#it's powerful and moving and is; legitimately; one of the best scenes in the entire fucking show

[solarmidnight]

I'm sorry if I'm misinterpreting or just forgot something vital in these books, but do you think Kastor is responsible for Auguste's death?

To be perfectly honest with you, it may be me who's misinterpreting. But I highly doubt that the Regent's control over Kastor, and, as a result, Akielos, started when Kastor had Theomedes poisoned and Damen enslaved. I think this was the end result of years of the Regent's work.

With Laurent years from ascension age, the Regent had a long time to spin his spider's web, placing his pieces on the chessboard and learning how best to control each one of them.

And one of those pieces had to be Kastor, since there's zero reason that Damen, a legitimate son of the king, heir to the throne, would have moved against his own father for power; all he'd have to do is wait for Theomedes to come to his natural end.

The Regent can't exactly go in and have all the Akielon royalty killed; rather than giving the Regent the power, there'll just be another Akielon put on the throne, perhaps a distant cousin or something. Akielos will stay in Akielon hands because there'd be no need to transfer power to Veretian royalty. No, he needed someone very close to the main royal family, someone who bore a lot of resentment at being overlooked and overshadowed, denied what had been, for nine years, his birthright.

Someone like Kastor.

Whilst Kastor did not kill Vere's king, nor did he kill Auguste (thank you, Damen), in my mind Kastor bears some of the guilt because he was allowing the Regent into Akielos's court. He was conspiring against his own country. Perhaps not at first; maybe there was correspondence, maybe there were meetings away from both courts, but Kastor became one of the Regent's little birds.

He would have been talking to the Regent, letting him in on things. Kastor was tricked by both the Regent, and by Jokaste, indicating that he, like Damen, has no sense of trickery and deception. But unlike Damen, who began to learn and adjust, especially after he came to know Laurent who's basically a master of trickery and deception, Kastor did not learn.

Kastor was being played for the fool. The Regent had every intention of taking control of both Vere and Akielos and merging it into one country for him to rule over as king and have the ultimate power he craved.

It would not have been hard to see that Kastor resented Damen, resented Theomedes for overlooking him after nine years of being the crown prince. Someone like the Regent would have seen it. Kastor is an illegitimate child, which, to the Regent, is almost like being born a second son; once the crown prince ascends and has children, there's even more people between you and the throne.

Kastor wanted the throne so badly that someone like the Regent, who bore the same nigh uncontrollable thirst for power, would have seen it. And it left him wide open.

The scene where Kastor and the Regent are sitting side by side at Laurent's trial, and Kastor does not realise (but Damen does, thanks to three books' worth of learning how these mind games are played) that the Regent is controlling the whole room, leaving Kastor with very little political power, was enough to convince me of my theory.

Again, I could be entirely wrong, but these are just the conclusions I've drawn after reading the books a few dozen times over.

[ladala99]

Pokémon World Championships... The Disqualification Thing Going On

For anyone not in the know, a bunch of people got disqualified on Day 1 of the Pokémon World Championships (Day 2 as well) for having illegitimate Pokémon (Pokémon obtained through cheating devices).

Which for me, watching from the sides and sometimes thinking about getting into competitive but never actually doing so partly because of how much cheating is normalized/somewhat required, is a nice change of pace. On the surface. There’s a lot going on this tournament, though.

Quick history of cheating in the Pokémon competitive scene: it’s been part of it from the very beginning. Pokémon have hidden stats (called IVs - or Individual Values) that just make some better than others and it used to be incredibly improbable to get perfect ones. Especially when you consider older generations allowed Pokémon with event-exclusive moves only obtainable in Ruby/Sapphire in specific locations to compete. A legitimate one came from some machine in Japan years prior. And had random IVs.

Also Legendaries. Most Pokemon you could breed to get a fairly good one, but Legendaries it was all luck. And you have one try per save file. So if you caught Kyogre during the story and it has awful IVs, too bad. You have to play Sapphire all over again to get a good one.

Naturally, some people used cheating devices to get their Pokémon. And because some people did it and got away with it (since you couldn’t really be the luck police. Maybe they really did get a straight 31 Shiny Kyogre. You don’t know they didn’t), others did it too. By the time I was looking into getting into it in the Diamond/Pearl era, there was a perception that if you don’t cheat, don’t bother. You will be at a disadvantage.

Starting with XY and getting better each generation, it started to become sanely possible to get competitively-viable Pokémon in-game. First by making it easier to control breeding and with Legendaries always coming with half of their stats as perfect, then in Sun/Moon being able to raise any stat to perfect, and finally in Sword/Shield being able to fully customize Natures and Abilities, which also affect a Pokémon’s performance and were previously set at a Pokémon’s generation.

At this point, any Pokémon you obtain can be fully made perfect… except if you want the Speed and/or Attack to be the worst they can be instead of the best. Which in certain circumstances, you do. This is relevant.

What is also relevant is how the tournament structure normally works vs how it’s worked this year. Usually, year one of a game coming out is a Regional Dex format. This means only Pokémon that are actually obtainable in the games that just came out are useable. This is an accessible tournament that anyone just getting into the series can play with just the latest games.

This time, though, while the rest of the season used a Regional Dex format, with the small shakeup that certain categories of Pokémon were excluded at first and got included later, Worlds did a much larger shakeup - some Pokémon only obtainable in Sword/Shield and Legends: Arceus are also allowed. And many of these are high-power Pokémon who are practically needed in the current meta.

Most noteworthy are Ursaluna and Enamorus. They both play best at 0 Speed, which isn’t something you can change on the fly. Which for Ursaluna, you can still breed its base form elsewhere and just use Legends: Arceus to evolve it, so it isn’t that bad.

But Enamorus. It’s not breedable, it’s exclusive to the postgame, and it’s a pain to catch. And once you actually catch it, Legends: Arceus calculates stats in a different way so you can’t tell what its Speed IV is until you save the game and move it into HOME. If it’s wrong, you have to play the entire game over again to try again. Oh, and because Legendaries have half their stats perfect by default, you have a 1/64 chance to get one with a 0 Speed IV instead of the 1/32 you’d have for a regular Pokémon.

Did I mention the ruleset was only announced two months before the tournament?

Yeah. Having a multi-game ruleset at the highest level when the rest of the series only required the most recent games was bad enough, but announcing it so late meant people playing legitimately did not have the time to get perfect Pokémon along with all the rest of the theorizing and practicing. If you want to use those new Pokémon, you are very likely to cheat to get them, or get them traded from someone who cheated to get them.

Add in that Worlds introduced new hack-checks never used before. Most people using illegitimate Pokémon have been pretty comfortable not getting caught. As long as it’s theoretically possible it’s been okay. It’s only people snooping in the metadata of those who uploaded their teams that could tell. But now the official hack-check checks the metadata.

Metadata that you cannot check without using cheating programs yourself, by the way. Say you play 100% legitimately and you wanted to use a team with a non-slow Urshifu. You only have Scarlet/Violet, not Sword/Shield. What are you going to do? Trade for one, of course! You get one fresh off the GTS, train it up and you’re ready to go. Right?

Nah, you find out at the tournament that the person who traded it to you cheated it in and you can no longer use it for the rest of the tournament. Shouldn’t have cheated, cheater!

And that’s why this doesn’t feel good even though I have little respect for those who in this day and age still hack in their competitive teams. Changing up not only the barrier to entry but also rules enforcement literally at the final tournament is just not a good thing.

[awesome-opossum-after-hours]

rewatching Stranger Things, final part!

-Eddie has a tapestry above his bed. wayyyy ahead of the trends (I believe it's a Slayer print but I couldn't totally make it out?)

- now that Noah is officially out (yay for him!!!!) Will's tears and speech during the Van scene about being different is all the more moving and authentic

-there was a little bit of realization in Mike's eyes at the end of that conversation

-the entire Wheeler family has targets on their backs. their deaths would hurt, have an effect on a lot of other characters. Nancy said that Vecna showed her Mike, Holly, and her mom and they were (unspokenly) dead

-did the older teens get to shower in Max's trailer? bc like... they all looked like they needed it BAD especially Steve and Eddie

-(update ^ no they didn't)

-Eddie couldn't possibly use the bandana in his back pocket as a disguise bc that serves a Greater Purpose

-Around the Bend is the PERFECT song to steal an RV to

-Eddie is headbanging as they drive off. someone pointed that out before but I had to see it for myself

-listen with all the d3ath theories and speculations going around about Steve- I do not care at this point WHO he gets this with but let Steve have his six little mini Harringtons one day and get to drive around the country.

-Eleven was trying to send Brenner into the Upside Down, just as she had done with Vecna and the Demogorgon

-I seriously think that Eddie was fully prepared to die for Dustin, really solidified by the "never change" promise. it's like getting an "I love you" text from THAT friend...

-Max made them promise that however they killed Vecna, they wouldn't miss. so when Nancy saws off her shotgun with Max watching, she assures her that it guarantees she won't

-the fucking shock collar is the most unnerving thing Brenner uses on the children like bffr that's horrible

-i can't get over the hug between the Byers Twins (yeah I won't stop calling them that) bc it looks like the best hug ever

-if Brenner comes back next season but Eddie doesn't I'm suing the Duffers

-tho there are theories going around that he legitimately has powers based on fanart Matthew Modine reposted saying that he was "000"... immortality???

-Joyce and Hopper almost fucked in a CHURCH. tisk tisk

-who's dogtag was Dustin wearing??

-yeah the way Eddie quickly broke eye contact with Steve.... idk if it's what a lot of people think but there was definitely something else going through his head besides "make him pay"

-when Argyle laughs while saying that dogs ride in the baggage compartment all the time I'd like to think that was Eduardo breaking character but quickly covering it and them just keeping it in

-they sell ice cream cake and cannoli at the Surfer Boy in Nevada

-while Max and Lucas are waiting for Erica's signal, i think they're in Mr and Mrs Creel's bedroom

-there's a joke i could make about why Jonathan brings up Will having the LEGO guy stuck up his nose but I won't ruin a sentimental scene

-again tho the tears in that scene and the freaking hug looked so genuine. we love you Noah :)

-those pizza sunglasses actually have a pretty cool patern, idk why the merch team hasn't made a pair of Surfer Boy Pizza Box themed sunglasses

-awww yall were right Eddie DOES have butterflies on his bedsheets

-Eddie did not need to yell when he cut the rope, def did it for Dramatic Affect

-the demobat screams have to be deafening

-is Dream a Little Dream Vecna's favorite song? unsettling

-Steve, Nancy, and Robin were choked for so long... like how did they not die???

-Lucas was literally going to take a bullet for his friends. so underrated

-Jason like barely blinks during his scenes where he's all psycho. in fact, each time the camera is on him in the Creel House, he doesn't at all.

-I mentioned this in season 2, but Eddie raising his spear and shield to fight the bats is a total parallel of Will standing his ground against the Mindflayer. IF he does come back next season these two will have to share stories!

-i think their best bet would've just been to cut Vecna's head off tbh

-"he's the monster, not you Henry!" bitch tf???? he's mercilessly and proudly killing teenagers

-why did Henry make a parallel version of Hawkins unless he had plans for Will? I bet he made it the day Will got captured, which is why the Upside Down is stuck on that date. but why????

