#its a funny thought but so unrealistic because than there would be no conflict

[edenilisk]

what if gojo realised what geto was going through and helped him this what if geto didn't leave gojo that

what if gojo left!!! with!!! geto!!!

[masonscig]

Man. I won't say I'm disappointed with this book, but I think the series is a whole lot better when the focus is on things being done TO the mc vs random people suffering because x wants their blood

Like, book one was about Murphy going after the mc. Simple clear threat that fits the tone of the books. Sure some other people died but I don't think it hindered anything

i liked book 2 because it was just a genuine supernatural problem. The carnival guys who's name I can't remember rn were just having a simple conflict of interest with wayhaven. I'm not mad at the trappers coming in at the end but I think a simple low stakes ending where they sign the treaty or don't would have been just as fitting

But book 3 was absolutely not ready to actually handle the dark topics it wanted to devle into. The scope of the plot was way to wide and it still managed to feel slow. If it were up to me I would have just had the trappers going after addie with no connection to mc. It would be lower stakes than like. A dozen or whatever kidnappings and wouldn't have made the actual romance (you know the focus of the books?) Feel so out of place tone wise.

Sorry for rambling into your ask box lol I just have many thoughts about book 3 (like the fact that on steam it sits alphabetically between book 1 and 2 so my steam games list goes 1 3 2. That's going to bug me forever)

HI <3 before i respond, don't apologize for leaving a long ask in my inbox! i absolutely love getting asks and especially ones that open up discussions! <3 thank you for this !! answering below the cut

you're so right about the differences between books. it's so much better when it's contained – the story for this was just too big for her to get her hands around. and that's awesome that she was ambitious! the story quality just suffered a lot bc of it. dude i LOVE that it was just One Guy Versus Unit Bravo for a while, because it was just so much more focused and allowed for more romance to bloom – and a huge reason i liked falk so much is that, like you said, it was a conflict of interest. he's not evil – just from another world with another cultural standard for "judgment". in book 3, it's literally a human (or supernatural in this case) rights violation. these are children – being kidnapped and attempted to be sold. this isn't a story that should have any lighthearted plot beats in the slightest – unless they were organic, and none of them felt that way

it's funny (not funny haha, funny weird) you say that about addie, because i was having an in depth discussion with friends about how much better the plot would flow if less people had been kidnapped. even just the idea that there are supernatural youth existing in wayhaven and that it is in fact, not safe for anyone! human or supernatural!

this book is just lacking the emotional impact plot-wise that it should, in my opinion, because she tried to cram so much into one book. that doesn't mean any of the plot points are bad, per se, they just needed to be workshopped, edited down, saved for later books, cut out completely – whatever makes the series flow better! and that's not to say any of these ideas are bad ideas – it's just unrealistic to write literally every possible idea for twc! there's going to be a point where there's too much to call back to and it's going to affect the story if those things aren't mentioned again yk?

also STOP ITS OUT OF ORDER ON STEAM??? LMAOOOO the cherry on top to a shit sundae huh.

[saturdaynightghostclub]

hi hello!! honestly so happy to see you on here, I came from tiktok and I’m obsessed with your writing and just your vibe in general??!

So I’m just knee deep into stalking your tumblr and I wanted to ask what you meant by the Ted Lasso-ification of media? It’s the first I’m hearing of it and would love to hear more of your thoughts. Take care 🫶🫶🫶

Oh bestie I am SO happy to talk about the Ted Lasso-ification of Media™

Disclaimer: I don’t mind Ted Lasso at all! I think it’s cute and funny and wholesome, and that’s a lot of folks’ niche so I am in no way shitting on the show or any of its fans—it’s just that I think it pretty much perfectly encapsulates the phenomenon I’m talking about w/r/t the larger entertainment-sphere at the moment. Also, this is super nuanced and there are obviously exceptions, there’s nothing wrong with engaging in entertainment media however you see fit, etc etc. All love to the wholesome media enjoyers, I promise!

Basically I think, in some way, we’ve grown into the mentality that we should never be uncomfortable, and therefore recent entertainment has trended extremely conflict-avoidant. That doesn’t mean there is no conflict, although it certainly can—really I mean that, when there is conflict, or when characters are flawed and make mistakes, or when uncomfortable topics are brought up, everyone seems to have a magical bag of buzzwords from which they can pull the perfect solution by the end of the episode. And while that’s great, it’s unrealistic and unsatisfying.

It’s baffling to me because part of the human experience is discomfort, and when characters enter into conflict it shows their humanity. How they deal with that conflict should, In My Opinion, reflect that humanity. While I don’t hate Ted Lasso or any of the other shows that are dealing with our current social climate in that way, they do get a ton of vitriol and frankly I can understand why. It feels like you’re being lectured at rather than entertained, like an After School Special instead of an adult TV show. Off the top of my head I can think of Ted Lasso, Grown-ish, Sex Education (which I LOVE by the way), Schitt’s Creek, and any other number of shows whose sole goal seems to be to state in very clear terms what is Right and what is Wrong so that we can pat ourselves on the back for agreeing with them. I understand the goal here, but I think there’s a huge discrepancy between the people who need to hear those messages and the people who don’t, and the latter group is the one watching those shows.

I think we need to let go of the idea that being Likable is the primary thing a cast of characters should be, and instead embrace likability in the face of human flaws. If a character screws up and can’t wave a magic wand to fix it in a tight 30 minutes, doesn’t that just make them more interesting? Doesn’t it make them feel real?

There are a ton of “wholesome” shows that I think do this really well:

Pushing Daisies

Northern Exposure

Ugly Betty

Malcolm in the Middle

And a couple of not-so-wholesome ones:

Twin Peaks

Hannibal

Succession

The Bear (could go either way tbh)

Barry

Fleabag

And many, many more!!

Basically my word isn’t law, but speaking as an individual: I want my entertainment to reflect the human experience, good, bad, and ugly, and there are ways to do that without being gross—just write like a human!

If you want to get more into this train of thought, Neil Gaiman’s talked about it a few times (ie “I wasn’t aware that I was making comfort content, I thought I was making thinking and feeling content too” or something along those lines) and there are countless essays and interviews with Ursula K. Le Guin where she makes a similar (albeit entirely more articulate) point!

Also thank you sweet anon, I appreciate your presence here and the fact that you’ve let me rant about my media frustrations haha

[csykora]

A thought about meaningful change

I don’t want to distract from the most recent thing Benn did. I’m going to be talking about several different things, and some might seem smaller than others: I know. I’m not saying that the newest thing isn’t important enough on its own or that everything’s on the same level. But I think patterns can be useful.

(I have also made myself sick with nerves a couple times so I’m posting this as is: sorry for typos, and while I’ll stand behind my ideas there may be some sentences that are a little long or awkwardly worded).

Back in 2015, Jame Benn and Tyler Seguin were doing a radio interview.

Some of you might be thinking, “You want to talk about THIS, AGAIN?” Yes. More of you are probably thinking, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Yeah, that’s what I want to talk about.

cw for discussions of sexual harassment, incest, homophobia, bullying, misogyny and transmisogyny, transphobia

So during this interview, one of the radio hosts asked Benn if he and his brother were ever road roommates. Benn said no, and the host commented that Henrik and Daniel Sedin probably roomed together.

“Well yeah…that’s the Sedins,” Seguin said.

“Who knows what else they do together?" Benn said. Everyone laughed.

“Seriously,” Seguin said.

"Dude, it's creepy," the radio hosts said, "In fact, it's a good example to future brothers in the NHL on how not to do things." Then they reassured Benn, “In no way am I implying that you have a Sedin-type vibe going about you.”

Benn and Seguin laughed. The conversation continued, calling the Sedins creepy for wearing similar facial hair, leaving nearby and spending too much time together.

When asked pointblank, “Are the Sedins weird?” Benn answered, “I don’t know. I can’t say.”

To finish the sentence he didn’t: he was implying that the Sedin brothers fuck each other.

Now, these were shock jockeys. They were almost certainly hoping Benn and Seguin would say something homophobic. That said, even shock jockeys pre-screen an interview. They’re not going to invite just anyone on the air and try this with them, because all it takes is someone saying, “I don’t know what you mean,” or “No, I actually respect Dan and Henke a lot as my colleagues” to ruin that set up. If a shock jockey thinks you’re a mark, you’ve probably said something off-air that made them think you’re a mark. And if they dug a pit in front of him, Benn is still the one who decided to stick his dick in it and make things overtly sexual.

After, the Stars stated that Benn had “reached out” the Sedins to apologize. Seguin did not reach out but was “included” in whatever Benn wrote or said. Neither of them gave a public explanation or apology. As far as I can tell the Sedins never commented on whether they received that message, what sort of apology it was, or whether they accepted it. Henrik Sedin’s only comment was, “I think it says more about them than it does about us.”

Ways that homophobia is working here:

-the idea that two men having any degree of physical or emotional closeness, even family members, is suspicious.

-Benn roomed with his brother. Course he did. The hosts spell out what he was afraid of: that the other men in the room might think he had the wrong vibe. He was so afraid of them thinking he had unmanly vulnerabilities like liking his own brother that he misrepresented the situation and pushed someone else forward.

-the idea that a man having any relationship to another man’s physical body or appearance, is suspicious.

Dressing or looking too similar to another man—which means you’ve paid attention to how another man’s body looks in order to copy him, like you’re trying to take ownership of his body, which = fucking him—is a really common accusation. Gay men are seen as lusting after and trying to copy other men’s real masculinity for themselves (but of course never quite succeeding). A man thinking that another man who he knows or suspects to be gay looks too similar to him, and so must have been watching and ‘copying’ him, is a common spark for homophobic attacks.

-the idea that any of this could have been a joke depends on the idea that two men having sex is wacky and unrealistic. Imagine if that happened, wouldn’t that be weird.

Now, someone might say, “It’s not that gay sex is wacky, it’s that the incest that is!” First, incest accounts for a lot of childhood sexual abuse, so I wouldn’t say it’s wacky either. And while it’s true that people can say awful things to different gender twins as well out of a combination of gender prejudices, in this case there were also homophobic ideas about men and masculinity at play.

Ways that power is working here:

-People forgot this fast. It was treated as settled because the Stars said it was settled. People gave “kudos” to Benn “doing the right thing” afterward, or for seeming to realize what was happening and not saying yes to the final question.

 I would argue that “I don’t know, I can’t say” is somehow a worse answer to a yes-or-no question, because it means that either you want to say yes but you’re scared of the consequences, or you sincerely don’t know what to say. All he had to do was say “No.” After he said “I don’t know,” Seguin continued and said, “They are weird.” If Benn had said, “No, actually they’ve been professional when I’ve worked with them and I won’t comment any more on their personal life,” Sequin might have noticed, and Benn might have encouraged him to change his behavior. Not saying “no” was a direct, demonstrable failure to show any kind of leadership.

-This counts as workplace sexual harassment. I’m not saying a case should have been pursued: that should have been at least partly up to the Sedins (although there should also be workplace rules about what is and isn’t acceptable without the victims having to ask for it). But that’s a word we can use for this, this could have been counted as that. Sexual harassment are actions based on a person’s gender, assigned sex, sexual activity, or other qualities related to sex, not just sexual attraction. I worry that often, conflicted feelings about putting people into the category of “Sexual Harasser” lead people to think that actions “aren’t bad enough” to be sexual harassment when they definitionally can be. In other lines of work, if you talk about your coworkers fucking their twins in the office, there are rules about that: at the very least, you’ll be getting a bunch of trainings and be moved to a part of the office where you won’t see them again.

In the NHL, it seems frighteningly clear that people don’t have recourse for sexual harassment. This was discussed and handled as a “childish insult”, not harassment against two coworkers/employees. Often, there’s a logic that something is just an insult, not a ‘real’ threat, because the person who did it couldn’t possibly be sexually attracted to the person they did it to.

-In 2015 Eric and Jordan Staal were living in identical houses outside Raleigh and ‘playing’ together every night. Seems super suspicious. Unless beefy Canadian boys’ behavior is normal, and European masculinity always has to be questioned as being softer-spoken, slimmer, more intellectual, scared of heavy hitting. There are a lot of reasons you might not call Eric Staal gay—maybe you know he’s bigger than you, more successful on Team Canada than you, more popular with the other Team Canada guys than you. Or maybe you just don’t look at him and think he could be gay. Or both. Eric is positioned so you’d have to punch up at him: Benn tried to position himself closer to that kind of social standing, by pushing someone else who already doesn’t quite fit in further out. This isn’t directly in the words, so I’m not all-out accusing them of xenophobia: what I mean is that it’s always worth asking if and how and why feminization is applied to Those Other People.

There’s the eating out thing. Which he sent to teammate Jason Demers, commenting “I feel like your (sic) the kind of guy who would”.

How misogyny is working here:

-the idea that this could have been funny or interesting or worth saying at all depends on the idea that vulvas are weird. Imagine if someone willing touched a cis woman with anything but their dick. Gosh.

-There’s no good explanation for what ‘the kind of guy who would’ was meant to mean. No one says, ‘Hey, do you do this widely mocked sex act? I don’t, but I think you would, and that’s cool and doesn’t affect your masculinity at all, bro, life is a rich tapestry.’

How power is working here:

-This counts as sexual harassment again. Even if asking a coworker (or really more like someone you shift-manage or who reports to you) ‘how do you fuck your partner?’ wasn’t, saying ‘you seem like you would do ___’ is. Again, I’m not saying that Demers has to feel that way about it, but he should have had options.

-Demers was also in a new relationship at the time, so this could be harassment to both him and his partner, who had no recourse when someone her partner has to work with/for comments on her body.

-I don’t think it was intended as sexual harassment. But there’s not really a nice explanation of what he meant to say. It seems like it was intended as an insult or a ‘warning’: ‘this is the way men are allowed and no allowed to be in our group, do you know your place?’

Around that time, the Stars shared a video of Benn, Seguin, and Valeri Nichushkin. Each were supposed to say a couple lines, including their name. Valeri pronounced his nickname ‘Vall’, with a native Russian accent, more like “Wall” in English. Each time Benn and Seguin laughed and questions him and the producer cut. After a couple takes Benn said, “I thought your name was ‘Val.’” 

Sequin physically turned away from Nichushkin and laughed. Nichushkin, not understanding the comment, and not laughing, turned to Benn for an explanation, but Benn only turned toward Seguin, both continuing to laugh.

