#like i have passive parallel play mutuals

[sneak-a-cat]

following someone on tumblr all happy and silly because “huh i like this blog they are funny” or “woahh art” or “ha silly guy” or “fandom hype!!” has the hidden ability of: that person may just follow you back. unprompted. making you mutuals. without warning. most terrifying thing you can do to someone

[golvio]

I think The Empty Cup was around when I started to realize that not doing exactly what each Princess wanted wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. While your mutually fatal duel with Razor in The Arms Race was a satisfying conclusion, The Empty Cup left a much stronger impression on me. First, for that visual of you gently holding the Razor’s still-beating heart in the palm of your hand, the only vulnerable and nonviolent part of her. You make no move to crush it in reprisal for all the violence she visited upon your body. You merely let it rest there, still beating, until The Shifting Mound comes to reclaim it, cradling it in an equally tender but even more visually arresting gesture when you speak to her afterwards.

But, also, there is something strangely beautiful in you sticking to your guns in your (possibly unwitting) commitment to pacifism so hard that reality itself bends around you. The Razor’s violence loses its power and smashes ineffectively against your refusal to participate, and her refusal to give up eventually strips her into a form that can no longer hurt you, that you can coexist peacefully in.

The rest of my routes of that run took a certain tone in examining agency: Damsel where you see what giving up yourself to make the other person happy can do to you from the other side, Den where setting an ultimatum does not necessarily doom the relationship to an endless cycle of conflict or a forsaking of humanity, and finally ending upon The Apotheosis where, goddamn it, enough was enough, and rather than being furious at my resistance like she was as The Tower, the goddess was delighted.

I think there’s a parallel to be made between The Empty Cup and if you choose to resist Shifty at the end, in order to reach her heart and truly speak to her, and to open her up to the possibility of a future where you aren’t constantly in conflict despite having been born to be each other’s diametric opposite.

It’s not always a good thing to lose yourself in a relationship and become totally enmeshed, bound to the roles you’ve come to play for each other as a matter of routine and convenience. I felt uncomfortable with The Damsel because I understood what sort of guilt and shame could cause someone to make themselves want to be so small and unobtrusive, but did it really feel any better to the Princess when I did the same thing at other points? Relationships involve compromise and sacrifice, yes, but they’re not one-person affairs by definition. You have to be an active participant instead of a passive extension of your partner. What you want matters, too, particularly if what you want does not involve being stabbed, or eaten, or compelled to allow a terrifying goddess who just exploded out of the earth to end your existence. Sometimes you have to put your foot down and say “no” if you want to reach a resolution that can make both of you happy.

[horse-girl-anthy]

Prince/Princess: The Gendered Landscape of Revolutionary Girl Utena

below the cut, I discuss how the prince/princess structure relates to gender, how the dichotomy plays out in the relationships between Utena, Anthy, and Akio, and how the film takes the themes of the show to the next level.

Prince/Princess as Metaphor for Gender

prince and princess are incredibly important categories in the world of RGU, and yet, they are difficult to pin down, making them a good parallel for gender itself. "prince," a simple term at first glance, takes on different meanings throughout the story. to list some of the most important ones that come to mind, prince can mean the desirable male, wielder of power, patriarch, actor, savior, and martyr. equally, princess can have many different meanings or expressions. it has often been remarked that prince and princess require each other, so for each definition of prince, there is a matching definition of princess: the desirable female, possession, spectator, subordinate, valued, saved, protected.

none of these meanings are individually bad. the dynamic of oppressor/oppressed is certainly not good, but it is still helpful to have language to describe it. however, therein lies the true problem of the prince/princess structure: it is totalizing, collapsing contradictory meanings into each other.

like gender in the real world, then, prince/princess are important, all-encompassing categories which shape social systems, and yet, it is almost impossible to make an ontologically true statement about them; they vary by situation. making a claim about their meaning creates a false reality or dissonance.

for instance, both the "male" and the "prince" are defined as active, while the "female" and the "princess" are defined as passive. however, these definitions do not often hold up in reality. what is important is that the definitions are nonetheless accepted within society. in the real world, a man may be classified as feminine for perceived passivity and then punished for stepping outside his social role. in the system of RGU, Dios failed to be a perfect, selfless savior. his punishment was rerouted to Anthy, a girl who made a choice to save someone she loved. the system, unable to handle an active princess, created a third category of "witch." although the social roles of prince and princess were unfit to capture the lived experience of Dios and Anthy, this contradiction was resolved by scapegoating an individual.