-if Vecna had killed El, would a gate open in Nevada?

-Will makes a quick glance to Mike when he says he loves El

-"if I said what I felt I thought that would make it hurt more" then Will looks at Jonathan, he looks back with knowing eyes

-I wonder if Argyle was still stoned out of his mind, those lights must've been trippy

-when Murray uses the flamethrower, Hopper shields Joyce :)

-Steve, Robin, and Nancy were the only ones who got to see Vecna's physical form, in person and not just in the mindscape (not counting people who saw him pre-banishment)

-if I were Hopper, I'd have kept that demogorgon head and framed in above my mantle like people do with deer

-it looks like Eddie broke his left leg in the bat attack, or at least while he's lying down it looks really twisted in a wrong way

-something that hurt badly about both Eddie and Max's death (aside from the fact that they died) was that in season 1, Dustin and Lucas were both the Comic Relief characters (though Lucas moreso in s3). seeing them both wail and sob while holding their dying friend broke me. while I do want this grief to be explored in s5 (whether both "dead" characters stay that way or not), I'm not emotionally prepared🥲

-some of the people who were packing to move from Hawkins were BOOKING IT. they wanted OUT

-again, just like when the Byers were moving, Dustin seems to not wear a hat when he's sad

-scenes where Mike hugs his mom are so underrated

-AFTER NANCY AND JONATHAN KISS YOU SEE A DEJECTED STEVE WALK PAST WHILE ROBIN PATS HIM ON THE BACK OH NOOOOO

-Lucas is reading Stephen King's novel, "The Talisman". funny enough, the cover shares the Stranger Things font

-Wayne wearing basically the same outfit as Jonathan in s1 putting up the Missing Person posters cannot be a coincidence

-Dustin's lip trembling before he hands Wayne the guitar pick is devastating

wow, I actually rewatched a series without skipping any parts/episodes! I know there hasn't been many people seeing these but I hope you enjoyed if you did!

[lesbx]

into the badlands falls into this wretched trope with the fact that it tries like so hard to be feminist that it becomes legitimately misogynistic and sometimes it is just unbearable. the main woman character is named the widow and her whole thing is that she was essentially a slave who was subject to horrible, horrible things all throughout her youth, who became a “wife” of one of the rulers of the land, a particularly vile one, who she eventually killed after he assaulted her daughter. and by the rules of the land, she inherited his reign by right of strength and even though it was entirely by the book within the laws, she was still seen as a black sheep who ‘stole’ her power (largely bc said bastard was well respected among the other rulers for being evil and ruthless bc they’re all terrible). that’s also where her name comes from, as a derogatory nickname referencing her “stolen power” that she took on as her title.

This is a good premise for a person who rises from tragedy and who seeks to fight to break the cycle of torment, using her power to break the system that hurt her and so many like her. the thing that falls apart is that the widow is absolutely not a good person, and after gaining her power fully, she very quickly succumbs to it with basically no resistance. Goes back on her policies of harboring slaves and granting them asylum on her land in order to make them fight for her and swell her army. She throws away her any emotional connection with her daughter, who was the reason she killed her husband, in order to protect her. She actively seeks out and attempts to kill a teenage boy (and eventually does kill him)

This ofc isn’t an issue by itself. it’s an ironic twist on a common trope that would work, if only it was done intentionally like that. Instead, it’s almost belligerent how the narrative refuses to acknowledge that she has done wrong in her life. she could eat a puppy on screen and the show would be like she’s so valiant and revolutionary for this. So in the end, it serves only to make her entire character extremely hypocritical at best and actively evil at worst, all while she is treated like any old protagonist. She is peak horrible girlboss writing.

And on top of all of this, there’s a scene where she’s fighting another woman, and they literally have a Heel Fight. They’re like grappling with each other while trying to stab each others feet with their heels and the focus on it, they do moves and spin and block and dodge with their feet as it goes on. It’s beyond parody how terrible that is and the show does it with a complete straight face

[alexandriteobscuraarchive]

S1e8 - Love the Lie aesthetics

[a-gal-with-taste]

Underappreciated Screenshots | Part 5

Seriously going to just scream about how so many shots in this show are museum-worthy, it's insane.

Oh, and Silco.

Gonna be about screaming about the show-visuals and Silco, as normal

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

The coin-glint, I can't-

Also, I am going to make a whole-post about Silco during episode 3 and his expression/mindset during this episode, but look at his face.

It's screaming 'I just killed one of my ex-friends in a brutal fashion and I'm also kidnapping the man I considered my Brother, whose probably also going to die brutally later today, and I have zero regrets about either, but still...'

And also 'literally, stfu Marcus,' at the same time.

Man's over-emoting can multi-task, gotta give him a 10/10 for it.

Speaking of 'stfu Marcus' shots-

But for real, the WALK in this scene screams power, screams elegance and rightfully so. Since this is HIS turf and he's gonna strunt around like the man of the house that he is.

Urgh. Move out of the way, Marcus, I want to see him just walking around >:(

🚨Child-Alert🚨

Throwing these together because... look.

Look at it

The use of storm/lightning in this show is so rarely used, but they did not miss a single mark with using it here, to illuminate his fight for survival, his last frantic move to cling to life while actively dying in this scene. It's like every flash is another beat of his slowing-brain, flickering still with life to grab that knife and fight.

Just... going to stare it for a bit longer.

Also, hands.

Definitely one of his more personal monologues, and also one of the best usages of depth/foreground vs background. How they literally have the water rolling off his fingertips, with him transfixed in the waters that almost killed him... AND you get a storm? Just- 👌

...

Also, hands-

LITERALLY a single-frame, but... c'mon.

The blue clouds, reaching and racing and a SECOND away from obliteration?

His widening-eyes exactly a frame later is probably my favorite close-up shot in the entire show, but this one is just so chaotic and perfect, and the blue-clouds is just, again... 👌

Something about his introduction to the kids, as ominous, and villainous as it is, kinda cracks me up. Because if you listen to it, his claps are just off-beat. Idk why that makes me laugh, but they're just a second too-long in between and it makes me giggle because, he's such a drama-queen.

"You... 👏 fell... 👏 for... 👏 my trap... 👏"

I could listen to Silco say 'candidly' all day and never get bored but that aside, I love two things about this shot:

1: Even here, even in the scene where he's basically poised as Vi's final-boss fight villain, they show the tooth-gap. It's adorably human, in a scene that's all dark and menacing, cloaked in shadow and glowing in the Shimmer that he uses to destroy, but they still show one of his most human flaws in this scene, and it's a nice touch.

2: it's the fact that he ACTUALLY looks confused by his past-self. For thinking Vi was the golden-child of Vander's family unit, for ever believing that Violet was the real prize. Like, 'wait, did I actually believe that? There was a time that I legitimately thought this girl, a Vander 2.0, could outmatch my daughter? How foolish of me.'

Just, again, the animators pulled NO punches and spared ZERO expenses, and I love them for it 👌

[thatgirl4815]

Korn as a *Player*

(Chess meta ♟) 

More chess meta? I think yes. Though I’ll be talking more about Korn as a character than about chess exclusively. 

I’ve said previously that I believe Korn is the player in the chess metaphor. We’ve talked a lot about the most powerful chess pieces, but despite all of the moves they can make, they would be nothing without the player’s hand. After all, players are what give pieces power. Korn leads the family, just like the player leads the game of chess. 

The player has multiple tools in their arsenal. Their job is to develop a strategy to manipulate these tools in such a way that they can best the tools of their opponent. Perhaps “tools” is too light of a word--“weapon” would probably be a more apt term. 

"We are one people.”

I didn’t find this out until very recently, but there is a universal motto for chess: the Latin “Gens una sumus" or, in English, “We are one people.” It has also been translated to “We are one family.” This phrase just fits too well with KinnPorsche’s plot to be overlooked. Family plays so many roles. For Korn, it’s all about the family legacy. To say that “we are one” is to imply that the family is a unified front. This is exactly what Korn needs from his sons--Kinn, most of all. His youngest son has already run away from the family, and Tankhun is who Tankhun is, so Korn is holding onto Kinn tighter than ever to ensure their family legacy prevails. Additionally, this phrase could apply to the hold Korn hopes to have over all his people—his bodyguards most of all. Loyalty is essential to maintaining a united front.

About Kinn and Porsche this episode: I have not yet recovered from the transition from the VP sex scene to the bread product placement, but I do want to say that overall, I was pleased with the progression of KP’s plot; I have to give Korn most of the credit for this. 

This was probably naive on my part, but while watching, I was extremely confused when Korn simply told Porsche that he had helped his friend avoid prosecution for Porsche’s parents’ deaths. I didn’t understand why he just now decided to spill. He probably heard that Porsche was asking questions and getting riled up, but he didn’t have to lay it all out so plainly. 

But then I got to thinking: Korn is the player. There’s a reason for everything he does. His strategy makes sense in a lot of ways. For one thing, he knows how close Kinn and Porsche are. In Ep11, I found myself wondering why Korn seemed so okay with Kinn and Porsche’s relationship after he had spent several episodes warning Kinn against it. But I think he realizes that KP’s relationship could actually be used to his advantage; in this case, it could be the anchor that Porsche needs to stay connected to the main family. Until we know more about Korn's connection to Porsche’s parents, we can assume that he intends to keep Porsche as close as possible, as he has been doing until now.

Korn’s strategy also consists of emotional manipulation. Maybe he is legitimately sorry for what happened to Porsche’s parents, but we know by the end of the episode that he’s got ulterior motives and more secrets yet to be revealed. Admitting that what he did was wrong was his best attempt at making things right with Porsche. The reason he tells Porsche any of this is because he knows that Porsche is asking questions, and he needs to get ahead of it. Like in chess, the player always needs to think several moves ahead. So even though Porsche is going to feel hurt and betrayed by this reveal, that’s a better outcome for Korn than the lingering threat of Porsche’s mistrust. As soon as Porsche starts asking questions, there will just be more and more questions piled on top of that, until the entire thing blows up in Korn’s face.

Let’s not forget that Porsche is the queen piece: the the most effective weapon in Korn’s arsenal. Manipulating Porsche is his top priority, for reasons we still aren’t clear on. But we know that if Korn loses his queen piece, it will be very difficult for him to win this seemingly ceaseless chess game.

This episode all but confirms that the root of KP’s mistrust will be because of Korn’s still-mysterious connection to Porsche’s parents. All in all though, we saw Korn making a desperate attempt to gain control of his queen piece using one truth to hide another. Despite how illusive Korn’s character is, his thought process seems clear: give Porsche something to latch onto so he won’t look any deeper. Korn’s failure as a player is with Porsche’s uncle. That is the one variable unaccounted for. I only wonder what more his uncle will reveal next episode. (My guess is that this bombshell will take up a large part of Ep13: the preview only focused on VP so as not to reveal what’s going on in KP’s plot line.)

--

Whew. I’ll go ahead and tag @luckydragon10​ since we’ve had some great conversations in the past about the chess metaphor. There’s also a lovely chess section in the “Damn Good KP Meta” Doc which you can look into for more interpretations and analysis. I’d LOVE to get/be directed to other thoughts on Korn and the chess metaphor after Ep12! :)

[harbingerofsoup]

The comprehensive guide for why absolutely everyone should read and watch this work of art.

