dawson. In “Prototype,” she tries so hard to help the automated units find a way to reproduce, creating sentient life in Prototype Unit 001, which is impressive on its own! So that makes it all the more devastating when she has to deactivate him, her first child.

A more honorable Klingon than Worf We gave Worf some stink for refusing to donate blood to the dying Romulan in “The Enemy,” and in “Lifesigns,” Torres goes the other way. When Danara Pel needs some of her Klingon tissue, Torres looks past the trauma that Vidiians inflicted on her and sees that Danara is an individual. Lumping everyone of a species together is not the Starfleet way. Worf, take note.

Learn the truth for yourself There’s a lot that we like about “Remember,” and a lot of that comes down to some stellar acting from Roxann Dawson. Torres won’t stand by quietly as the Enarans sweep their problematic history under the rug and pretend they’ve been a moralistic society all along. She steps up for learning from the past, acknowledging where we’ve come from, and being better for it.

You’re not going to learn anything from being with these lollipops Another instance of Torres not letting someone take the easy way out comes when she meets the Doctor’s The Sims family in “Real Life.” She reprograms his bubblegum characters to have something closer to agency of their own, challenging the Doc to learn to compromise with and respect his fake wife and fake kids. Ya know, skills that he can use with his actual crew!

B’Elanna and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Honorless Day I’m a sucker for the quiet reflection and character study that we see in “Day of Honor” when Torres and Paris are on the brink of death, floating in space helplessly in EV suits. In confronting what could be her final moments, Torres finds some clarity in her existence. And it’s just a touching admission for her to voice her love for Tom, kicking off their romance arc.

I’m going to have to deactivate you It’s telegraphed from pretty early in the episode, but it’s still impressive when Torres takes out Dejaren with an isomimetic conduit in “Revulsion.” We do give her credit for trying to help the wayward hologram in the first place, but she’s also smart enough to see through his facade and keep herself alive when he predictably goes nuts and tries to kill her because she’s corporeal.

Where’s the boob tube? This is a smaller detail but it’s indicative of the Torres-Paris relationship. When Tom returns from a two-week away mission, B’Elanna surprises him with a classic TV set in “Memorial.” It’s surprising Tom didn’t already have one, so it’s a good touch to see that B’Elanna knows exactly the kind of thing that would make his day, like a loving and thoughtful partner would.

We’re still alive and I’m still asking Star Trek overall is hit or miss when it comes to character relationships (one day, we’ll cover them all!), but Tom and B’Elanna just work. Sure, they both do stupid things sometimes, and you’ll see them in our Worst Moments lists, but Torres marrying Paris in “Drive” is weirdly right. It’s a joy to see how much they complement and expand each other’s characters. <3

Not every Cardassian is arrogant and cruel Wow, Torres gets held hostage by holograms a lot, doesn’t she? The thing I like most about “Flesh and Blood” is Torres’s interaction with the Cardassian hologram engineer Kejal. As we’ll see below, Torres has a bit of a tiff with Cardassians, but like she did with Danara Pel in “Lifesigns,” she’s able to treat this one like an individual and work together to save the day!

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Worst moments

I know this weapon very well You know I love it when the same episode pops up on two lists. Even though Torres did a great job disarming the Cardassian missile in “Dreadnought,” don’t forget that it was her fault that this thing was careening around in the Delta Quadrant in the first place. She knows this thing like the back of her hand because she was the one that reprogrammed it for the Maquis!

No means NO! I will shit on pon farr every opportunity I get, the same way I shit on oomox jokes. So even though Torres herself isn’t to blame for contracting pon farr in “Blood Fever,” it sure is the writers’ fault. It’s just so gross to watch this strong character lose her agency because of that creep Vorik, and it’s even worse that she tries to rape Tom even when he rightly tells her no.

No PDAs next to the warp core The Torres-Paris relationship is quite cute, as we stated up above, but their constant making out in the middle of engineering in “Scientific Method” is unprofessional. Guys, your coworkers on the first floor can totally see and hear everything, and we know how loud Klingon mating is, so keep it in your quarters when you’re off the clock before Tuvok writes you up.

If thoughts could kill… Even compared to other Klingons, Torres’s temper is substantial. The strength of the violent mental image she concocts in “Random Thoughts” pushes the Mari who experience it into committing murder. So really, how bad must it have been if it had such an exaggerated effect on people that their police force wanted to lobotomize her? Nightmare fuel, no doubt.

Try to remember that we are not just a bunch of drones Ever since Seven of Nine first joins the crew in “The Gift,” Torres is a major bitch to the former Borg. She’s opposed to working with her in “Day of Honor” because of her background even though Seven is recuperating, and it’s not until Chakotay orders her to chill out on the poor woman in “Message in a Bottle” that Torres shows her any respect at all.

Where’s Counselor Troi when you need her? We will say on the podcast that Voyager badly needed a counselor until the cows come home, and “Extreme Risk” is the perfect example of that. Torres is clearly coping with trauma, among a lot of other stressors, but instead of coping with it in a healthy way, she opts for the dangerous solution of getting herself injured in the holodeck all the time. At least program a Freud puppet!

As far as I’m concerned, they’re all cold-blooded killers Somehow, even though Torres was able to put racism aside in “Lifesigns” to help Danara Pel, she won’t give an inch to Cardassians in “Nothing Human” to save herself. And this Cardassian isn’t even real! It seems like a weird hill to literally die on for Torres to be so stubborn and willfully naive to refuse care. At least ask the Doc to reprogram Moset’s face first!

You must learn to master your emotions So most of “Juggernaut” is a Best Moment for B’Elanna but I ran out of slots above, so here we go. Even though she successfully figures out the whole Malon ship problem and discovers the true identity of the Vihaar, so much of the episode feels like a regression because Torres spends so much of it angry and violent – a backpedal for how far she’s come as a character.

Death becomes her Speaking of character regressions. This show can’t seem to decide where Torres ever stands in her relationship with her Klingon culture, and “Barge of Dead” goes all in on mystical claptrap. Despite five previous seasons of keeping her roots at an arm’s length, Torres uncharacteristically jumps into this dangerous death ritual with both feet. What the Gre’thor?

Such a Mary Sue It’s sweet that Torres is so nice to Kellis the playwright while he writes his Voyager fanfiction in “Muse.” But she crosses the line when she decides to improv an ending for Kellis’s play just because she’s so egotistical that she doesn’t want him to kill her character off, beaming out in front of the whole audience. It might be the most selfish reason for breaking the Prime Directive yet!

I’d say you’re capable of a lot more than delivering PADDs, if you know what I mean I blame this one more on the writers than on B’Elanna, but it still made me uncomfortable. Icheb gets it into his hormone-fueled head that Torres has taken a romantic interest in him in “Nightingale,” which is just peak adolescent boy fantasy. Unknowingly, she leads him on, and what I’m sure was supposed to be a joke just feels cringe. Really, she should’ve decked him.

Genetic modification is the treatment of choice Close to the end of the show, we’re back to Torres’s fraught view of her Klingon genes when she learns her unborn daughter will have head ridges in “Lineage.” Torres falls yet again into a spiral of self-loathing, assuming Tom will leave her the way her father did, and she tries to trick the EMH into surgically altering the fetus to remove any Klingon attributes. That is without honor!

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Let’s restore some honor to this post before we move on to our next character spotlight. Keep watching here as we go through the whole Voyager crew and also keep following along as we’ve finally reached season 4 of Enterprise over on the watchalong podcast at SoundCloud or whatever listening app you like best. You can also bond with us about science over on Facebook and Twitter, and if you’ve got Klingon rage problems, maybe talk to the EMH about it.