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knifeonmars · 3 years ago

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Comics that mattered to me in 2021

Every year when I sit down to do this I end up whinging about being exhausted with comics, and this year is no different. The churn of corporate superhero comics is deeply alienating, and after I made a concerted effort to read more prose this past year, I can't help noticing that a lot of the writing is, frankly, shit. Jonathan Hickman's Mr. Cerebral Scifi posturing looks a lot less impressive when you've been reading Herbert or LeGuin or Banks and realizing how shallow even the most acclaimed writing in superhero comics often is.

Nor did indie comics have much for me this year. 2022 will be Peow Studios' last year in operation, and while they're still publishing at the moment and their work remains stellar, knowing that they'll be gone casts a pall over things. Al Gofa's decision to cape for Brandon Graham by including him in his failed Gamma Twinkles Kickstarter campaign, even in light of the accusations of predation by Graham, after public backlash and the loss of multiple collaborators from the project really took the wind out of my sails re: indie comics by reminding me how shitty the space can be.

Spawn

The only comic which I read with any regularity in 2021 was, genuinely, Spawn, as preparation for my vanity podcast on the series, Regarding Spawn. I can't say that Spawn is good by any measure, indeed certain parts of it are complete shit, but as someone who has always struggled to find a community, it's nice to actually get to read along with someone and discuss a series for all its highs and lows. I guess the lesson is that comics and media in general are best when you share it with someone, so like, touch grass.

The Immortal Hulk

Probably Al Ewing's magnum opus at Marvel Comics, even if it is marred somewhat by its association with artist Joe Bennett and his unpleasant personal politics. While it was running there were few, if any comics like Immortal Hulk, certainly not from the mainstream superhero comics market. It was religious horror, it was action, it was sublime and funny and excellent. I'm glad that it got to have its run and, improbably for an Al Ewing comic, go uninterrupted by petty cash-ins and spinoffs (look at the current X-Men line to see what happens when that pointedly isn't the case). Immortal Hulk has unseated Planet Hulk as the best Hulk story, and it did so by being a completely different kind of story. We may not see its like again.

Home Time

The second part of Campbell Whyte's Home Time released this year, following a group of Australian middle schoolers trapped in a strange fantasy world during what was supposed to be their last summer together before high school. I'm no "YA adult", note my use of scare-quotes, but I really did love Home Time. It's hazy and weird, it evokes a kind of nostalgia which hit close to home for me, and I love the tricks and stylistic flourishes it displays in riffing on videogames.

Batman: Creature of the Night

Another title I've written about before, the last big project from the late, great artist John Paul Leon with collaborator Kurt Busiek, Creature of the Night is the companion piece to Busiek and Stuart Immonen's incredible Superman: Secret Identity, and yet it is totally distinct and its own beast. It's a story about mental illness and anger and grief, and it gets at the core of Batman in a way which is both more distinct and more honest than either fandom "BatDad" characterizations or self-serious "disturbed" takes on the character.

Jack Staff

It is a true pleasure to see a master at work in their craft, and Jack Staff is Paul Grist's clinic on the capabilities and potentials of both the comic book medium and the superhero genre. Grist pulls from reference points that a North American reader like myself has little familiarity with and in doing so constructs a superhero world which feels totally distinct from the one-millionth indie comics riff on Batman/Spider-Man/Superman/etc. The things he does with layouts, with lettering, with the page as a whole, must be seen to be believed. If you ever have the chance, do not miss Jack Staff.

Butcher Baker, The Righteous Maker

Neither Butcher Baker nor its creator Joe Casey are a problematic fave for me, and yet I guess they are. I don't love Butcher Baker unreservedly, but I can't help thinking about it in terms of my largely withered critical reading skills. I think that there is something profoundly ugly at the heart of superhero power fantasies, however much certain people online will argue that superheroes have always been politically "good" , and Joe Casey lays that bare in a totally unabashed, indulgent, but absolutely knowing way. Butcher Baker is a creep, a thug, and a libidinous bully, his enemies are over the top visions of American prejudices and fears, it's a weird book and I don't like every element of it, but I can't help thinking about it. Considering that so many superhero comics seem designed to slide smoothly off the brain as soon as possible, totally unprepared for or uninterested in critical reading, Butcher Baker is a welcome change.

Superman: Blue

It is with a heavy heart that I admit that Electric Blue Superman is Good, Actually, and these comics are damned solid. It'll sound like I'm damning it with faint praise, but this volume collecting the first set of stories from the brief Electric Blue era is just really solid superhero comics. I've slagged off series before for feeling like standard portions of superhero entertainment, but this isn't that. Superman: Blue has a lineup of great artists including Stuart Immonen in the early part of his career, and a rotating cast of writers telling charming, innovative stories using what I have to admit is a fun setup. There's no groan-inducing crossover high stakes here, nor the inflated self-importance of "nothing will ever be the same!" instead it's just solid, entertaining stories with fresh takes on characters new and old. Even as burnt out as I am on superhero stories, I must admit that you could do a lot worse.

#comics that mattered #comics

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nanaosaki3940 · 4 years ago

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Enji Todoroki/Endeavor - The Social Disaster

MHA’s one of the main subplots is the Todoroki family story which we all know it as ‘Keeping Up With The Todorokis’. This subplot is deliciously complicated and the root of these complications is none other than Endeavor or Enji Todoroki himself.

And I’m going to explain why I call him ‘The Social Disaster’.

After failing to surpass All Might, Endeavor started his stupid breeding experiment where he’ll create a child to use it as a weapon to surpass All Might and become the No. 1 hero and the first weapon he created was called Touya Todoroki. At the very beginning of the training sessions with his son, Endeavor filled Touya’s head with dreams of becoming No.1 hero, be greater than All Might, that he was the destined one to carry out his father’s legacy etc. And then one day Endeavor stopped everything and just gave up on Touya, saying – “No, you can’t. You’re worthless, you can’t do this one thing I told you that you’re gonna be able to do your whole life and so you need to just get the fuck out of my face. Stop doing it. Go be an accountant and just give up.”

From birth Touya was told –“You’re gonna be this great thing. You’re gonna be this Hero Hokage.” and then Endeavor’s like – “Oh sorry, you’re not going to be that Hero Hokage.” and we see that Endeavor’s spending the whole time telling his son like - “Go hang out with your friends and go be normal.” And Touya says – “Well, everyone at school wants to be a hero too.” To me, it’s kinda looping back into Deku’s situation in reverse, like where Deku wanted to become a hero but he was quirkless and Touya also wanted to be a hero, but he can’t tolerate his own flames.

And then Endeavor came up with this shitty idea like – “Oh, you know what will make him stop, if you get him a fucking replacement.” which is maybe the worst idea I’ve heard in my whole life of how to resolve a problem like this.

To me, Endeavor has seemingly no understanding of how people work beyond just – “Oh, this is how I solve criminal cases.”

During his engagement with Rei, he looks and talks like such an awkward idiot and I feel like the way he treats Touya and the way he tries to handle his situation, just proves that how bad he is in understanding what he is doing and how his intentions affects reality.

Even though he is a grown-ass adult and he should know, it's interesting to see that there is this sort of consistency because I believe the implication is that it is his social idiocy that also caused him the No. 1 spot that he could never really become the people's man like All Might because he just doesn't know how to be a man of the people like All Might. And this is how it infects all parts of his life.

He's telling Touya to stop out of concern for him like – “You need to stop this because it's just not good for you.”, which is a very sweet sentiment. But at the same time, we get the panel of where he says – “We got to have another kid to make him stop doing it because then he will give up.” And Rei says –“No, we're not going to do that.” And his response is –“No, we gotta do it because he is never gonna be the one to surpass All Might.”

Then they have Natsuo and we see Touya’s reaction to it and it’s obviously that he’s not taking it very well and then we just see Endeavor getting more and more angry and Rei is getting more and more sad and defeated by the whole situation and when they have baby Shoto, the faces of Endeavor, Rei and Touya physically upsets me. We get to see Endeavor looks really excited, Rei's just like –“I’m done, just stop.” And Touya is so devastated because he realizes that this is the one that's gonna be better than him.

Shoto got what they wanted out of him and we see Touya saying like –“I can still do it.” and the end result is just the dad saying like; it's not even like –“Let's do things together other than being heroes.”; it's more like –“You got to give up on being hero, go play with other kids, go to school and get the fuck out of my face. I gotta train this other hero child. I don’t have time for this shit.”

Endeavor has a line of logic within his brain where he's like –“I can’t fix Touya for what I have done to him cannot be undone because I don’t have the capabilities, so I will just move forward and hope that he copes up.”, which is a terrible and stupid idea, but it is nonetheless align of logic within him.

There’s a certain set of values, ideas and goals in him and he follows them through and they were all terrible and reprehensible. But it still shows that there was an internal logic to him that it makes him even more monstrous without taking that terrifying humanity away from him.

Endeavor is just a person who has done terrible things, with an actual logical line of thought behind it even if it is logic that only makes sense to him.

There’re a lot of obvious parallels we can make between Touya and Deku (they’re not subtle about it and it’s kind of in our faces). Well it's just interesting to me that like Endeavor his whole obsession is like –“I gotta be better than All Might.” And then even in situations like this where he has this protégé that he gives all this hopes and dreams to like –“You're gonna be great, you're gonna be a hero, you’re gonna be the greatest.” And then the child has this power that his body cannot handle and he can't do what the dad told him to do, Endeavor is just like –“Well then, you suck kid. Get a new job, idiot.”

On the other hand, even though All Might is far from perfect in a lot of ways of course when it comes to this but it’s the exact same thing but he understands that like having these aspirations and these dreams even in someone so young is so real. And we know that All Might feels bad about what happens to Deku, but at no point does he tell him like –“Okay, give it up kid. You still can’t do it more than 5% without breaking your arm. Give it up idiot. I’m gonna give it to somebody else.” Like at no point does that even cross his mind. Rather All Might tells Deku –“Look, you gotta work to do. You’re not up to that level yet but I’ll help you and I’ll do it with you.”

And that’s true that Touya wanted to be better than All Might which wasn’t realistic but he was also a child and rationality and setting realistic goals comes much later than being a fucking child. But Endeavor was so obsessed with his own shit that it was hard for him to get over his own hang ups and look through Touya’s problems. Touya could easily still be a hero if he accidentally singes his skin a little bit sometimes that’s not even close to the kind of damage that Deku does himself every time he fights anything. So, it’s not unrealistic to be like –“Okay, yeah I’ll help you and we’ll take it slow. We’ll help you get over your power and then when you get to school or whatever, you can get help from the tech department and make you a heat shield or whatever.”

There were many ways that he obviously could’ve worked around it but Endeavor didn’t give a shit about that because that wasn’t his goal. He’s goal wasn’t to nurture Touya rather his goal was to find a way to get past All Might. He didn’t give a shit about trying to take it slow or trying to help Touya to accomplish anything other than what he wanted and once Touya couldn’t do that, he’s like –“Get the fuck out of my face while I train this replacement child.”

Endeavor is a kind of a person who makes every single mistake it could have made, like starting right from the point where he buys a wife to the point where he tortures Shoto during training sessions. Like you all can tell that he almost like wanted to be a parent when he was like –“Oh, I need to protect Touya from his own power.” He vocalizes a sweet sentiment but also he’s the reason Touya is like this and he can’t just run away and that’s why I like what Rei says as well it’s like –“You just keep running away. You keep creating these problems and you just keep running forward to All Might but also you keep running away from what you have done.” And I am so happy with how Rei is characterized like she is so much more spunky and so much more like assertive than I thought. Like she actually talks back to Endeavor and even in the hospital scene, she has like a presence and says –“You know we will do this. You need to get yourself together and we need to atone together, but most of all you because you were a piece of shit.”

And I also like the little thing at the end where Shoto was like –“I talked with Mom before we came here and I told her that I was going to be the one to stop Touya, but no, we’ll stop him altogether.” To me it sounded like it was Rei’s idea where she was like –“No, you can’t let this piece of shit make this your problem.” I mean Endeavor was always running away. He ran away from Touya and all this stuff happened. He was ready to do it again in the hospital, saying that –“I can’t fight him, he’s my son and I can’t do it.” But Rei was like –“No, get up and take some fucking responsibility for your problems.”

And I love that it was Rei the one who came to that conclusion, because even Shoto was ready to be like –“Dad can’t do it. I’m destined to stop my brother.” And she was like –“No, it’s this asshole’s problem. He did this and yeah all of us could have done more but you can’t let him sit in a bed and wallow about being so pathetic. He needs to get up and he needs to solve this.” And there's no better character it could have been to have been the one that came to that conclusion.

And this is what I love about MHA that how sincere it is and what I mean by that is moments like these where it doesn’t really go out of its way to play into any specific tropes when it comes to this abuse storyline and instead just gives you hurt people moving past and making decisions that sounds reasonable. Like the fact that Shoto didn’t just go on the avenger mode but instead talked it over with his mother which usually doesn't happen in shounen manga/anime. When you decide on making a revenge plot in shounen, you just do it. You don’t go and talk to someone important in your life and seek emotional counsel in shounen. So yeah, I love that Horikoshi sensei is giving us mature and realistic contents like these.