First of all, Iruma is best boy! He loves his friends and his family, his instinct is to help others, and like… just look at him. So good, so pure. But what truly makes Iruma a protagonist worthy of having a slide to himself is his character development. He actually starts off as a completely selfless person due to how his awful parents groomed him, and his whole character arc is learning how to be more selfish. Of course, Iruma’s selfishness manifests as eating all the food he wants, holding on to his family and friends, and finding ambition.

Sullivan (the first guy) adopts Iruma as his grandson after his parents sold him. This dude radiates grandpa energy and his number one priority is to spoil his new grandson. He’s also the principal of the school he sends Iruma too. And one of the most powerful demons in the netherworld. Opera is Sullivan’s butler, and warms up to Iruma a bit slower than Sullivan (so like a few days). They’re not very expressive facially. Rather they mainly express emotions through their ears and tail. They’re a total Badass™ and surprisingly mischievous. Alice Asmodeus (on the left of the 3rd pic) swore his undying loyalty to Iruma after Iruma accidentally kicked his ass. This man is ride or die, and honestly my words can’t do him justice so it’s better if you just experience this gay disaster for yourself. Clara Valac (right of the same pic) is a gremlin and I love her. Her priority is to play with her friends All. The. Time. But she also has insecurities about her personality after it stopped her from making friends. I put Ameri Azazel (please step on me) in between them. She’s the student council president, a badass, and a huge romantic. Naberius Kalego is the homeroom teacher of the misfit class (the class Iruma ends up in.) He’s a Very strict teacher, but genuinely cares about his students and is good at his job. There are so many other characters, but I want to avoid spoilers and get sleep tonight.

14 year old Suzuki Iruma was raised by his parents to do chores and make them money. Eventually they decided that he wasn’t bringing in enough, so they sold him to a demon who takes him to the netherworld. Instead of eating him though, Sullivan (the demon) asks him to become his grandson, and Iruma, who’s unable to say no under any circumstances, says yes. He starts school at the demon school Babyls (pictured above) where he attends as the only human. Of course if anyone finds out they’ll eat him. While at school, he realizes that he doesn’t have an ambition of his own, so Ameri suggests that he try climbing the ranks (all demons are ranked by their power you know the drill).

This manga is hilarious! With such jokes as Iruma eating a ridiculous amount of food, every interaction between Asmodeus and Clara, and Ameri’s obsession with shojo manga. One of the funniest bits is that due to some unfortunate circumstances, Kalego becomes Iruma’s familiar, and you’ll learn all about this if you check it out, but for now all you need to know is that that fluffy chicken is Kalego. Crossdressing has been used for comedy like three times now, but not in a degrading way. It’s not the butt of the joke or anything. That’s Iruma, and he looks fucking amazing as many other characters have said many times 100% seriously. Moving on, cause explaining humor is difficult!

I adore how Clara is allowed to be a hyperactive gremlin, and I’m not talking “oh she’s quirky” I’m talking playing involves battle axes and acting like a demon bowling ball. You know the trope where the powerful girl isn’t actually that serious and instead is a huge romantic? Well Ameri may be a romantic, but her seriousness isn’t an act. She is 100% dedicated to her ambitions. And look at the designs for some of the recurring background characters! Too often in fantasy settings the female monsters, demons, etc are reduced to almost entirely human, with the exact same body type, and maybe horns or something. Not Here! There’s also the girls in the misfit class who all have their own motivations and interests. I’m also now realizing how many tall girls are in this series… awesome.

Ok so the fact that there’s even more than one queer character already make this amazing. But in addition to that, it’s never treated like a big deal. I mean look at the second picture “gender doesn’t matter to demons” love wins! So Eiko is a recurring character who has a huge crush on both Iruma and Ameri, and later becomes comrades with Asmodeus specifically when it comes to Iruma (they share photos of him it’s hilarious). Asmodeus having a crush on Iruma isn’t explicitly stating, but like I’d like to see someone argue that he doesn’t. Besides, his feelings are always treated the same as Clara’s and Eiko’s when it comes to Iruma. The holy grail of representation though is Opera who’s never referred to by gendered terms. The english dub of the anime actually specifically uses they/them pronouns. When I tell you I screamed! I could go on, but I’m I’m trying to avoid introducing too many characters.

In Mairimashita! Iruma-kun a good family supports and loves each other completely, regardless of blood relations. But it’s not either or. Sullivan, Opera, and Iruma are my golden standard for found family. I mean their love of Iruma is over the top and unconditional, which is what Iruma needs after a life without any such love from his parents. Biological relations are shown as something that isn’t always great, yet it’s not something to be expected either. Clara’s family is a gift, and Asmodeus’ family is one of the funniest dynamics I’ve seen.

These are typically considered negative traits, but here they are portrayed as desirable and useful. And it’s a convincing argument. Through Iruma we see that having your own ambitions and getting pissed is necessary for living a fulfilling life, and we see this because he starts out without having that. Every single time Iruma declares his own ambitions or says something selfish it’s just… chills. It’s always a powerful scene. Whenever Iruma gets truly pissed over something (which has legitimately only happened twice) we all cheer cause we’re so proud of him. I could write a whole essay about this one aspect of the story, but just know that I consider this to be an incredibly compelling narrative, and my favorite part of Mairimashita! Iruma-kun.

In conclusion, I’m posting this on my birthday, so as a present I would like more people to get into this fandom because it deserves a larger fanbase.

[eponymous-rose]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E129 (March 16, 2021)

Tonight’s guests are Matt Mercer and Taliesin Jaffe!

Matt, on DMing Luc’s Revivify: “That was weird. It’s one thing when it happens because of player action and circumstances and the choices they make. When it’s entirely on me, unintentional, and just realizing different chess pieces you’ve set up, that’s rough.” It was especially rough since this was a child NPC related to a PC. “I was hoping somebody had a spell slot left.” He kept in mind that there are two clerics in the room and that they could resurrect the next day even if the Revivify went poorly. “A good chance, since it’s his first time. Okay, okay, okay, okay, I think we’ll be okay, we’ll see how this goes. It was really stressful in the moment! I did not set out to have that happen, but when I realized what was going to happen, I tried to see it through.” He wouldn’t have prevented a chance to bring him back. “There may have been an offshoot short-run series of games to find a way to bring him back. I would have found some way to correct the circumstance so the players could feel good about moving forward with the story and there was no undue punishment beyond their control.”

Taliesin on Cad’s response: “This is a big thing if you’re a cleric. It was very much coming in like an EMT. Everything should be fine... hopefully. Just focused in and got it done. The minute things started to go south it was like, okay, that’s the next problem.”

On Yeza’s feelings: “It is a very complicated situation. I think he, much like how Veth is trying to figure out what it is that she wants, I think he’s trying to help her find that while also figuring it out for himself. I think Yeza’s also noticing that because Veth’s the more active of the two of them she also takes the weight of the responsibility and the blame for things when they go wrong, unnecessarily. Especially when he himself acknowledges that he’s partially at fault for even dragging everyone in with the Conclave. As much as he’s appreciative for them coming back for him, there’s a lot of back and forth. He’s filled with a lot of regret, too, but he’s very much trying to convince Veth that it’s a burden that she doesn’t have to keep to herself, that they can share it and work through it together.” Matt mentions that, as an actor, he really loves exploring interactions between characters first and foremost. “Especially when you don’t know where it’s going to go.” He also praises Sam as a scene partner - “I really cherish that.”

How does Caduceus feel about Revivify and Speak with Dead? “Speak with Dead is an interesting middle ground, because he knows that it’s not actually speaking with the dead. It’s really just-- it’s almost medical, really. This is just reactivating a brain at a certain point. It’s practically just a muscle twitch at this point. That doesn’t really prod him in that direction. Revivify is interesting, because it had never really come up. At first I thought of it as bending the rules, but it’s not bending the rules. You knock over a plant, you replant it, you don’t stare at it and go ‘Well, that’s over.’ This is just doing the work. No, we can bring this thing back to health. This is all part of the circle of life, that sometimes we can save something. Especially given the stress that he’s put himself through over the past year of being with these people. He’s started to think of himself a bit as a battlefield medic, and triage is just part of the deal, and it’s completely acceptable.”

Did Trent really just want to talk? “Yeah, that circumstance, as it came together, Trent would never have arrived if there wasn’t an indication that there was some kind of infiltration or attack. Even beyond that, it was Jester breaking the concentration on her charm on that one guard when she created her duplicate.” The guards’ job is to inform a member of the Cerberus Assembly, and Trent lived the closest. “He didn’t know who it was, didn’t have any expectation necessarily. The minute he saw the illusion, he knew a powerful magic user was involved.” Seeing Caleb was an unexpected surprise. “I don’t think he wanted to throw down necessarily. He was more interested in figuring out exactly what the nature of this was.” Matt had multiple battlemaps that didn’t get used. “They managed to cleverly out-maneuver him in his surprise of seeing them.” The Nein rocketed up his priority list after that very quickly. Taliesin: “We’re so fucked.”

On Cad being “Uncle Caduceus” to Luc: “It’s the thing he misses most about home, is being a juvenile shit. It’s nice to be able to express that part of him again, as opposed to the serious, life-threatening, constant intensity. I’m very at home just being a little difficult.”

Cosplay of the Week: an amazing Beau! (_rumor_king, photography by kourtyardproductions on Instagram)

On Marion: “Like a lot of people in this whole narrative from the beginning, getting swept up in things larger than her and trying to adapt. This is a circumstance she’s avoided for a long time. She’s having a rough time in some ways, but simultaneously, she’s enduring. Like a mother would. She’s adapting, she’s making it work. Without much of a choice, you just kind of do the best you can and lean on the people around you to help you where they can. Luckily she has a daughter there. She’s probably surprising herself at how well she’s doing given the circumstances.” Matt talks about how weird it is to feel proud of character he’s created. “Of the many things Marion is incredible at, she’s a studier of the human condition. She’s seen and heard the stories of so many. That gives her a very special perspective. She can see elements of that fractured individual within Caleb, and knowing the good that he’s brought to his friends, and knowing he’s possibly saved her life from bad circumstances, she couldn’t not speak up. She very easily falls into that role of maternal comforter, because it’s one of the many things she’s really good at, she enjoys it, and she can see well when people need it.” He’s been enjoying having Marion along for this (despite the difficult circumstances) because he was always a little sad that they only got to see her for short periods of time.

On the Blooming Grove’s safety: “He’s afraid that it’s a premonition. He’s not pinned it down, but he’s happy to let his imagination wander. He at the very least feels like there’s a reason he’s having these thoughts, and that there’s a reason to go there. He’s a big believer that these things don’t just happen. He’s more likely to think that there’s a good reason to go versus a danger to go. He’s had a couple of ominous warnings lately, and he’s not used to them and not a fan. He’s more likely to read something like that as, there is something there waiting for you that you have to discover. There is something that is going to be helpful to you, even if it hurts.”