"You Could Never Be My Prince, Because You're My Brother"

Dios never answers Utena's question in the above exchange, yet to the audience, the answer is obvious, especially after the Shadow Girl play from earlier in the episode: Dios is Anthy's brother.

as with many sibling relationships in RGU, Anthy and Akio's sexual development created a rift between them. there may have been a time when their mutual care made Dios feel like a prince and Anthy feel like a princess; children don't need to consider the implications of prince/princess to the same extent that adults do. once they grow up, they find that another facet of prince/princess is sexuality, specifically heterosexuality.

infamously, Anthy tells Utena in the final episode of the show that she could never have been her prince, because she's a girl. was a similar cruel reality imparted to Dios? although Anthy does not need a fairy tale prince, a romantic partner, in order to be saved, "male lover" is nonetheless an inextricable part of the prince.

according to Dios, Anthy needs a prince to be freed from eternal torment, and yet "prince" is an impossibility. not only would a person attempting to be a prince be held to inhuman standards, but they would also face the contradictions in meaning inherent to the category. in a twisted way, perhaps the incest between Akio and Anthy is born from this very fact. Akio, in trying to be her prince, becomes her entire world, her brother and her lover, her patriarch and her champion.

however, it is obvious that he is not only doomed for failure but is also doing her harm. Akio is not someone capable of pushing against the system, defining himself and his relationships. his weakness became his princehood.

The Girl Who Wanted To Be a Princess and the Girl Who Wanted To Be a Prince

RGU never answers the question that it asked in the very first episode of the show: whether it was really such a good idea for Utena to try to become a prince. similarly, whether Dios's claim that only a prince can save Anthy is left open, ambiguous.

to examine this issue, it's important to consider what prince/princess mean to Utena and Anthy, in the confines of their relationship. Utena's motivation for the entire show is to be a prince, but she doesn't seem to know exactly what she means by it. when asked to explain in the first episode, she states that she "wants to be a noble prince who saves princesses." she will be tested on this claim throughout the narrative.

Anthy is more opaque than Utena. however, it's clear that, as disillusioned and dead inside as she may be, "prince" still holds a great deal of meaning for her, and the character is designed to be the obvious "princess." in his episode 2 commentary, Ikuhara wrote:

Anthy is another Utena. In the initial stages of planning, I thought of the main character as someone who wanted to be a prince, but at the same time also wanted to remain a princess. However, I decided to divide that personality into two different characters. What did “also wanting to remain a princess” mean? I would agonize over the expression of Anthy for the entire series.

Anthy's desire to be a princess is a rarely commented on aspect of her character. she may not believe that she will ever get what she wants, but she still wants it. in fact, the entire structure of Ohtori could be viewed as a way to maintain her status as (false) princess, as much as it maintains Akio's status as (false) prince.

to be a princess, Anthy needs a prince. what exactly would she hope to gain from a prince? in an interview, Ikuhara and Takemiya Keiko had the following exchange:

Takemiya: What is a prince, for a girl? Ikuhara: Someone you can entrust your core self to.

this quote helps to narrow down Anthy's motivation to be a princess. I view Anthy as a character very aware of the workings of the system. the best way I can put it is that she is aware of this fact: in the world of Ohtori, a princess is the only kind of girl worthy of being saved. she needs a "prince she can believe in," and crucially, her prince needs to see her as "worthy of protection."

Utena and Anthy's backstory in episode 34 sets up these themes perfectly. for Utena, being a prince meant being "a person capable of saving others," specifically Anthy. to Anthy, being a princess meant someone being horrified by her suffering and trying to stop it.

however, even from this beginning, the story is not so simple as prince/princess. although Utena is certainly enamoured with Dios, the person who truly inspires her to become a prince is Anthy herself. she is shocked out of her despair by Anthy's suffering and moved to tears by her selfless sacrifice. sacrifice, itself, is on the "prince" side of the equation. as stated previously, Anthy was punished for her transgression, but this is exactly what Utena chooses to emulate.

The Foolish Pursuit of Ideals

prince and princess are amorphous categories that are impossible to embody; they are ideals which do not exist in reality. that is precisely why Utena's drive to be a prince is so foolish. and yet, creator Ikuhara praised this foolishness, saying that those close-minded adults who judge her as childish are actually the foolish ones.

considering this issue, it's interesting to ask if it's possible to live without ideals. an ideal is a concept, a human method of understanding reality, but all too often, our ideals replace the world around us; we watch the shadows on the wall of the cave and take them for reality.

various religions and philosophies instruct their followers to cast off concepts and live only in the real world. the problem is, it's not that simple. characters like Akio, Juri, or Anthy, who supposedly don't believe in ideals, are still ruled by them. there's a kind of false maturity in pretending to be above the rest of humanity, who are still caught up in illusions.

ideals tend to be very important in Ikuhara's works, not because they're necessarily good or real, but because the reactionaries who eschew them have nothing better to offer, and there is something to be gained by pursuing them.