It was part of a pattern of comments from observers: “If Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn are having a laugh in the locker room, Nichushkin can only guess what’s so funny.” They themselves commented on how “His English is really not good at all…A lot of times we find him just sitting there.” “(In) normal conversations, he doesn’t really know what’s going on.”

I’ll give them credit—they said they felt pity and “try to help” too. I just can’t find any examples of them doing it, compared to teammates like Sharp or Spezza who can more concretely describe spending time with him.

Nichushkin chose to burn contract time in the KHL rather than Dallas before being bought out, expressing that he no longer felt like he “belonged in the NHL.” He felt that the Stars didn’t “trust” in him, was “nervous” in the locker room, and said his family worried for his mental health because of the culture.

“There is a bit of it because I want to be part of the conversation when someone says something,” Nichushkin said. “But I don’t have enough words I know so I can join in.”

-Is it the worst xenophobia in the world? Nah. It’s not free from xenophobia, when the only joke is that someone speaks differently than you. It’s not Benn joking about his own misunderstanding to invite Nichushkin in. I often point to Tripp Tracy, who asks players to teach him words in their language and then sets up jokes about his accent so they can deliver the punchline and laugh with him.

-Is it bullying? It kind of came off like it, to make a joke about someone you know can’t understand. At least it was unnecessary, and unkind. It’s just reminding someone they don’t belong.

-It’s unimpressive. It’s deflecting. Oh, he doesn’t know what’s going on? What did you do to tell to him? My family communicate through a mix of finger-signing, Scrabble tiles, and interpretive dance: I guarantee you, if you can’t communicate concepts like “we’re going to get dinner now, you’re welcome here, we’re having fun!”, you’re not trying. Which is fine, I guess, you don’t have to talk to people, unless it’s like, your job to work with your teammates.

Wanting to ban trans*feminine athletes from competition is based on a complete misunderstanding of math, medicine, and athletics; it’s unnecessary, unethical, and unkind.

It’s an unsurprising continuation of the ideas that there’s a line between men and women and transgressing it is suspicious, that women are gross, that people who are different are shocking and funny, that social pressure can and should be used to remind people who are different that they don’t belong.

It’s a fascist use of power, which I don’t say to mean that “He is A Fascist in every sense,” but that those beliesf express a desire and a comfort with using power to control other people’s bodies, and which bodies have access to certain spaces, to maintain “purity”.

I’m not saying that anyone should have looked at any of these things and easily decided in that moment, “That’s it, he’s shouldn’t have a platform or power over other players, he’s irredeemable.” You might look at a couple of them and think, “That’s not even a problem at all.” I’ll agree to disagree on some of them, but my point is about a pattern of how this dude uses the power he’s given.

I have a phrase, or more a series of words I sometimes yell when I’m talking about subjects like this—“STRUCK A TIM HORTONS.” I shout this in commemoration of the time that Ryan O’Reilly got drunk and drove his pickup into the wall of a small town Ontario Timmies.

“Struck a Tim Hortons” is a very good phrase to read in a police report. And, also, I’m an ACoA. I’ve experienced impaired driving, I’m terrified to shaking of it, and I know that other people have experienced much worse consequences. This isn’t a perfect metaphor (it’s not an example of prejudice or violence against a class of people, etc) but my point is that I try to hold it in my heart because that’s one case where I know what it’s like to really, really want something to just be NBD. Where part of me wants to just think it was a funny mistake so I don’t have to really think about the serious implications of it, and part of me super doesn’t. I have an instinct to resolve those feelings, to come down and decide that it’s either insignificant enough that I don’t have to think about it, or significant enough that I can hate him and then also stop thinking about it, and then I can have the relief of feeling just one feeling at a time.

I don’t think it’s bad to feel conflicted learning something about someone. I think it’s important.

But the problem is that if one thing isn’t significant enough, and we decide to keep thinking someone is fundamentally Good, we often toss that thing out. So when another thing happens, we only look at the new thing, trying to decide: is this enough? And that next thing might not be enough either. So we can go on and on, until you add up to a lot of things that have each done some harm, but none of them have been enough to change how we see and talk about someone.

Now I, personally, decided that the Timmies wasn’t so bad that ROR couldn’t ever make it up to me. But I didn’t decide to feel fine about it: I tried to just put a pin in how conflicted I felt. It’s been years, and over the years I think his actions have showed meaningful change. He hasn’t struck a Starbucks, a Dunkin, or even a Caribou. There’s a pattern.

I think a lot of people who don’t really like the things Benn says or does or believes have given him a lot of chances to make up for them, because they don’t want him to really mean those things. By which I really mean that I know there are a lot of women and queer fans who liked the guy. I get it (I don’t actually get it get it, but I mean I can try to understand people coming from a very different place than I do about him). 

I’ve read a lot of ways that people who are themselves vulnerable in our society try to empathize with him by imagining him as vulnerable too--he’s also experienced fatphobia, homophobia, he wasn’t expected to succeed, etc! I think that’s a wonderfully human instinct. But often I think people have more empathy for those experiences than he expresses for himself--he agrees that it was Bad to be fat and he’s Worked Hard to fit into the masculine norm, he agrees that it’s Bad to be close with another man and works to avoid it--and certainly more than he has showed in his actions toward others. If you’re going to say I hate him for saying that, I don’t--I want him and everyone in our society not to feel and do this shit!

I see a lot of people starting from the idea he is a good leader trying really hard to spin his choices as a smart strategy when he plays dumb with media, when he doesn’t give specific action plans or give public statements or apologies. (I actually agree with the first one, I think it is a strategy for him to avoid transparency and not do a part of his job that he doesn’t want to do.) It just…it seems like a lot of work to reach a pre-determined goal. It’s okay to like someone and for them to still not be good at their jobs! When I say I think a guy’s not a good leader, that’s not always the same as saying he’s a bad person. And if we keep on promoting a guy as a good leader because we like them regardless of their demonstrated leadership skills…that’s how we end up with a lot of shitty policies in the NHL.

Over the years he has consistently avoided stepping up to his captaincy and using his personal power to say things like, “No,” “Tyler, cut it out,” “This is what I’m going to do to fix a problem,” or “I believe in…” anything, really. 

I really, really want to ask people to be mad as hell and advocate for the NHL to improve its code of conduct and harassment processes. I do. But I’m also tired. I don’t think, if I did ask you that, it would work. I don’t have an argument for why you should be mad at someone who’s mad at my existence. I’m not trying. I just want to encourage you, if you’re feeling the tug of feelings and just want to be able to simplify someone’s behavior and love them in simple terms, to put a pin in the more complicated parts, and remember them the next time, and look for patterns.

[bestworstcase]

farran rereads lost lagoon: chapters 16-17

back at it.

re: romance novel: “I saw a patch of red flowers, and I thought they would be striking against Cass’s dark hair. She wasn’t exactly a flower wearer, but maybe she’d let me pin one on her dress? The color would set off her fair skin so perfectly. And she could at least keep some in a vase by her bed. I refused to believe there was a person alive who didn’t feel better with freshly cut flowers in her room.” that’s gay rapunzel

i do admittedly have some ambivalent feelings about this passage. on the one hand it’s - yes, very gay. but also it feels to me like such a clear illustration of the difficulty rapunzel has with empathy and listening to other people when their experiences or expectations or needs diverge from hers; she acknowledges that cass isn’t into flowers, but follows it up with “but maybe i can get her to wear some anyway,” and of course there’s the whole refusing to believe anyone could feel differently about having flowers in their room than she does. and it also has this weird undercurrent of - god, i don’t know how to phrase it in a succinct way.

this specific passage was on my mind when i wrote this bit in moonless air chapter 4: 

Still. She plucks at the stitches of her jack-of-plate, self-conscious.

It’s the nicest thing she owns. Soft green velvet sewn over sturdy layers of canvas and steel. Armor. She’d saved up for more than a year to buy it for herself on the anniversary of her adoption two years ago, and at the time it had been nothing but a frivolous luxury. Stupid, really. She’d never had real reason to wear it in Herzingen, not for anything besides teaching herself how to move with its weight and entertaining ridiculous fantasies—but last night, Moira had intimated that their destination in Vardaros is fancy as well as dangerous. So the jack seemed… appropriate.

Sharp. She twitches.

Clothing—fashion isn’t– Cassandra’s always hated dresses. It’s a trait that demands a certain amount of indifference to what other people think of her appearance.

And she can do indifference. Cassandra has indifference in spades. But nobody’s ever paid her a compliment quite like that before: baldly appreciative. Straightforward. Not like all the times Rapunzel coaxed her into tolerating crowns of late-summer flowers because the colors look so nice with your complexion! and not like the Commander’s gruff praise for how grown-up she looked in the hideous pastel gowns that had come with the lady-in-waiting gig.

because – like, cass is butch, and “not a flower wearer,” and here in lost lagoon we have this passage where rapunzel expresses this pretty straightforward attraction to cassandra but in the context of imagining cassandra presenting in a much more feminine way than she is comfortable with - in a dress with flowers in her hair etc - and it just... rubs me the wrong way a little bit. and this is not to say like cass can’t be butch and put a flower in her hair but when it’s paired with rapunzel specifically acknowledging that cass doesn’t WANT to wear flowers then it - yeah i feel weird about this passage. 

and that translated into cass having a whole little crisis over being complimented for her appearance without implicit pressure to be more feminine for the first time ever

anyways

i still can’t get over the name monsieur lefleur 

rapunzel summarizes hervanian culture as “brash but can be funny; distrustful but not mean-spirited” so, basically, they are americans

she is feeling very Prepared to meet with them, in contrast to every other time she’s met with foreign dignitaries or nobility before this. eugene tries to warn her that cass is PISSED with her and she just brushes him off, as one does, by saying that cass is “not all bubbles and moonbeams” but that she is “a softy” inside. 

of course this leads up to cass blowing up and going off while rapunzel tries to calm her down and just - groan this line. 

“People don’t change! You told a criminal a detail that puts my entire future at risk!”

how many times have i said “cass doesn’t act this way in tts” i feel like it’s a constant drumbeat. but i have to say, again, that cass doesn’t act this way in tts. i don’t think it’s unrealistic for her to think like this, given that her father is essentially corona’s chief of police and she idolizes him, but i feel the need to reiterate that there is zero sign of cass having this mindset in tts proper. and it does sort of bother me when people read this into cass’s character because it undermines and delegitimizes her dislike of eugene in early s1. 

which like. tts itself sort of frames their mutual dislike as a mutual problem, but it’s... really not? and imo the best illustration of this is in this exchange from cassandra vs eugene: 

CASSANDRA: Unbelievable. Did you eat all the cookies?

EUGENE: I’m not a pig, Cassandra. I ate all of your cookies; I’m saving mine for later.

CASSANDRA: Ugh– you are nothing but a self-serving, inconsiderate, arrogant freeloader!

EUGENE: [scoffing] You know, I can rattle off insulting adjectives describing your personality, too, but to do so would imply that you actually have a personality, and I just wouldn’t feel right about doing that!

this is the dynamic every time they squabble in early s1. 

1 - eugene does something selfish or thoughtless - in this case taking all the cookies and milk for himself. 

2 - cassandra calls him out for it, and he doubles down, often taking a potshot at her in the process. 

3 - cassandra gets mad and calls his behavior what it is (self-serving, inconsiderate, arrogant)

4 - eugene gets defensive and insults her as a person, typically with variations on calling her icy / unfeeling / humorless / joyless. 

which is to say, their fights are initiated by eugene’s poor behavior, and cassandra attacks his behavior but eugene attacks cassandra herself. like, eugene is the dude who insults you and then goes “pfft why can’t you take a joke” when you get upset with him. that’s what this is. 

moreover, when eugene’s, for lack of a better term, residual flynn rider-ness starts to taper off, cassandra’s criticism of his behavior also tapers off, AND she gets much gentler about how she phrases this criticism once he starts to actually take it on board. but there’s no accompanying shift in the way eugene speaks to and about her - the jibes about her being humorless or cranky or soulless literally never stop and at no point does he ever seem to consider that cass might not appreciate them as much as he thinks she does. 

(to be clear, i don’t think they bother cass very much if at all - but they do create and reinforce a perception on eugene’s end that cass Doesn’t Have Feelings and the background radiation of that contributes to the toxicity that develops in season 2.)

like again, pulling from cassandra vs eugene here, eugene is extremely insulting towards cassandra even when he’s ostensibly coming to her defense: 

RANDOM THUG: Look at that, Fancy-Boots has got something to say!

EUGENE: Name-calling? Come on, we’re better than that, aren’t we? Sure, we could sit here and make fun of each other—tease Cassandra for her chronic joylessness, or me for my uncommonly good looks, or you for your poor dental hygiene, tragic fashion sense, robust body odor, and what are clearly woefully misguided decision making skills, but do you really want to go down that road?

ALL OF WHICH IS TO SAY - besides demonstrating an obvious willingness to give eugene another chance once he starts doing the bare minimum to not be a dick to her, cassandra doesn’t like eugene because eugene is an asshole to her and takes the enormous privileges he is given completely for granted. 

saying “well she doesn’t like him because he was a criminal and she doesn’t believe criminals ever change” erases that completely and reframes the conflict as cassandra treats eugene unfairly because of bigotry that she needs to unlearn. lost lagoon takes this even one step further in that lost lagoon eugene is genuinely trying to be responsible, he is taking his new lot in life seriously. he doesn’t need cass to tell him off for acting like an ass because he doesn’t act like an ass. he shows actual interest in getting to know cass and makes an effort to break through her hostility in order to get along. unlike his tts counterpart, lagoon eugene really doesn’t do anything wrong, and that makes cassandra’s intense hatred of him on the grounds that he was a thief look completely irrational and, like i said, bigoted. 

it’s just very frustrating to me.

anyways

rapunzel tries very hard to persuade cass that it’s actually totally fine that she told eugene the secret because she just can’t keep secrets from eugene (except the lagoon which she has arbitrarily decided is totes fine to keep secret and i am pretty sure this contradiction never gets pointed out) - and cass is having none of it, and of course arianna interrupts before anything can get resolved. 

they rush out and monsieur lefleur interrupts them, asking questions about the lost lagoon. he reveals that he heard an ~elegant cloaked person~ inquiring about it in the library. he asks for the book. they say no. the red herring smells to high heavens, and the chapter ends with rapunzel subtly telling cass to hide the book ~for the safety of the kingdom~ and oh my god i just can’t handle the low stakes. 

seventeen picks up from there with cassandra’s point of view; she’s suspicious of lefleur and angsts a lot about how she has no time to train and she needs to get out of corona yada yada. her plan is literally to just walk until she finds someone to hire her on as a guard which. lol. this kid.

i feel like this is the strongest passage in the whole book: 

She said there couldn’t be any secrets between Eugene and her. But why—especially when it meant sacrificing my future and everything I held dear? I’d read about romantic love in poems, and it seemed to me like a spell. Sounded great for the lovebirds, but what about the other people.