Then in chapter 302 we see Rei asks Touya like –“It almost seems like you don’t want to really be a hero, like you don’t seem like you actually care about becoming a hero. It just seems like you’re obsessed and stuck because Endeavor is your dad and you feel like you have a legacy to live up to but he is abandoned you.” And of course Touya’s responses were like –“Fuck you, mom. I fucking hate you.” But she was right. If Endeavor just hadn’t been such a pig headed shit in dealing with the problem, Touya either would have grown up to the point where he realized it was not worth it or if he really wanted to be a hero, Endeavor could have actually helped foster him into one if his entire end goal wasn't dependent on Touya being the best one.

Did Touya need to be the greatest hero ever created?

No.

Because in their last real conversation, before Touya ran off to the mountain and got burned up, he said and acknowledged the fact that he wasn’t as good as Shoto right now, but he said –“One day, I might become great and you’ll be proud of me.” Touya wasn’t even there saying like –“Oh, I’m the greatest thing ever born. Look at my awesome fire. Oops I burned the mountain down.” It was just him being like –“Look, I’m still trying. Look at this cool thing I did. Acknowledge this one thing that I did.” And Endeavor’s only reaction is – “Shut the fuck up, kid. You fucking idiot. How many times I tell you not to do this?”

But when Touya does get burned up, it shows us Endeavor’s face in horror running to the mountain which again is so bizarre. Honestly I’m starting to wonder if we will get an Endeavor back story ‘cause his set of morals and values is so fucked up.

The issue is Endeavor does care, but he just doesn't understand how to care. Like on a base level, he has the positive emotion of caring about Touya’s well-being and that is about where it ends. Endeavor has no comprehension of what that means or how to do that in a good way.

Every idea he thinks of how to fix it is stupid and he's even obsessed with the notion of like –“When Touya uses too much of his fire, he burns himself. So, I guess he has to never ever use his power ever forever from now.” I mean this goes beyond ‘I'm socially awkward around ladies’.

I almost think Endeavor’s previous family was just nothing prior to him and he fucking hated that. This is probably edge dark turn for what they might end up doing but I’m going almost like the Hawks route like –“Dad was a drunk, mom didn’t give a shit and they fought all the time. I was the scared repressed kid, but then at school or whatever it turned out I was actually pretty awesome and I became popular to some extent by both like athletic and corporate events. I was cool for that aspect so I’m used to being around people but I have no understanding of how they work at all.” That’s my assumption.

Even when he keeps trying to apologize to his family it always comes off like –“Yeah, I’m a bad guy and you hate me, so I’m gonna buy you a house that I won’t live in.” I mean, you’re still not really trying are you? You’re just moving the problem ‘cause you just like –“Oh, they’ll just be happy without me. I just suck. I’m just going to go away.” But like, you’re not helping them heal up or whatever. You’re just like ‘I’m going to be nice now’ but that doesn’t make all the horrible shits you did go away.

Endeavor doesn’t have an understanding of how humans work just because of how he is, but now I’m really curious to see if there might be more behind that. I just want to see why he’s so obsessed with All Might, like where that came from.

The character he’s obviously a parallel to is Bakugo and with Bakugo, we do get to see that since his youth Bakugo equated being a hero and the triumph of being a hero with being as good as All Might. That is very light as far as his motivation goes but it’s a motivation nonetheless.

With Endeavor, we’ve only ever gotten as far as like –“He is strong and I’m weaker and that pisses me off.”

It's almost idolization in a different way where we’re like with Bakugo, it’s like –“That’s my goal. I want to be just like All Might.” Whereas with Endeavor, it's like –“That's my goal 'cause I’m pissed off that I’m not the best of the best.”

They both idolized him in similar ways and Bakugo obviously feels more socially adjusted than Endeavor. Even though Bakugo’s a dick, he’s aware of things and is surprisingly emotionally literate. Like the scene where him and Deku get in trouble after they fight in end of season 3, they're like cleaning the house or whatever and Bakugo makes that little reach out of like –“Hey, the fighting style you’re using is messed up for these reasons, so you should try doing this.”

Like that alone is way beyond anything I would ever expect that of Endeavor. Endeavor’s response when they were cleaning the house would have been like –“Don’t worry, I’ll move my room to a different floor, so we won’t have to talk anymore.”

Endeavor’s a fucking weirdo, I swear.

And also Endeavor’s like actual motivations of becoming No.1 hero are almost intentionally omitted from the whole Todoroki family subplot and it’s so uncanny. I’m really hoping that Horikoshi sensei actually does something with that cause I think it feels so shallow compared to how much time we've spent on it now exactly and I feel it’s intentional and we are going to get something more about Endeavor. It feels like one of those gaps that an author leaves specifically so you can question it until it fills you in.

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #enji todoroki #bnha endeavour #mha endeavor #shoto todoroki #touya todoroki #toya todoroki #natsuo todoroki #fuyumi todoroki #rei todoroki #mha shouto #dabi #mha dabi

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bigskydreaming · 4 years ago

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Do you have any character in any fandom that you hate so much or a character who bothers you so much that you can't look at any media without getting annoyed/ upset? Not like villain character, a normal or even fandom fave character, someone most others won't find anything wrong with but your guts hate them, that kind?

I mean, the most obvious example of this for me is definitely Stiles in Teen Wolf lol. I know that a lot of people didn’t start disliking him until later seasons but I just flat out never liked him from the get go, and like....it built and grew due to a lot of fandom attitudes towards the character?

Because like......I just do not enjoy characters who constantly seem to be making digs at or undercutting their supposed friends or family, the way Stiles was with Scott from the very pilot. Its like yeah great, I can absolutely see and recognize all the times he was there for him and did in fact do good friendship type stuff, but the problem for me lies in the way fandom tends to make that TRANSACTIONAL with the stuff I had a problem with where its almost like, well, see, since Stiles tried so hard to save Scott in this one episode Motel California, he GETS to casually insult and demoralize him all the rest of the time, and holy shit no that’s not how that works, y’know? (Especially because Scott’s shitty self-esteem was the bad guy’s way in for almost killing him in Motel California, and gee what connection could there be between shitty self-esteem and constantly being belittled and talked down to by your literal best friend in the whole world BUT I DIGRESS).

And a lot of people over the years have been like, okay but friends tease each other and give each other shit all the time, are you saying they’re all bad for doing so? And no, I’m not, but the thing people tend to gloss over here is the key phrase “each other.”

Because its one thing when you have friendships like this. Its another thing when those friendships flow entirely one way in this specific regard.

When one character is not only ‘allowed to’ but almost EXPECTED to take pot shots at their friend at every available opportunity, but any single time the other friend does the same, no matter how playfully, its fixated upon as being mean and unfriendly, like...THAT is the problem.

And while I don’t have a specific single character that answers your question here in terms of Batfandom, the exact same phenomenon rears its head there and I holy hell object to that too, lol.

Like, we see it SO often with how Dick’s brothers are habitually characterized as mocking his relationship with Bruce, work ethic, standards, jobs, apartment, fashion choices, cooking, NAME......with it just taken for granted that there’s nothing wrong with them all calling him Dickhead or saying he’s ‘really lived up to his namesake’ practically once a fic, if not once a chapter......

And again, the common refrain is “well siblings are just like that?”

And they’re not actually, is the thing. I mean, I grew up with siblings too, and YES we gave each other shit all the time, but again its that exact same key phrase: EACH OTHER.

Like in comparison to the above, how often do people read fic where Dick casually insults his brothers every time he meets up with them, or makes snide, backhanded offensive references to their own parents or memories/reminders of them, or insults their standards not even as a point of specific conflict, but just as a casual, generic expression of contempt?

Its not a two-way street there either at ALL, and THAT’S the issue.

(Also similar to the example I outlined with Motel California, a lot of people write stuff about Dick having shitty self-esteem, but again like.....when you pair this as hand in hand with Dick regularly being insulted and talked down to by his own family, who never ever seem to have anything good to say to him or about him until AFTER he has some kind of breakdown, its like......where do you think shitty self-esteem so often comes from?)

Like, I’ve had people tag fic/drabble posts where I have Dick engaging in what to my estimation is the equivalent of gently teasing Jason or Tim.....and people tag these with “I feel funny about this because Dick seems kinda mean to his brothers here”.....and then nine out of ten times, if I go onto their blog, within a PAGE or two, I see some post where Jason and Tim are calling Dick a Dickhead or mocking his intelligence with NO sign of funny feelings from that person and its like......its not the criticism I mind, lol, its that uh, one of these things (standards of behavior applied to each character) are not like the others.

Because a lot of times when pressed on this subject, people will respond with “well it wouldn’t be in character/Dick or Scott are too nice for that to be their sense of humor” and again its just kinda glossed over that uh, this is basically a tacit admission that the characterization you’re going with for everyone else is ‘not that nice, actually.’ BUT any time people call this specific kind of behavior out when these characters do it, THEN the response is not “well yeah, you’re right, its not that nice actually,” its a defensive “well okay but that’s just how these characters are, are you saying they’re assholes?”

And its like well no, actually you basically were the ones who said they were assholes when you made this a core part of their characterization, and now you’re using this weird kinda circular logic to loophole your way out of them being actually held up and acknowledged as such WHEN they’re characterized this way.

If these specific other characters never get to retaliate or return fire BECAUSE they’re too nice, then there should be no problem acknowledging that when the characters who DO engage in this behavior are actively engaging in it.....they’re being assholes, and no, its just how friends/siblings are is not actually a defensive/deviation from this if their targeted friend/sibling is never actually able to do the same without being held up specifically as stepping outside the territory of “being nice.”

Few things bug me more in terms of basic character interactions/dynamics then the tendency fandom has of building up certain characters as having free reign with how they treat other characters, while simultaneously limiting these other characters from any kind of equivalent spectrum of behavior by using their own positive traits AGAINST THEM.....but with fandom at the same time being willing to full on go to war in defense of the first kind of characters if anyone draws any kind of connecting dots between their examples of frankly asshole-ish behavior and the implication that they might, in fact, be not that awesome as a result.

Its this annoying sleight of hand wherein certain characters can do or say anything without it being a reflection on who they are character-wise, while other characters step the SLIGHTEST toe out of the line that fandom has drawn for their character and how they’re EXPECTED to behave at all times in order to avoid active criticism.....and this then absolutely is an indication of how they’re actually flawed and gross and even abusive, because of how not nice what they’re doing is, and if people want them to NOT be perceived that way, they need to go back to characterizing them or focusing their characterization of them on all the times/ways in which they just placidly accept whatever’s dished out without any kind of reciprocation.

So yeah, Stiles was always a big example of this for me, but it was far from limited to just him. Any time a fandom is like “these characters can make fun of this character or be super critical of them but this character is never ever allowed to do the same in return, that’s against the law,” I’m like yeah no, that’s a swing and a miss for me. Hard pass on those particular fandom faves....at least so long as their fandom fave status seems to go hand in hand with their ability to inflict maximum psychic damage upon their alleged loved one any time they’re feeling down or are just in a mood, all while facing zero consequences for it....even in the simple form of their targeted ‘loved one’ ever simply being like yeah I just choose to not want to be around you when you’re being assholes to me/if you’re going to just be an asshole to me.

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lemonadesoda · 4 years ago

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Part 2 of the Hide and Seek meta

There’s a bunch I didn’t say in the first meta post because it would have been spoilers, but now the fic is done, so here you go, more random behind-the-scenes that no one asked for but you’re getting it anyway

every writer knows there’s at least one part of writing the story where you hate the story, and for this story, that was chapter 11, which very nearly got away from me. In the first go around, when MJ and Snatcher have their conversation, Snatcher had too explosive of a depressive breakdown and revealed too early that Hat Kid had died in one of the Death Wishes. MJ was pretty furious, considering how big of an asshole Snatcher had been to them like 2 days ago in chapter 9, it led to a big argument and I had to walk away for a few days and figure out whether I was taking the story in the right direction.

on that note, the second half of the story was easily twice as hard to write as the first, my increasingly busy schedule notwithstanding. In the first half, the characters are all pre-turning point, but after chapter 10, I had to work to keep them true to their personalities but this time With Character Development

certain events were planned from the beginning, while other things came up on the fly either as I wrote or in response to reader comments

for example: the lullaby was not in the original plan. A reader commented they wanted Snatcher to sing, and my brain didn’t let it go.

another example: while Snatcher’s anxiety attacks were planned, how it intertwined with his expended magic and lack of souls was spontaneous. I realized when writing his breakdown in ch 9 that as a ghost, his stress couldn’t express itself in almost any of the classic physical symptoms, so he ended up getting phantom pain, dissociative episodes, and extreme fatigue

the legal arguments in ch 17 were mostly planned, but the actual details of the argument, in terms of actual debate points, I came up with largely on the fly, and it is a lot of good fortune that everything worked out so well

part of why I wrote this story in the first place was because I wanted to explore the progression of character change especially in Snatcher, because in other fics I read, he either starts off nicer than I expect or stays meaner than I expect for way longer than I think Hat Kid really deserves to put up with. Moonjumper probably overtly changes the least, mostly because I needed one character who was neither a literal child nor an emotional basket case.

since a lot of people have commented that they like the characterization, I will attempt to elaborate on the methodology

o shit there are sub bullets hell yah

for each of the characters, there was always an underlying feeling that I kept in mind that would act as my compass for how I wrote them

it helps that they all have very strong pre-existing voices in my head, and I play all the dialogue through their vocal lines to make sure it sounds feasible

again, echoing the previous meta, Snatcher’s underlying waypoint feeling is shame. In the first half, he reacts with defensiveness or awkwardness and denial when confronted with that feeling. In the second half after his turning point, he acknowledges that his love for Hat Kid is stronger than the fear of vulnerability he has in expressing it and in fact he becomes kind of clingy and hovery toward her. Instead he channels his bad feelings into repression by hiding his struggles from her instead. It takes him a while to feel like he is allowed to be happy, but eventually love overcomes that too.

