#it’s very contextual

[thebaffledcaptain]

actually part of what bothers me so much about this fandomification of historical figures is that it feels so disingenuous. if you love a person… you treat them with all the respect with which you would treat another human being, because that’s what they are. the same thing goes for historical figures—they are not any less human for having been dead 250 years. I don’t know. I just feel like if you really do care about these people then you don’t engage with them and their histories by blorboifying them, and if that’s the only way you can engage with them… well, then i’d take a step back to assess whether you can really call that history.

[aardvaark]

i <3 when parker appears out of thin air

[thesulkycroissant]

Donna is so funny I love her

[asmeninas]

I just think before doing "Aspect of Culture is Deteriorating" posts you should just really try looking into the history of what you're talking about. Certain phrases are always popping up in posts like that here while often the issue they're talking about is not new, this is just a new manifestation of it and it's the one the poster knows because the poster is 21. “We are being pushed shallow bestsellers that are churned out yearly by the same group of writers, and this is because of booktok” is something that you can easily avoid saying by just, I don't know, looking at older NYT bestselling lists and then looking up what was said about the top sellers in fiction at the time of their release, for example. Then you might also notice that the panic about what bad books are teaching our women goes as far back as the novel does and take the "it's dangerous for girls" bits out of your posts.

[zoe-oneesama]

Since you’re on that hating Wish train (I’m there with you), I think you might be interested in checking out Jonah Who Two on YouTube bc he’s re-written some of the songs (his “This is the Thanks I Get?!” is really good and way more villainy)

Jokes on you, I ALREADY HAVE!!! >:D

[arithmonym]

re-reading the locked tomb, and i'm thinking about how harrow identifies alecto as a "girl" rather than a "woman."

obviously, john had other sources of inspiration... but did you know that the original barbie doll was only supposed to be nineteen years old?

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

He's sensitive about that

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[sam-ph-side-notes]

After the chill, after the jokes, I present to you T̷̙͊̄̌H̵͉̹̲́̏̇É̵͕̋ ̸̨̻̰̹͎͛̒͛̀A̵͉̻̻̗͇̅͛͠N̶̜̽̌̓̐Ġ̶̤͑̚S̶̯̗̓͋̂͋T̵̨̤̣̼̞͗͑̅̐͠

[draculagetspegged]

Castlevania / Castlevania: Nocturne

[chirpsythismorning]

S5 opener REAL

[spookberry]

Danganronpa is actually pretty funny, and here I thought it was ace attorney for edge lord tweens

[littelestvic]

I might be killed for saying this but there is something so smart about opening your (arguably worst) new album with "this isn't rock and roll, this is music for children"

[whetstonefires]

duolingo teaches me such batshit things and because they've removed all the tips and grammar fact pages and like, actual information from their app over the years i just have to sit with having been trained like a dog to understand that the mandarin for for japan (日本) is 'reuben.'

like. the sandwich.

[kaurwreck]

OH YOUR VERLAINE AND RIMBAUD POSTS AND THE TENDENCY OF ASAGIRI TO FLIP FLOP THE MENTOR/MENTEE OR ADMIRED AND HOW RIMBAUD WAS THE YOUNGER ONE BUT IN BSD VERLAINE WAS SOCIALIZED BY RIMBAUD

With Rimbaud and Verlaine, it's worth remembering that bsd!Rimbaud is Verlaine. His skill is Illuminations, but he gave Black #12 his birth name, Paul Verlaine. bsd!Verlaine was not originally named Rimbaud, but his youth, passions, and duality are Rimbaudian, while bsd!Rimbaud's more coddling temperament, at times paternal and at times impassioned, and last sentiments for bsd!Verlaine, are seemingly references to irlVerlaine's poetry about irl!Rimbaud. (Such as Watercolors: Green, an English translation of which I shared in a separate post.)

Notably, Verlaine published Illuminations on Rimbaud's behalf and influenced the content and arrangement that was published. His legacy is often related more to his relationship with and publication of Rimbaud than his own poetry, according to the journal articles I've been reading. bsd!Verlaine's Brutalization incantation also comes from Arthur Rimbaud's Les Sœurs De Charité.

But the bsd iterations of Rimbaud and Verlaine aren't wholly distinct either, each carrying fragments of the other, sometimes blurring together. That, too, is a homage to the philosophies of the irl!poets. For example, Rimbaud, at times, writes from Verlaine's perspective in Une Saison en Enfer.

Rimbaud's poetry is also marked for its dialogic perspective-shifting, and he wrote through and lived within a philosophy of ambiguity, duality, and self dissection (at least during his youth):

irl!Verlaine, too, had a dual personality at times:

So, I don't think Asagiri flip/flopped Rimbaud and Verlaine's roles; I think he's commentating on, illustrating, and interpreting where their poetry, legacies, and passions became thoroughly entangled, as filtered and processed through bsd's themes. I think Asagiri enjoys plucking tragedy from reality and asking, "What would it have taken for them to have found reason and purpose absent any?"

That said, I also don't think Asagiri is ever really inversing mentor/mentee roles, even in regard to Akutagawa and Dazai. irl!Akutagawa was not irl!Dazai's mentor, he was a profound influence who lived and wrote just prior to the era of modern Japanese literature in which Osamu Dazai made in his name. I think Asagiri is commenting on (i) where they were deeply alike in mind and heart, which is why Dazai found solace and reflections of himself in Akutagawa, and (ii) on the stylistic dexterity Dazai could have lent to Akutagawa had he been in the position to do so, specifically regarding the way Dazai intepreted the I-novel genre through perversions of the truth as a means for expressing sincerity and gut-wrenchingly raw autobiographical candor without flaying himself apart the way Akutagawa seemed to when bullied into confessional literature by the cultural zeitgeist.

(Akutagawa was criticized for his sharp brilliance since the era was consumed with confessional literature, in comparison to which Akutagawa's stylistic precision seemed to many distant and aloof. Parasocialism is older than Christ, and BookTok is a descendent, not the progenitor, of corrosively vapid takes.)

The choices in bsd are playful but sincere inquiries into + conversations with the works, legacies, emotional turmoils, and overwhelming humanity of the referenced authors. But, while I think there's immense profundity in call and response, especially across eras, literary cultures, and artistic mediums, I also think Asagiri is more consumed by revelations than reflections.

I'm also not so sure whether we can call Rimbaud socialized by any contemporary connotation of the word—

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Bestie Deficiency

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[sekaicards]

hey whats Stars Align

hello. 'Stars Align' is a 2019, 12 episode anime about, among a lot of other things, soft tennis. one of its main characters is yuu asuka, a character who is explicitly non cis.

weirdly, i've been seeing a lot of criticism popping up for copal's handling of the recent mizuki event especially on the topic of their gender. i have also seen both prior to and after the release of the event people not so subtly implying that as a japanese company they have no knowledge about being trans or non-binary or any other sort of non cis identity. or that it would be "more realistic" for ena to have not known about trans people or reacted poorly to the news.

western perspectives of gender and being trans do not apply everywhere, of course, but to suggest that a complete lack of knowledge and a more unknowing/bigoted reaction to such news would be more inherent to and make more sense from a character on account of them being from a non-western culture doesn't exactly sit right with me for a number of reason i'm sure you can figure out.

japanese people are capable of understanding being queer. this should not be a novel concept. and if it is to you, try to think about why.