On Astrid: “While maybe not as readable in overall personality as Trent is, I still want to be careful to not discuss things that are still being discussed within the game and tossed around as possibilities. Astrid is another complicated character, as anyone would be who’s been through the life she has. I can’t say too much. I can say she’s definitely legitimately happy to see Bren/Caleb after all this time.” His reemergence definitely caught her off guard. “We’ll have to see where it goes from there.”

On Cad’s successful Divine Intervention: “He’s definitely hit the ‘on a mission from god’ stage. He’s been that way for the entire campaign of, this, this is what I’ve been waiting for. Even when it sucks a lot, it’s been nice that those things have popped up to remind him, no, no, you’re doing it right, everything’s good. Probably not going to survive the next week, but you’re doing good! Not quite 1 in a 100 chance, but I forget so often to make that roll, and it’s such a great roleplaying roll. I don’t know how at level 20 you could deal with the fact that you can do that every day.” 

On Zeenoth getting his comeuppance: the kidnapping was a concept Marisha brought up for Beau’s backstory, and Matt went with it even though it was opposed to the Cobalt Soul’s philosophy because he knew rooting it out would make for an interesting story. “I felt it was an important beat to bring to her, because it was something that she was wronged by. And to show that there are still some good people out there who are trying to make things right.” After the tentative peace, dealing with this became Dairon’s next focus. “I was glad we finally got to it. So many people don’t have the opportunity in their lives to get that sort of justice and vindication, so if I can bring elements of that justice into our world, even for our own hope, I’m going to do that. Especially for my wife’s character, especially for a character that deserves that.” Taliesin points out that if it had come too early, Beau wouldn’t have believed it.

Cad’s thoughts on the Tomb Taker betrayal? “He knew it was gonna come at some point. There was no way that was gonna last. He was hoping it was gonna last a little longer. He was really hoping they had a vested interest in getting them all the way to the end. Nope, this is apparently as far as we go, and he was not prepared for that.” He was expecting the potential for de-escalation. “Caduceus is the only character in there that doesn’t have a history with Lucien. I think he sees him a little more clearly than everybody else does. They’re all looking for this person that Clay, at least, is of the opinion that he’s just not there. This is a very manipulative, very dangerous infernal human. Just smarter than all of them. Really aware that there is no calculating what the hell is going to happen. Conversation is the only way you can deal with someone like that.”

Fan Art of the Week: An amazing Caleb closeup! (rynn_birb on Twitter)

Taliesin on Lucien: “I’m excited he’s the one that’s going to kill us all. Poetic that this is how the game ends.” Matt was delighted when Taliesin handed him carte blanche to do what he wanted with Molly’s past. “I was like ‘shit... oh, wait!’ The character of Lucien was always intended to be an antagonist so that it would have been Molly being chased by the person who wanted their body back. But then it happened that he got his body back.” Taliesin: “He’s so much worse than I ever hoped.”

Matt, on the Holy Avenger: “I hadn’t thought to initially even give that sword.” The good roll was the only reason Kima handed that over. “Well, sure, you get the sword. It was very reactionary, it wasn’t my intent originally. I was like, well, I mean, there’s two avenues she can take with this.” Multiclass into Paladin, or lean into the fact that her subclass is essentially a barbarian paladin. “This really works out in a uniquely beautiful way. Let me see if I can lay out a path for her to earn it.”

On Cad’s attempt at lying blowing up in his face: “He was like that kid that had a really bad day in high school and was like, you know what? I’m going to let loose. This is it. I’m gonna dye a streak in my hair. And then tries to give himself a haircut and ends up with half bangs. Well, okay, obviously I’m not that person. I was feeling a little distraught and I didn’t handle it well. Maybe I’m going dark... no, I’m not going dark. Nope.” Matt mentions how much he relates to Caduceus.

Matt, on the Eyes: “What can I tell you? I’m enjoying the hell out of it. The moment they began to really push to read that book, I was like, okay, this is on you. I’m excited for the point in the narrative where the march continues back to Eiselcross. I am almost impatient - not really - because we’re on the cusp of getting to more of the meat. There’s so much to learn, so much to see, so much to explore. I love instilling my players with absolute terror.”

Thoughts on Jester’s Tarot reading? Taliesin cackles. “Molly made the cards, so. Did it to himself, he did, he did.” Matt: “Once again, another example of things working out unexpectedly and too perfectly for an improvised moment. Fuck.” Taliesin: “Bless the wisdom of chaos.” Matt: “I love that even at this point in the campaign, Molly continues to fuck with people. I’m just so proud. That deeply shook Lucien, for reasons.” Taliesin: “It’s the everlasting gobstopper smoke bomb.”

[osmpalliumduo]

Dream smp actor au my beloved

First season

Dream is a very famous actor, his movies got recognition very quickly regardless of being a pretty new actor, the most popular out of all of his movies being “Manhunt” an action movie that has a lot of improv and fighting scenes

After his second movie of Manhunt he decided that along side with some of his close friends and co-workers to start a tv-show called the Dream smp

It took a really long while to get all the actors for the first season, a lot of planning and getting people to work on sets and props

Some of the actors Dream got to participate were his close friends Sapnap and George who were in the cast of his last movies “Manhunt”

Tommyinnit was a kid Dream found in a small community of actors called “Hypixel: Sky Block series” he went ahead and literally snatched him from that serie and added him as one of the main leads of the storyline of his serie

Tubbo was kind of a addition out of the blue, Tommy after joining the cast decided to take Tubbo with him, a fellow friend and co-worker in the Hypixel series. Dream didn’t had a problem with it after realizing that both kids were insanely talented

Wilbur was, in Dream’s words, the best addition to the cast he could had ever imagined, Wilbur had been in the past in several other popular shows like “SMP Live” and “SMP Earth”

Wilbur not only did an excellent work as an actor but also added so much into the story, helping Dream several times with the storyline and script, eventually becoming a co-writer of the script over all season one

Making the serie itself was hard, but getting everything together and editing was a whole lot of work

But the most difficult thing was actually acting, the thing was that the whole cast of the serie got along so well, that when it was the time to actually act, getting in character was kinda impossible

Even for Dream was difficult to get in character

The whole war declaration took at least five shots because Dream kept breaking character or Sapnap kept wheezing

Eret’s betrayal was one of the last scenes to be recorded because it was just really really hard for the cast to actually act hurt or not joke between lines

The Tommy vs Dream duel was so funny to the cast, even more when Tommy was done with makeup and he literally had an arrow inserted in his stomach

So many memes, so many

The L’manberg era was one of the most difficult to act and write, the cast being new and not used to the whole atmosphere

But when the election and pogtopia era hit in, it was much more easy for the actors to take everything much more serious

Jschlatt and Technoblade were added to the cast and it was insane for everyone, both actors being really close friends of Wilbur because of their old projects together (SMP Live, SMP Earth, etc)

The election arc was, described by the whole cast, as one of the best parts of the whole season

Quackity would pull this insane improvs moments between shots and everyone would just have to run with it, getting a lot of extra but very cool scenes

Tommy and Tubbo would just pull the strangest faces in shots whenever they knew that the camara focus wasn’t in them just to try to make each other laugh

Niki and Awesamdude would sneak food into the set all the time, bags of chips, coffee, chocolate, sometimes even cake

Wilbur, Schlatt and Quackity had this whole competition between them where they would literally live inside the set and whoever stayed the longest would win 100 dlls

The pogtopia era was more easy to record, but much harder to act

Wilbur had lots of trouble being actually mean to Tommy and overall acting as an antagonist

When recording sometimes he would just stop and ask Tommy if he was okay and make sure to let all of the cast know he didn’t meant what he was saying

Tubbo Schlatt and Quackity had overall a very good time recording, most of the time laughing after hard scenes and joking around

Not Schlatt and Techno collectively suffering cus they got at least three hours of makeup prep because of tusks and horns 😭✋

The pogtopia set was one of the hardest to archive, this one having legit stares and buttons on the walls

Tubbo and Wilbur fell down those stares at least five times, Techno almost convinced Dream to use a harness on set

Technoblade revealing the vault full of weapons and stuff for the revolution was such a difficult scene to make because everyone kept messing around with the cool props

Schlatts death was easy to act, as soon as he died he made a peace sign and screamed “I’m outta here!” And proceed to walk out of the set😐

Moving on, Philza’s addition to the last episode of the season was something most of the cast wasn’t aware of, most of the reactions (besides Philza and Wilbur) being completely genuine

Philza is known for his famous serie called Hardcore and a couple of appearances on others people’s series

The end of the season was something hard to do, people had to use harnesses and when explosions occurred they had to be literally thrown into the air getting a lot of genuine screams

Tommy was supposed to be the president of L’manberg but he decided to pass the power to Tubbo in a moment of improv, Dream and Wilbur liked that scene a whole lots

The cast made Wilbur a funeral party after the last shot, lot of people got drunk while Phil just took care of the minors and made sure they didn’t get in trouble <3

Second season

The second season was something that all the fandom awaited eagerly, wanting to see what had happened with L’manberg and the beloved characters, so Dream and Wilbur made sure to make everything perfect, everything connecting points on the story

Ranboo was one of the new additions, a new actor that worked on his own going from place to place, the well known place like Hypixel, Bedwars (Invited by Purpled) and in his own side of TikTok

Dream found out about him and decided to add him just on a go, he of course wasn’t ready for the big impact the boy would have in the story at all

Now, Ranboo is one in the suffering gang, every morning having to spend hours in makeup along side with Tubbo (horns) Wilbur (ghost) and Tommy (exile appearance)

By the way, Ranboo’s storyline was supposed to be separated from the whole L’manberg and Exile story, but Tommy and Tubbo liked him a lot so decided to add him on their storylines

Tommy was supposed to burn down George’s house alone, but the same day they were recording he asked Dream to add Ranboo. And Tubbo decided to make Ranboo his minutes man out of the blue with simple improv and Ranboo went along with it

Oh, talking about Exile

If the cast thought Pogtopia had been hard to act??? Wait for the Exile arc

Literal pain, for literally everyone involved

Tommy is a lil shit but it was legitimately difficult for Dream to be actually that villain and manipulate and ahg, pain

Tubbo and Tommy had so much trouble recording the whole fight scene at the wall, it took at least three days to get the shot right because Tommy and Tubbo couldn’t stop breaking character or laughing

Oh yeah, it was difficult to this kids to stay away from each other, they were so used to working together that it was legitimately difficult to not be together

Which caused for Tommy and Tubbo to sneak into eachother sets and try to chat and just vibe together which would end up with Ranboo dragging Tommy away from Tubbos set and Quackity doing as well with Tubbo

New L’manberg was nice to record, Tubbo tells when he is asked about it, it was a really nice change for the dynamics, including Ranboo and Fundy more, tho he missed Tommy dearly during the recordings

At the very end of exile, one of the last shots, most exactly when Dream has to blow up Tommys stuff, he accidentally tripped with one of the props and ended up breaking a leg

The recording went straight to Twitter where people lost their shit over the scene, mostly because Dream tried to continue the scene with improv but Tommy lost his shit and they had to take the whole shot again after Dream got checked up

Technos execution was planned to happen really early in the season but Techno kept forgetting that he had to get on set so they had to move it slightly at the end, the end of exile and the execution hitting at the same time

The butcher army cast had the idea of the bloody aprons, Dream had this whole thing were they would have this really cool uniforms but they just went “nah, bloody aprons”