HK’s underlying feeling is loneliness. In the same turn, she both craves and distrusts affection. This is discussed in ch 5. Once she decides Snatcher has earned her trust, the loneliness translates into feelings of responsibility. Her choice to go after Vanessa in ch 13 was motivated by the fact that she felt like a burden because Snatcher was caught between her and protecting the forest and she assumed it was her job to go and fix it. It takes a lot of convincing for her to realize she doesn’t have to take charge of a situation, and ch 17 was a culmination of her arc in that she basically played no active role in saving her ship, and that was intentional. It was important for her arc to end in being saved by her parents in a situation where she felt helpless.

MJ’s underlying feeling is basically straight up just love. They’re motivated even early on by the fact that they care about HK and initially it fuels their frustration with Snatcher because they thought he was bound to hurt HK if he kept being such an ass and it allows them to stand up to him to some degree. Even after that though, they would frequently bow out initially to keep the peace, unless HK meddled to convince Snatcher to be nicer to them. However, they also fundamentally still cared about Snatcher too, and realizing he had an opportunity for happiness in front of him, was determined not to let him crush it. Eventually, their sense of love translated to their own existence, which they had always been kind of ambivalent about. MJ wasn’t sure how much ownership they had over their identity, but taking on a role as HK’s parent gave them a good enough sense of self that they were able to better embrace the idea of Themself as a concept. MJ was the hardest to write at all times because I needed to make sure they were getting enough chances to have their own struggles and anxieties as well as their own fulfillment. I put a lot of work into them, but if I were ever to revise this story, I would put even more work into them.

Of the 3 mains, I personally think MJ is actually the funniest. They have a very dry sense of humor.

I see everyone noticed the pet names, so yes, MJ prefers “my dear” and “little one” while Snatcher sticks with “kiddo” most of the time but will occasionally go for the one hit KO with “sweetie” when he’s feeling real mushy

the hardest part of writing ch 17 was balancing how I wanted to portray the Captain. While I very much didn’t want to give the sense that her caretakers were good people, I didn’t want to portray them as cruel evil monsters, to the point that they would have crushed any sense of joy HK could have. A lot of the backstory was excluded from the actual text, simply informing how I wrote her character, but basically her caretakers were largely just a combination of selfish, neglectful, and resentful of having to look after a child when they were more interested in their work. The Captain himself does recognize through the discussion that HK is genuinely really happy and well cared for on Earth, something he’s aware she could never be in his and the others’ care, and so that one bit in the end is a hint that he does genuinely acknowledge on some level that they were shitty caretakers, that he did fail her as a guardian and that she deserves better.

Okay that’s plenty long, so I’ll stop.

#ahit #a hat in time #ahit hide and seek #long post #meta

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mrs-evadne-cake · 4 years ago

Note

Regarding the criticism that Hopper has been getting post S3, how much of the backlash do you think is justified and how much do you think is unnecessary? Because to me, in some aspects i can understand why he would have such a knee jerk angry or grumpy reaction in certain situations, like when it comes to dealing with the boy dating his daughter, or when his crush stood him up, but i didnt like how they amplified his anger to the point where it becomes his default reaction to everything.

There was a thing I saw on here a while back that said something along the lines of ‘You know something went wrong when you don’t get mad at a character for their behavior, you get mad at the writers’ and that’s sort of been how I felt about S3 Hopper.

I think very little that he does is out of character in a vacuum- if you just gave me one sentence write ups of everything he does in the Season like, ‘becomes needlessly aggressive to Mike because of El’ or, ‘doesn’t believe Joyce thinking the Upside Down is Back because of magnets’, or ‘is ridiculously mean to the world’s most adorable Russian Defector’ or ‘almost chops a man’s finger off with a cigar cutter’ I think I would have been a little...taken aback... by some of the choices but I wouldn’t go ‘That’s absolutely ridiculous, he’d never act like that’ (with one significant exception, but we’ll get to that later) because Hopper is and has always been a man at war with himself when it comes to good vs. bad emotional impulses and one with anger issues, and with a presumably cold-turkey pre-10am barbiturate habit in his rear view mirror and much LESS under control drinking problem.

The problem for me- going along with what you said- became how MUCH there was of it and how cartoonishly over the top it was most of the time (I’m aware this was an active choice during production- this does not impact if I think it was a GOOD choice). I think that if they had - focused- his anger a little more instead of just turning every scene he was in into a chore watching of Hopper YELLING at someone I’d have less of a problem. If I wanted to spend my time watching a middle-aged prick getting stupidly aggro at literally everyone around him for no real reason I’d just go to family holidays.

Now, where it gets really in the weeds for me where I would lean heavily toward justified rather than ‘in-character actions, badly handled’ is that his characterization- even within the context of only S3- starts to become inconsistent to feed his anger.

Lemme explain.

So lets assume we as an audience can accept that Hopper is being Needlessly Shitty to Mike and El because he’s being protective of El and has established anger issues- so far so good. We have cause, we have effect, it’s in character, not a fan of execution but hey, I don’t have to love it all. We think that he’s so resistant to Joyce and her Magnets because he really wants the entire thing to be over so badly that he’s willing to ignore and aggressively reject her (admittedly) shaky theory just validate his own hope that El and the rest of them are safe. We can draw a through line for the character very adequately explaining (but not excusing) why he’s acting out. And then we get to Murray's and, as usual when the show takes me to Murray’s, it ruins any goodwill I had. What possible excuse is there- given what we’ve accepted about his actions and motivations up to this point, what the season has been telling us about the character, and what we know the character knows about the *sigh*... Evil Russians definitely starting shit in the town with his telekinetic super-weapon of an adopted daughter in it who he wouldn’t even let out of the house for a year just to be safe- to give Joyce shit about BEING WORRIED ABOUT THE KIDS.

Him putting her down because the kids (these fucking kids) were obviously, definitely fine (in the town he knows has *sigh*... evil Russians trying to open a gate in it) is so absurdly, blatantly contrarian that it wrecks everything. I can accept ‘Hopper is acting out because he is very stressed in the first half of the season about his daughter being in any kind of danger, from boys, monsters or the world in general but when the plot goes ‘Your daughter is absolutely, totally is in very obvious danger’ and his reaction suddenly becomes ‘GOD, stop being so hysterical Joyce I’m sure it’s FINE’- The character is now broken- he’s internally inconsistent and is serving the writers needs instead of the writers serving the character.

It’s a trivially easy fix- just flip his motivation to Needing to Get Back To El ASAP- hell, it’s EXCELLENT motivation to be a raging asshole to everyone that gets in his way or slows him down- but as written it makes it clear that the actual motivation is ‘be shitty to Joyce because we want to be like Romancing the Stone or Moonlighting’.

This is where I feel like the backlash was VERY justified.

Thanks for the ask- this one was really interesting.

#stranger things #long post #jim hopper #asks

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fatebreaking-a · 5 years ago

Text

Tagged by : I am a thief. ( Stolen from @starthieve ) Tagging : steal it from me.

THE POSITIVE & NEGATIVE; Mun & Muse - Meme.

fill out & repost ♥ This meme definitely favors canons more, but I hope OC’s still can make it somehow work with their own lore, and lil’ fandom of friends & mutuals. Multi-Muses pick the muse you are the most invested in atm.

( I will not, I will pick all my muses, how dare- I’ll leave everything except this blog + my other Sona blog out, for length’s sake.) long post, so it’s under the cut.

My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless /

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES-ish / NO. ( people who like her like her, and people who don’t... really don’t. )

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK.

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK.

Are they underrated? YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO / MAYBE ?

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG.

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO / MAYBE ?

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL.

How strictly do you follow canon? — lol. I take inspiration from canon, let’s put it that way.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — Your local patron saint of lost causes, a heroic entity who has overcome betrayal and judgement to become an existence that can save the world. Also she’s tall and strong and hot and nice, what more could you want? Huh? You want more than being hugged by a 6′4″ lady??? Sona can also be in various countries, and can participate very easily in fluff, angst, and all sorts of other types of threads.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — Lots of angst and drama, a bit of a loner with a distant vibe. Having no etwahl and not playing music kills the interest and ‘usual interactions’ for a lot of people, and being mute & not jumping to telepathy can make threads dry and slow. Being a ‘sexy boob lady’ ( u g h ) also has painted her in a certain light - I’ll never forget that someone said that ‘ofc everyone ships with Sona, she’s the village bicycle.’ I’ve made her exceptionally strong ( almost overpowered ), and that doesn’t jive with people sometimes - shoving in all these themes that I personally like and crafting an interesting story of a divine / demonic seer witch who doesn’t know what to do with herself, is finally ‘too strong’, and finds power distasteful... The themes can be a little depressing and cold, even when she acts nice. And seeing “Even though she feels nothing, she still acts nice” in character can feel... tiring. A mute is not an easy person to write with, and I don’t shy away from trying to give the impression that ‘waiting for Sona to communicate can be tiring’ - because I want my readers and mutuals to feel the kinds of things she goes through everyday. While I try to make the blog accessible, Sona has a speech disability, and that can be tiring.

Also that she doesn’t act like a fancy noble... I don’t know. I feel like the way that I write her is very, very different to the fandom’s impression of her, and that leaves people disillusioned. “This isn’t what I expected or signed up for.” She’s just not that person... And because she doesn’t speak, a lot of prompts are off limits. I’ve also recently reset because I wanted to emphasize that she is patient, grim, and secretive while still being kind. I’ve toned down her tendency for mischief a lot, she used to be an absolute gremlin.

A lot of these things also apply to my other Sona blog ( @virtuous-dignity ), where she is extremely structured and self-confident and a bit of a recluse, so while she’s much much nicer, she’s also a complete hardass. It’s rough stuff, especially since I make sure to point out, “hey this Sona practices music over 8 hours every day.” “Hey this Sona finds it morally wrong to play music for small audiences.” There are certain traits that just cut ideas in the bud.

What inspired you to rp your muse? — I played Sona a lot in bot lane. Multiple years of sexist remarks, shitty writing, and bad characterization made me frustrated. A lot of things were left unexplained and the etwahl felt like too much of a focus that I could not answer, “who is Sona besides a musician with a fancy instrument”. She has to be someone, right? But we never get to that in the story ( nor in the apparent upcoming lore rework either... ). She has to be someone, her being a famous musician is not everything. So I forcibly tossed aside the music part, especially to also prevent accidentally being pulled into ‘your music is so pretty’ plots. Plus: I wanted to write a character with an internal conflict who was going through some things but wanted to be nice anyway - I believe in that idea a lot. And I wanted to write a character that, tbh, could ship and flirt and just... be flirty and easy going more ( hah! didn’t work out so great now! ). My first canon characters were a ‘left by the void Malz’ dealing with his sins and Ori, who I talk about below, and neither were really great for getting that flirty vibe out. I also really wanted to emphasize that... Well, to be blunt, that if I wrote Sona as sexually promiscuous, that wasn’t a bad thing. That ‘being sexy’ and ‘sex positive’ did not equal ‘objectified tiddy witch’ and ‘perfect candidate for oppai mouse pad’ and other things I’ve heard directed at me in my league experience. Many, many things. Ugh. It kind of did end up turning into a thing where Sona herself draws an interesting line between ‘haha I can tell everyone’s looking at me with those eyes and it’s the fucking worst’ and ‘ok but I trust you and am in bed with you, so I want you to grab me’ - but that’s getting more into ns/fw topics so I’ll leave it there.

What keeps your inspiration going? — All my characters tend to be expressions of myself, as well as answering important thematic questions, like “What does it mean to be rejected by your home and no longer have a place”, and some other stuff. I usually go back to that. Plus, exploring concepts around abandonment and loneliness is something I do a lot with her - feelings of neglect and disillusionment, and ideas surrounding “do I need to like someone or be liked by someone to treat them with dignity”. ( virtuous-dignity, on the other hand, was created because I wanted to write something as soft and uwu as possible, and then it turned into something about ‘balancing dignity for oneself with duty to others’ and handling those kinds of conflicts. )

I also really do enjoy, on some level, turning people around on these characters. “You made me care about character x” is such high praise.

My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless /

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO.

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK. ( idk, how many of you think robots are hot- )

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK. ( I think people downplay Ori’s intelligence a lot, but Riot also casually implied she did open heart surgery on herself so??? )

Are they underrated? YES / NO.

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO / MAYBE ?

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG.

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO / MAYBE ?

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL.