Did I just not matter in the face of this love, even though I had been the one to risk everything to show Rapunzel the world? Was I just supposed to fall on my sword because Eugene was uncomfortable that he didn’t have every last piece of information about Rapunzel?

she has a brief argument with owl, who is a pretty obvious stand-in for her own doubts / feeling that she truly belongs in corona and doesn’t actually want to leave. but she has no choice! but it’s stormy, so she can’t leave! oh no!

(i think if tts really strongly felt she had no choice but to free corona, a measly thunderstorm would not be enough to stop her.)

[ducavalentinos]

How would you rate Sabatini's biography on Cesare? I love it, but I wondered if you had any other (English) recommendations? Also take a shot everyone Sabatini interrupts his narrative to talk about how hot Cesare was sfhttjjggj

I think as far as Cesare bios goes, I’d rate his biography 7/10. I have conflicted feelings with Sabatini’s work, because I love his writing style, his sense of humour is great, it matched mine right away, and he has such a genius way of pointing out the hypocrisy and double standards applied to the Borgia family. He cleverly shows how much of the Borgia myths and general accusations thrown their way are connected to politics (shocker!) and to their Spaniard, and less nobly origins. Not to mention how he exposes the historical bias against Cesare, and general dishonesty with him, from primary sources to modern historians such as Gregorovius, that paragraph Sabatini wrote about him was truly a moment in the Borgia historical literature for me, I'm glad he said it. I just wish he hadn't fallen so hard for the Machiavellian Prince archetype about Cesare. The more I re-read his work, the more it becomes clear to me he took Machiavelli’s writings about Cesare at face value, fell in love with the image presented by him, and then proceeded (whether consciously or unconsciously) to apply this interpretation, one that has its limitations and flaws on their own, to all the facets of Cesare’s character, and all the other aspects of his life lol, which resulted in this too strict, robot-like persona. There is no nuance, no deepth to Cesare’s Sabatini, he exists only as the stoic, unscrupulous, unfeeling Machiavellian Prince. It’s a mistake I see being made time and again by most of Cesare’s biographers, many who follow Sabatini too blindly, or just Borgia biographers in general tbh, but Sabatini’s bio acutely illustrates this particular issue better than the other bios I’ve read I think, (with the exception perhaps of Beuf’s “work”, who somehow managed to outdone Sabatini in this Machiavellian presentation of Cesare, taking it to new extremes with super dramatic and misleading writing, for the most part). And you know, I always get the impression Sabatini had his own conflicted feelings in regards to The Prince, and its clear-headed, pragmatic politics. He seemed to admired it and feel repulsed by it at the time. And those mixed feelings sometimes ended up leaking into his view and writing about Cesare and some historical events, and what he believed had happened (e.g., the take of Urbino), and I find that very interesting. In any case, the point is: Sabatini’s Cesare is unrealistic, and it constantly enters into conflict with what Sabatini also presents as evidence for his history. I mean, he insists throughout the book in reaffirming Cesare was a utter egoist, cold man. Only moved by his ambition and thirst for power. He was incapable of kindness, or of being considerate with others, of feeling compassion, without ulterior motives involved. All of his actions were always calculated to only serve his own interests. Everyone around him were pawns to be used and discarded when they were no longer of any use to him. We are to believe he was a cynic, a block of ice, essentially. We are also to believe he never had genuine emotional bonds with anyone, much less with women. Women were interchangeble to him. Sabatini was convinced he was a man incapable of having a sentimental side, of loving or of having any connection with them beyond the physical aspect. But then, in between chapters, sometimes pages, he also tell us how Cesare seems to have deeply grieved the death of his cousin, Giovanni Borgia, whom he refers as Mio Fatre in his letters. He gives an honest, if quick, account about the marriage and relationship between Cesare and Charlotte d’Albret, in which Cesare’s obvious feelings for her can be seen, as well as his kindness and respect towards her. Sabatini admits the evidence shows they may well have loved each other, and that when leaving Charlotte in charge of all his affairs in France, as the governor and administrator of his lands and lorships there, as well as his heiress in case of his death, Cesare shows “his esteem of her and the confidence he reposed in her mental qualities.” And of Cesare’s policies and behavior as its ruler in the Romagna, it reaches a point where his mere self-interest doesn’t quite alone explain his relationship with this romagnese subjects and many of his decisions. It undermines Sabatini’s claim that it was for show and for his political gain. Last but not least, what is one supposed to make of the hypothesis he posits to the what I like to call, the Dorotea affair? This event is the peak of his contradiction and his mental gymnastics, because to be sure, his hypothesis is not far-fetched. I will concede I thought it was the first I read his bio. But over the years, between carefully separating fiction from history and reading other sources, then going back to his bio, I recognized his hypothesis is one of the plausible ones, certainly more plausible than the official sensationalistic narrative of Cesare simply abducting the innocent maiden Dorotea out on a whim, to satisfy his lust, (the fact Borgia scholars  are still repeating this narrative with a straight face is beyond my comprehension), I can see Cesare doing what he proposes, it def. aligns better with my understanding of him, and all the historical material I’ve read about him and his times, however, this hypothesis is completely irreconcilable with Sabatini’s Cesare. So, he says one thing, then he says another that’s incompatible with the first thing he said, and then proceeds to show evidence that either puts into doubt or confirms the opposite of his characterization of Cesare. And that’s only considering the historical info he dedided to include in his bio. If he had included some of the info Alvisi presents in his Duca di Romagna, a work he must have checked out, if not read it all, given one of the languages he spoke was Italian, and Alvisi’s bio is the best and most authoritative historical work made to date about Cesare and his life, I believe he would have struggled a lot more than he did. It just seems like he enters into a trap of his own making. Turning an already difficult task more difficult than it needs to be, honestly. Ironically, his stance is as messy and contradictory as the aforementioned Gregorovius in his Lucrezia Borgia, where you also have two Cesare(s): the one he sees and wants to present versus the one that emerges from the his own writing at times and historical material he himself exposes it. Overall, his work frustrates on some fronts, and I think it could have been better. It has its faults, some the typical faults/vices fond in Borgia biographies, others very much his own, but nevertheless I have a fondness for his bio which I do not share with others bios on Cesare, or the Borgia family. It is the only bio in the English language I find myself reading again and again, and the one I would put it first as better, or more decent, in this language about Cesare. I admire his honesty, and his bravery in challenging a little bit of Cesare’s dark legend, and the baseless accusations attached to his name. I appreciate what he tried to do, the very least of what I expect from a serious historian when dealing with figures as infamous in popular imagination as Cesare and Rodrigo Borgia. There is no denying his work was one of the main works which advanced Cesare’s historical literature, and the approach to his figure. Moving slightly from the literary, colorful, villain-like character of the Italian Renaissance, towards starting to be more seriously studied as a historical figure properly. And oh my god, yes, interrupting the narrative to talk about how hot Cesare was. It’s funny you mentioned that, because I don’t remember him doing that so much (time for a re-read!), but that's one of the characteristics of the Borgian/Cesarean historical literature heh. I’m yet to read a bio where authors do not feel the need to take a moment to talk about how hot he was, some even a poetic way lol, it’s so amusing, and always the one thing I know I will agree with them, if nothing else. Also, I think Borgia bios have huge potential for drinking games! Like: take a shot of tequila every time Cesare gets badmouthed for no reason, or baselessly asserted guilty of questionable murders, fratricide, rape, and abduction. Or when Juan and Cesare envied and hated each other narrative is repeated. Or when Guicciardini, Sanuto, Cappello and Giustinian are uncritically used as credible sources for Rodrigo and Cesare. Every time Lucrezia gets painted as the Good Borgia, the pretty, passive doll who was the helpless victim of the terrible Borgia men. Or when authors get uncomfortably shippy with the Cesare/Lucrezia relationship resulting in exaggerated claims such as: Lucrezia was Cesare’s only exception, or they were unusually close as siblings, etc. And of course, whenever Cesare’s hotness and allure has to be talked about dsjdsjsj, the list is long, and I think it will get you drunk very quickly. I know I couldn’t keep up back when I was reading Sacerdote’s bio, and I was drinking wine so. As for recs in the English language, I would say Woodward’s bio has its value in terms of sources and historical documents. I also think his analysis about politics, about Cesare’s goverment in the Romagna, and also concerning the conclave of 1503 are generally good. His last five, four chapters are the best ones imo, so if you are interested in these points I mentioned, it might be worth checking out. I would just open a caveat saying that as far as a biography about the person of Cesare Borgia is concerned, it is weak and to be read with a grain of salt. I was mostly unimpressive by his work on that front, and I thought about quitting time and again. He likes presenting himself as the impartial historian, (a big red flag that only makes me twice as cautious when reading any historical work) writing in a mostly sober tone, but of course like all scholars, all people, he has his bias, and they do come to surface from time to time. He displays an peculiar antipathy and ill will towards Cesare at times, which leads to harsh, confusing, unsubstantiated claims about his character and some of the events about his life. In contrast, you can see he is more benevolent and fair towards Rodrigo Borgia, and a constant thought I had while reading his bio was that he obviously chose the wrong Borgia to write a bio on. Had he chose Rodrigo as his Borgia subject, I believe we would have had a pretty good bio about him and his papacy.

[iridescentides]

i watched the ep twice bc i didnt take notes the first time BUT. hsmtmts 2.04 thoughts under the cut

gina first. my favorite part of the episode was when she admitted that she feels out of place living in someone else’s house and that she wanted a bigger part in the play. i was SO worried they were gonna just let her happily sideline herself in a “yay she learned her lesson about not being the center of attention” kind of way bc i would not be able to handle that two seasons in a row. let her be angry!!! she has a lot to be upset about

the gina/carlos conflict was awful bc theyre making carlos unreasonably annoying this season. last season he was nice, he was enthusiastic, not competitive and just rooting for other people. idk why they needed to flip him so drastically to being spoiled, rich, selfish, pushy, and bitchy. and on top of that i have not been vibing with the pieces of dialogue theyve been giving him this season just to score woke points. its so unbearably obvious that even though hes a brown gay character, he was written by a white gay person who thought, on some level, that he was giving the gen z kids the #hashtag representation they wanted. his delivery of every line that screams “remember, im mexican” is so awkward, it doesnt land well, and im begging them to stop. they want so badly to commodify his character and parade him around as a “look how diverse our show is!” thing and im so so sick of it bc you can tell, with all the surface-level pieces of dialogue, that they dont actually care at all

(”look around, theres not a lot of me at this school” we GET it, this show wants to be glee so bad)

im honestly starting to slowly ship rina less and less. in season one i loved seeing someone make gina happy, especially since she had no friends before opening up to ricky. but now its just a whole mess and i wish she would love herself a lil more to realize that its not worth all this stress. he made a choice and no amount of conflicted moments of eye contact is going to fully take that back. im not necessarily against love triangle plots, but i HATE the whole “women wait around hopefully while male character, whose decisions have already hurt multiple people, makes up his mind” bullshit

that being said, gina handled the situation like a CHAMP, im dying over how quickly she was able to mask her pain and make the joke about the twix bar. im love her

we were absolutely ROBBED of an ej/big red performance this episode!!! i am at my LIMIT we better get gaston next week or i will riot

on the ej train, him not getting into duke was extremely predictable. we all kinda saw that coming and knew that would be his main point of growth this season. im glad they didnt wait super long to do it. now please @ writers i am BEGGING you to give my man more screen time than one scene per episode

its very odd that they keep making mr mazzara have emotionally tough conversations with the students. i will do a parallel gifset of those once the season ends. i liked his convo with ej for the most part, but he really didnt have to beat him over the head with the “youre an emotionless robot” thing again. its clear ej is gonna throw himself into av club or whatever (even though at the end of last season that was supposed to be big red?) and discover that he has a lot going for him. because he does, he literally has everything going for him, thats why they had to make his “problem” not knowing himself. bisexual ej caswell ftw

i love the parallels between ej and nini this episode? i think since the beginning ive felt that there was a lot about them under the surface that was similar. it was interesting seeing ej tell nini about duke first, instead of the obvious choice of ashlyn. i wouldve loved to see how that scene wouldve gone with ricky, gina, carlos, or big red though bc each reaction and attempt at comforting him wouldve been so different. i didnt love that nini had to be pulled away from the conversation, but im glad they can still talk to each other after everything that went down. and i love the juxtaposition of ej’s convo with mazzara directly following nini’s convo with miss jenn bc theyre essentially the same.

speaking of, i loved miss jenn in this episode. her stories are always so funny, but i loved seeing her care so much for nini and guide her, like a teacher. i loved how she pointed out that everyone who loves nini just wants her to be happy

im glad nini is leaving yac bc there was no good way to keep that up honestly. but im pretty annoyed that they were so obvious about it? like, they immediately made it the worst place in the world without exploring it very much. the place is super unrealistic, ive never been to drama school but im sure it wouldnt be like that. no creative arts place for KIDS would be so impossibly limiting. plus the weird bluish coloring in comparison to the nice warm tones of the rest of the show was, again, a dead giveaway. why send her to the school at all if it wasnt even gonna matter?

even though im glad nini left yac, im NOT looking forward to the way miss jenn is about to bend over backwards to put her in the play somehow. she plays obvious favorites and im so annoyed

(sidenote: nini just? decided to leave yac without consulting her parents??? ummm)

granted is a very good song, one of my faves so far

ricky deciding to tell nini he wants her to stay was stupid. what did he think that would accomplish? who in their right mind would drop out of a good school for you?

i loved when nini said yac was missing something, and miss jenn said “ricky” and nini said “you.” that was so so sweet and cute

i think the kourtney/howie thing is gonna grow on me. i hate amatonormativity so im not a big fan of them introducing a whole ass character exclusively so kourtney can have a love interest, but i loved the gesture he made of bringing her the pizzas and her flashcards. i feel like kourtneys love language is acts of service, and she was literally this meme when he did that for her:

i liked seeing ashlyn try to be there emotionally for gina! i want more of them together

overall this episode was okay. not enough songs, and i wish they were spreading out the emotional conversations through the season instead of packing them all into literally one episode, but what we did get was pretty good.

after watching the preview i see that next weeks episode is gonna be about carlos’s party, and i love party episodes. BUT i hope that after that ep we finally get an advancement on the north high stuff! i dont give too many fucks about lily, but i wanna see my son asher angel

[land-of-classpects-and-analysis]

Hi! ENFP 9 back! Just read your reply and rogue of hope is definitely a good candidate, but the creativity part also made me think about the space aspect. Do you think it could fit too? Also i read some of your class analyses and the way you go in depth with classes is an absolute JOY to read (can't wait for more), and i think the maid class describes my relationship with creativity and hope somewhat well. What do you think about it?