Utena striving to become a prince is the driving force of the entire narrative. although the ideal is already defined by the world around her, she attempts to decide for herself what it means. in doing this, she is maintaining her right to be herself, not someone dictated by the system. by testing out her ideals in reality, she gains insight and is able to try new approaches which allow her to effect change.

thus, even if Utena is chasing after an ideal, she is chasing one of her own choosing. after falling into spiritual darkness when faced with mortality, she is reborn through her desire to save Anthy. that is the core of herself she tries to hold on to throughout the series.

in episode 12, Anthy is moved by Utena's nobility, briefly seeing Dios in her. however, the same shot of her eye widening reoccurs in episode 38, this time without Dios. Utena manages to shine through the veil of the ideal through her own reckless pursuit of it.

however, that's not to say that Utena's idealism is "correct." whatever personal meaning prince and princess hold to Utena and Anthy, they still exist in a wider social system. even if Utena's intentions are good, she ends up falling into the paternalistic, egoistic aspects of the prince.

"prince" wasn't the right word for what Utena and Anthy were seeking (and maybe there were never any right words; language is, after all, a system of meaning which rests on symbolic representations of reality). Anthy may have needed a prince in the sense of "person she can believe in," but prince comes a lot of other baggage. as Anthy informs Utena in the final episode, it's impossible for a girl to be a prince, as prince is defined as male. equally, it's impossible for Anthy to be a princess, since she has been deemed a witch.

however, despite Anthy making it very clear to Utena that she is a witch, Utena still choses to approach her as someone worthy of being saved. and even though Utena fails at being a prince when she lets Anthy fall from the heavens, she does become someone Anthy can believe in. one way of looking at it is that Utena and Anthy made each other prince and princess in that moment, causing a contradiction which shattered the system. but they didn't meet as prince and princess--they met as human beings and equals.

Adolescence of Utena: Escape from Concepts

in the show, Utena goes to her metaphorical grave still apologizing for not being a prince. Anthy is freed of her social role and sets out in search of Utena, but the audience is given relatively little insight into what might come next. the film picks up where the show left off; while the show explored the importance of ideals as much as their dangers, the film casts them off fully, heading out into a brave new world.

a crucial difference between the film and the show is that in the film, the prince holds no power outside the minds of Utena and Anthy. as in, there is nothing holding them in Ohtori but their own decision to walk out. in the show, that option was not open to Anthy until the end, and Utena was not going to leave without Anthy.

the show's extended meditation on ideals and systems allowed for the film to start with a clean slate. its social landscape is surreal and unmaterialistic to the extreme, focusing solely on the internal worlds of the characters. at the start of the film, Utena and Anthy are not ready to graduate, as it were, because they have not accepted the death of the prince. after Akio's body is exhumed, Utena descends into the underworld, meeting the ghost of Touga. of the scene, Ikuhara said:

The reason why Utena thinks she killed the prince is because Utena realized that Touga was dead. By realizing that Touga was dead, Utena realized that she no longer needed a prince. And that was her departure from the girl's world of dependence (on the prince) into a grownup's world.

the prince never existed, was dead the whole time, and there is no life in continuing to pursue that ideal. Utena puts to rest her desire to have and to be the prince, while Anthy's eyes are opened to the world beyond Ohtori. her relationship with Utena empowers her to defy Akio, and the two race away into a pathless land. dummies bearing their names take their place in Ohtori, implying that they have left behind even their names, their identities. they are no longer prince or princess, masculine or feminine, male or female; those categories have ceased to hold meaning. they are heading into a world without concepts, where nothing is preordained.

many of the characters in show want to "return to a place they came from." however, what they want is to return to a point in time, a memory which may not even be accurate. at the end of the film, Utena and Anthy are not regressing back into childhood, but reclaiming their true selves, the core of their being which exists regardless of socialization, free from the past and open to the future.

[h-worksrambles]

I was talking with some folks on Discord about Leo’s route, specifically the relationship between Chase and Kudzu. But during this discussion, someone asked: ‘how different would the story have been if Kudzu had been a love interest for Leo, rather than for Chase?’ And I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

Now for the record, I really like Chase and Kudzu’s relationship. For one thing, Kudzu is important in terms of contrasting the toxicity of Chase and Leo’s relationship with a more healthy supportive one. Kudzu goes out of his way to make sure Chase is safe, not out of obsession or because he needs Chase to function. But because of genuine compassion and selflessness. And they’re able to mutually support each other in the aftermath of the trauma they’ve undergone. He also serves to enhance Chase’s own character arc of being less passive and more decisive across the route. As Leo descends deeper into paranoia and jealousy as the hysteria takes its toll on his mind, he lashes out against Kudzu and kicks him out of the safety of Leo’s house. Chase making the choice to reject what Leo wants, and go and help Kudzu cements that he is steeping out of that noncommittal enabler role. Actually putting his foot down about what he wants by going to help Kudzu just as the raccoon has done for him. I know some people find their dynamic to be a little too ‘knight in shining armour’ adjacent. But Chase has honestly become more self actualised and so is in a better place to start a relationship on even ground.