How strictly do you follow canon? — hahahahahahaha. hah. hah. Sorry. Everything I write is divergent by default.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — A genius inventor and cute spherical robot duo who speak to other robots and shoot lightning, run around acting cute, and try to save their city one step at a time - all while dealing with deep existential dread and fighting off a fate that decrees Ori’s death. Between ‘pancake bot’ and Ori being an accidental flirt, there’s plenty of variety and development here as my oldest canon muse. Not to mention that the blog ‘grows’ and ‘changes’, and in the last year, Ori has taken to dying her hair pink ( because Vi is cool is why, just don’t let her near a rifle or she’ll try to imitate Cait ). I also regularly think about / draw different hairstyles and clothing styles. Ori is very much ‘alive’, the most so out of the three muses on this blog. A human that has the memories of being a robot, trying to live on and live a good life. Also, there are bird, angel, and time themes. So many clocks. Mega clocks!

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — Deep angst and existential dread, because she knows her fate is to die and she’s cheated time. Themes of dysphoria and other troubling topics abound. Being stuck in time loops, thinking she’s an aberration, needing crutches because her legs stop working, etc.

Also, removing the fact that she is a robotic automaton is a bunch of the appeal of Ori. Or well, it’s what makes her character ‘interesting and unique’ to many. Without that, she is ‘yet another Zaunite’, as the thing that made her most interesting was her death and rebirth. ( Nevermind that her entire story is that she’s a selfless person but- I’m supposed to act like she’s bad, right? )

What inspired you to rp your muse? — Hey remember when institute of war was a thing? And then when it wasn’t? And Ori’s lore was “died to a turret shot trying to be a champion”... and then it was up in the air for two years?

That’s why. If no one else will love her, I will. She deserves better. And then the lore became close to my lore so I rewrote everything a second time trying to stick to the themes I had.

Ori’s thematic question is, “What do you do when you don’t recognize yourself anymore? How do you get back to ‘okay’ and what do you do from there?” It’s a pretty dim question that has a lot to do with body image, but also to do with abandonment and neglect, and just dropping out of people’s lives. I think that’s something that people can really relate to. I originally wrote her on a multi with a ‘post void Malz’, who was dealing with the trauma of being puppeted around for years and all the things he had done, trying to get back to ‘okay’ without getting killed. More below:

What keeps your inspiration going? — Themes as noted above, Ori is super cute, and a lot of my art & general ideas. I’ve kind of turned these three characters in borderline OCs and keep developing them as they grow... Sometimes I think the stories and concepts I’ve written have outgrown the fandom. And thinking about her, and how she would live, and what her story is... mmm.

Also, the themes I write... I think they matter. Maybe it’s not obvious to anyone but myself, but writing a character who feels dysphoria and hates their body for ‘betraying them’... is relatable. It’s not nice. It’s not simple. But it’s relatable and it matters. Ori’s theme on this blog has a lot to do with “fighting a fate that says you’re going to lose and defying expectations” as well as “coming back from something wicked and rotten in your psyche/body”. And I do write some other skin verses for her but they’re all adapted to meet that theme. ( For example, in SG, she rises to guardian after finding out she’s fated to become a dark star and fights that fight alone, because ‘hell no she’s not going to go dark’. This was 5+ years ago back when there were theories SG and DS were same universe. )

Mostly it’s writing about these themes of expectation and reality. Overprotective parent, absentee parent, dealing with trauma... All my writing is like that. It can make my characters seem overly tragic, yes, but these ideas are not so far gone that they’re completely irrelevant and beyond belief. I’m sure many people have experienced emotional exhaustion and problems with body image. Even though I do write ‘polite but ready to fight’ characters only... Well, I believe in exploring and expressing these kinds of problems. Inner conflict and all. But also fluff! Fluff is really nice! Talk to her about pancake robot.

I also really do enjoy, on some level, turning people around on these characters. “You made me care about character x” is such high praise.

My muse is: canon / oc / au / canon-divergent / fandomless /

Is your character popular in the fandom? YES / NO. ( post rework??? oh my god )

Is your character considered hot™ in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK.

Is your character considered strong in the fandom? YES / NO / IDK. ( hard to consider ‘martial’ characters strong when Xer/ath and Syn/dra exist )

Are they underrated? YES / NO. ( she’s a little overrated, isn’t she? )

Were they relevant for the main story? YES / NO / MAYBE ?

Were they relevant for the main character? YES / NO / THEY’RE THE PROTAG.

Are they widely known in their world? YES / NO / MAYBE ?

How’s their reputation? GOOD / BAD / NEUTRAL.

How strictly do you follow canon? — I still draw from old lore with her big four blades of doom and ‘reviving’ with the help of Raka ( though I leave it vague / easy to gloss over ). I also had a lot of ideas about music and rhythm and tradition before the update ( drums were a big thing for her, so strong percussive beats and motions reign over the more silk and ribbon dances that flow more, drawing on things like Zelos existing, Lito’s lessons & harsh behavior, and her own internalized habits of trying to calm herself ), so I draw on those a ton. For me, the progression is ‘classic’ -> ‘infiltrator / nightblade ‘ -> ‘aviator’ all as one timeline. Also wrote her as being ‘missing in action’, which makes the awaken cinematic weird. I also really try to emphasize that she’s an emotionally stunted wardog with scars and not ultra pretty, so.

SELL YOUR MUSE! Aka try to list everything, which makes your muse interesting in your opinion to make them spicy for your mutuals. — A world traveler and a wardog, you can find her anywhere, any time, ready to kick some butt and enjoy the local food. Her simmering fury is a counterpoint to her relatively muted demeanor and adventurous spirit. However you may find her, there’s a definite charm to being flown up above the clouds to watch a sunset and talk. She will fly you where you need to be.

Now the OPPOSITE, list everything why your muse could not be so interesting (even if you may not agree, what does the fandom perhaps think?). — I’m a little stuck on old lore and writing Lia as a character that has “left behind” her past and is pretending to be dead does make certain interactions tough. She’s also a deeply stunted character, emotionally, and I write her ten years of experience as having chilled her to a cold, ever burning ember rather than a passionate flame. Also, ‘aviator’ is kind of weird to handle for a lot of people.

What inspired you to rp your muse? — This one is really simple. When this blog started, the only splash where Irelia was smiling was the aviator splash. That’s it. That as the whole reason. “I want her to be happy and have found her happiness.”

What keeps your inspiration going? — I will admit that Lia is the character that I give the least attention to out of these three, and part of it is because I don’t really do flirting or shipping with her as much. She’s not one to reach out to others, and there are a lot of popular Lia blogs to the point that when I, as a multi, write with someone... She probably isn’t the first pick.

But I just... want her to be happy. That’s it. As I mentioned with the Ori section, what I’ve worked out for her has kind of outgrown the fandom itself, she’s become a different entity. Her themes largely involve recovery and finding oneself anew, and writing a character that is passionate about others while still being cool-headed is some of the variety I need. Because Lia is ace/homosexual, she sits out on a lot of the flirty content, but the chances I get to write her being romantic and caring... my god. Just a few posts back and forth with @unholyshe ‘s Akali and a So/na I used to write with....... Unforgettable. ( On that note go follow @unholyshe what a good writer, gosh dang. ) It’s these small interactions I find intensely compelling, and having a ‘quiet intensity’ and really thinking about her body language...

Also it’s nice to write a character with little secret agenda, who is just straightforward. “Will I enjoy kissing you? Only one way to find out. ‘It was okay.’ “ A ‘the only way forward is through, just do it’ attitude is refreshing.

------------------

Learning to write all three characters helps me write the others: The little things I think about that are specific to each person really help me out for the others. The depth of using body language from Sona bleeds into how Lia uses body language, and how Ori doesn’t ( even common ticks ), etc etc. Ori’s blunt, observational style of speaking ( telling you that you look good like it’s an observational fact ) helps me understand how to be straightforward with Lia.

Some more personal questions for the mun.

Give your mutuals some insight about the way you are in some matters, which could lead them to get more comfortable with you or perhaps not.

Do you think you give your character justice? YES …? / NO. ( sometimes I do get very anxious abt it, esp. since I’m so divergent and do things like ‘so/na is one part succubus lol’ )

Do you frequently write headcanons? YES / NO. ( do excerpts count? less headcanons and more musings, since I’m on like 5+ years with 2/3 of these. )

Do you sometimes write drabbles? YES / NO. ( time is not a thing but I used to write a ton, my drabble energy goes to novels now )

Do you think a lot about your Muse during the day? YES / NO. ( this is why you see mobile posts from me constantly, and so many excerpts / musings ).

Are you confident in your portrayal? YES / NO. ( It’s what I want but it can also be disillusioning / disappointing to people so. Dunno. Anxiety. =/ )

Are you confident in your writing? YES / NO. ( It takes me a bit to warm up to a character again, but yes. I know my writing is not bad but I can be a little insecure about it. )

Are you a sensitive person? YES / NO. ( Very. I cry a lot and I get upset pretty easily. Sometimes I end up being really cold instead but idk. )

Do you accept criticism well about your portrayal? — To a point. Sometimes criticism is irrelevant or meaningless, or is just personal taste. “Sona shouldn’t be that strong” isn’t helpful ( but thinking about ways to pare down the complexity is good! ) Sometimes I get criticism that is the equivalent of tasting a chocolate cake and going, “It should have been vanilla, I like vanilla better.” That’s cool, but that has nothing to do with the taste of the chocolate cake I made. ( Ori as a human isn’t interesting, talk more about Sona & the etwahl even though it’s broken, Lia flying doesn’t make sense, etc - these are foundational flavors, so what can I do? ).

Also sometimes people make comments that make me feel they’re just being petty / catty and not sincere. I’ve seen quite a few hypocritical comments and it’s hard to take them seriously. So, yes, but ‘to a point’... Mostly I take suggestions, which I then talk about for the muse. Exploring those ideas. Unsolicited criticism is... hmm. In my experience, about half of it isn’t constructive. And from the wrong person, it can sound judgemental.

Do you like questions, which help you explore your character? — Of course? I love asks. Always. Great. Awesome. If I have a chance to draw to answer these asks, even better.

If someone disagrees to a headcanon of yours, do you want to know why? — Not really. I’m divergent, they probably disagree because they have a different vision for the character. I’ll be honest here and say I’ve had enough people tell me that “my portrayals are not what they expected” that this can be... disheartening. I usually have a good reason for 80% of my hcs. If we’re talking in IMs though or just conversing, I’m totally fine with it. This comes back to unsolicited criticism - to be a little blunt, some people just straight up don’t know what they’re talking about. And given that I put a bunch of effort in trying to make sure most of my headcanons can be glossed over, so it doesn’t cause conflict and my ‘ultra grim take’ doesn’t cause the end times... I dunno. I’d rather that someone tell me “the kind of interactions they want”, so I can lean into that direction. If you just want fluff, I can leave most of my darker hcs for So/na at the door... But you need to tell me that, so I can work with you.

If someone disagrees with your portrayal, how would you take it? — just leave? huh? I mean, I already know people disagree. If you’re not rude, then we’ll just move on and be chill. Otherwise... well, we won’t be chill and you can still go, but I’ll consider you a dick. I don’t expect everyone to agree with “Ori is a human”, but why bring that up to me?

This is why a lot of the time, when people talk about characters and my muses, my brain defaults to “Well that has nothing to do with me.” Why should I invest any time being upset that people are disappointed with my portrayal or I’m not what they expected. It’s exhausting. People have some really strong opinions about Lia and Sona sometimes, but... ‘that has nothing to do with me.’ There’s no point in trying to convince someone to try your flavor of ice cream when they’ve already decided what flavor and toppings they want. It just leads to tremendous insecurity. I should not have to argue that ‘my portrayal is worth paying attention to’.

Ugh. I might be too sensitive about this. There was a point where people really got in the habit of saying, “this is how character x is” ( not their muse ), and it felt like someone trying to enter my kitchen. It did not feel like a suggestion or an idea. It was an assertive, “this is how Irelia is” by, say... a Ry/ze or Ken/nen blog or something. That felt extremely isolating and alienating to me, because it felt like I could not participate in that conversation at all. Or stuff after. I had to sideline myself, because... that has nothing to do with me or my interpretations. Ofc griping at them is wrong because I know they mean, ‘this is how I see it’, but ye. I’m short tempered and easily upset. Working on it.

If someone really hates your character, how do you take it? — um? bye? hello?

god I used to go “ ok that’s cool you don’t like my portrayal, here are some other great So/na blogs that I love” but I realized that I was directing someone who felt the need to tell me my portrayal or character is bad to those people... and no. no no no. I still feel a little guilty about it, because thinking I directed a toxic person to my duplicates... yuck.

If you don’t like the characters, or you don’t like my divergent takes, that’s fine. I get it’s not for everyone. Just unfollow me. You’re not paying me. You’re not under any obligation. To an extent, i don’t mind being critical of the character, but there’s a difference between being critical and being hateful to someone’s muse? And it depends a lot on how close I am with a person. For example, I think Sy/las is a complete scumbag and I hate him, but I don’t go yelling that to every Sy/las blog I see. C’mon.