I would certainly say that Space is a candidate when it comes to creativity! The difference between Space and Hope is that Hope-bound tend to be dreamers more than doers, while Space-bound are the opposite. However, obviously, there are instances where the two of them switch! Hope-bound bring about peace and order, while Space-bound bring creativity and new opportunities, amongst many other different things between each other.

As someone who is actually responding to another anon inquiring about the Maid of Hope Classpect, and with my current (and previous) thoughts and knowledge on it, I would certainly say that it is an option! A Maid of Hope is someone who would struggle with creating their Aspect, especially if they have just experienced an immense burnout or falling with it and are in the process of healing. They'd also be one capable of making and enforcing boundaries and rules, if only mostly for themself. A Maid of Hope would be someone who works best at their own pace, even when that pace isn't one people agree with. What's most important for a Maid of Hope is to have space to grow on their own and build up their own values, morals, beliefs, and faith, because for a long time, their Aspect did not allow for them to have that freedom.

With a Maid of Space (which I am also answering an ask about, funny enough dcnnjn) they are someone who is made to create. Space holds immense amounts of potential for creation and change. The Maid of Space knows this, and in a way they are heavily aware of changes that happen in their life and how they can fix an issue. It's simply that, most of the time, the Maid of Space holds resentment towards their Aspect and its grand importance. People expect great things from the Maid, and while they can deliver a service of healing and creating small pieces of their Aspect, it's often all they can do. When one is equipped with an Aspect such as Space, and when one is put into the role such as the Maid, it can become apparent why one may never want to try and reach their full potential. It's a larger-than-life Aspect to be a part of, and to be expected to create more of it - or even through it - is not a task to be taken lightly, especially when it's something constantly seeking to overtake who you are as a person.

So, yes, I would say that you could very well fit that of a Maid of Hope or Space! In trying to figure out which is which, my best suggestion is to think about how you view yourself in situations - especially group ones. Do you play more of a peacemaker role, wherein you try to deescalate or even help others to avoid conflict and drama, or are you more of the center of everything where people say and/or expect great things of you, even if it may seem unrealistic and/or unfair? Of course, I always advise not to think too heavily on this stuff, as this all is meant to be in good fun! I do hope this has been helpful, though, in getting a closer feeling to your Classpect!

And also thank you! ;v; I'm most certainly feeling some musings coming on for the Thief Class, so perhaps that is something to look forward to in the future (if my schedule will allow it cjdsnn)!

[mayabishopapologist]

station 19 - season 4, etc

this is long but i want to put down my thoughts before thursday comes and i guess i have A Lot To Say.

honestly didn’t pay much attention to this show until halfway through season two—  always liked maya and was glad that they gave her more to do. going into season 3, i was excited for more character development &stronger storylines. however, by the end of  301 the dip in quality was glaringly obvious. a quick google search revealed that there was a new showrunner and, well, it showed. 

while the show had been going in a really good direction with balancing the screen time between andy and the other regulars, this season, the plot was all over the place. it was uber dramatic and just. so much happened just to happen? seemed like every other episode had a major event(deaths alone; ryan,rigo,pruitt?!!?). they were so frequent, it was hard to process. it was also hard to get invested as the characters themselves moved on(or were shown to have moved on, extremely quickly!) 

i enjoy the show for what it is and i have no delusions about broadcast tv shows (or shondaland productions, for that matter)but the suspension of disbelief.... i mean: a stabbing, a robbery, a shooting and a car crash? all in one episode? please! lmaooooo. drama for dramas sake is always boring and weakens the story.  

& as for the characters... .

everyone felt like a hollow version of themselves this season and it was hard to watch sometimes, actually. characters switched motivations /personalities for the sake of the current episode and i know this show is very ‘monster/emergency of the week’ but. some consistency! please! like—

maya: she’s always been determined and focused but they went so far with it this season, it was almost cartoonish. her competitiveness was hinted at in season 2 but she was always portrayed as self aware. ‘the beast,’ as she dubbed it to andy, was something she knew of and tried to contain, because she knew it could get out of hand. 

yet, in season 3 she suddenly forgets this and just. becomes the most power hungry/singularly focused person, ever. she goes after the captain position behind andy’s back, (citing andy’s emotional state, because of the death of her best friend as a reason she shouldn’t get the job?? huh. since when is maya this purely callous??!) she just doesn’t give af, suddenly, about andy at all, and goes for a job that she is hardly qualified for(she was lieutenant for like, a few months?)

and then after she gets the position, she just. loses all sense of reality? literally she was so unhinged(fun to watch but so much) and it was like. um?? maya has never been the uptight one (they've mentioned and depicted andy as being the one like this, multiple times!) and we know she knows how to have fun, so, for her to all of a sudden just. not know how to read the room? yeah okay. to make her so intense and severe, especially w the drills and training was, a choice. a bad one, on the writers part. like, i get that they needed her start as captain to be dramatic or whatever,  but there were ways to do that. and even the animosity with the team and her went so far, i just think that whole storyline was amazingly lazy, honestly.  

and the friendships!! andy and maya’s friendship is just, a mess. at this point they've spent more time at odds, and the idea that they're supposed to be best friends with this super close bond? yeah, i just... i dont buy it tbh. if they'd spent more time building up their connections and making us understand why they would be friends and showing them being there for each other past a few scattered scenes her and there? maybe. but so far, that hasn't been the case.  making that bond real, solidifying that friendship, would have made this conflict have more of an emotional impact. but doing it now? making maya ‘turn’ on andy, this soon and this drastically just. it made her seem like she was extremely jealous and had been waiting to pull the rug out from under andy all along. and also, why would they stay friends when, so far, maya has showed, time and time again, that she’s willing to let her wants/ambitions leech on her loyalty to andy? (jack thing, job thing, etc). although, it’s not like andy’s a good friend to maya either, she’s selfish and seems to like it when maya is in her corner but isnt always there for her. they went so far with the idea that maya was this coldly calculating asshole that she was almost a villain?? it was so silly to me.

and the traumatic home life plot they gave to maya was clearly their attempt at some adding nuance to her character and trying to explain why she would act the way she did, but to me? it fell flat. it was rushed, and they went from zero to 100(why did her mother come to talk about her divorce/abuse at maya’s job? like she was literally working? idgi. no boundaries lmaoo) 

and i actually relate and sympathize w maya a lot. and while i liked that they were exploring the many ways abuse can present itself, it was very... hm, ham-fisted. just super rushed and then wrapped up so quickly. they have, i think, written themselves into this dark place i fear they have no intention of exploring. 

and while i understand it, i hated how far they let maya go, especially because i don't feel they’ll adequately address it. they move on so quickly( maya was deaf for like half a season and then. she just. wasn't) and i hate the idea of her just being ‘fixed’. a relationship and an apology doesn't undo years of abuse, idc. also will they ever address maya’s um, thoughts about death??? because that was super heavy and not just something someone gets over? going to need for her to get actual professional help. that isn’t her girlfriend, like. asap. 

speaking of carina, i do like her and maya together a lot. big part of why i watch, ngl. but i need their relationship to be a lot more reciprocal. like, lets dial it back on the codependency, maybe. carina cant (and shouldn't have to) hold her up so much ! that’s not love. also maya needs to start being a good girlfriend. they started off that way, i know they can get back there. but like, we hardly got to see them settle into it, we got those cute 30sec clips of sweetness then maya was lashing out and cheating and it was like. wait a minute! what??? 

for s4, i want to see them working at reconciling—im talking, groveling, awkward in-between moments where carina isnt sure she can trust her. okay, tough conversations, hell, even jealousy because let's be real. maya working with jack is a lot for carina to just. take? i know i absolutely would not be happy about that, but i also wouldnt take maya back so... anyway! brushing over that would not just be a missed storytelling opportunity, but it would also be super unfair to carina and do a huge disservice to their relationship as a whole. as cute as they are, having cute moments with no real depth would get very old, very quickly.

carina: what can i say but-perfect, amazing, fantastic, WOW

seriously, carina is almost unrealistically perfect. she takes a lot and has been through the most (can they be nice 2 her this season? like just for fun) going forward, im going to need her to be more than a plot device to calm and soothe maya. i get that she was introduced as a love interest, but in season 4(as a season!!regular!!) that cant be all she is.

speaking of, it was really weird to me that she was promoted to station 19 and not greys because... what is a gynecologist going to do at a fire station? the general consensus seems to be that she’ll join warren’s PRT but like. she’s not a general surgeon so that’s a reach but, i want her around so ill buy it. i just want better and more for her tbh. not just screen-time, but also character development and depth! also friends! tired of carina being isolated, they did it on greys which. a waste! i meaaan, amelia was RIGHT. THERE. just look at the material! for s19, i want her, vic and travis to be friends or even just her and vic, like yesplease! i also want to know more about her and im tired of her being treated badly. like, i think society had progressed past carina being shitted on, thanks!

vic: my fave!!! they did so lazy by her this season ugh. she’s so charismatic and charming and just so good!! yet, her storyline was all over the place. we hardly got to see her sit with her grief  (spontaneous crying aside; barrett doss is so good!) she was just kind of... around. and that relationship w jackson. lol. it was so obviously for crossover potential and well. i didnt hate it or like it. actually, i was mostly indifferent. bored, even when they were onscreen together. i just didn't care and wanted more of vic, not vic and whoever. i know they're up in the air rn but i wouldn’t be torn up if he doesn’t come back. 

i want more for vic past just romantic entanglements. i know we’ve gotten a bit of her past, but i would like to see more! also, what about employment accomplishments? her artsy theatre friends? her family? just. more vic, please!!

she’s so fun and cool and when they let her, she shines. they need to let her! 

jack: my boy! so dumb, but i love him sm. he def needs like. major help, though lmao. and maybe it’s just me but im tired of his sex addict plot. like, we get it, but can we move on now? kthanks. they need to let him work on himself especially, the constant self sabotage. it's getting old. for ALL of them, actually, seriously, how many times can they all get in their own way.

andy: don’t really think about her. the mom storyline seems like it would be wonderfully dramatic, im intrigued. she and sullivan are cute, i guess. hope they make it.

ben: no major issues w his storyline, hardly remember it honestly. i liked the rapport he was building w vic and want them to explore that relationship more, its cute. 

travis: so funny and adorable, let him do more.

dean: loved him in all his entitled first born African son glory. i didnt so much love the baby plot but that always bores me. his sudden love for vic though. lol. since when? it def, came out of no where and while i really enjoy their friendship, to me, there is zero romantic chemistry there so i would prefer it if they just. stopped. lmao. also. the way he treated her because he could get a handle on his emotions? ridiculous. has humanity not like, gotten past the ‘he’s mean bc he likes you’ thing?? like grow up maybe?

and this isnt just about dean but like. are there not more single young people in seattle? why do they all have to sleep with the same 5 people. ik for the sake of plot, workplace relationships are easier but still. i think they should branch out. really. 

overall, i want better for all of them, and i think if the writers would just. take a moment and stop trying to tell so many stories in such little time, they could do better! also, whoever’s out there. please, enough w the crossovers! dont want to be forced to watch greys just to know what’s happening on 19. i get that they're in the same universe. it’s only mentioned every other episode. we. get, it. i liked what they did with private practice, it was like once every few seasons. and i know they won’t do that, but maybe, two a season. 

this is so much. but this how does have a ton of potential and i just really want it . like, get there.

[imaginethoseguys]

Dog... not me saying I won't be writing fanfiction anymore, then asking for Haikyuu inspo and then finishing 3 seasons of Bungou Stray Dogs in a week and writing this...... I have no explanations. bye

One Way

Pairing: Dazai Osamu x fem!S/O Word count: 2.7k Warnings: suicide and depression, angst, it ends good tho Summary: After parting, Dazai thought he would never see her again. He convinced himself he wouldn't. But then, a new lead for a case appears, and Dazai feels his entire being shattering to pieces.

When Dazai saw that case for the first time, he didn’t believe it. It was too good to be true. No, it couldn’t possibly be true. After they parted the last time, he never imagined such a chance to present itself to him. But all the evidence said otherwise, so it left him no choice but to believe. His deadly precise logic was in a raging conflict with his emotions, which Dazai never thought would be an issue. Although, lately, everything became too possible for his comfort.

In existential fear of meeting her again, he regretted meeting her at all. Not for the reasons one would assume. Looking back, he should’ve killed himself months, months, and months ago because now that he knew her, he understood how difficult it was going to be. Before, he was eager and ready to end his life. Nothing really held him back, no bonds strong enough to regret leaving them behind. The issue lied not in reflexivity or thinking too much about others. It was in nothing but his own overbearing and absolute selfishness when it came to her. He didn’t want to live to keep her company, he wanted to hold onto his privilege of looking at her, touching her, smelling her hair, kissing her knuckles, feeling her gaze on his face, feeling her fingers in his hair. He was rid of it after they last saw each other, which was ages ago.

Now, this crushing lonely bliss was tumbling down, all because of a file that stared at Dazai from the surface of his desk. Dozens of people dead, Yokohama was on the brink of a cross-organization conflict, and the newly located lead had Dazai completely taken aback. He wasn’t working, of course, to Kunikida’s great annoyance. He was thinking, spiraling into endless rabbit holes, staring at her photo attached to the file. She looked so nice, why did she always look so nice? Well, he knew why, she was elegant and stylish, there was a metaphysical kind of beauty to her, she looked breathtaking no matter what she did. Perhaps, it was his bias talking. She always looked after his appearance back in the Port Mafia days. She fixed his ties, she taught him to buy good-fitted pants and shirts. She wouldn’t shut up about Mori’s coat asking him to please throw this doormat away and get something nice. He figured it probably wasn’t the coat as much as it was her hate for Mori and his nasty pedophilia, it’s so disgusting it’s probably contagious please wash your hands. She cared. It felt nice. She would be happy to know he burnt it. He wondered if she would like his new coat. He bought it trying his best to remember her advice. He wanted to show it to her.