Ranboo was supposed to have one as well but he tried to use his character’s morals to get out of it, he succeeded, no bloody apron for Ranboo :)

The whole execution scene at Technos house was so funny to record, things without effects are extremely hilarious

Quackity kept messing up his lines, Tubbo kept falling and tripping when he had to run, Ranboo just didn’t knew what to do, Fundy kept blocking “hits” that he was supposed to take

Techno just wanted to be finished already, he was so tired 🥲

Moving on, the whole death scene where Techno uses the totem of undying was mostly made with editing, the anvil was a green square made out of foam, and the totem was just a green stick

Really funny without effects, really badass after editing

Moving on! Tommy living in a hole was literally not planned, Tommy was supposed to try and hide inside Technos room but he said fuck that and made the team make another entire set for something that would last tops a week 😐

Techno and Tommy had a blast doing the whole “Welcome Home Theseus”. The scene was taken perfectly the first shot because the both of them were so excited for that scene

Finally Tommy can leave the suffering makeup gang cuz his character is healthier now 😌✌️Techno is now taking his place suffering in makeup prep because of his scars and tusks

The day of the Festival was so important to the storyline so everyone was extremely nervous before recording, but it was okay, the whole episode came out really well

Tommy and Techno had to use green capes between the invisible shots and it was just hilarious for everyone on set

Tubbo accidentally forgot his speech and had to improvise in front of all the crew

Dream fell at least twice when he was “building” the walls around L’manberg again

Tubbo and Tommy kept laughing or apologizing to eachother while in the fighting scene

Tubbo accidentally slipped and the disc Mellohi accidentally broke when he was about to give it to Dream 😬

The whole Doomsday deal was something really really hard

A lot of what happened was made with editing so most of what happened on set was just green screens and sounds out of computers to let the actors know what was happening

Technos dogs were actually from a fan! This fan had this whole adoption establishment and decided to let the cast use em for the recording! They even got a tour :)

Technos and Tommy’s whole exchange during doomsday is supposed to be heartbreaking and sad to watch, but Techno and Tommy have such a good relationship that they just, kept laughing, Tommy kept making faces and Techno’s voice wasn’t genuine while saying his lines

Ghostbur’s exchange with Phil almost didnt happened because Wilbur kept refusing to spend five hours in makeup prep lmfao

The whole cast did sang the L’manberg anthem after it was blown up, even Dream and Techno. The clip of the cast just singing will forever stay in Twitter

The aftermath of doomsday was a good change of things, much more calm recording sessions for at least a few weeks

Snowchester was something that Tubbo came up with as pure improv, he liked the idea of some kind of retirement place so he decided to add it after doomsday

Ranboo moving in with Phil and Techno was complete improv as well from Phil’s and Techno’s part, Ranboo literally had no idea what was happening when Phil invited him to live with em

Ranboo literally got snatched lmao

Endgame or the final disk war was surely something

The prop team had to make bout four new sets in the matter of a week, the most hard one to make being the mountain one

Tommy and Tubbo knew that the whole episode would be hard to record but they were still extremely hyped just because they got to record together again as besties

Makeup time at the end was about eight hours, Tommy suffered a lot while Tubbo was just used to it at this point

THE WHOLE PRISON SCENE WHERE ALL THE SERVER GOES THROUGH THE PORTAL??? PAIN.

Everyone is lost, no one knows when to cross, people are missing armor, no one knows where the fuck George is, Punz keeps breaking his sword accidentally, everything is falling apart

Quackity wanted to play a prank on the cast by appearing shirtless in the super intense scene but everyone was so tired of recording that Quackity was actually shirtless in the final shot

Dream stayed in his obsidian box at least half an hour because Tommy kept messing up his lines

At the end of the season, where Dream is finally taken to prison Wilbur makes his appearance to Tubbos and Tommys surprise

Their reactions were genuine because only Dream and Wilbur knew that part of the script

Overall, the end of the season was amazing and the fandom went insane with it

Extra stuff <3

Nobody knows if Skeppy and Bad are actually dating or not, it is a mystery for everyone

Most of the pets used in set were borrowed from fans :)

The Drista saga are used as comedic relief or filler episodes, Drista being actually Dream’s lil sister who insisted in wanting to appear in the show as a god

Michael is actually Technos little brother who went to the set a couple of times cus Techno was babysitting him. He made his way into some of Ranboos and Tubbos shots, after that they decided to adopt him and make Michael canon just cus they liked the kid a lot

Dream decided to give Karl the chance to have a spin off of the show called Tales of the smp after realizing his talent at storytelling. Karl had the possibility to get new actors for the serie but he decided to use the same cast and just make them act differently, the fandom loved it

Wilbur and Tommy had this cool idea between them and after a while of writing and planning they decided to start their own show called the “Origins SMP” featuring some of their friends from other shows, not only the Dream smp

[thanks for reading lol, I think I got slightly carried away]

[fermented-writers-block]

PART 1 of 6 of the Owl Deity Hooty Theory

[NEXT PART]

[OWL DEITY HOOTY THEORY MASTERPOST] (in development)

(TLDR at bottom of post)

Over several long months of research and analysis since March of 2020, I have been following an utterly fascinating thread of potential misdirection and subtle details throughout The Owl House, and today, I would like to start weaving together of what I believe could become one of the biggest and most cleverly disguised twists in the entire show.

To begin, let’s take a look at the B plot of Understanding Willow:

On first glance, it’s an ultimately inconsequential sidestory with the sole purpose of justifying an excuse to keep Luz and Amity in Willow’s mind, as well as providing some well-needed room to breathe and release tension after the veryemotionally charged confrontation with Inner Willow. After half an episode of Eda and King outdoing the other in ridiculous ways to win Gus’ vote and Gus running off in frustration at the end of the episode from Hooty’s inane rambling, it’s easy to laugh off Gus’ pick and assume that nothing/of value was said when he closed the door for the interview.

However, if one pays close attention to that very scene, Hooty actually canstill be heard (if faintly) underneath Eda and King’s grumbling, interestingly talking about how “It all started with a hunt. Blood red skies. That’s right, I was created-.”

Now, while it may seem silly to focus on dialogue from Hooty of all characters, this A) tells us that there was an event in the past involving blood red skies and a hunt of some kind, B) that Hooty had been created close to said event, and C) implies that what he knows but can’t tell as a story worth a damn is EXTREMELY important to be included and be hidden in such a manner.

For comparison, the only other instance of dialogue being tucked away in the background in the entire show is in Wing It Like Witches:

During the lecture at the beginning of the episode, the history teacher openswith lore on Belos appointing a head witch to each coven over 50 years ago, immediately cluing in the audience to try and decipher the rest of the lecture as it moves to the background. Adding to this is how the musical sting when Luz shows off her movie obscures what he says even further, making it even more of a intriguing puzzle that the creators clearly intended for viewers to pick up on and attempt to solve.

In contrast, the hidden dialogue of Hooty’s interview is much shorter and not as hard to decipher as the teacher’s history lesson, but at the same time, there are few to no indicators whatsoever in that scene to clue in the audience to even check for something like that. It comes at the end of an episode where most viewers would have been paradoxically tired out and driven abuzz by the revelations of Amity and Willow’s relationship, doesn’t attempt to draw much attention to itself, and frames itself as a comedic subversion of audience expectations with neither the “greatest witch who ever lived” or the self-proclaimed king of demons being picked by Gus.

Instead, he picks someone that the show portrays constantly as an oblivious and gullible idiot after being described as a “state of the art defense system” at the very beginning of the series. Someone who, despite it being played for laughs, is scarily capable of casually subduing Lilith offscreen one episode and then beating her and an entire squad of Emperor’s Coven members without even the slightest change in personality or temperament.

Someone who, due to being the Owl House itself, could be considered the titular character of the entire show, yet is taken for granted by those who inhabit him and barely gets any respect from even the cutely patronized King - including when Hooty could be interpreted as having potentially been full on DEAD for a time given the use of extremely cartoony X eyes and a lack of vital signs in The Intruder.

And someone who Eda at best tolerates and at worst abandons in personal interactions and only occasionally acknowledges him when he’s actually doing his job. Yet at the same time is so implicitly trusted beyondprotecting her home to the point where - when up against the closest person Eda has to an equal outside of likely Belos - the only actually recognizable spells Eda used in combat were 1) stereotypical energy blasts, 2) a single shield spell in Covention, and 3) a noticeably large reliance on imitations of Hooty above any other spells she could have decided to use instead.

In short, the show repeatedly tells us he is just an idiotic gag character through and through, but at the same time demonstrates he has immense power through both onscreen and offscreen demonstrations, implicitly tells us his importance ahead of time through Eda’s imitations in actually serious situations, and treats his interview and origin story as - if not even more- important to keep secret than a long lore dump about how Belos’ reign works.

After all, there being only two instances of hidden background dialogue in the entire season is already intriguing on its own, but for one to get plenty of clues to draw in people’s attention and for the other to be treated as just another gag about a “mere comic relief character” - aka a good way to draw away attention and lower one’s guard - heavily suggests a far deeper significance buried under layers of misdirection, comedy, and conditioned audience expectations.

I mean, when Eda bragged about being “a bad girl living in a secret fortress,” Hooty followed with a remark about how “I’m the secret.” While that line may sound like Hooty simply being confused as part of a one-off on the surface, it’s an odd dialogue choice for the writers to pick when you think about all the other reminders of his nature as the house itself throughout the season. With the precedent these moments set, it would have been much more appropriate for him to latch onto the “fortress” side of “secret fortress” AND it would have been just as equally funny of a joke about his awareness skills, but instead, Hooty broke away from the established trend to say something that would make people suspicious were it to come from anyone else.

In a way, this reminds me much of the many subtle bits of foreshadowing strewn across the show, like Luz unknowingly describing Amity in Witches Before Wizards and Eda burning a hole through Luz’s coven type quiz that coincidentally selected the same track she had taken at Hexside as “a punky potionist.” At the time of airing, these initially seemed like one-off jokes, but eventually came back in full force several episodes later with Amity’s hidden sensitive feelings and love for the Azura books becoming clear in Lost in Language, and the reveal of Eda’s school track in Something Ventured, Someone Framed with her school misdemeanor pictures.

That said, compared to these individual bits of minor foreshadowing, the jokes about Hooty in Understanding Willow appear to simply be the most obvious pieces in a giant puzzle, implicitly and outright telling attentive viewers that there’s a major mystery to be uncovered here.

In fact, I feel bold enough to say that we could be looking at a twist on a similar scale to that of the Pink Diamond/Rose Quartz and Stanford Pines twists in Steven Universe and Gravity Falls respectively, what with this particular puzzle piece coming from how Gus wanted to make THE greatest interview of all time, and how he was looking for someone who was “interesting, accomplished, AND noteworthy:”

Note the emphasis on the ‘and’ here, as Gus had made a big deal that “people aren’t meantto be all those things” at the beginning of the episode, so as a result, stripping away all the comedic framing of his subplot leaves the intriguing implication that whoever - and, perhaps, what- Hooty is, they really are the most interesting, accomplished, AND noteworthy person out of everyone.