Another bit of salt but it’s... kind of a sad topic, really. There are some characters people love to hate, whereas other ones get the ‘protection squad’. And in general it’s really disheartening to see someone shittalk Lux every two weeks, but go ‘these other champs are off limits’. If you have that attitude, it makes me think you’ll shittalk my characters the moment they get popular ( COUGHIRELIACOUGH ) and that’s kind of sad. And mean. So general advice on this is: Probably just don’t tell someone you hate their muse, you know? Idk. Everyone has their own tolerance level too so. meh.

Are you okay with people pointing out your grammatical errors? — Somewhat. Not much to say here, sometimes I am very tired, sometimes I comma splice like a madman, sometimes I overuse hyphen dashes to avoid deciding whether to use a comma, period, or semicolon - like this. I don’t need an editor. English is my first language. But if there’s something egregious or you have tips, let me know? I’m someone who looks up grammar rules regularly, and breaks teh rules just as regularly. Knowing when and how to break grammar rules is useful. Though I do tend to... overuse something once I’ve learned it. Hyphen dash, I’m looking at you.

Do you think you are easy going as a mun? — Yes and no. I’m chill, I can be a little overly passionate, and I’m pretty quick to apologize... But I have certain moral standards and if you break those, you’re done. Also I can be a vengeful bastard. I try to give as much benefit of the doubt as I can and many chances, but I’ve noticed that I really... have a sour attitude towards a lot more people than I expect. Sometimes people who are very well liked, just because they said or did something that ticked me off. Luckily, I have the special skill of not being a jerk even if I don’t like you, and overall trying to be nice to most people, so it usually won’t matter.

Ah and I can be a little selective in who I talk to / play favorites a bit. I’m a busy person with an adult life and a stressful job, I only have so much patience. I skip from “tolerating it” to “leaving”, and that can seem like I ghosted, but that’s not always the case. Just better to leave than to pick fights. I have some pretty strict standards and harsh opinions. Short temper. Vengeful. Alas.

Somehow people think I am very nice and baby, so take that for what you will. Pft. I just want people to be happy and feel comfortable and okay. Wrong is wrong, blah blah blah ok I stop now.

That’s about it, congrats for filling out!

( If you managed to read all this, with 3 full muses... Let me know, I want to hug you??? )

#long post tw #ooc #//...I think this took me over an hour to write oops.

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minaminokyoko · 4 years ago

Text

The Old Guard: A (Disappointed) Spoilertastic Review

I hate 2020.

For many reasons, of course, but there is this particular nastiness it seems to have, like it’s getting revenge on us for our past and current sins.

And the Old Guard feels like part of that revenge.

I haven’t read the graphic novel, so please understand the following review is based on the film alone. I was on board with getting to see my queen and girl crush Charlize Theron kick some ass and rock that bangin’ brunette pageboy haircut that only she can and yet what this movie gave me is a raging case of 2020. This concept isn’t anything new or original, but it should have been a walk in the park. It has solid actors and a simple premise.

So why was it total bullshit?

I’m so angry. I’ve said before how certain movies feel like someone had all the ingredients to make a hot, delicious pizza and yet when they combined them, they came up with Brussel sprouts somehow. This movie is a lazy mess. It has about a handful of decent moments, but overall, it’s negligent. It doesn’t care. It doesn’t care to show you its potential. It’s just a tired, by the numbers, dull action movie that’s wasting the talent that it managed to gather together. Maybe that’s why I’m so mad. It’s clear that this could have been fantastic, but the apathy in the writing turned into a grey, flavorless bore.

Sigh. Let’s swing the ax already and get this over with.

Overall Grade: C-/D+

Spoilers ahead.

Pros:

· I signed on for Charlize Theron and at least I got what I wanted, which was her kicking ass but still giving us a few soft moments of vulnerability. This is why I will follow this woman to the grave. Charlize Theron is one of my favorite actresses because she’s so good at showing what women are capable of as characters. She has such a wide range of acting skills, giving us a cold, bitter woman but at the same time showing hints of inner kindness and strength and love. This movie barely has many redeeming qualities, but she’s by far one of the best parts. The movie knows it, as she is the only one we really get to “know” over the course of the film.

· Joe and Nicky are the only other characters providing any warmth or emotion in the film. It’s badly needed. I was so let down that they didn’t show Nile’s introduction to the team because, to me, I got the sense that Joe and Nicky are the heart. They seem in touch with their emotions and not as cynical and hardened by their “immortality” as Andy. They seem to still care about helping people, even at the cost of themselves, and they could have been such a strong anchor if the movie invested more time in them. Both actors are solid and believable in the roles and it’s a pity they weren’t given more to do than to be the victims who needed rescuing.

· The action, for the most part, is solid. It’s pretty average, though. Nothing surprising. It’s the moves you’ve seen if you watched John Wick or Atomic Blonde, so keep that in mind.

· The effects are solid, particularly for their healing factor. It’s smooth and polished looking.

· What little bits and pieces we see between teammates is likable. They seem genuinely fond and protective of each other and it’s not in focus enough, but when it is, it’s nice.

· The soundtrack is pretty good.

Cons:

· Lack of explanation. Look, I get it. You don’t want to load your entire movie up with exposition, but it’s very simple and easy to pace it out. You don’t have to dump it all in one spot, or if you do, then you can simply be strategic about it. Most good movies also know how and where to integrate the exposition and story into sequences where the characters are performing an action so that you don’t notice the exposition as you have something visual to distract you and keep your attention while you’re watching the movie. The Old Guard doesn’t care about all your questions. It just thinks you should accept whatever it jams down your throat, no matter how goddamn unbelievable it is. They explain so little of what’s going on to Nile that after the halfway point, you might as well throw up your arms and forget everything you wanted to know about the group. They answer nothing at all, yet expect Nile to throw in her lot with them for however long she’ll be alive. What’s frustrating is that you have solid actors who could pull off the emotional angles of the hard decisions they chose to make as semi-immortal beings. It pisses me off that they don’t explain anything because the motivations are what make us all care about the characters. For instance, why become soldiers? No one said they had to fight for humanity, especially since they JUST heal wounds. They aren’t super fast or super strong. They could have very easily simply acquired wealth over the centuries and used that wealth to invest in things that help people. Why do they have to be fighters? Oh, right, because it’s cooler.

· Lazy writing. The number of plotholes in this thing, due in part to lack of explanation, is stunning. I mean, it’s just so goddamn fucking lazy. It doesn’t care about its own material. It just needs to get from Point A to Point B by taking the most shortcuts possible. I can’t handle how little the movie cares about its own content. I can go point by point for laziness. We can start with how no one wanted to ask Nile ANYTHING after she came back from the dead. They just got mad and scared, but they didn’t say anything when she was still on the military base. What the actual fuck is that? And they just left her alone afterward, expecting her to follow orders? Uh, that’s not how that works. Her friends would be asking her a billion questions and the medics would have asked her even more questions than that. She wouldn’t just be walking around of her own free will, especially not in this day and age where science is obsessed with figuring out the why of humanity. They’d have kept her locked up and started examining her the second she healed the neck wound. And that’s just right off the cuff. Don’t get me started on her five second “I don’t want to march in your parade” bullshit that is just so clearly the second act breakdown moment to have the hero come back and save them in the third act schtick. How is Nile somehow calling out Andy for killing those men in the church when she was LITERALLY a Marine, who is TRAINED TO KILL BAD PEOPLE???? That made NO sense. But again, this movie doesn’t care. It doesn’t care about fucking anything. Booker’s betrayal was painfully telegraphed and it was also another plothole, as Andy has been alive for thousands of years and would have felt that the weight of her gun would be off without its ammo. She also would’ve checked her rounds before going in hot. Then there’s even smaller details, like it being broad daylight when they’re brought into that lab and then they have a shootout but there’s NO ONE on the streets when they leave, but then they leave and THEN all the people magically reappear. Go fuck yourself. This movie is an insult to average intelligence. It just expects you to open up and swallow every bit of its bullshit over and over again, squandering its own potential. It’s so infuriating.

· Cliché placeholder dialogue. The dialogue is so unimaginative that I’m pretty sure a bot wrote it. You can tell beat for beat what’s going to happen fifteen minutes before it happens on-screen. The movie really does not think much of its audience. It doesn’t have a unique take on pretty much anything at all, which is a crying shame, really. There are plenty of juicy angles for character and action that they could have gone for and didn’t.

· Not enough time is spent getting to know anyone except for Andy, and even she is given drive-by characterization. Nile is a huge loss. As a black woman, I am always dying to see black women in science fiction/fantasy stories because there is a severe lack of representation. I was hoping Nile would get a bigger stake in everything, but she’s just a chess piece. The movie doesn’t delve into her life, her wants, her needs, basically anything at all. They mention her family repeatedly, but they don’t go into detail to make you care and understand what a loss it is to leave them behind. It’s especially shitty when her bonding with Booker could have been a great emotional moment. Their origins line up well. She could have had conversations with him, arguing that she should be allowed to tell her family or at least say goodbye, and Booker could share his own tragic backstory with her to explain why it’s better for them to remain solitary. Then his betrayal would have hit even harder. Then Nile would have felt personally betrayed. It’s so ridiculous that there is all this set up of pain and interesting backstories that the movie just flatout ignores. Especially Quynh. Quynh ’s story will haunt me for the rest of my days, personally, but even that was left as an untied thread. It’s clear from that pompous ending that there’s either already a sequel planned or in progress, but personally, this movie let me down so hard I hope it doesn’t happen. Not unless a much better filmmaker and writing team comes along. Quynh’s untied thread is a blatant show of how they still think they deserve your time after showing you how little they care about their own material. They introduced the idea and then abandoned it without fully exploring what it meant. It’s clear that her horrible fate is painful to them all, so not giving it the adequate time to be explored is just even more insulting to the audience.

· Lack of imagination. For instance, we have some Mark Zuckerberg-looking villain spouting the same tired dialogue from the idiot villain in the Venom movie. There also is no creativity in the action. We could have done some fun things utilizing their healing factors during fight sequences, but there’s not much to them. Just standard punches and kicks and headshots. Then there’s the boring dead wife betrayer guy who is inexplicably left alive after accusing said cartoony villain of murdering them. He has ALL the information to take to the CIA or FBI or just ANYONE IN GENERAL IN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES and they just bop him on the head and leave him there??? This movie doesn’t have a single original thought. It’s just regurgitating other clichés from much better movies.

I wanted this to be good. I wanted a break from 2020, but it’s clear that this year is unprecedented in how terrible it can get and how it doesn’t want us to enjoy anything. I wish I didn’t have to say these things about this movie, but I do. I honestly don’t think it’s worth a watch and that people should avoid it. It’ll inevitably do well because people don’t have anything better to do, but that’s still a shame. I’m so disappointed in all its wasted potential and I always will be.

Kyo out.

#The Old Guard #movie review #film review #spoilers #spoiler alert #Charlize Theron #new movie #new release #Netflix

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bthump · 6 years ago

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what do you think about the prophecy? "He is the one who shall bring an age of darkness upon the world" what does this mean? is griffith really going to turn out being the bad guy( I hope not) or guts is going to change this prophecy somehow? (because he should have been a sacrifice but he is alive?) also why does schierke call griffith false?

Ok so I re-read a bunch of scenes relating to the prophecy to try to come up with a decent answer, and honestly I think I might’ve been better off just going “idk probably depends on your pov” lol.

But I came up with some things to say and I’ll try to lay out my thoughts in a somewhat organized way here, so bear with me.

At the end of the Eclipse, Slan is all, now that the fifth angel is here the time of darkness descends. Then she defines exactly what the Age of Darkness will entail:

Soon Farnese shows up and recites the prophecy. This also happens right after the Eclipse, before the Black Swordsman arc will have taken place, two years before the next time we see these guys:

The fifth angel, the Hawk of Darkness, pretty obviously Femto. There’s no mystery here.

And honestly, the Age of Darkess is pretty explicitly discussed during the Conviction Arc. There’s really no mystery there either, at least not yet.

(I’m relatively certain that last line is essentially identical to “they sensed intuitively” from NGriff’s resurrection, and which I’ve also seen translated as “knew,” and so I wouldn’t put too much stock in the word “believed” there as purposefully leaving room for doubt, just fyi.)

Like, this is hammered in over and over. This prophetic dream of plague and natural disasters and war and famine, followed by Laban bemoaning the state of the world as these events come true and he encounters a landslide and a village full of plague, and we see tens of thousands of starving refugees outside the Tower of Conviction, and Kushan war elephans make an early appearance, etc.

Dark shadow, darkness that covers the world, thick darkness, utter darkness, etc etc. It’s not subtle, and it’s pretty clearly the intended follow-through to Slan’s words and Farnese’s prophecy. The Conviction Arc shows us the world that’s shitty enough to motivate humanity to will a saviour into being.

Also while Age of Darkness sounds a little too impressive to be boiled down to a measley 2 years that suck extra hard, I’d argue that this is more like the straw that breaks the camel’s back. Plague and famine etc just draw into sharp relief the divide between the have and the have-nots, which is largely what the Conviction Arc is about. It’s about nobility terrorizing peasants through the Inquisition, and neglecting peasants as Laban muses that the King is too obsessed with trying to find Griffith to allocate resources to relief efforts, and how much this fucks the world up.