Wanted but couldn’t, there was no way. There were rumours about her death a few years ago among the Port Mafia crowd, but Dazai called bullshit on it right away. She knew better and she did better than just dying somewhere. Staring at her photo that was clearly taken here, in Yokohama, he couldn’t understand. Why was she here? Why was she involved? She had no reason to be. She wanted to get away, there was nothing she wanted more. After Oda died, they both decided to leave Port Mafia. But Dazai intended to stay in Yokohama and she wished to leave without looking back. Mutual loss drove them apart, they both weren’t mentally ready to find compromises. So she left. And he stayed. And now there was this photo of her, shamelessly lying in the file and destroying the elaborate image of a life he has built for himself. He stated at it for another minute or two. There was one reason for her to be back, Dazai was deliberately avoiding even considering this reason because everything inside him screamed how unrealistic and stupid this reason was.

Still, he had to suppress his inner turmoil because no matter what he thought, rationally, there was only one way to find out. Uttering a quiet ‘I see how it is,’ he got up and started walking towards the exit. Kunikida was quick to stop him.

“Where do you think you’re going, Dazai?”

“Weren’t you the one who gave me the file? I’m off to work, of course.”

“Don’t say ‘of course’ like it’s something ordinary, idiot.”

Kunikida eyed Dazai’s face and fell silent for a moment.

“Do you want me to come with you?” He asked, calmer and noticeably more serious. Dazai looked back at him, eyes half-closed, giving him a moment of silence in return before breaking into another exaggerated smile.

“No thank you, I don’t want you ruining my disguise plan, Kunikida.”

Kunikida started yelling again, but Dazai paid it little attention since he was already out of the door.

One way, he thought repeatedly, as if to burn the phrase into his mind. ___ The building Dazai found himself in was no coincidence or convenience. Universe was speaking to him, furiously punching the obvious into the back of his head as he dodged and ignored the impact. The old abandoned church was the place where he found her after a failed attack mission. She wasn’t a stranger to murder, and she was prepared to face death of her associates as well as her own, but it was her first mission in command and a first horrifying defeat, which she did not take lightly. He found her hysterical, sobbing and holding onto her arms so hard it bruised, fingers almost piercing through fabric and skin. Never in his life has Dazai ached for someone else’s pain as much as he ached for hers. He couldn’t bring himself to say something usually harsh, like stop pitying yourself or get over yourself and get your shit together. Instead, he grabbed her and pressed her trembling body into his own, hugging her so hard she could barely breath anymore. He wanted to squeeze all the anguish out of her and absorb it. It wasn’t a problem, he dealt with worse, he could take it, so please let him so she doesn’t have to. His head pulsated in despair, at a loss of what to say and what to do. So he kissed her, so hard their teeth collided. He kissed her and kissed her, until she couldn’t think. He wanted to distract her, to leave her head an empty space, to leave her no chance to reflect, remember, or blame herself. No chance to feel anything.

Looking back, Dazai wouldn’t call it the healthiest way to comfort someone in distress, but it kind of worked, so who’s to judge. He walked up to the altar, allowing the nostalgia to take over his senses for a little while. He always found it funny: they made their secret meeting place a church, yet nothing they did here was close to holy. Nothing they ever did in their lives was holy. A murder 9 to 5 takes a pretty big toll on your mind and soul so having someone in your orbit who relieved your sense of existential dread and sometimes made you forget you’re dead inside helped. This is why Dazai wanted so badly for this lead to be a dead end. He was doing such a nice job of having his shit together and seeing her meant all of it would go to hell. One could say he was being too harsh on himself, but these were facts: as an analytic, Dazai knew himself in and out, and he acknowledged that his feelings for her, which was arguably his most irrational part of being, were a threat to his work performance, moral compass, and strive for the sweet embrace of death. It had to be fake. Then, he would come back to the agency, and she would be gone, and he would be able to solve the case like 2+2 and move on. Then, he would commit suicide, perhaps with some lovely lady, in some poetic and melancholic way, letting the black hole in his chest ascend into space and settle somewhere in its infinity. And all would be well. If this lead was a fake. If it’s a fake. If it’s—

“Fancy meeting you here.”

A second, and Dazai can swear he hears the sounds of glass breaking all around him. Everything is vacuum, the following silence is deafeningly loud in his ears. His body aches and his chest feels tight and prickly. He can’t find it in himself to breathe.

“You know, I wasn’t even sure this place would still be here, but I sacrificed logistics for the sake of a romantic sentiment.”

Her heels tapped against the old wooden floor as he felt her get closer to him.

“I guess great minds think alike,” Dazai said without turning around. There was silence again. He could feel her soft (he knew it as) gaze on his back. His fingers trembled.

“What do you have to do with this whole thing? You’re a primary suspect. What’s your gain?” Deciding to wait no more, Dazai spoke.

He hears her chuckle.

“Why do you ask me if you already know the answer?”

“I want to hear you say it.”

Don’t say it.

Don’t say it.

Don’t say it.

“I got involved on purpose, of course.”

“Why?”

Say it isn’t so.

“To get to you.”

The hole in his chest shifts, it grows bigger, hungrier, it howls, like a whale on the bottom of an ocean. Even though she has left a long time ago, her ghostly presence lingers inside of him, a little smoldering coal, red sparkle inside a black pit of nothingness. It senses her presence, her scent, the timbre of her voice, and it starts absorbing everything it can reach just to get her closer, to lure her in.

“It was a pretty risky affair, I confess. I’m on a radar right now. I’m surprised no one followed you here, but you’re Dazai, so I shouldn’t be too surprised.”

She waited for his reaction and when nothing followed, continued to talk.

“My leave from Port Mafia was messy. I’m not on good terms with Mori, like you. I’m not on any terms with him except for my ever-burning hatred of that perv. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you anything, but after Odasaku things moved fast, so I had to leave immediately. The only option of me not dying was a one-way ticket. I wasn’t supposed to get involved with anything in Yokohama, otherwise they would be fast on my ass.”

He knew that, he knew all of that, he wasn’t stupid. He understood she was telling him this to fill the silence and not to explain herself. But seeing, or hearing in this case, her alive meant her escape was successful. So why? Why would she come back? To a person who did not follow her. Who did not write her. Dazai did not want her being tracked by anyone, so he kept his distance. But this distance was supposed to drive her away, to separate them. To turn them into strangers.

“So why,” Dazai said out loud, finishing his train of thought. “Why are you here? Why on earth are you here? Are you out of your mind?”

“Probably, “she mused. She was right behind him now.

“Tell me the reason,” Dazai gritted his teeth. It was the only way to stop his entire body from shaking. Just tell him something, anything but not what he wants her to say.

“Because life without you is meaningless and miserable.”

Dazai scoffed. Who is she saying this to?

“I don’t want to live if it’s a life where I never see you again. I’d rather live 5 minutes after seeing your face than god knows how many years with you as a fading memory. I fucking hate your memory; I don’t need it. I need you. I’m not a good person, I don’t deserve chances at life, I’m not gonna use them. I killed a bunch of innocent people in hopes of getting you on the case, you think I care for my life anymore?”

He remained silent. He knew this feeling too well. To live with a bottomless pit for a heart, to meet someone who covered it so nicely to then be rid of that someone? It was better to never cover the pit in the first place. It only hurts more when you know things can be different. Better leave them untouched and let the black hole swallow you, thinking this is how it’s supposed to be.

“Osamu. Look at me.”

He let in a shaky breath. He hasn’t heard his name like this in forever. No one else could say it like her. In no one else’s lips did it sound so soft, so tender, so welcoming.

So loving.

“Please don’t make me turn around,” he said quietly, barely a whisper, voice filled with pity and hurt.

“Why?” she echoed as quietly.

“Because I’ve been doing such a good job ridding my life of any meaning. I’ve convinced myself I won’t be seeing you again and that I’m fine with it. I’m numb. It makes the work so easy, you know? I can execute any plan and not worry about anything. I’ve studied so many ways of suicide. I’ve never been closer to making my wish come true. I can spend a bit more time helping others and then clock out into nihility.”

He felt her forehead softly press against his back. Her long gentle hands went around his waist and locked on his stomach. Her delicate fingers reached to his hollow chest, to the hungry wailing emptiness that was devouring him and cradled it. She took it into her warm benevolent palms and held it carefully, warming it up. Dazai breathed out brokenly, his own hands lingering above hers, hesitant.

“How am I supposed to kill myself after seeing your face?”

He felt her smile.

“I’m sorry. I’m too selfish.”

Her body shifted back slightly, which made Dazai instinctively turn his head to the side.

“Got you.”

With that, she leaned onto him and caught his lips in hers. Check mate. Losing any last bits of control, he spinned around, grabbing her, pressing her body closer to his. He wanted to hold her close, so close, closer than ever before. He wanted to dissolve in her, to become one with her because it seemed to be the only way to never lose her again. Life didn’t need to have meaning, there was no meaning. No meaning, no God, no purpose, no higher power, no morality, no ethics, no good, and no evil. There was only her. He only needed her. Her lips, her scent, her voice. She could be his God, his judgment his atonement, his nationality, his worldview. His sin and confession, his modesty and decadence. His culture and ignorance.

He could feel her own darkness longing, begging for his presence, the way his longed for her. She talked to him through her tongue entwining with his, through her hands clutching his shirt.

I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you

A small and hesitant do you love me? Do you want me?

Dazai smiled helplessly.

Why do you even ask? Of course I love you. I can’t fucking live without you, life is pointless without you in it. I want only you, there is nothing else in this world. It’s only you.

you you you you you you you you

When they break apart, they are both breathless, like they just ran a marathon. He finally opens his eyes and looks at her. It’s a paradox, how she looks so different yet so comfortably same as the last day he saw her. Same glimpse in her eyes when she looks at him. Same soft hands cupping his cheeks. Same breathtaking scent that blurs your mind and vision. It’s her. The pit in his chest is quiet, for the first time in years. The lingering coal is lit up, it’s bright and warm, and the flame is her figure.

She looks him up and down, pleased.

“You got a new coat.”

He grins, pressing his forehead against hers.

“Yeah. Do you like it?”

She closes her eyes again, placing her palm firmly on his chest, sealing the darkness shut.

“I love it.”

[differentnutpeace]

'Jupiter's Legacy' Decodes The Superhero Genre Without Subverting It

You'd be forgiven for wondering how Netflix's Jupiter's Legacy compares to other recent entries in the glut of "Wait, what if superheroes ... but, you know, realistic?" content currently  หวย บอล เกมส์ คาสิโนออนไลน์

 swamping streaming services. (To be fair, this "realistic superheroes" business is something we comics readers have been slogging through for decades; the rest of the culture's just catching up. Welcome, pull up a chair; here's a rag to wipe those supervillain entrails off the seatback before you sit down.)

So here's a cheat sheet. Netflix's Jupiter's Legacy is ...

Less cynical and empty than Amazon's The Boys

Less bright and blood-flecked than Amazon's Invincible

Less weird and imaginative than Netflix's The Umbrella Academy

Less funny and idiosyncratic than HBO Max's Doom Patrol

Less dark and dour than HBO Max's Titans

Less innovative and intriguing than Disney+'s WandaVision

Less dutiful and disappointing than Disney+'s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Less thoughtful and substantive than HBO's Watchmen

Less formulaic and procedural than the various CW super-shows (which I include here only out of a sense of completism, not because they're aiming for the same kind of performative faux-realism that drive most of these other series).

It's unfair to make these comparisons, sure. But it's also inevitable, given the crowded landscape of superheroes on TV right now. And in every one of those comparisons, Jupiter's Legacy doesn't necessarily come up short (it's far better than The Boys, especially), but it does come up derivative.

Makes sense: "Derivative" is a word that got slapped on the comics series it's based on, by writer Mark Millar and artist Frank Quitely, which kicked off in 2013. Millar and Quitely would likely prefer the term "homage," of course, and after all, the superhero genre is by nature nostalgic and (too-)deeply self-referential. So the fact that so many story elements, and more than a few images, of Jupiter's Legacy (comics and Netflix series both) echo those found in the 1996 DC Comics mini-series Kingdom Come is something more than coincidental and less than legally actionable.

Showrunner Steven S. DeKnight and his writers' room have carved out only a thin, much more grounded slice of the comic's sprawling multi-generational saga, but they've retained certain elements of family tragedy and Wagnerian recursiveness, wherein the sins of the father get passed to the son. They've also, smartly, retained the multiple-timeline structure of the comic as a whole, though they've pared it down and stretched it out over these eight episodes, clearly hoping for a multi-season pickup.

Readers of the comics will likely grow impatient at how little of the overall saga is dealt with here, but this review is aimed at those coming to the series fresh, who will find more than enough in this season to satisfy — it's a whole story that hints at what's to come without slighting what's happening now.

The now in question switches between two eras. In 1929, immediately before and after the stock market crash, brothers Walter (Ben Daniels) and Sheldon (Josh Duhamel) are the sons of a successful steel magnate. Walter's the diligent numbers guy, Sheldon's the glad-handing optimist. Sheldon's rich, smarmy friend George (Matt Lanter) is going full Gatsby, and muckraking reporter Grace (Leslie Bibb) runs afoul of Walter and Sheldon following a family tragedy.

Sheldon becomes beset by visions that will put him and several other characters on a path to their superhero origin story. Be warned: The series doles this bit out even more slowly than the comic — settle in for seven episodes' worth of Duhamel clutching his head and shouting while trippy images flash by, hinting at his ultimate destiny.

In the present day, Sheldon is the all-powerful hero The Utopian, who is married to Grace, now known as Lady Liberty. Walter is now the telepathic hero Brainwave, and George is ... nowhere to be seen.

The series has fun playing with the disconnect between the two timelines — characters from the 1930s story are either missing, or drastically transformed, in the present day, and while later episodes connect some of the dots, many of the most substantial changes are left to be depicted in future seasons.

The present-day timeline instead focuses on the generational rift between heroes of Sheldon and Grace's generation and those of their children. There's the brooding Brandon (Andrew Horton) who strives to live up to his father's impossible example, and the rebellious Chloe (Elena Kampouris), who rejects a life of noble self-sacrifice and neoprene bodysuits for a hedonistic modeling career.