I could go further and talk about why I suspect the mystery surrounding King’s origins, whether true or not, is partially meant to misdirect us from paying attention to Hooty, or how the TOH crew’s could be disguising legitimate clues to his nature among made up and highly meme-able joke answers in order to proliferate said concepts throughout the fandom - thus letting us do all the dirty work of getting ourselves used to the ideas and used to dismissing them at the same time - but to bring things to a close for now, I’d like to leave you all with a question that I’ll start answering next time:

What does it mean when both the most powerful and notorious witch on the Boiling Isles and the possible actual king of demons/the Titan itself/something don’t match up to a house? And what do you think it is that makes him so special to warrant such misdirection?

TLDR: Between Eda’s golem spells, the show stressing his nature as the titular house, his implicit strength, and the odd dialogue and structure of Understanding Willow‘s subplot in relation to him, I believe I have good reason to suspect the show has been giving us many hints towards Hooty being much, much more important than it would like us to currently believe or even joke about. Particularly, through clever uses of comedy to establish and enforce a strong audience bias against looking closely at him or unironically taking him seriously, and to potentially plant the seeds for something I will start exploring in Part 2.

[lesbiancolumbo]

Alfred Hitchcock

The critical dogfights over Hitchcock’s status were fought at a crucial time, in the early 1960s, to assert the value of his greatest works—Rear Window, Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds. And these films are without equal for the way they adjust the cinematic image to our expectations. They are deeply expressive of the way we watch and respond to stories. Their greatness is often employed to explain the nature and workings of cinema. Thus Hitchcock became a way of defining film, a man exclusively intent on the moving image and the compulsive emotions of the spectator. Hitchcock in England is a career unto itself, no matter that the American films take on a greater power and ease—like driving a Cadillac after a Morris Minor. The English films are playful, and sometimes facetious or silly. But they have dark moments and there are stirrings of sexual menace. The comic adventure of The Lady Vanishes, for instance, turns into a parable on appeasement, in which stock English fools get hurt. The first Man Who Knew Too Much is startlingly grim and cruel, and Sabotage is not unworthy of Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent. But it was Hitch’s storytelling flair—and visual storytelling—that got him to America, where his new boss, Selznick, saw the need to teach that Brit plausibility and character. Selznick was a pompous teacher, but he had a point. And the sardonic Hitchcock did study in those first years. Thus, immediately, Rebecca moves us.

The first point to make about Hitchcock, therefore, is the variability of his work. That is the more important in that Hitchcock’s defenders frequently praise his technical and commercial knowingness. But no matter how many times the profit ratio of Psycho is repeated, it does not alter the fact that Hitchcock made several flops, several films in which the entire narrative structure—over which he spent such time and care—is grotesquely miscalculated. Stage Fright, The Trouble with Harry, Lifeboat, and Torn Curtain seem to me thumpingly bad films, helpless in the face of intransigent plots, true delicacy of humor, and uncooperative players. Spellbound, The Paradine Case, and Rope are flawed by unwieldy or wrongheaded situations. Dial M for Murder is unadventurous suspense, Saboteur a monotonous chase film. The rich emotional undertones of North by Northwest show how simple many of the other thrillers are. Furthermore, those defects often affect much better films. Strangers on a Train is one of Hitchcock’s most fascinating films, but Farley Granger and Ruth Roman are coldly abandoned by their director. Even Psycho, made with a torturemaster’s refinement, stumbles over the implausibility of the car-purchase scene. And while it is legitimate to defend and praise his use of back projection as proof of the preference for emotional to actual reality, it is equally clear that so celebrated a technician ought to be able to achieve such inner realism without jolting the audience from its identification with the film.

To see Hitchcock’s films, in my opinion, is not to confront an author of supreme technical and narrative confidence, or a moral philosopher of great wisdom. I believe him when he said he was nervous about whether Psycho would prosper. After all, he swapped endings on Topaz, allowed bizarre passages of inconsequential chatter in Frenzy, and watched stonily over drab performances from Paul Newman and Julie Andrews in Torn Curtain. And all this in the years when virtually every quarter of the film world was prepared to acknowledge the significance of his work. One might argue that age was catching him up, except that Frenzy is almost a parody Hitchcock film, packed with moments that spring from his best work, which are persistently ruined by the uneasy jokiness of the film and by its ignorance of the real world.

Ignorance and fear are the abiding impressions left by his films. Just as his suspense works through deliberately withheld knowledge—and withheld from the hypersensitive voyeurist curiosity that he has aroused—so he teaches us to share the fear of the world that he always owned up to. Why not face the implications of his two celebrated admissions: that he feared, above all, arrest; and that his aim in cinema was to put the audience through it? I would not deny that his films can lead to great insights of an intensely pessimistic vision. But I do not see how a man so fearful, and so chronically adept at conveying fear, can be judged as a profound artist. Suffering in his films invariably depends upon the victim’s being unbalanced or demented. The pain felt by Perkins in Psycho or Stewart in Vertigo is savage, yet it is more limited than that in Renoir, Mizoguchi, or Welles because of Hitchcock’s resort to mania and melodrama.

“Hitchcock’s most profound subject and achievement is the juxtaposition of sanity and insanity, of bourgeois ordinariness and criminal outrage. The crisscross motif, derived from thriller fiction, is itself a map of the way audiences willingly cross over from their seats to involve themselves in a film. James Stewart being drawn into Kim Novak in Vertigo is a model of the way we are sucked into films. Charming Robert Walker and boring Farley Granger make a trap for our need to identify. The method of Rear Window—a voyeur in the dark inspecting other lives—is the principle of cinematic spectacle. Hitchcock’s best films all grow out of his instinctive employment of our impulses and fantasy life in the cinema. And his moral seriousness consists of showing us the violent, psychotic fruits of some of those impulses and shyly asking us to claim them as our own. I say “shyly” because Hitchcock did not properly own up to his seriousness. It is not enough to paint Hitchcock the interviewee as a sly legpuller who teased earnest questions. The truth may be that he did not fully grasp his own films. Truffaut’s book amply reveals a man of very mundane, shallow moral and social attitudes, flip rather than witty, genuinely more interested in technique than in meaning. And, it must be said, there is a degree of spiritual coarseness and callousness in Hitchcock’s work that chimes with the career-long taste for brutalizing our nerves.

[baku-fessionals]

Q: Is there a specific moment in the series regarding Bakugo Katsuki that sticks out in your mind for any reason?

A: “A few. I’ll warn you. This will be long.

Uraraka vs Bakugou

This is supposed to be the scene that helped created the Kacchako ship and to cement that Bakugou is a “feminist” that “respected and acknowledged” Uraraka as a “worthy foe”. All I saw was Horikoshi using Aizawa as a mouthpiece to say that despite his crude behavior, he’s aware of her strength.

Only for him to say, as he pulls out an insane explosion out of his ass, that NOW was time to get serious.

Meaning while Uraraka was giving everything from the get go, Bakugou couldn’t be bothered to treat her like a threat and just knocked her around to exhaust her UNTIL she finally did something that potentially challenged him.

And then he had the GALL to demand from Todoroki to not hold back against him. The iconic “Who said anything about her being frail?” was said begrudgingly.

He didn’t look in awe of her, he was slumped over and pissy that he had to acknowledge that maybe not everyone in his class was inferior to him. Bakugou came off more misogynistic to me in that scene. Meanwhile the two people who actually acknowledge Uraraka’s intelligence was Midoriya, who set Bakugou straight with no shred of hesitation.

And Monoma. Yes, the boy who shits on Class 1-A at any opportunity, actually explained her big move and saying it in a tone of admiration.

Midoriya and Bakugou vs All Might

From smacking Midoriya in the face with his gauntlet because he wanted him to shut up,

to dragging his feet about needing to work together,

to actually willing to give up victory because he personally felt so humiliated about needing to rely on “someone so weak”,

Bakugou was nothing but a petulant little shit and I couldn’t stand him. In more ways than one, Izuku carried that entire battle, facing the number one hero,

all the while trying to collaborate with a screaming five year old until he (with a look of revulsion) worked with him.

Also, Bakugou is knocked out,

was a shitty team member, but he gets to pass.

Meanwhile Sero gets knocked out, acts like a HERO and saves his teammate, and failed his exam. Explain me that.

Class 1-A vs Tamaki and Nejire

This is the episode before we actually see Season 4’s story happen. The class is up against two of the Big Three and we see Amajiki actually giving the rest of 1-A a hard time. Then Bakugou swoops in and steals the hard work and glory from them because of course Bakugou has to get the final blow. But then he goes off on a stupid tangent of Amajiki possibly looking down on him or whatever. And remember when Bakugou fired that gauntlet blast at Midoriya, where he would’ve “been fine as long as he dodges”? Well, Bakugou fired that straight into Amajiki’s face at point blank range. I’m sorry, that’s suppose to be funny? It just felt like Bakugou going back to basics, only this time he traded one person with horrible confidence issues with another. And Kirishima failed Amajiki as a friend that day.

Heroes Rising

Towards the end of the movie, Bakugou is granted One For All by Izuku and the previous users, because he is also a “worthy hero”. Really? The same kid that called the same users a bunch of weak nobodies suddenly is worth being granted the power to get their help. The same little shit that (as said by Mineta), hasn’t done anything since they arrived at the island? Instead of helping people (which is also part of a hero’s job), he shut himself in just because there wasn’t anyone to fight? Yeah, clearly deserving of All Might’s quirk.

Bakugou’s legitimate hero name

Best Jeanist and Midnight try to get him to incorporate an appropriate hero and get him to understand that a hero name is something you want citizens to know you as. Before, he came up with a bunch of violent names.

This could have been funny if he wasn’t so serious about being a violent little shit all the time. Then we finally get revealed his actual hero name. And what did he do?

He doubled down, tried to throw in part of All Night’s name into his as of he was All Might’s successor and not Izuku, with just a hint of a god complex. He WANTS people to see him like this and holds no regret or shame in his choosing. This radiated small **** energy and cemented how stagnant of a character he truly is. Of course there’s him trying to kill Midoriya with an explosion with his gauntlets, both his sob story during DvK2

and the apology where he made it all about himself and no chance for Izuku to say his piece,

him being a shit training partner for Izuku

and hogging up the OFA meetings with nothing of value but instead all about him.

But those five in particular I felt stood out to me.”

- Anonymous Survey Participant

[anolyso]

Utena thoughts...about 2 weeks later

I've been putting it off for way too long and so most of my thoughts stopped being fresh. On top of watching way too many analysis vids post-watch, but still I do at least want to put my 2cents of Revolutionary Girl Utena out there for the world.

Utena is perhaps one of the most famous "magical girl"/shoujo action shows out there for not only it's transgressive themes of relationship abuse and low-key pretty much being the poster girl for like actual feminist perspective on/in anime...but also just doing it all in both a heavily allegorical and understated, yet super over-the-top stylish fashion

But that's it's reputation preceding itself, is Utena worth while all these years? The answer is Yes, but it also really shows it's age and budget in pacing and repetition, tho as an appreciator for "behind the scenes" compromises in art, it's more showcasing Ikuhara's talent in working around both taboo and long-form budget constraints with just well-thought out and iconic imagery that - while episodic and formulaic - is just very good at filling the 39 eps with feasts for the eyes.