The Conviction Arc shows us a pretty good example of a world where darkness, ie wickedness, hatred, hostility, the dead, and illusion (I’d argue Mozgus’ brand of religion, especially with how much fun the narrative has with painting it as super fucked up and hypocritical etc, like God’s love being a torture chamber, fits that bill) covers the light.

And it’s the kind of world that Femto requires in order to be incarnated physically.

So whether the “Hawk of Darkness,” directly caused this “Age of Darkness,” or whether it’s more like, yk, humanity/fate caused it itself because humanity’s negative emotions reaching a critical point allows him to incarnate and change shit up as per humanity’s desires (this is all there in the Lost Chapter), I’d stay it fits the prophecy. Femto = Hawk of Darkness = Age of Darkness = all the darkness of humanity emphasized.

But this gets muddy once NGriff does show up and we get the sequence where his apostle captains meet him etc:

Like okay, so Schierke’s maybe just reciting the old prophecy, since it’s the exact same wording Farnese gave us, so maybe this doesn’t change what we were lead to believe was the Age of Darkness? I mean at this point we’d be still in the midst of it, going by what was stated in the Conviction Arc. The future tense could just be because it’s an old prophecy.

But the future tense is there (and I double checked with a scanlation lol, and it was there in that translation too, so I’m assuming it’s part of the original Japanese wording), and it’s worth considering that this is still meant to be foreshadowing and the Age of Darkness is yet to come. In which case it would presumably be Fantasia.

So one possibility is that the Conviction Arc is either a giant Age of Darkness red herring or it has been retconned out of being the Age of Darkness, and we’re meant to understand Fantasia as the prophecized Age of Darkness brought down by the Hawk of Darkness.

I’m not fully on board with this possibility because a) the Conviction Arc was pretty damn straightforward and made perfect sense as the AoD and I hate retcons, and b) Fantasia is defined by light lol, not darkness. Both literally in that a bright white light envelops the Earth as it changes and it’s often described in terms of light, and figuratively in that I’d suggest every one of Slan’s examples of light up there (love, hope, etc) is illustrated in the nature of Fantasia. Humanity joining together despite differences including apostles, hope, astral planes merging (which I’d argue makes the world more real, not less), the living (NGriff’s funeral services make people more at peace with the idea of death and able to emotionally recover from the loss of loved ones much easier), and I’d also argue that this chill easy going accepting version of organized religion we’ve seen fits the ‘sacred’ bill a lot better than Mozgus’ horrific version.

Admittedly you can argue the opposite for some of these points, like maybe Griffith’s funeral services making people more cool about death is a bad thing and an example of death eclipsing life. Maybe the astral plane is supposed to be more illusion than reality. Maybe we’re eventually going to see hostility and hatred in the world outside Falconia. Hell, maybe the Sea God slog was meant to be indicative of the ~darkness~ (and to be fair I did not re-read much of the sequence to try to find examples of the narrative evoking darkness as a description, so it could be there. But it’s gonna take more than an anon ask to get me to re-read the entire Sea Sea god subplot lol.) But even from Guts’ perspective the joining of the astral plane also includes wholesome Elfhelm-y shit, so it’s still not as simple as evil sea gods and monsters now getting to fuck shit up, we also get helpful mermaids and stuff.

So yeah so far given what we know, the pre-Fantasia world fits the description of the Age of Darkness perfectly and really heavy-handedly lol, with all the references to darkness involved, and Fantasia is a lot less clear-cut.

So the way I’d interpret this prophecy is that Griffith is both the Hawk of Darkness and the Hawk of Light, which imo is likely to be in part an on the nose reference to Femto as his inner darkness vs NGriff who does, in fact, save the world in a way characterized by light lol.

And which one you see him as depends on your point of view. It’s not that Sonia is wrong and being tricked and Schierke is right and sees the truth. It’s that Sonia, living in the Age of Darkness, losing her parents and almost being enslaved etc, and being saved by Griffith, is in a position to see Griffith as a saviour, along with most of the rest of humanity, which was collectively crying out for a change that Griffith’s dream and goals in particular are suited to enacting.

Schierke, distanced from humanity, not actually in danger of being burnt at the stake or starving to death or whatever, and more knowledgeable about the astral plane, sees Griffith as the Femto-y Hawk of Darkness, king of the blind white sheep (his human followers, one presumes), master of the sinful black sheep (apostles one also presumes).

And the fact that this chapter doesn’t end on Schierke’s assessment but on Sonia looking on at Griffith in awe, followed by yk 150 odd chapters of NeoGriffith being portrayed as the protagonist of his half of the story rather than the antagonist of Guts’, followed by seeing those “sinful black sheep” and “blind white sheep” up close as interesting and likeable characters in their own right who go out of their way to help people (Sonia rescuing Kushan children, later apostles helping humanity, eg), make friends with some of Guts’ rpg group including Schierke, at one point join Guts and co in a fight against a greater enemy while being directly paralleled to Guts (Zodd), etc suggests that maybe that particularly harsh description is not fully accurate or fair.

If Fantasia does turn out to be the (an?) Age of Darkness after all, I imagine that would also be depicted as a more dual thing depending on your perspective. For those getting eaten by dragons, yk, maybe Age of Darkness is a fair description. For those living in peace, maybe it’s not.

Also as an aside, to address a counterpoint I just came up with lol, I don’t think the relative tininess of Falconia vs the rest of the world has much bearing on this. Miura’s Berserk is pretty solely focused on this one particular chunk of the world, and there’s virtually no acknowledgement that Midland and the surrounding area is actually just a tiny microcosm of the world. I mean, the Godhand and the Idea of Evil are presumably not solely the manifestations of fantasy Europeans’ negative subconsciousnesses, but it’s their suffering and their inequal society that allows Griffith to manifest physically. No acknowledgement as to whether like, the wildly different societies throughout the world, some of which are probably more equal and less hit by plague and famine, and therefore more content, should counterbalance all the suffering in Midland and area lol.

To me this feels like a pretty typical issue/trope with medieval fantasy that Miura’s just kind of casually playing into bc he doesn’t particularly care about subverting it or making a point about it so much as he cares about using this established structure to tell his own story. Even during the Fantasia montage, we only saw medieval pseudo-Europe. The lone acknowledgement that the world is technically bigger than a stretch of land between Midland and fantasy India (+ Elfhelm) was the page of the bright light spreading across the Earth as seen from space. And like, a secretive conversation between 2 of Guts’ current allies (Magnifico and Roderick) discussing the possibility of colonialism lol.

Again, maybe we’ll see acknowledgement in the future? Maybe eventually the narrative will come out and say that yeah, it’s absolutely absurd to think that a happy kingdom whose residents number in the thousands is a beacon of hope for 99.99% of the world that has no way to get to it lol and is presumably, in theory, stuck with their own dragons and stuff now. Maybe Berserk will ultimately turn out to be a giant thoughtful subversion of European-esque fantasy stories that treat Europe as the centre of the world. But based on what we’ve seen so far I don’t think there’s much reason to assume that lol.

Like even the Elfhelm warlocks don’t point that out when they had the perfect chance to, they just say that it sucks that Griffith made his kingdom the only peaceful place, forcing people to choose between Fantasia and Falconia. They don’t say that the vast majority of the world doesn’t even get access to that choice lol, and so I don’t think it’s meant to be relevant.

I also want to point out that Miura redacted the Lost Chapter because it gave too much away too soon, and has since spent some time hinting about things those of us who’ve already read it probably know.

Like Flora doesn’t know what that something lurking in the abyss is, but we do, and it’s humanity’s dark, painful subconscious itself.

Griffith is essentially the avatar of humanity, hence why he’s humanity’s “desired,” and is remaking the world in humanity’s collective image. And like humanity isn’t all good or all evil but contains both, so does NeoGriffith, imo. Even the “Idea of Evil” isn’t evil itself, it simply fulfills a role humanity desires - the role of villain, essentially. It’s the reason why bad things happen, it’s the scapegoat for humanity.

The Hawk of Darkness is symbolic of the darkness of humanity - and that’s pretty much the point of Femto, I mean just check Slan’s heavy-handed Eclipse commentary of “this is what it means to be evil. This is what it means to be human” - and the Hawk of Light is symbolic of at least the potential humanity has to overcome that darkness, imo.

I’ve always puzzled over pain vs salvation there, and I still do, but hey one possibility is that it’s a suggestion that humanity’s over the Idea of Evil being the scapegoat that brings them pain (fate making bad things happen basically, so humanity has something to blame), and wants it to bring them salvation instead - light. And through NGriff’s transformation of the world, humanity reaches that light themselves by uniting in peace to survive against their own demons. Even outside of Falconia, humans are only going to be able to live in a world full of fantasy monsters by uniting together lol.

And like until I’m conclusively proven wrong I’m going to maintain that

Fantasia being defined through joining humanity together is pretty solidly framed as a positive thing. Maybe humanity working together in peace is light and salvation, love over hate, hope over hostility, reality over illusion (the ultimately meaningless differences that divided people), etc.

SO I guess at the end of the day what I think is that Griffith is simultaneously the Hawk of Darkness and the Hawk of Light, that while Fantasia has some downsides to say the least lol we’re not necessarily supposed to take Elfhelm Warlock dudes’ assessment as the be all end all either. We’re getting 2 sides to this utopia story and we’re probably meant to judge for ourselves whether it seems worth it or not. Schierke would say no and prioritize the darkness of Griffith, ie the Hawk of Darkness, Sonia would say yes and prioritize the light, the Hawk of Light, and neither are wrong. But idk, maybe both might be able to grow from seeing the other’s point of view and incorporating it into their own understanding of the world.

I’m also thinking this dark vs light stuff is going to come into play in a big way when Guts and Griffith confront each other, and I imagine that their relationship is actually going to get the final say in all this. Hate or love, hostility or hope, illusion or reality, the dead or the living, wickedness or sacredness. Does this not to a tee describe them post Eclipse vs pre Eclipse?

Maybe if the Age of Darkness is still to come afterwards, they’ll end up plunging the world back to its original status quo when they conflict and kill each other or whatever, and take Falconia/the world tree/whatever down with them. Maybe NGriff’s unfrozen heart will come into play as the final piece of the thematic puzzle if the Hawk of Light represents the light of humanity, which ofc includes love. Maybe all it will take to conclude the themes in a satisfying way is a moment of understanding of that “true light” between them, discovered in darkness, while they fight.

Like you’ll pry my reading of Berserk’s themes as consistently and thoroughly existing to symbolize Griffith and Guts’ relationship out of my cold dead hands lol.

Fuck sorry this got so long and meandering. What did I say about trying to keep my thoughts organized lol?

Anyway tl;dr I don’t know shit and I don’t think the world of Berserk actually makes much sense, but let me throw out some theories and interpretations of possible contradictions and weird ass world building lol. And I mean, Miura is pretty consistent in interviews about saying Berserk isn’t about plain old good vs evil, so it wouldn’t surprise me at all to get something more complex and interesting than “Griffith is the evil Hawk of Darkness tricking humanity into seeing him as the Hawk of Light, and Guts is going to save the world from him.”

OH SHIT AND I ALMOST FORGOT: I have no idea where Schierke calls Griffith “false,” so you’ll have to point that part out to me, unless it’s just a difference in translations or something. Sorry I can’t address that part, hopefully you’ll at least scroll to the end and see this even if it’s super tl;dr lol.

#Anonymous #ask #a #berserk meta #b #lost chapter spoilers #theme: fate #character: neogriffith #theme: true light #theme: morality #berserk is a lot of things but it's not overly simplistic i'll give it that #theme: spirit world

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jungblue · 6 years ago

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people need to realize that as writers we don’t get to control what members we get inspiration for, and even if we did, we have the right to write about whoever we want

exactly! bc i know in my responses i’m just explaining how they’re factually incorrect on a lot of things. but honestly even if someone only wants to write for one or two members... it doesn’t matter? it’s their free time? it’s their life? and they’re literally putting these things out for FREE? like it’s ridiculous, but there will always be people like that unfortunately. number of fics does not equal love for the members

Anonymous said: ffs I get so annoyed about these ”you only support the maknae line” like how???? that is so annoying and just because you get inspiration to write about some member doesnt mean you don’t support the rest. so childish.

it’s annoying bc it’s not even factually correct. literally the last full length scenario that i wrote for tae was almost two years ago. two of the last three one-shots that i’ve written were for hyung line?? they just want to be mad honestly. it doesn’t matter if the bullshit they’re spewing is correct or not

Anonymous said: last time i checked biasing doesn’t equal to how many things you’ve written for them? i’m a hoseok stan and i love the boy to death but i find it a lot easier to write for jungkook or yoongi it just be like that sometimes 🤷🏻‍♀️ some of y’all rlly are too much, man jfc

yeah like i have certain characterizations for each member. i’ve been very into writing like the fun party boys lately. that’s why i have a lot of planned fics for hoseok and tae, bc i specifically enjoy writing them that way. yoonkook for some reason i can put them in any role, so that’s why i write for them the most

Anonymous said: I’ve stanned bts for three years now, and I’ve been a kpop fan since 2007, and I haven’t been ever invested in a group as much as I am with bts. I write a lot of stories for Jungkook, since I share a similar personality with him and we have similar interests, but just because I don’t write the other members as much, doesn’t mean that I don’t love them like I do with Jungkook. Don’t bother with those bored anons that just look for trouble and think they can hide behind anonymity. Love ya! xx

yeah i’ve made several posts about the fact that i like writing for yoongi and jungkook the most bc i find myself to be the most similar to them. but idk why i even try to explain it, bc people who send rude messages like those literally don’t care. but it’s alright. i appreciate all of the support!