At issue: Sheldon's refusal to acknowledge that the world has changed, and that the strict superhero code (no killing, no politics, etc.) that he lives by — and forces others to live by — may be obsolete, now that supervillains have escalated from bank robbery to mass slaughter. Younger heroes, including many of Brandon's friends, feel compelled to protect themselves and the world around them through the use of deadly force.

Clearly it's a fraught cultural moment to have fantasy characters who can fly and zap folk with eye-lasers deal with that particular all-too-real real-world issue; several scenes land far differently than they were originally intended.

But unlike other entries in the superhero genre, Jupiter's Legacy is prepared to deal overtly, even explicitly, with something that films like Man of Steel and shows like The Boys too simply and reflexively subvert: The superhero ideal itself.

The notion that an all-powerful being would act with restraint and choose only to lead by example is what separates superheroes from action heroes. Superheroes have codes; that's the contract, the inescapable genre convention, the self-applied restriction that tellers of superhero tales impose upon their characters; navigating those strictures forces storytellers to get creative. Or at least, it should. The minute you do what so many many "gritty, realistic" superhero shows and movies do — dispense with that moral code, or pervert it, or attempt to argue it out of existence by portraying a villain so heinous and a world so fallen that murder is the only option, you're not telling a superhero story anymore. You haven't interrogated or inverted or interpolated the genre, and you certainly haven't deconstructed it. You've abandoned it.

Say this much for Jupiter's Legacy — it's not content to wave the concept of a moral code away, or nihilistically reject it. It instead makes its central theme the need to inspect it, unpack it, and truly and honestly grapple with it.

Which is not to say it doesn't stack the deck by portraying a fallen modern world not worth saving — it does do that, usually through the lens of Sheldon's daughter Chloe, who throws herself into a world of drugs, alcohol, sex and general narcissistic monstrousness. The show attempts to explain her sullen self-destructiveness as a reaction to her father's unrealistic ideals, but in execution, her scenes prove cliche-ridden and bluntly repetitious. It's one of several examples where the show's choice to focus on and pad out one small part of the comic's overall tale results in leaden pacing.

But even though it takes seven full episodes for the characters in the 1930s timeline to get to the (almost literal) fireworks factory of their superhero origin, it's hard to argue that it isn't worth all that extra time, as Duhamel, Bibb, Lanter and especially Daniels have a great time with the period setting. (There are two other actors who get brought into the superhero fold in this timeline, but they 1. aren't allotted nearly enough screentime to really register and 2. represent spoilers.)

The period details of the 1930s timeline (Lanter was made to wear a waistcoat; Daniels' pencil-thin mustache should win its own Hairstyle and Makeup Emmy), and the brewing conflict between the younger selves of Sheldon and Walter can't help but make those scenes much more intriguing to watch than those set in the modern day.

The ultimate effect is a lot like watching the 2009 film Julie and Julia, in that sense. If you imagine that Julia Child could fly and shoot lasers out of her eye-holes.

And, really, who's to say she couldn't, after all?

[x0401x]

Asahi Shinbun Interview with Akane Kazuki

“Original animes are now showing their true value.” - On the feelings that director Akane Kazuki has put into his latest work, “Hoshiai no Sora”.

One challenging TV animation began airing in October 2019. The title of the series is “Hoshiai no Sora”.

In the past, many TV animes were original works, but as of late, animes often have a source material. It can be said that the ratio of “anime adaptations” of source materials is between over 60% and over 80%. “Hoshiai no Sora” is an original anime, which is rare nowadays.

Akane Kazuki-san, the director, original creator and screenwriter, had made three original animes until now. Yet all of them were sci-fi and fantasy, their stories unfolding through “unrealistic” themes. However, unlike Director Akane’s works up to this point, “Hoshiai no Sora” is a “realistic” story that has the youth of middle school boys as its theme.

Why did he decide to make one more original anime, with a theme that he had never written about before? The motive was hidden in the roots of Director Akane’s entry in the anime industry.

Raw || Index

Coming in contact with the possibility of an original anime through “Gundam”

One of the reasons why Director Akane decides to aim for the anime industry was that he “felt the potential of anime”. At the time, many directors, such as Miyazaki Hayao and Tomino Yoshiyuki, were creating original works that did not have a source material and enlivening the anime industry. Director Akane was greatly influenced by them.

“When I was a child, after watching Steven Spielberg’s ‘Encounter with the Unknown’ and George Lucas’s ‘Star Wars’, I began looking up to international live action movies. There were many works amongst the live action movies from overseas that were exciting, fun and insane to watch, and I could feel an essence of entertainment from them. On the other hand, several of the Japanese live action movies were focused on realistic artistry and not very entertaining.”

“Then, I watched the works of Miyazaki-san and Tomino-san and they had me going, ‘This is entertainment! Japan can also make entertainment-type works!’. At the same time, I felt that we could be entering an anime era from that point onward.”

After graduating from university, Director Akane joined Sunrise. Under Director Tomino Yoshiyuki, father of the “Kidou Senshi Gundam” series and one of the people who motivated Director Akane to aim for the anime industry, he was in charge of the production progress of original robot anime works.

Starting with the Gundam series, Director Tomino created countless original animes. Director Akane was charmed by the way that Director Tomino made his series.

“In Tomino-san’s settings, I already required to insert my own ideas. With Tomino-san’s plots as base, the writers would make the scenarios, and the responsibility for their content fell upon the storyboard writers, but if we made storyboards that were exactly like the screenplay, Tomino-san would get angry. ‘Put more ideas into it,’ he would say. ‘I’m already giving so many ideas, so why won’t you guys give some too?!’ (laughs). For original animes, in order to make the series interesting, we had the duty of sprinkling and hammering our ideas into it while having constant questions about it. Witnessing this at twenty years of age, I came in contact with the enjoyment of making original animes.”

From this experience, Director Akane started to think that making original animes was something natural for animation directors.

The decline of original animes | The sense of two impeding crises that he had been observing

Having left Sunrise and turned into a freelancer, Director Akane birthed original animes one after another. He worked as the director, original creator and series composer of “Geneshaft” (2001), “Heat Guy J” (2002) and “Noein: Mou Hitori no Kiki e” (2005). However, along with the passage of time, the difficulties of creating an original anime increased. This was because the fact that the public became able to purchase anime films (VHS and DVD) gave rise to a climate of concern for the film sales in the industry as a whole.

“Original animes take a great deal of workload and costs for the production and advertisement. Still, you have to release them in order to know if they will be a success. On one hand, animes that have a popular source material such as mangas, light novels and games have their stories and characters ready, and you know they will sell to a certain extent even if there is not much propaganda for them.”

And so, the number of projects for original animes saw a steady decrease. Currently, most of the animes being broadcasted are series that have source materials. In these circumstances, Director Akane claims that he can sense two impeding crisis.

“The first is: I feel that the viewers have begun to grow tired of anime. When they have a source material, people can get excited over the developments even without watching it in earnest. I wonder if they are becoming unable to watch anime seriously. If I had to say it, anime is turning into a sashimi accompaniment nowadays. Social medias are the sashimi and anime is the grated radish. People watch anime in order to talk about it in social medias. Anime is becoming a tool for communication. For us, the creators, this is destructive.

The second is the decline of the anime industry. That is because the people who have the know-how for making original animes are disappearing. Many of today’s young animators enter this industry after watching animes that have source materials. The number of people who aimed for this industry out of wanting to create original animes has truly decreased. It is exactly because things are this way now that we need original animes.”

Breaking the patterns of traditional animation and opening up a new path

“Hoshiai no Sora” is the original anime that Director Akane took roughly fourteen years to make after “Noein: Mou Hitori no Kimi e”. With the sense of impeding crisis as his trigger, the thought that “we must advance with new ramifications and possibilities of animation” sprouted within Director Akane himself.

“When I thought about what young people use their money for these days, I concluded that they use it for ‘experiences’. That they might be paying to experience things they would not be able taste anywhere else, such as live concerts and events. When I pondered what could be the equivalent to a live concert in terms of anime, I figured that original animes feel like lives. Original animes, I thought, can create experiences that you can only have a taste of through them, since nobody has seen them before, so there is excitement when they are watched for the first time upon being broadcasted, and all sorts of emotions stir up because you cannot predict the future developments.”

In order to have the viewers feel that “experience”, what he was particularly conscious of was the “story”. Until now, he had been the creator, director and series composer of his original animes, but this time, he was the creator, director and screenwriter. Moreover, the setting this time was not a fanciful world of sci-fi or fantasy, but instead is a “realistic” story that depicts the youth of students. As “unrealistic” stories about the isekai theme have been increasing in number in the past years, Director Akane has put into it his intentions of being able to further amplify the feeling of a live concert through a realistic story.

“In ‘Hoshiai no Sora’, the story is portrayed through breaking the barriers of conventional anime. Several of the animes being aired nowadays have the role of ‘a place to escape to’. Many series depict impossible things in hilarious and crazy ways, forgetting about common life. That is by no means bad, but I believe anime should also have other functions. I aimed for a story that would not be simply funny, comfortable to watch or emotional, but that would throw themes at the viewers and make them ponder on ‘What do you think of this phenomenon?’ with me. I want to reflect the conflicts and troubles shouldered by the people who are living in the present, as well as the current era, through anime. Additionally, I want to show a new path not just for the audience but also for the people currently involved with anime production, that ‘this way of making anime also exists’.”

“Hoshiai no Sora” portrays children of the current times

And so, on October 2019, “Hoshiai no Sora” aired at last. Starting with its project, this work took a period of about three years to be made. In regards to its production, Director Akane states that he interviewed young people who are from the same generation and environment as the featured characters.

“This time, when I received the story, I reminisced to my childhood first-thing. The child characters who appear in anime look like they are having fun and are portrayed as though they symbolize nostalgia, but is it really like that in real life? When I looked back into my childhood, there was a lot of constraint, irritation towards myself and others, those kinds of things. So above all, I wanted to depict this properly. But this time, even though I could write as much as I felt like about my own childhood frustrations, I wanted to write about the frustrations of present-time children. The environment that children are put in nowadays is becoming much more complicated than in the era I was raised. I wanted to write about the children who live in it through anime.”

“That is why I did interviews first of all. In those interviews, I found that, along with the evolution of the times, children felt things that adults are incapable of feeling. Nevertheless, when adults do not understand this, I noticed that they often disavow young kids without listening to them. I thought that, if I also portrayed this part of it, the younglings might watch the anime seriously as if it were them.”

What livens up this crafted story is the “art style”, which gives off a soft impression. It is said that the adoption of anime-like cutesy illustrations in contrast with the realistic story was the producer’s suggestion. Since people cannot tell what kind of story an original anime with no source material will be until they watch it, he made use of the idea that they would be drawn into the anime by its art and gradually get pulled into the story. Introducing people to a realistic story through an unrealistic element - one could take this as a form of expression that can be achieved exactly because it is an anime.

In 2005’s “Noein: Mou Hitori no Kimi e”, “new” techniques were adopted, such as the CGI outlines and the fact that the animation style changed on every episode, which was rare for the animes of the time. Just like that, Director Akane always shows us viewers a new “something”. This deepened the expectations that “Hoshiai no Sora” would also surely show us something novel.

“When watching the series, one might at first have the impression that it is about the activities of a middle school boys’ soft tennis club, a sports thing. However, it is a drama that depicts not just this, but also the frustrations and troubles that middle schoolers shoulder these days, including the adults who cause them. It reflects the nature of the current times and presents questions, as we have tried all kinds of devices to make people think, regardless of whether they are young children or adults. It is different from the patterns of anime that people have being seeing until now, so there might be viewers who were at loss. I think they could not have imagined how the story would turn out (laughs). With this included, I want everyone to have fun watching it.”

[kinetic-elaboration]

December 29: The Wrath of Khan

Today’s movie watching was Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

My overall impression versus TMP is that this is clearly a smoother and more consistently entertaining film. It has a definite story with very little filler, good pacing, a lot of great little dialogue and character moments, and a strong conflict at its center.

But its sci fi bona fides are much weaker. Like by a lot.

Mom and I are talking a bit about Genesis and the more we talk, the weaker it appears to me. First, it’s not really as believable, imo, as a lot of Star Trek. Maybe it’s because it’s not alien based, but I just have a harder time suspending disbelief to think this is possible. Second, it’s not clear why anyone thought this was a good idea. I mean, as McCoy immediately pointed out, it just seems so CLEARLY dangerous: an object meant to foster creation that could so easily be the worst weapon the universe has ever known--nothing could go awry there! Third, the reason for creating such a device isn’t obvious at all. Carol mentions the “growing population” and “food scarcity” but nothing we’ve ever seen of the Federation implies they’re running out of space. Or, frankly (Tarsus IV aside), food. And fourth, there really isn’t any point to Genesis in all its particulars in this film. Like, obviously, its actual purpose is a plot device to resurrect Spock. Within just this film, it doesn’t do anything. Khan wants it, for some reason I’ve already forgotten even though I just saw the film, and he gets it, but I didn’t even notice that happening, because it was so unimportant. His REAL mission is his single minded revenge fantasy on Kirk. Genesis is just a McGuffin/space filler/plot device for the next film.

And honestly that’s not such a big deal, except that when you compare it to TMP, ,and its central idea of a human made probe that gained so much knowledge, doing what we taught it to do, that it became sentient and then started searching for the meaning of life, and how this relates to the search for meaning experienced by the main alien lead, and how his search, in that film and throughout the series, is a mirror for humans and OUR need for purpose... well it just seems really weak. “We made this really dangerous and unrealistic thing for no reason whoops!”

Mom is now criticizing Kirk for being too slow on the uptake when he first encounters the Reliant, which is fair. That’s pretty OOC of him. The idea that he’s too old for space is both one that I must personally disregard, and one that the film would have you discard, since we’ve already heard from TWO characters, the people who know him best, that his best destiny is as a starship captain, and command is his proper role. And that he might be a little rusty is also not a great explanation imo, because the rust was supposed to have come off in TMP. So, plot hole probably.

We were trying to do some math--TMP is at least 2 years post 5YM and TWOK is at least 10 years post TMP, so at least 8 years post TMP. I can understand more rust growing but like... he was already an Admiral in TMP and the idea that he was out of practice with actual command was a big part of his arc there. So it doesn’t seem warranted to do that again.