Utena broadly is about tomboy Utena with memories long ago after her parents died being "saved" by a princely figure like a princess...except she's so enthralled by the nostalgia that instead she becomes a full on Prince herself and receives a dueling ring to fight in the Ohtori Acadamy secret duels for "engagement" to Rose Bride Himemiya Anthy.

Utena is divided between 4 arcs, only the first and last being Manga adapted from hearsay:

1: Student Council Saga

2: Black Rose Saga

3: Akio Ohtori Saga

4: Apocalypse

From back to forth I'd say that Akio + Apoc is more just escalation into the finale while Black Rose being anime original comes off as a glorified side-character study which while complementing the secondary cast, feels like one of those Anime movies that has to say "but if you don't watch this part, it's pretty much optional for the main plot" despite it also actually introducing the most important antagonist within it's margins.

More importantly, it's the Student Council (arc and the actual people) that lay the foundation but also a large part of the show's focus which ironically puts Utena in the background until like almost the finale and some in-between developments, so it's less "Utena (and Anthy Himemiya)'s story" until the very end, but more like a showcase of how fucked up the system at large is (pin in that).

By the Council themselves is:

Kyouichi Saionji: The biggest jobber, like actually introduced as the most despicable loser ep 1 and proceeds to be a complete arrogant joke for the rest of the show. Honestly in another shojo "love" story, they'd find some way to redeem him but semi-compellingly they turn him into like an Aqua-lad type pathetic brat with an inferiority complex to the actual Student head

Miki Kaoru: the naive "nice, non-threatening soft boy" that also just never actually listens to the girls around him. Probably adds more complexity to the whole patriarchal idea on analytic reflection since yeah, the whole "nice guy finishes last" plays up better when the kid comes off as that "ally" energy of wanting to save Himemiya from being the Rose Bride but also low-key won't actually not just do the duels and win her cuz he's that sorta wishy-washy hypocrite. Arguably the least hateable guy in the cast (minus mascot Chu-Chu)

Juri Arisugawa: TRAGIC LESBIAN TRIANGLE LOVE. Probably the biggest point to of both "not-explicitly homosexual" but also really freaking obvious since her entire story is her girlfriend stealing her "boy crush" when actually she was crushing on her and being pretty much frustrated throughout her story as pining most of it. It's quaint by today's standards but also like damn girl, get over her she was like the worst back stabbing bitch (literally if Black Rose counts)

Nanami Kiryuu: SPEAKING OF QUEEN BITCH, it's been a long time since I've watched a High School girl bully and honestly it's kinda refreshing. If Miki is "soft-boy uwu" Nanami is a brat that gets her come-uppance often, featured prominently as an anime only with the MOST filler/comedic episodes but also not low-key, being the most out-spoken actual brother complex ironically spins perhaps the biggest twist and ironic relationships of "I love my brother but not-like-that but also like-that" by the end. Mostly comedic relief but I find her inclusion to actually add a lot more to juxtapose...

Touga Kiryuu: Big Student Council Prez himself, the first arc antagonist and also a strong foil to Saionji and later a stepping stone for Akio. Touga is THE image of a Princely Playboy Heart-Throb that in any other Shoujo romance would have the main girl win him over from all those "other girls" despite him being apathetic if not outright manipulative of them. Good thing Utena is better than that and really puts a spotlight on just not-actually-ok his power hunger for "the power to bring the world revolution" that leads him to heavily objectify Anthy, arguably even more than Misogynist Trophy Girlfriend beater Saionji, since he doesn't even see her as more than a means to an end despite professing and looking the Prince part but lacking all the actual virtues.

The Student council matters more since they're characters and subsequent tragic flaws are the ACTUAL meat of the show and on second rumination actual shows more how fucked up the system/gender dynamic/power hierarchy is since - while it blatantly fucks over Juri who can't just outright say who she likes - also show almost it's own sub-text of Masculine failings: Saionji desperately clinging to being TOXIC MASCULINE™ and completely falling short underneath Touga; Miki's "nice boy" act belying him trying to replace his low-key nostalgia for his sister (also a bitch, but apparently was more like Nanami in the manga); and best yet Touga being the quintessential "Prince in all but actual behavior" by emulating a cutthroat and Machiavellian world view but coming up empty because well, he's just an illusion of a prince...but that leads in way more to the big finale piece where I'll reintroduce the actual story's main trio

Utena Tenjou: Tomboy Prince with brain empty except for lesbian thoughts. Honestly probably what every western "STRONG INDEPENDENT WOMAN" archetype wishes they were since while having very tomboyish personality in athletics, blunt speaking and also VERY oblivious to the actual plot for REAL DRAMATIC IRONY, but also never actually demeaning her being feminine partially due to her love of an childhood prince and how she maintains her relationship with both her friend Wakaba and later Anthy. Honestly mostly a plot device after S1 until she gets ACTUAL development by the very end and instead kinda bumbles her way into undoing the entire REVOLUTION OF THE WORLD. I kinda wish she felt either more cognizant or at least felt like she was developing/properly rebuking the rest of the cast's power obsessions but I guess that's for the movie.

Anthy Himemiya: Actual Trophy Wife with a dark secret (darker than ski- wait no that's terrible scratch that). Set-up very much as an immediate princess in distress while also being the most femme Yamato Nadeshiko, Anthy being the Rose Bride as a literal prize who acts and behaves as whom she's "engaged" with desires while otherwise being quiet, wry, mysterious and noticably submissive, by the end it actually plays up into THE BIG REVEALS of just how abused she's been into a hopeless acceptance...like y'know actual abuse victims.

Akio Ohtori: Grade A Antagonist, probably the most insidious I've seen a villain in a while, Akio is notable for, back in 1997, being perhaps the big go-to of actual deconstructing the facade of a whole shoujo genre's "hots for a teacher/sexy man putting the moves" and highlighting how actually exploitative and abusive a person like that really is. Being Himemiya's brother (somewhat justified in the manga by both being a weird Sailor Moon-esque reincarnation of gods/godesses of Dios), despite how much of his motives are runing the background and how the entire back story is  uh...brought up in like barely in the last arc with little lead up (some scenes feel like they'd be a full melodrama season and they just have like 1 scene in the final arc episodes) he manages to one-up Touga (in the plot as well) by instead of "just" objectifying girls, not-just-flat out saying Utena looks best as a princess, but y'know the fact that he is implicitly yet constantly exploiting and victim-blaming Anthy for her own suffering for "the power of Dios/Revolution of the world" turns it on its head

I've spent all this time on characters but in truth a lot of the meat of the show relies again on the Council Members fleshing out the issues of system leading to outright divorcing "being a Prince" (heroic altruistic virtues) and "being a man" (considering like all but maybe the comedic relief have some deliberately misogynistic behavior) and beyond just the plot (or rather character) synopsis, the talent goes far more in how it's framed, the symbolic/allegorical shots, the repetition adding a good episode formula flow to character showcases, probably the most "tasteful" allusion to uh...*ahem* sexual abuse that so many other edgier/prentious shows fumble. Both in how intimidating yet understated it's foreshadowing is until they hard-reveal it despite never explicitly naming it even tho it sends Nanami into hysterics

Really it's both a massive blessing and reason for it's cult beloved status for it's aesthetics but also it's burden, for being a full 39 episodic season by season character development study of everyone BUT the main trio except for snippets and the very end that makes it greatly appreciable as a legitimate work of art.

What I wanted more to say however (long overdue) is that a large part of following is, visibly at least, western feminist critiques and yes while it almost seems like Utena fits the "deconstructing patriarchy" story like a glove...it's weird how almost none of them actually can give a good historical account of actual Japanese female/gender/sexuality norms nor Anime contemporaries actually were. Like Tenchi Muyo and Berserk came out the same year (Cardcaptor Sakura the next) and despite how you can "feel" the influence in lots of modern shows like SHAFT's signature visual imagery cuts or many WESETERN shows having straight scene references to Utena....almost no one has a similar feel to Utena until like Princess Tutu comes out.

Really tho probably should've watched Utena and then Tutu because while it's undeniable that Utena is a major pillar of shoujo re-codification - what with everyone before Utena was saying they thought it'd be like a Rose of Versaille or Lady Knight rip-off...whose laughing now? - it's almost like there's a missing link between it and it's major western fanbase (probably with what few anime did get overseas, this one probably rose to the top), or how very noticeable there IS an influence on it's genre in Japan

Almost none of the big analyst fans actually know A) it's not "a deconstruction of Magical Girls" since despite Ikuhara working on Sailor Moon just before this, almost none of the tropes line up and instead more with Shoujo genre as a whole. or  one of the major inspirations was Takarazuka theater.

And this is not to dismiss how inspirational it is to it's western fandom, but while I am notably cynical towards placing things on pedestals, there's probably something about cultivating the whole pop-culture feminist reading commune with people making weird time-loop theories while kinda most of it is just filling in a mad-lib mostly thanks to Ikuhara just keeping things on the vague and letting the audience take away their own perspective.

Again, most of the show is completely sub-textual or visually/symbolically depicted and never stated nor properly defines it's weird key words (End of the World, Revolutionize the World, Power of Dios, Rose Bride, all things said constantly but never really said what they "mean". But that's also perhaps its charm, in it's allegory and very Death of the Author approach, it has definitely allowed it's fan theorizing and appreciation to flourish so there's something there for that.

Ultimately I'd say Utena the TV series is great more so for what it isn't...or rather I should say it's great for not just subverting Shoujo tropes and archetypes for the Japanese audience but also that despite dealing with some very serious and heavy subjects in obtuse and perhaps understated ways for the time, people have allowed it to be put on it's pedestal because they can easily fit it in themselves.