Anonymous said: I get why theres more jk fic tbh they are not my biases but yoongi and jk are my fave to read somehow? I get that it might be easier for u to write for him. I read a lot of good quality writers on tumblr and they all have fave member/s to write about. Theres nothing wrong about it.

yeah every writer is different! we all have people that provide for a lot of inspiration, and idk why people get so entitled over who we decide to spend our free time writing for

Anonymous said: to shitty anons: comeon leave her tf alone. SHE chooses who she wants to write for. she does this for free and this is how you appreciate her? and also, inspiration to write for a certain member doesnt mean she likes one more than the other. writing is her choice; plot, characters, MEMBER etc. sry i felt like people were attacking you for no reason at all, love your writing btw

Anonymous said: All these anons getting mad about who you write about more is pathetic !! It’s not hard to search up fics of other members if that’s what they want to see ? You keep doing you lovely 💞 your writing is amazing and I’d still read if the main character was a frog

Anonymous said: The haters man.. lmao go write ur own fanfics and see if it’s easy to write great fics for every single member. I write fics, and I find it easier to write For Jungkook, Jimin and Namjoon. Doesn’t mean I don’t stan ot7 But stay pressed

Anonymous said: Don't listen to all these haters author-nim! You can write about whoever the hell you want! No matter what i will always read and support what you write because that's just how amazing you are as an author! People just dont understand how hard it must be for you guys to be able to write all this awesome stuff. Anyways Much love author-nim!!❤❤

Anonymous said: I am so mad at why people have the need to express their discomfort at your choice of member to write for but they can literally search stories for whoever they want instead of writing hateful messages to you. You are an amazing writer but who you write for? That’s your decision and the fact that haters have the nerve to write to you to complain it’s stupid. Don’t let this messages get to you you have so many followers that love you and your beautiful work so much!!

thank you guys so much! i really do appreciate all of the kindness and support. it means a lot to me. love you all♡♡♡

#blue blabs

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cookinguptales · 6 years ago

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I saw two films yesterday at the film festival! One I loved and one was... well, imo, a lot of wasted potential.

I went to go see Koreeda’s new film first, Shoplifters. I’ve always loved his films (though admittedly I just don’t have the heart to watch Nobody Knows) and I’ve always gone to see them during the festival. Usually they are… not packed. This time, though, I was shocked to show up and find a rush line around the block?? I didn’t even realize that it’d won the Palm d’Or. Really, really glad I preordered my ticket, especially bc I loved the film.

Later that evening, I went to go see Widows, which was Steve McQueen’s new film. It was fine? I’ll admit I was just expecting something other than what I got and I didn’t find what I got particularly engrossing. That was likely more an issue of taste than quality, though. Well. Some of it was probably quality.

(Note: I mentioned graphic depictions of sex work under the content warnings not because I want to be anti-sex work but like. I can definitely see how depictions of it could be triggering.)

Some more thoughts:

As I was walking out of Shoplifters, I heard a lady complaining about how slow the film had been and how long it had taken to establish what the relationships between the characters were and the mean little voice inside me was like You don’t deserve a Koreeda film!!

If you’ve seen many of his films, the movie is pretty much what you’d expect. It’s a very quiet film about family and how messy it can be. Apparently, this particular film was pretty controversial in Japan amongst their more nationalist groups (and Abe, which… as I said, among their more nationalist groups) because of its depiction of Japan’s underbelly and its criticisms of some of Japan’s social issues. Personally, I loved it.

It’s a film about this motley crew of thieves and con men that make up a messed up little family. The film begins with them “adopting” a new little girl. “Adopting” is a euphemistic word. It’s more like they realized a little girl was being terribly abused by her family and they kidnapped her. That’s sort of the crux of the film, you know? These are not moral people. They do awful things. They teach small children to shoplift instead of letting them go to school — but where did they find those kids to start with? There’s an uneasy question of morality in this film at all times, especially when hints start to arise that shoplifting might be the least of some of these folks’ crimes.

Koreeda is honestly one of my favorite directors ever when it comes to depicting difficult families. His characterization is so gradual and realistic that you almost forget that these are not real people. These characters aren’t related by blood, but they take care of each other. They kidnapped a child, but the kid’s real parents were horrifically abusive. So at a certain point, where do they stop playacting at family and where do they start becoming real family? And once they become a found family, what secrets are dark enough to make the members realize that this is perhaps not the found family they wish to be a part of? It is essentially a film that questions the bonds and boundaries of family, both biological and adoptive, and it’s beautifully done.

Koreeda’s always been a director who asks difficult questions about adoption vs. biological kin, and this film is probably most pointed in that regard. His films are littered with poor parents and children just trying to make the best of things, to the point where it’s pretty clear that he’s resentful towards Japan’s attitudes towards family. The wrenching ending of this film makes that especially clear. As always in his films, there are no neat answers to these difficult questions.

The film is, as expected, beautifully shot and acted. It’ll also make your heart absolutely ache. It’s not as viscerally upsetting as Nobody Knows, but damn if it isn’t close. Definitely sadder than Like Father Like Son, one of my favorites of his, and that movie is pretty upsetting. The ache feels worth it, though. It’s just this grimy and lovely story all at once and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

(CW: brutal (if not graphic) child abuse, child injury, death (adult), graphic depictions of sex work. Definitely NSFW in spots, so I guess maybe don’t watch it with your parents.)

And then later I went to go see Widows. It wasn’t entirely the film I was expecting, and honestly, I don’t know that I liked what it was. The film was really billed as a feminist heist movie and uh. I guess a heist happened and there were some vague gestures towards Strong Female Protagonists. It was still a surprisingly dude-centric movie, though, with a depressingly predictable plot. It’s certainly not a fun movie, I’ll tell you that. It’s pretty brutal in spots and most of the characters range from boring to unlikable. Part of the problem is that the film vacillated wildly between an organized crime film to a heist film to a political film to a film about a romance to a generic action film to a film that occasionally flirted with actually important issues. But because it hopped around so much, I didn’t really feel satisfied with any one part.

It was basically a story about these women who’d been married to Crime Folks and when a Crime that the Crime Folks went bad, they all became widows. One particular widow (Viola Davis) got saddled with her Supreme Crime Husband’s shit, so she had to pull off his last heist with the other widows so they’d be out of debt to the people he’d fucked over. The other widows actually had very little to do with this bc they only had Minor Crime Husbands, but she dragged them into it anyway because I guess that’s just the kind of person she was. A lot of the film was pretty much Viola Davis bullying the other women into doing things and then feeling sorry for herself because she married a crime guy and that turned out to be a bad thing. There were also side plots about political machinations I didn’t care about and some organized crime which seemed to basically amount to David Kaluuya graphically torturing and murdering people to, idk, make the film brutal? Those scenes often felt fairly pointless and took up way too much time. He’s bad, I get it, what’s your point?

All the twists were pretty obvious. There was a scene about police brutality that I guess they could have bothered to do something interesting with, but it never went anywhere. (Nor did any of the political questions about social issues.) Honestly, the whole subplot about the dead son felt extraneous. I could sort of see what they were maybe aiming for? That she felt like he didn’t want their family because he was white and they weren’t and he didn’t want to deal with their lived reality and that made all the betrayals worse? But it never really came together, which was a pity. Like many aspects of the movie, it could have been something really interesting if they’d just given it some real thought and focus. Honestly, almost any of the plot lines could have been really good if they’d had their own movie. But uh. They didn’t. So it was kind of a mess. Maybe that’s what annoys me most. There was potential there but it went unrealized. So tons of things just felt extraneous and/or absolutely useless.

To be fair, the acting was obviously superb. It was pretty much carried by Viola Davis. Just wish the writing had been there. Like Viola Davis could act as hard as she wanted, that didn’t make her character particularly interesting or sympathetic. Every time she’d cry about her horrible dead husband and the predicament she was in, I was just like. Cool I mean I guess this is what happens when you marry a guy you know is a shit. None of the betrayals felt particularly shocking considering, like, it was established from scene one that he was a shitty guy. She just felt naive to the point of stupidity sometimes. Or maybe just self-involvement. And like. It’s hard to feel bad for a person who didn’t care if her husband hurt people as long as none of it affected her. Like I’m sorry that you’re reaping what you sowed, I guess? I’m not rooting for you, lady, nor do I even find you interesting as an antihero. (None of them were interesting. None of them. Most of them were stereotypes or otherwise shallowly-written characters.) Like I legit did not care who won the election or who got the money by the end of it.

On the upside, tho, there was a lot of Cynthia Erivo in the last third of the movie and boy am I here for her!! The character had barely anything as far as real characterization but I mean. Cynthia Erivo. By the end of the movie I was just kind of zoned out and watching Erivo do stuff. So that part was fun, at least. Everything else… not so much.

(CW: some fairly gory violence, graphic depiction of sex work (that was somewhat coerced), abusive parent-child relationships, mobility devices being taken from a disabled person in a fairly traumatic fashion, torture, death, racial slurs, extremely graphic police brutality, racism, sexism, animal abuse, implied child endangerment, graphically NSFW, etc.)

#movies #film festival films

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ling-buyi · 7 years ago

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What do you think about the people who don’t really like Dr. Ye or think that he is “too perfect” to have an emotional bond with him? I’ve been reading about how they think he has no real character development compared to Minho. I just wanted to ask what you think about the whole Dr. Ye vs Minho line. Or rather if you think Dr. Ye is endgame?

so uhhhh this got exorbitantly long feel free to skim lmao. i didn’t even realize how much pent up anger i had yikes

I haven’t stumbled on anyone saying that Jae Wook is too perfect yeeet but I think it’s ridiculous. Complex characters don’t need have to have dramatic traits and super major flaws or anything. It sounds more to me like an expectation that an audience member may have rather than an actual writing/characterization thing. Anyways, I actually find him very realistic because there are many people that are closed off and just because they seem a certain way, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t going through some stuff on the inside. To assume that reflects more of an individual’s preconceived notions.

A person’s attachment to a character is at the end of the day, subjective. But like with any kind of media consumption, that doesn’t mean that a person shouldn’t analyze things critically. Jae Wook isn’t your typical “cold” kind of dude. He’s been betrayed by someone he probably considered his life partner and I’m honestly surprised that more people aren’t resonating with that. To trust someone is so fundamentally human and to have that aspect be violated is awful. We know that he has the capacity to care because he already has, with his ex and with the way that he treats his patients, but it’s subtle.

People would rather gossip than to actually get to know him and that’s been something that the show has played with throughout. The only one that shows any kind of genuine nature is Bo Young and because of this he gravitates towards her, coming to rely and trust her without even realizing it. I don’t blame him for being anti-social after been so gossiped about that his last workplace become a hostile one. I also think that there’s a fascinating duality to his character in the way that yes, he’s in control of his emotions and but when you actually strip that control away, you will find that he’s actually out-of-tune with his emotions and says just that to Bo Young who is the exact opposite.

He’s jealous of the way that she could easily cry and turns “cry-baby Bo Young” what has been used as an insult throughout her life, into a compliment. For the longest time as a pretty angry child, I always bottled up my feelings and was furious at myself every time I cried. I’ve grown to accept that about myself nowadays and have come to like that about myself. All it means is that I have the ability to empathize with others in a way that a lot of others in the world don’t care enough to. I don’t mean to get personal here but that sentiment really meant a lot to me just as much as it probably did to Bo Young. Seeing someone that also recognizes one of the very things that make her such a wonderful character feels amazing.

Back to my point, this is obviously a flaw that he recognizes in himself and I don’t see why that wouldn’t be valid. More on this can be seen in this post and have also been addressed by @justonehappyvictory and @theflowergirl who both have also written about this very issue. I linked it there just in case you or anyone is still curious and/or haven’t seen it yet. They also go into this whole debacle of Min Ho vs. Jae Wook thing going on too but since I’m here, I’ll go ahead and give my two cents as well.

For me, the two of them aren’t comparable AT ALL. I’ll throw out there that I despise Min Ho and no one can convince me otherwise. I don’t owe him anything and Bo Young sure as hell doesn’t either. I don’t know where this ~discourse is coming from but I think most of us need to do some reevaluation here—or not, I don’t really care either way.

On to what you asked about what people have been saying about their Min Ho’s “development” to Jae Wook’s. Character development is defined as “the change in characterization of a dynamic character, who changes over the course of a narrative” (this definition is from Wikipedia but that’s pretty much right so we’ll go with it). Okay so what do we know about Min Ho? Well, that he went to college with Bo Young and has been consistently mean to her ever since, UNTIL he starts to like her WHEN SHE ALREADY LIKES SOMEONE ELSE. This is important folks because 1) it’s bad timing and 2) it’s shitty.