Also, the way he was commanding poorly in TMP was very IC: he was pushing too hard, trying too much, caring too much about the mission and not enough about...the laws of physics. That’s very Kirk. Being slow on the uptake, caught with his britches down--that’s not Kirk. Plus, with no one to call him out on it, like Decker did in TMP, his poor command doesn’t seem like a big character obstacle to overcome but just like...sloppiness all around.

I thought Khan was over all... just not that interesting. I guess I’m just not into the obsession/revenge plot. Also...idk man he didn’t seem that super to me. He outsmarted Kirk, like, once, and Kirk outsmarted him like 4 times. He tortured some people--but regular humans can do that. He used those sandworm thingies, which is also something humans could do. Overall, he didn’t seem to have any particularly special skills. The only time he really seemed like a worthy adversary for Kirk was when Kirk wasn’t really being IC himself.

I’m also not into the fridging of his wife. Think how much cooler it would have been if she’d still been alive! The only non-super human in the bunch and she’s still there! Ex-Starfleet and bitter!

The K/S in this film is very soothing. Imo they are clearly together here, and the whole film is better if you assume they’re boyfriends and everyone knows. That Vulcan convo that Spock and Saavik have? Waaaaay funnier if you think she’s talking about his boyfriend (”not what I expected....very human” “Well no one’s perfect”). Every time they call each other ‘friend’ like ““friend”“? All the Looks? The birthday gift?

Also the “I have been and always shall be your [friend]” scene is a wedding I will not be taking criticism on this opinion. Could it have been written more like a vow? I think not. It’s not quite This Simple Feeling but it’s the best this film has in that regard.

I liked Saavik and I do think she’s one of the better later-movie additions (though I only like her, as far as I can remember, when played by Kirstie Alley). She didn’t necessarily strike me as super alien, though, at least not at first... But I appreciated how persistent she was about the stupid test, and her regulation quoting. I enjoyed her. I also liked how she was obviously Spock’s protege, which makes her Kirk’s step-protege, and they had just a little bit of that awkward dynamic going on. (”Did you change your hair?”)

The Bones and Kirk relationship was great in this film. You can really feel their friendship and their history with each other. Bones knows him so well and can be honest with him, just when Kirk needs it most.

I also love how Kirk has the SAME conversation with both Bones and Spock (re: being a captain again) but with Spock it’s sooooo much flirtier. In case you weren’t sure what the difference in these two relationships is.

Bonus: this bit of dialogue: Spock: “Be careful, Jim.” / Bones: “WE will.” Lol Spock people who aren’t your boyfriend do exist.

Obviously, I cried during THAT scene. Honestly AOS should have taken note about how to do emotional scenes like that: they come after the main action is over and the villain is defeated. Then they hit at the right time and to the right degree. Kirk just slumping down after Spock dies....like he’s boneless...like he doesn’t know what to do... I CANNOT.

I feel so bad for him that I’ll even forgive him that awful eulogy. Spock died for Genesis? Uh, no, he died for the Enterprise, and for YOU. Spock is the “most human”? You shut your whoreson mouth

I remember hating both Carol and David but I actually hated them less this time, Carol especially. My mom is being really harsh about her, though, which makes me feel less confident in my assessment. I mean first off, she’s the inventor of Genesis, which is a pretty big strike against her. Second...pretty lame to keep Kirk from David. Although I did some vague math and Kirk would only have been about 21, still in the Academy, when David was born, so you can see how that would work out. Also, she distinctly says “Were we together?” which means they were not--this was a fuck buddy arrangement for sure. More complicated. But it still feels weird to retcon that, like, he’s known THIS WHOLE TIME that he’s a dad and we’re only learning about it now, as an audience.

Anyway I’m getting off track. Carol. What to make of her? Is she unstable? Is she still mad at Kirk? My mom points out that she just decided on her own that David would want to join Starfleet if he knew Kirk was his father--whereas what seems to have happened instead is he didn’t just become a civilian scientist like his mom but became her specific protege--working on a project where everyone was probably handpicked by her? I would assume? Also..he hates Starfleet. Not to put everything on the mom, but how did that happen?

Also...going down the rabbit hole of this and feeling awkward about it... but David KNEW Kirk. As “that guy you hung around with.” That means Kirk was in his life for quite a while, long enough for him to have memories, and long enough for those memories to still be with him even into his 20s. But he was never allowed to know who Kirk was. That means Carol’s rule must have been “You can see your son but you can’t tell him who you are” which in some way seems meaner to me than just “please don’t contact us again.” If he was already on his way into space, that could even make sense--”I know you’re not going to be able to be a family with us, so let’s not pretend, let’s make a clean break now.” But that wasn’t what happened!

Anyway whatever not to be HAICG!Kirk about this or anything lol

David is mostly annoying because he’s so anti-Kirk lol. I found him least annoying when he came around to Kirk at the end. Another big strike against him: he wore his sweater tied over his shoulders in such a Preppy manner. I honestly don’t see what about him is supposed to be reminiscent of Kirk.

David/Saavik was definitely happening lol. I wish I could have heard that conversation. It sounds like she told him a lot!!! Not sure why she attached herself to this particular annoying human so fast but I guess she did.

....I think that might be all. The uniforms and general styling were much better than TMP (though less funny/entertaining), and it was certainly an enjoyable overall yarn. A lot to pick apart and critique but in a fun way. Will probably watch The Search for Spock soon.

[jojotichakorn]

Theory of Love: Review (& General Info)

Summary: Third is a film major, who’s been in love with his best friend Khai since the very first day of university. The problem is, Khai has a rule - he doesn’t date friends. And to make matters worse, he is a terrible player, who’s dated girls from each faculty. Will Third give up on pursuing Khai? Love him from afar? Or will something entirely unexpected happen? (Trailer)

Couples: Two mlm couples - one main, one background.

Running Time: 12 episodes - around 53 minutes each - 10,5 hours in total

Cast (& their Instagram pages): Gun Atthaphan (Third), Off Jumpol (Khai), White Nawat (Two), Mike Chinnarat (Bone), Earth Pirapat (An), Neen Suwanamas (Lyn), Sara Legge (Paan), Foei Patara (Chen), [more].

Where to watch? YouTube

Related Shows: None

My Review:

Rating: 5.5/10

Short review: Considering how I didn’t connect with some of the actors, most of the characters and pretty much all relationships, as well as with the plot overall, I found this BL kind of boring and even annoying at times. There is enough problematic moments here and there, but I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily critical. This is possibly my most subjective review to date, because most things I don’t like about this show just don’t fit me personally. And since it’s not that bad and I know that a lot of people love it, maybe you will too. So at the end of the day, I don’t recommend it, but I’m not saying you should be necessarily staying away from it either. Though, as usual, it’s obviously your own decision to make.

Extended review (under the cut):

Theory of Love is one of those BLs that everyone seems to love. It’s on everyone’s list of favorite BLs of all time, and every character favorites list features at least one person from TOL. Which is why I feel weird about not liking it.

The thing is though, I don’t hate it. I think it’s kind of alright and at times really annoying and problematic, but that’s about it. Mostly, I just don’t care about it. Like at all. And I’m gonna talk about why.

So, the cast of TOL is stellar, in my personal opinion. At least, at face value it is. There’s extremely popular familiar faces, like Off, Gun, Earth, White and Neen. New faces that truly captivated me right away, like Sara, Foei and especially Mike. And, most of them lived up to my expectations. Off is still good, Earth is still as perfect at subtle acting as he’s always been (which is especially helpful this time around), everyone is just truly great. Well, with one exception. And I should’ve probably mentioned this last, because he is generally accepted as one of the best actors not only in GMM, but in the BL industry in general. But, I did not believe Gun at all. And I want to mention that it’s the first time I don’t believe Gun like this. I don’t know what happened in TOL (besides, I’m sure lots of people will disagree with me), but to my mind he wasn’t real as Third at all. I don’t see him being in love with Khai. He says that he is and everything he does confirms it (like literally everything – cute moments and thoughts and looks, all the puzzle pieces are there), but I just don’t see it. And he never really manages to make me feel anything. He cries and breaks down and has a generally terrible time, and with my head I understand that this is all extremely said, but my heart stays still – I don’t feel a thing. And maybe that’s why I never managed to like TOL that much – because I am completely disconnected with the lead. But it is what it is, you know.

The characters in this show once again make me feel conflicted. Third’s personality is far more sarcastic and blunt than other BL mains’ – and I do like that. Khai, on the other hand, was first unlikable to me and like really annoying, and then after feeling a little bad for him closer to the end, my pity sort of cancelled out my hate and they met in the middle, making me just not care for him at all. They do try to give background characters a little more depth just by having one-two conversations with them alone, but it feels kind of forced – like they knew they needed to make them more real, but they did it so mechanically that they ended up being even more fake. Thus, the most memorable and likable characters to me ended up being the ones we know the least about – An and Chen.

The friendships in this drama are good and bad all at the same time. I don’t think I have to mention that Khai is a terrible friend, but it’s meant to be that way, so that was handled perfectly. I was never really sure why anyone was friends with him in the first place (or at least anyone who isn’t Third, because love is blind), but that happens sometimes – we get stuck with shitty people, so whatever. I can see how that could happen. Otherwise, friendship in TOL is kind of a one-way train. It’s a great modern train with all luxuries, but it only goes one way. What I mean by that is all background characters like Two, Bone, An and Chen are amazing friends to Khai and/or Third. Their relationship is truly detailed, they apologize, help, notice things, talk - just do things friends do. But, Khai and Third don’t return the favor. And I could understand why that happens with someone like Chen or even An – they aren’t really POV characters in any instance in the show. But, Bone and Two have their own real storylines and things happening in their lives, which the viewer follows and is invested in. But Khai and Third don’t know about them, because they just never even ask how their friends are doing. Which sucks.

The romantic relationships in this show are (mostly) a mess. Khai and Third’s “bond” is nowhere near being profound – it’s toxic, damaging and disappointing. At the end they do get together and “Yay!” I guess, but I don’t see them truly resolving their issues (or realistically staying together for long). For example, Third clearly still doesn’t trust Khai and it’s mentioned for the drama, but then it’s never truly resolved. Bone is thrust into this weird thing with his professor – and thank gods he didn’t end up with her, but it was still really unnecessary in my opinion. An and Two are sort of a beam of light in this whole relationship mess. Overall, they have a pretty good storyline – its complicated enough and simple enough in all the right places. There are things that are kind of related to An and Two that kind of make me mad – for example, the way Two tries approaching Lyn. But, mostly it’s good. I especially liked how their connection was subtly established from the very beginning – and looking back at it (or rewatching it), you can see some clear signs.

The overall plot is kind of good. It can be funny and even self-aware at times, though there are a lot of unrealistic, stupid, nonsensical things there as well. The only real specific criticism I have is that background storylines don’t seem to exist outside of background storylines. There is a lot of examples with AnTwo specifically. The KhaiThird and AnTwo plots are sort of intertwined, because An is Third’s friend, as well as Khai’s supposed rival (because everyone thinks An is approaching Third), and obviously Two is Khai and Third’s friend, who is directly involved in their relationship. So, there are moments when – for example – Khai is jealous of Third and An, Two is there (at the time, already realizing he feels something for An, or that he is at least important to him), but he is completely unfazed, as if this doesn’t have anything to do with him at all. Which, even if he was approaching it all “maturely” or trying to hide his real feelings, there would still be some sort of minor reaction. And there’s just none.

The theme of someone confidently believing in something and it not being true is present multiple times in this show. And usually, when a story does that, it’s quite complicated. All the facts are carefully established so that the viewer believes the lie, and then when the truth is revealed, the viewer looks back on the story and sees all the clear clues to the truth that were given, as well as just how and why they’ve misinterpreted every detail that led them to believe the lie. This all is very hard work that requires some smart, careful planning. Which TOL didn’t do. An truly seems to be into Third and there is no other way to interpret some of the things he does with him, and Khai truly does act really flirty with Third in the beginning, which can only be interpreted as him trying to approach Third, which was not true at the time. (Even if he subconsciously liked him, that was legit planned flirting – not subtle things that could reveal his true feelings). It’s clear that this is all done for the drama with all disregard to why this trope is usually used. And there is many moments where something really nonsensical and completely inexplicable happens just to further the drama. TOL is drenched in plotlines like that – and there is nothing I hate more than unnecessary drama.

The movie theme is present throughout the whole show – both directly and indirectly. They do connect everything with movies quite well, and the cinematography choices are more meaningful than they usually are. The way shots are set up, the subtle details that are hidden in camera work and setting specifically – all of it is quite artistic and careful, which makes me think it was done specifically because of the relating themes of movie making in the show itself. The only thing I didn’t really like was how much the things that were happening was compared to “how as if it was all just a movie”. It was ironic the first couple of times, but stupid and repetitive the next hundred.

LGBTQ+ issues aren’t really touched upon in the show. But, when they kind of are – it ain’t it chief. Khai’s friend telling him he couldn’t possibly imagine “a dude like him being into another dude”, Khai feeling uncomfortable with imagining a date with Third similar to the ones he takes his girlfriends to, and the ever present intimacy problem, which mostly belongs to AnTwo here (boyfriends kiss, GMM – they do). Now in certain context or with some explanation, these might’ve been better, but there is no good context or explanation here – it’s just Bad.

There’s quite a few other problematic moments in this show. A lot of them are connected with Khai and Third. For example, Khai physically pins Third down when he’s trying to talk to him, while Third cries and screams to let him go. After receiving a “no” over and over again, Khai asks Third to be his boyfriend once again – this time in a public place, making a big deal out of it, with everyone chanting “yes”. Khai also admits that he sees all the girls he’s with as an object – which in the context is positioned against Third, who he sees as a person. It’s made to look romantic and special, but it’s just some kind of a new fucked up version of “you’re not like other girls”. Also, and this is slightly less serious but very annoying to me, Bone’s new girlfriend was introduced at the very end of the series. And by introduced, I mean “Here’s a girl, she’s Bone’s girl” – and that’s the entirety of the introduction. It has no value or meaning to the viewer and seems to send a message that Bone’s story could only have a happy ending, if he ended up in a relationship as well, which is obviously a shitty fucking message. I would’ve preferred him staying single.

Finally, talking about some small details that caught my attention. The main quartet is a very stereotypical teen movie gang, but I think that’s intentional and it does fit well. They’re also third and forth years, which is kind of unusual for BLs, so that’s pretty cool. I do love the style – I want all their outfits and hairstyles like right now. The sound choices are not always the best, but the music can be pretty nice. There’s quite a few metaphors here and there – and they’re actually good. But, there’s not nearly enough attention to detail sometimes. The kisses are really good – no doubt about that here. And, surprisingly, they address the fact that kissing someone out of the blue is not ok multiple times, which is really great (and – let’s be fair – pretty unexpected, which makes it even better).