Honestly though, not that a more "straight forward" approach wouldn't detract from Utena but I will say that the movie, Adolescence of Utena, is very much the best encapsulation of what Utena strives to be (for another big blog post) and while the TV series has plenty of time and flexes it's directorial muscles with budget constraints and season pacing UNrestrained, the movie will trim a lot of the fat

[butchhamlet]

OKAY SO I GOT TO SEE SHAKESPEARE IN THE PARK ANDRE DE SHIELDS KING LEAR YESTERDAY AND IT WAS FUCKING AMAZING SO HERE’S A POST ABOUT THAT

first off here’s the shitty picture i took of the set! the entire thing was set in “a north african nation” (words theirs; in quotes because i don’t want to seem like they named a real one and i just didn’t bother to remember askdfhdskhfds) & the entire cast was people of color! i am staring at this picture thinking about how blurry it is but trust me that it was SO fucking cool... it was visibly gorgeous but also visibly crumbling which. like. foams at the mouth about the symbolism yknow

ALSO the winged thing is the throne! during intermission (which was after 3.6), some crew members took the wings off and laid them down at the back of the set like the whole thing had come apart, and when edmund entered in 5.1 he had a moment of staring out at the audience with his foot up on the top wing

the entire production went hard on drums; there was a note in the program about how the director wanted to center the african setting & also the rhythm; the trumpet herald at the end was replaced by drumming, and during the storm scenes, the drums represented the thunder! (complete with flashing lights for lightning; it was cool as fuck)

& now i’m gonna describe my beat-by-beat staging notes that i scribbled down from where i was sitting in the grass. no attempts to make this coherent bc the show was so fucking good and i just feel insane <3

 edmund came out in literal jade-colored glasses which felt like a WONDERFUL character bit

everyone in this cast was so well cast btw and not to be a lesbian but like. the lear sisters. 😳

they cut the cordelia asides in 1.1, which made it slightly harder to get a read on her but also made it slightly more startling when she said “nothing, my lord” (goneril and regan both got up to take a literal microphone from lear, while cordelia didn’t take it when he held it out and literally turned away to face the audience instead)

there were three little stools laid out for each sister to sit on & lear was so infuriated by what cordelia said that he started throwing them around (not at her but close)

and lear never looked particularly Legitimately Threatening (he looked very small, actually; idk how tall andre de shields is lmfao but he definitely looked like an old man), but cordelia flinched near-instinctively when he threw the stools, like this wasn’t the first time

WHEN LEAR LEFT NEAR THE END OF 1.1 GONERIL GOT UP AND SAT IN THE THRONE WHERE HE’D BEEN SITTING AND STAYED THERE WHILE SEEING CORDELIA OFF

she was also the only lear sister in a pantsuit 😳

on that note they were color-coded! goneril was dressed all in purple, regan was orange, and cordelia was pink; all of their households followed this (eg cornwall was orange, oswald was purple), but when cordelia came back in act four, it was in soldiers’ clothes without any pink on her

andre de shields lear was fucking incredible and is anyone surprised about that like he was so good

he did SO much yelling. man has some lungs on him. not even yelling words all the time but a lot of just flat-out yelling (which was alternately funny and distressing depending on the moment)

like in 1.4 he stumbled back in to deliver “50 of my followers at a clap?” heralded by his own flat-out scream which made everyone laugh a little. grandpappy off the shits

EDGAR CAME IN ON A SKATEBOARD WITH HEADPHONES ON AND WHEN HE STOPPED AND LIFTED UP HIS SKATEBOARD SHAKESPEARE’S FACE WAS ON THE BOTTOM

this edgar was so fucking perfect btw like. everything about him. i think he was my favorite part of the show

lear and his knights busted in playing loud music, waving guns, and drinking from beer cans (white claw? idk what it was i’m a weenie). lear was wearing the brightest orange shirt ive ever seen. kent received entry to the group by busting some sick moves to the music despite being an oldass man

the fool was SO fucking funny he interacted w the audience constantly and the entire time (even during the storm scene) he was lugging around a suitcase and a little folding stool

after “have more than thou showest” the audience started clapping and he looked at us and said “not yet”

and then proceeded to deliver the sweet and bitter fool speech as a full-on rap with the audience clapping the beats in after each line

at the end of which he said to us “good job! give yourselves a hand. the king’s mad at y’all now though” and then he turned around and lear had his gun aimed at him and AUDIBLY clicked the safety off and there was a tense second where the fool had to talk him down

GONERIL SLAPPED LEAR AFTER THE BARRENNESS CURSE

1.5 hurt because the fool was VERY clearly trying his best to cheer lear up, like, he kept glancing around for ideas and trying to joke while lear sat pathetically on his folding stool

the stage was outdoors (duh) and there were ramps on either side for the actors to come on and off into the crowd, and when edgar ran off, he sprinted down the ramp, then turned, sprinted BACK, hugged edmund HARD, and then ran off again and around the back of the stage

this was after edmund FULLY punched him in the face on “pardon me” :(

at the end of 2.1 edmund was the last one to file off stage and he turned and gave the audience the cheekiest shrug

edgar tripped and ate shit while he was absolutely tearing around the side of the stage for 2.3 and idk if it was on purpose but it felt in character AKHSDFKHDSSFH

he delivered “poor turlygod! poor tom!” like he was acting, and then looked up and went “that’s something” kind of like he’d just realized

the fool delivered his merlin speech like he was making it up on the fucking spot. “and then the realm of albion...” [PAUSE.] “will come... to great... con-fu-si-on” emphasizing the non-rhyme. same with the non-rhyme of “see’t” / “fee-eet.” then he looked at us and said, “i didn’t write it. ask the author” and scrambled offstage

in 3.3 gloucester hugged edmund! ...and edmund picked his pocket for his key

“nay, he reserved some white flowers in the crook of his elbow, half a pair of pants, and a nasty ratty baseball cap, else we’d all been shamed” (im filling in the wording i forgot but that’s near verbatim and i cackled out loud)

(he was, indeed, wearing nothing but some white flowers, a ragged pair of pants, and a nasty ratty baseball cap. and a lot of dirt/paint)

when gloucester entered during the hovel scene edgar was skittering across the floor and looked up and the whole set paused as they made EXTENDED eye contact and it hurt INTENSELY

and then edgar snatched gloucester’s flashlight and hurried to the opposite end of the stage to focus entirely and intently on warming his hands over it like a fire and he did not look in gloucester’s direction at all but he got VERY still when gloucester mentioned him

i made an AUDIBLE noise when lear stabbed the fool. like. i knew it was a possible staging but it happened so fast and so viciously that it caught me totally off guard

and edgar got the “i’ll go to bed at noon” line :(

genuinely it is hard to emphasize how perfect this edgar was. how do i kin a character but just one specific version of that character that i saw one time

(intermission happened here!)

while interrogating gloucester, cornwall was very deliberately putting on medical gloves and then he picked up a power drill and my friend and i in the audience looked at each other exactly like the fucking monkey puppet image

however. only one eye went out with the power drill. because regan took the other one out WITH HER NAILS in a fit of rage when her husband was injured. full on stuck her hand into his eye socket

goneril and edmund kissed for a LONG long moment in 4.2. long enough that oswald coughed pointedly. which did not stop or affect them

gloucester tried to pay edgar and edgar immediately turned around and chucked the payment off stage

gloucester used a cane the whole show and he dropped it off the “cliff” before he fell, and edgar swooped down and silently caught it and held it for a moment before he let it clatter to the floor

at this point he was also wearing leggings and like. three mismatched layers of flannels and jackets

lear came out in act four in a tropical dress, white face/chest paint, and a flower/fruit hat

he threw money into the crowd multiple times during his speech, including one point where he specifically leaned over the edge of the stage, motioned at the closest audience member, said, “come here,” and then threw money at them

he also mooned the guards who came to get him

and nearly hugged someone in the crowd while the guards tried to drag his half-tranquilized body away

oswald was so fucking funny for the entire play. so funny. in 1.4 he came in with goneril and pointed at lear with the air of a small child tattling to the teacher; when kent attacked him he fell on the ground whimpering;  he came in to kill gloucester a moment before lear left and ducked back into the wings FAST before creeping out again

when the guards brought lear and cordelia in, someone set out the fool’s little folding chair, and cordelia ended up sitting on it during lear’s speech :( felt very my-poor-fool-is-hanged y’know

curan from 2.1 was the captain in 5.1! so he & edmund already had a bit of a relationship established

REGAN THREW HER WINE IN GONERIL’S FACE WHILE THEY FOUGHT OVER EDMUND

edgar and edmund dueled with two swords each

AND WHEN HE WAS INJURED AND ALBANY CALLED THEM BOTH OUT. GONERIL TOOK EDMUND’S SWORD AND WENT AT ALBANY WITH IT AND NEARLY GOT HIM BEFORE RUNNING OFFSTAGE

they cut “yet edmund is beloved” which is always a cardinal sin HOWEVER when he got the news about regan and goneril edmund stabbed himself which. pain and suffering!

much like albany himself, i literally forgot about lear and cordelia because i was so enthralled by gloucester brothers duel like. i was so caught up in the agony of edgar killing edmund that i forgot the other fucking bomb that had to drop and it was like getting bricked in the face

my last note literally reads “cannot believe i forgot abt the other bomb to drop jesus christ i hate this shit ass bitch ass play it really just fucking ends like that huh fuck off”

it was the first time i’ve ever seen live shakespearean theater and it literally could not have been better and i am terminally insane now.

[kelpyart]

Firestar - The OG boy! The one that started everything so many years ago! I have always had such a soft spot in my heart for Firestar, being able to watch his adventure unfold from an outcast to one of the most respected cats in all of the clans, as a little girl. I've always loved Firestar- I think one of my favorite scenes is when he sits with Yellowfang when she's dying and tells her about every good memory they have together. I love the idea of him going from this little tiny kit to this just massive, stronk cat. I could never imagine him as a tabby, so I love his Abyssian designs!! I bet when he purrs it's REALLY OBNOXIOUSLY LOUD Graystripe - It has been so long since I have read a Warriors book that I haven't been able to keep up on Graystripe, other than he had his own book and it was really good ;; I always loved how loyal of a friend he was towards Firestar, but I distinctly remember being incredibly frustrated with him when I was first reading through the series and his romance with Silverstream, followed by his subsequent bouncing between clans. Now I don't mind it, but when I was little, I was MAD. I also like that he was able to settle back down as he got older with Millie- I really like that it showed he could love again and was able to move on while still honoring Silverstream. Ravenpaw - I haven't read Ravenpaw's story yet, either- but I love this boy! Big ears are a must. Very nervous boy! One of my top 10 favorite characters- I love how even though he was afraid, he came back to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Firestar against BloodClan. I don't really have too much to say about him- dark kitty, white patch on chest! Loved his brother Dustpelt so much but never felt as good as him. Tigerstar - A horrible man- disgusting! But his character was already really interesting to me, and the characterization that Cushfuddled made with him was spot on- I love!! I love the concept that he legitimately thought that taking over ThunderClan was in their best interest and he was honestly convinced that he was doing the right thing. Big cat, maybe Maine Coon or Norweigan Forest cat? Just BIG AND LARGE. His design pulls a lot of inspiration for Nifty-senpai's design for Tigerstar! Spottedleaf - Man, I was never really a fan of Spottedleaf and I absolutely HATE FirexSpotted. I feel like it was more of a tiny crush on Firepaw's end like "ooh she's pretty! uwu" but nothing more than that. I really hate the writing on how that was dragged out into him loving her forever. I mean, when he joined the clan, she was literally old enough to be his mother? I just... don't like it. Design wise- she is small and has round-shapes  Her ears are small and round, compared to Redtail's, that are large and have tufts. While Redtail's design is much more simple, Spottedleaf's is much busier (based on my favorite design for her by cityswarriorkitties on Tumblr). I honestly love in Twin Shadows (by Cushfuddled) SandxSpotted ;; I love it so, so much Bluestar - Bluestar is the worst. 10/10, dislike. I love my design for her, but just in general dislike her character a ton. I could do a complete character analysis for her as to why I dislike her, but I think my main reason is by naming Brightpaw 'Lostface'. Even if she was mentally struggling at the time (which I think we have all been there!), she, someone who holds the HIGHEST power and respect in the clan, took our her anger on a CHILD (a literal CHILD) by naming her 'Lostface'. You cannot take our your anger on a literal child. Imagine if a teacher- no, the principal- went to school and was having a really hard time with everything in life, and took a child who was just HORRIBLY misfigured and would be for the rest of her life- and named her LOSTFACE. Not even that, a Warrior name is almost sacred to Warrior cats- it is their entire identity. It's just cruel, disgusting, and I could never forgive her after that fact.

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