Sure he becomes nice to her, okay cool, but that doesn’t negate the constant berating that Bo Young has had to endure by almost everyone because they’re all also shitty. And yeah he’s “changed” but would he have? I don’t know, it’s all conjecture and “what ifs” but it doesn’t change the fact that his “development” is external rather than internal. What I mean by this is that he becomes nice only when it suited him because he now has a personal interest in Bo Young.

Jae Wook on the other hand has always been kind (albeit still reserved) to her BEFORE he even realized that he liked her back. His development then stems internally as a true character evolution as he begins to open up. He isn’t opening up to please Bo Young, it is a result of his time around her. There is no ulterior motive. He is simply evolving, as characters and people do in real life. Those that cry out that he isn’t as complex as Min Ho are simply disregarding what’s in front of them and are putting their own preferences on display.

Obviously this isn’t a blanket statement because having a preference isn’t wrong of course. But it is still important to engage with the material meaningfully and critically. If you’re here to just have fun, then that’s cool too. Just don’t impose your own biases onto others and pass it off as something that it isn’t. Another thing that’s been bothering me that @akria23 also has addressed in the post that I linked earlier is this idea of entitlement and the “deserving” game when it comes to the female lead. To say that one guy “deserves” Bo Young is frankly misogynistic as it objectifies the woman as something to be coveted and won. It also disregards her agency in the matter as an adult woman capable of making decisions for herself.

I have also seen floating around that neither of them “deserve” her. This is not progressive. I get that a lot of us are chugging the “loving Bo Young” juice and want only the best for her but this isn’t the way to do it. The fact of the matter is, Bo Young CHOSE Jae Wook and has continued doing so. Until Jae Wook actually does something crappy then I’ll also be on that train. But as of what’s been shown to us, he isn’t perfect and now that they’re together they are trying to make things work.

All he’s done is dote and care for Bo Young. What’s so wrong about that? Denying that, also denies a component to her character. It’s really not about teams, because at the end of the day, it isn’t about the men. She had a crush on a genuinely sincere man who compliments, and respects her and who also loves her poetry! And now likes her back! Why should that be taken away from her? Some women don’t need a man, but some do want a man and that’s chill too!

Lastly to address the last part of your ask, at this point she’s literally only liked Jae Wook and honestly there’s no doubt in my mind that they’re end game. But of course, nothing’s done until it’s done but my I’ve already placed my bets and I am not backing out anytime soon #YeLine 5eva

#me getting asks?#it's less likely than you think!#thank you for giving me the opportunity to get this off my chest anon!#asks #Anonymous

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eludum-a · 7 years ago

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(scheduled to post this around noon on thursday my time.)

as we head into this (american) thanksgiving, a lot of us are gonna be dealing with some Grade A Bullshit: retail work, bigoted relatives, etc. i wasn’t actually gonna do this originally, but then i realized what holiday was coming up right around the time of my blogiversary and i was like... welp. alright. guess we’re doing this then. things lined up too perfectly NOT to, and things can be kinda shitty for people around this time of year, so let’s put a little positivity back into the community! or something like that.

(yes i realize some of the people here are not american. no reason to deny my love tho.)

anyway, onto the callouts!

@ultimatetalentless have i talked about how much i love sin’s hinut lately? his and nanami’s friendship/rivalry (and his and chibot’s unresolved romantic tension) is so much fun to write and it’s so great having an Angst Partner to shoot terrible ideas at. on top of that i love talking to sin out of character and sharing some of the things we come across that remind each other of our muses.

@mideoku julie followed me and the following day, snakes started manifesting physically in my house. i get no peace from them. they follow me home every day and beat me down with a two by four while yelling down with cis. but if we’re being real here julie’s shitposting lights up my dashboard every day for better or worse and theyre actually a really cool person. we’ll fight in pokemon when u catch up to me binch

@steinways sarah’s one of my oldest mutuals from all the way back when she just had her mahiru and i?? love sarah?? she’s such a sweetheart and all of her characterizations are so absolutely stellar. 10/10 would sarah again and also she made my theme so. yknow. amazing all around

@ongakuvoices rio’s a special brilliant soul w so much love for their muses and it shows in everything they write... i adore both their ibuki and their nagisa to pieces!! i know theyre gonna go places in life and ill be over here cheering them on from the sidelines, probably holding up some signs with memes on them

@jrco-disd actually i hate seth. nevermind. i’m not doing this

@nullverum boss was like one of the first ndrv3 blogs i interacted with long before the game had its official english release. i remember i made a post a while before saying that i thought ouma/nami would be a strange but cute brotp and hell! i was absolutely right in every way. its even funnier upon finding out ou/ma kind of plays the na/nami role just as much as the ko/maeda role in actuality (he’s gotta do both since a CERTAIN SOMEONE gets fridged at the beginning), so they’re surprisingly good (bad, actually) for each other.

@ayatsurii sparkle’s peko is great ok? best sword girlfriend, would shower her in love and affection and cute things. nanami apparently has a thing for taller, stoic individuals with red eyes who could kick her ass one-handed. (don’t we all tho??) ahem. anyway. would recommend sparkle’s pekpek.

@kibouzuru i know we were mutuals for a while before i got involved with truth syndicate stuff? i feel silly not having interacted with u before because i rly should have. im really glad i got a chance to bc u and ur egg are cool (well, naegi’s a total dork) and now i can have nanami tease leggy and eggy about their relationship. she’s gotta get back at hinata for all those years of short jokes somehow, too bad naegi’s just collateral

@hikaup i remember i was on the lookout for pokemon blogs a while back and i stumbled across ur blog and was like... what the heck, this hikari seems way too cool... and wow!! i was totally right!! i love ur portrayal so much it’s such good shit and chiaki and hikari already have such a good dynamic. i hope chiaki gets to do Spooky Shit with hikari someday (and maybe even hold hands???? lets not get ahead of ourselves here) btw i get whiplash from how often u put out amazing themes

@kibcu

and yes, im gonna be at your basketball game tomorrow. stop telling me about it

@cantalazarus u know how i feel about u. ur smart and funny and talented and ur take on ur muses is So Good and

@malchancevilain watchy is another one of my oldest mutuals and its always great to see their togami on my dash! we’ve been in a few group verses together now and i love seeing how he handles different situations (always with a great degree of salt) and just hanging out ooc! also: greg grimaldis wherever you are you better believe im getting those fifteen dollars back *mic drop*

@seineijashu oh.

hey nerd. we havent rly spoken much in a while but im still out here 100% in ur corner and i love everything u do. i know i dont know like anything about Boruto’s Dad like i said (im more a hunter x hunter guy myself,,,) but even if roleplaying opportunities are scarce im still totally down to talk like any time. now if only our time zones would line up. ps theres a secret message hidden here did you see it

@hopefromtheordinary it’s so great to see you back in the dr rpc! i loved your komaeda and your kamukura way back when. i love the twin shenanigans you and sin get up to (serious or crack) and i really can’t wait to get more chibot/kamukura stuff going! im excited i hope ur excited too

@gamblingqueen ANOTHER person i’m so glad to see back over here!! u were one of the first people to rly plot with me to any extent ooc and i am very excited to get right back into it! chiaki and celes are such an odd pair, but it’s wonderful to see them interact after they’ve both been brought so low. im over here rubbing my hands together at the speed of light in anticipation

@mxssias if naegi tries to get nanami to watch sword art online with him one more time shes gonna kill him and hide the body in the reserve course grounds. ahem. anyway. alex you’re such a little shit but you’re funny and i love your egg boy even if he’s constantly getting himself into trouble and sacrificing himself like he doesnt have anything better to do. get that boy a better hobby? thanks

and sorry if i forgot anybody! doing these is kind of exhausting for me and i might have gotten a little lazy, but i tried to hit most of the people i’ve been in contact with ooc at least a bit (who have been active within the past week or so).

...

.........................

@jrco-disd ok fine fuck you. seth was one of the first people in the fandom to reach out to me and even if he’s often belligerent at me for no good reason (ok, fine, maybe i deserve it) i still really appreciate his friendship and am glad that we can exchange shitty sonic memes with each other. the day we get that sonic forces monster factory is the day we both can die happy, probably after strangling each other

#jnfbhjng i hate how in some of these i talk abt them like theyre not the ones reading this #and in others i address them directly #but im not rewriting this now!! take it or leave it!!#[welcome to my christian minecraft server // ooc]#follow forever

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50cyg · 7 years ago

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[1/2]Hi you have a great blog! Just wanted to drop a note cuz folks are so mad about Meiko but to add her as a character is a choice I respect--having a new character be a catalyst for a new plot is a way of keeping fans pleased with representations of their faves, i.e. having a new character shake things up means that writers can keep the baseline of characterizations that fans love for the original digidestined.(Personally I think tri!Yamato is very in-character but this also seems unpopular)

Thank you! I’m glad you like it :)

First of all, how people are responding to Meiko, from both sides, is frustrating to me.

Many Anti-Meiko fans don’t actually spend the time to properly convey what they dislike about her and just say she’s a shitty character and they didn’t come to see a new characters steal screen time. While I semi-agree with these statements, they ultimately have no purpose beyond releasing frustration. Which I guess is why people make them.

On the flip side you have Pro-Meiko fans who say that the only reason people dislike Meiko is because she’s new. They also defend every action the character has taken, or not taken.

Then these two opposing groups do nothing but fuel each other and what we get is a war instead of actual discussion and thoughtful criticism of the character and the story surrounding her. Basically, I just don’t like extremes of any kind.

I don’t hate Meiko, I like aspects of her and also find myself relating to her sometimes. But I don’t like the way she is handled and think her inclusion is unnecessary.

Now, in response to your statement, I’d like to start by saying that you are completely entitled to your opinion and I think there are people who would agree with you. However, I do not.

(Warning, mild Anti-Meiko ahead)

Even with Meiko’s inclusion, Tri is shaking up the characters. Taichi and Yamato in some ways have switched their stances regarding how to handle situations. Taichi’s character and his conflicts are at the forefront of the series and we can see the ways in which he has stayed the same and the ways in which he has changed. He is definitely not the exact same as he was when he was 11. Many people in the fandom who see Taichi as a more one dimensional character were really thrown off by how much Tri is highlighting Taichi’s more hesitant side, even though we saw it a number of times in Adventure, and even in 02.

We can see that Tri/Yamato has been pretty heavily influenced by Adventure Taichi. He has gone from the kid who doesn’t want to climb up a mountain in case of danger to the guy that knows if they don’t fight Alphamon more people will get hurt. He has become the one who moves forward first. This is not in line with his established character in Adventure but rather a result of Taichi’s influence on him over the years. Vice versa Taichi has been influenced by Yamato, which we saw happen throughout adventure and which was highlighted when we see Taichi think “what would Yamato do?” in response to someone asking him if they should go to Pinocchiomon’s house. Now this does not mean that either is acting OOC. When I said once that Yamato is out of character I was talking about the fact that he is out of character from his established 02 self. 02 Yamato is far far more laid back, while as Tri Yamato is very similar to Adventure Yamato. Both Tri/Taichi and Tri/Yamato feel like older versions of their Adventure selves, who have grown and been influenced by each other over the years.

So yeah, Tri is not afraid of making alterations to characters or dynamics or putting certain aspects of a character more to the forefront.

They also are not afraid of giving pre-existing characters personality transplants. There is really only one scene in the Adventure universe, prior to Tri, where we see Takeru troll anybody. This scene is when he trolls Pinocchimon. Tri then took that minor minor glipse into Takeru’s troll side and decided to multiply it by a thousand, effectively making him the troll king of the Adventure universe (though I’d argue Wizardmon is a bigger troll but that’s a post for another day :P). I’ve seen virtually zero complaints made about this change in his personality. In fact, virtually everyone loves it. It makes Takeru a far more compelling character. Him being a troll is now one of his defining characteristics, when it was previously a tiny tiny aspect that was created and used to execute one scene.

Furthermore, despite Meiko’s inclusion they still have pre-established characters in conflict with one another. Taichi and Yamato are in conflict. Sora gets angry with Taichi and Yamato. Yamato was angry with Jyou. Mimi and Koushiro were in conflict. Jyou stands up against Taichi in Kyosei. Koushiro stands up to Yamato in Kyosei. Hikari has literally just brought on the apocalypse. There is in fighting happening throughout the entire series.

Finally, they do not have to mischaracterize them for Drama. Many people were very engaged by the plot line of Patamon getting infected and no one had to be mischaracterized for the drama of those scenes to be effective. Hikari was not mischaracterized for the drama of her giving into the darkness to be executed well. As far as I’ve seen, fans have not had an issue with having bad things happen to either of these characters. In fact, fans like me love seeing our faves suffer. Think of how much more effective it would have been to have Jesmon trying to kill a pre-established character that we love. How would fans have reacted if Jesmon was trying to kill Patamon? I guarantee it would have brought on more emotions than him trying to kill Meicoomon.

So yeah, I don’t agree. I hold to my belief that Meiko’s inclusion was not necessary. I think fans would have been happier had she not been included and instead we’d gotten tragic things happening to the pre-existing characters. This is all hypothetical though, and anyone who reads this post is free to comment whether they agree or disagree.

#anti-meiko #digimon adventure tri #50cyg answers #anon

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