Overall, as I’ve said before, I don’t really hate this show. Despite criticizing it, I mostly just don’t care for it. It isn’t a BL I would recommend to someone, but if I was actually asked, if someone should watch this specific BL – I would say “Sure, why not”. It’s not that bad and I know that a lot of people love it, so maybe you will too. So at the end of the day, I don’t recommend it, but I’m not saying you should be necessarily staying away from it either. Though, as usual, it’s obviously your own decision to make.

[upslapmeal]

So I’ve been thinking about how much potential JtV had and how it’s ended up like.......this, and there are two things I keep coming back to:

the world the show exists in feels a lot smaller than it did at the start

the time jump wasn’t equipped to bear the weight of Jane’s grief

This got longer than I planned and whether it makes sense or not is debatable but I’ve just had Thoughts so I’ve stuck them under the cut.

Losing a main character, along with the section of the show that they were the lead of, is definitely a part of that first point. And along with the role of the crime/detective plot being dramatically reduced, Luisa and Rose also stopped being in the show as much. It’s funny going back to watching s1, because the cast and the world just felt so much fuller. The show gave Jane friends, there were mentions of people we never saw on screen, whereas now it doesn’t really feel as though the characters have a life beyond what we see. Characters that are introduced into the show as Jane’s friends seem to vanish as fast as they arrive, and there are cases like Dennis where he more or less disappeared once he was ruled out as a love interest. I know that ‘so these random people are apparently Jane’s friends?’ is something the narrator has joked about several times, but by this point in the show it makes things like a whole bunch of people turning up for Jane’s 30th feel hollow and doesn’t help at all in the richness of the world. It’s not exactly the same thing since the premise of Crazy Ex Girlfriend involves someone moving to a town where they only know one person, but if you look at the cast at the end of the show, they excelled at getting characters to go from ‘random side character’ to ‘I can’t imagine the show without them’ in a way that makes the world of the show feel so much bigger and richer than it did at the start. Yes, JtV has added characters (a favourite of mine being Darci) but it just........idk to me it feels smaller.

And that first point applies in terms of the scale of the story, or of the threat. I think this is a problem that came with losing the detective plot as a main part of the show. Imagine if the show had gone in the direction where we would look back at s1 and think ‘remember when we thought Rose was a big threat? ha!’. @aparticularbandit made a great post pointing out how Mutter could have easily been Bigger and Badder than the show let her be, and then for so long the show didn’t really have a ~villain or mystery, at least not on a bigger scale than Anezka/Magda. And the lack of that, the fact that the show did away with a plot that had the potential to keep getting bigger and wilder meant that containing it more or less to a cycle of drama with Rose/Luisa a) made it feel repetitive and b) removed a lot of the potential for twisting and turning plot developments to complement the more restrained and character-based Villanueva plots. And, looking at s5, I am aware that kidnapping your lead character’s husband and torturing him until he has amnesia is a Big Villain Move but that plot was badly done and I’ve already talked about it endlessly so I won’t go into it here. And maybe s5 has some big plot left planned, but this is about missed potential more than anything.

A third and final thing that makes the world of the show not feel as developed as it could have been is the writers’ seeming reluctance to vary the characters put together for plots, only exacerbated by the show removing a main character. @petramos, @solanospetra and @jetrafied have already said a bunch of good stuff about this, but it’s just so strange that we’ve got to almost the end of the whole show and there’s been what......one? proper Petra/Rogelio scene? Have we even had a proper Petra/Xo scene beyond a brief exchange of hair/shorts compliments? Imagine if we’d had An Adventure In Aunty-ing starring Luisa and Anezka (I know they had a plot together but....still)! Or Luisa and Honorary Aunt Lina! Imagine if we’d got The Lawyering Adventures of Michael and JR! Give us Darci and *spins wheel* Rafael! Idk, going back to the point about lacking characters there’s a limit to how many you can pair up, but even with pairings we’ve seen many times the writers seem reluctant to change the dynamic. The Rogelio/River stuff is feeling old and repetitive, even Jane and Petra who have had probably the best development often seem to loop back to arguing. Going back to Michael, the Michael/Alba dynamic was something I always wanted the show to get to go into more, and then just as they managed to break him and Rafael out of their pattern of rivalry in s3 they killed him and undid everything when they brought him back. We were robbed of The Great Rogelio Rafael Michael Matelio Father’s Day Extravaganza we deserved! There’s just such a feeling of regression and repetition at the moment, rather than genuine progression. 

Putting together this lack of strong growth between all the characters and the lack of a big external threat means that, five seasons in, so much of the drama is still from internal conflict, rather than problems being faced by a big Villanueva-De La Vega-Solano-Cordero(-Factor-Santillan-etc) unit. And I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any internal conflict! That would be unrealistic and it’s good to keep the dynamics moving and changing! But I feel like it should be a bit more Big Family vs Life And Its Problems than it is at this point.

And now (this is a lot shorter I promise) the second point: the time jump. Honestly, a jump was exactly what the show needed at its halfway point. It would shake things up, put the characters in a new place while also giving them theoretically several years of relative calm in-universe, and from a practical perspective it would let them age up the child actors. Maybe it would have been more like the multiple smaller jumps in Chapter 28 than what we actually had in s3, but a jump would have been great. Provided that it was the jump itself that was mixing up the show. The problem was that it wasn’t the time jump that was the big change, it was something that happened immediately beforehand. And I’ve already rambled on enough (you know, looking back at that post I’ve........I’ve just repeated most of it here whoops, there I was complaining about the JtV writers being the repetitive ones lol) about that didn’t give the viewers enough time to deal with something very dark, nor did the continued lightness of the show really feel it did the grief justice. And obviously, they weren’t going to let the show get bogged down in sadness, so honestly I feel the jump should have been the twist on its own. They should have let it freshen up the show without having it bear the weight of something so traumatic.

So. That’s them thoughts written down. 

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, six times.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Five (35.71% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Nine.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

The pacing is a disaster, the story is weak, and if the style of comedy isn’t to your taste it can be very grating, but the central theme has at least some glimmers of genuine quality.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Gamora passes with Ayesha. Nebula and Gamora conflict. Gamora asks Mantis about her empathic abilities. Gamora passes with Mantis. Gamora and Nebula fight. Gamora confronts Mantis.

Female characters:

Meredith Quill.

Gamora.

Ayesha.

Nebula.

Mantis.

Male characters:

Ego.

Peter Quill.

Drax.

Rocket.

Groot.

Stakar Ogord.

Yondu Udonta.

Taserface.

Kraglin.

OTHER NOTES:

Nice of Ayesha to randomly exposition on the way her people are created, even though it is not relevant to the plot or anything else at all. 

Gold Ben Browder is the highlight of this film. Because it’s Ben Browder. And he’s gold.

The immature escape-from-the-Sovereign-fleet bickering between Quill and Rocket (with chimes in from Drax) while Gamora is the Token Female and Wet Blanket is just...chafing a really tedious cliche. 

Drax hanging out the back of the ship as they’re crashing is one of those things where the characters are so unrealistically indestructible it makes it hard to engage with the idea that they’re ever in real danger. That happens a lot in this movie.

Android prostitutes. Sigh.

Daddy issues. Never seen that done before. Thrilling.

First time I saw this movie I thought it was a weird choice to make the raccoon the main character of the B plot, but to be honest, Rocket is the best of the Guardian characters and front-lining him is one of the better choices of the film.

The whole idea that Quill was able to hold an Infinity Stone because he’s half god really fucks over the whole ‘the Guardians teamed up to withstand the power of the stone together’ thing. Like, nevermind, that whole climactic moment from the first film didn’t mean shit, Quill is a half-god.

Kraglin thinks that Nebula would be the type to buy a pretty necklace or a nice hat and this is just one of those weak, gender-stereotyped jokes that makes me annoyed at the lack of awareness in writing ALIEN CULTURES and also just, like, the basic ability to comprehend character personalities. I complained about this when I reviewed the first Guardians film, but honestly. Whether in throwaway lines or entire plot arcs, these movies are rife with gendered writing, more than any other films in the MCU so far, and that doesn’t make a lick of sense. ALIEN. CULTURES. GUYS. 

He’s playing catch with his dad and MY GOD, glowy god power should not be this trite and boring. 

This script has a bad habit of over-playing its jokes. You gotta know when to stop, y’all.

URRRGGH, the momentum of this movie straight-up dies every time the plot shifts back to Quill and his dull daddy issues. The imbalance between the A and B plots is staggering.

Gamora and Nebula’s conflict and eventual reconciliation is one of those few quality emotional beats in this movie; the recognition that the hate that has been engendered between them comes from the abuse they suffered at Thanos’ hands, and that they are both victims of him, not of one another. It’s a kind of insightfulness that is surprising, considering the cliches and under-developed arcs that populate the rest of the film.

Credit where it’s due for genuinely funny jokes that they don’t overplay: the Mary Poppins gag, Drax’s nipples, the giant Pac-Man.

Yondu deserved a better movie, man. I don’t know why the rest of this story is such a mess when the little slivers it gets right are so spot-on.

So, daddy issues. It’s one of the most overdone cliches in the history of storytelling, typically stemming from a very performative-masculine root (the father as the only/most important role model for his son, specifically in modelling manliness), and/or the old-fashioned patriarchal idea of the son as his father’s heir (and the idea that that makes the relationship between a father and son more profound than any other). Men love to write stories about their daddy issues, despite the fact that they’re rarely interesting or unusual or different to the billion other daddy issues stories that have already been told. As such, the fact that this movie is built around that same-old-same cliche is a fact distinctly to its detriment; that said, it’s also the one well from which it draws any spark of meaningful inspiration. 

The dot points above have already made it clear to which sparks of inspiration I refer; the Daddy Issues threads with Gamora and Nebula and their abusive father Thanos, and Quill’s realisation of the way Yondu ended up filling the fatherhood role in his life. Gamora and Nebula’s Daddy Issues are automatically fresher than the average on account of them not being dudes (Ant-Man had the same thing going for it, though that movie made a much greater strength out of it); that said, the fact that Thanos’ terrible parenting forms the backbone of the two sisters’ conflict and eventual unification is not what makes that slice of the plot work: it’s the sibling bonding, not the Daddy Issues. The sibling bonding is where the fire’s really at (again, enriched by the fact that the characters are female; funny how the under-representation of women (or any group) in media can make even small amounts of representation seem impressive just for existing), but unfortunately, that bond is pared down to the absolute minimum number of scenes possible for functionality as a subplot, and therefore we never really get to enjoy what it offers so much as we kinda point and wave at it as it goes by. Yondu gets a bit more play, both through the character’s own ruminations on his life/personality/relationships while hanging in the B plot with Rocket, and through Quill’s Daddy Issues whining in the A plot to which Yondu’s relevance provides the only saving grace. Still, Yondu’s place in the plot and in Quill’s life only gains narrative weight in the final act, leading to a cathartic denouement for the character, but not for the film itself. The bloated emptiness of the A plot with Ego is something which Yondu’s meaningful sendoff cannot retroactively undo.

I’m...trying to figure out if I have anything nice to say at all regarding Ego and all that he entails, but I’m not coming up with anything. A godlike character who is also kinda-sorta a literal planet should not be so devoid of interesting factors, and yet, here we are. With every overdone boring Daddy Issues cliche in the book, played straight. We’ve got ‘I never knew my father!’ abandonment-resentment! We’ve got father-son bonding (heavy Americana edition)! We’ve got the heir-to-my-empire, follow-in-my-footsteps schtick! If it’s overdone and boring, we’ve got it! The fancy special effects visuals can’t make up for the total absence of compelling plot (the first movie in the franchise also made that mistake, though it at least faked it on the plot front a little better), and the shapelessness of the story on Ego prior to the reveal wreaks havoc on the pacing of the movie; where the B plot has trajectory from the jump, the A plot just kinda wanders around, having nothing new or interesting to do or say, nor even any thoughtful ways to bring itself around to that aforementioned reveal (as with the first film, things just kind of conveniently happen and characters go places and say things at the opportune times; nothing flows naturally from one event to the next, cause and effect style. I am baffled that people think James Gunn knows how to plot).

Speaking of characters going places and saying things, this film also does a very poor job of utilising its cast in a meaningful way, which makes it kinda embarrassing that it’s called Guardians of the Galaxy as if the whole team actually matters. Much like in the first film, Drax is just an extra without any real plot or purpose of his own, no narrative or character arc to speak of beyond being a total douche to the new female character on the block, Mantis (the fact that the movie uses Mantis as a punching bag and laughing stock for the so-called good guys is among its more tasteless sins). Groot, meanwhile, was already more of a gimmick than a character, but that’s up to eleven now, and like Drax he could pretty easily be excised from the story without lasting effect. Gamora’s interactions with Nebula are really her only good fodder; her tangential attachment to Quill is incidental and has no personal relevance for Gamora, she’s just providing someone for Quill to bounce his inane misogyny off, because how would we recognise him without it? Quill being the centre of this plot does at least make sense this time (sleeping pill that it is), unlike in the first film where he was frankly pointless to the story; nevertheless, the drudging Daddy Issues cliche of this movie fails to make anything insightful or impactful out of Quill’s experiences. As noted earlier, Rocket is, bizarrely, the only character who feels like his story matters, and it’s his and Yondu’s character exploration that wins the prize as the highlight of an overall weak, spectacle-laden film that thinks it’s much funnier than it really is. 

It’s no secret at this point that I don’t care for the Guardians franchise, but it isn’t complete absent glimmers of good promise and creative storytelling. Unfortunately, it’s also largely overrun with lazy plotting and vaguely-connected strings of shenanigans that prioritise rapidly-staling comedic beats over any semblance of narrative cohesion or character development. A rocking soundtrack and a smattering of toilet humour does not a worthy film make; it’s not like I’m going in looking for some high-brow drama, I just prefer my entertainment to hang together a little better than this does, and it surprises me a bit to hear people sing the praises of something so very, very messy. Whatever. It did its job for Marvel’s bottom line, so I don’t expect they’ll cook up any quality improvements for the third film of the franchise, when it comes. I sure would be glad to be wrong, though. There’s so much potential they’re wasting here.