But he’s also a foil to Leo in that they’ve both lost someone important to them in the past in a way that still affects their behaviour. Kudzu’s grief for his deceased boyfriend manifests in his aloofness and flashes of anxiety. While Leo is still struggling to get over Chase. But contrasting how Kudzu manages his sense of loss compared to Leo, who gets swallowed up in it causing him to hurt other people, is an interesting parallel. There’s also the fact that Leo stays in Echo as a way to hold onto his nostalgic memories of the past, while Kudzu goes there to get away from his.

Keeping that parallel in mind, let’s talk about Leo and Kudzu. They’ve spent two years as friends and neighbours. They’re both dealing with the fact that they lost their romantic partners. In particular Leo is kind of starved for any solidarity with other queer men, since the only out people he knew growing up were Chase (who has now left town on bad, uncertain terms) and Flynn, who is cagey and distant at the best of times and who Leo himself kind of ignored after he and Chase started dating (keep in mind Carl is still closeted/questioning at this point so he doesn’t really apply to this case). Suddenly here comes this new guy who he gets on well with, is going through similar experiences to himself, and who he can relate to as some of the only queer people in a bigoted, backwater town.

Even their personalities are potentially a good match. Leo is highly affectionate and protective, which could be good to help Kudzu, who’s still closed up emotionally due to his grief, out of his shell. Kudzu meanwhile is selfless, protective in his own right, but he’s also willing to put his foot down and, as Leo’s friend, tell him when he’s crossed the line (he knows about Leo’s enmity with Clint and has repeatedly tried to help Leo stop and see fighting with him isn’t healthy). On paper, they could be a good match.

So what if Leo thought the same thing? What if he had considered a deeper relationship with Kudzu? But he couldn’t bring himself to. Because he’s still holding out hope to rekindle his relationship with Chase. To go back to the good old days of how things used to be. It would make for a character arc very similar to Chase’s own across Leo’s route. Of learning to put down the nostalgia goggles and learn to let go of something unhealthy. And Kudzu would play the same narrative role as a healthy alternative relationship, to this deeply toxic one. But the focus would be on Leo outgrowing his worst tendencies and obsession with the past, with a partner who could not only help him make a fresh clean start, but also challenge his behaviour and inspire him to be better, to be worthy of the love he seeks.

Do I think this would be a better direction for the story? Not necessarily. True, it might make for a slightly more believable pairing since Leo and Kudzu had two years to get to know each other while Chase and Kudzu had a week. After all one of my only complaints with Leo’s route is that I’m not entirely sure why Kudzu likes Chase (sorry, my otter trainwreck. I love you but Kudzu can frankly do better). But I do think it was the right decision to end both Leo and Jenna’s routes with Leo on his own. Leo’s unhealthy idealisation of romantic relationships is one of the things he has to overcome. In his ending, he’s slowly making the first tentative steps to recovery by himself (albeit in an extreme, cold turkey way). And in Jenna’s he’s actively atoning for his mistakes, supporting a friend who he hurt in the past, Micha. Leo probably should end the story by learning to be comfortably single. But I can’t help but think about the idea of him and Kudzu as an interesting ‘what if?’ direction. So if any of you fanfic writers out there see this post, I mean…Free real estate.

[chumpovodir]

sorry i'm actually still on that castlevania brainrot, with a big big focus on CoD since i've been re-playing it in my free time, but felt like i was being too annoying about it between simping for Hector in a way i have not publicly done for any other blorbo and bitching about netflixvania lmao

now that i've had some time to let my thoughts Stew and Simmer, and after consuming whatever Hector-centric fan content i can get my greedy little hands on, i got some Thoughts on all the pairings i've come across, and put together my as-of-now takes on them:

• CV: CoD Hector/Isaac - yes! THE ship of all time! versatile, but however you ship them, They Are Each Other's Whole World!!! they're best friends at minimum (at least before Hec's betrayal) and hell yes they're fooling around with each other - they're 2 dudes in their early 20s who grew up together, literally have no one else and probably spend damn near 24/7 together as a result of their living situation/jobs. is it a casual friends with benefits thing? are they romantically involved and devoted to each other? work besties? mentor mentee kinda thing? is it mutually toxic and/or abusive? friendly rivalry? bitter enemies til the end? it all works! the beauty of the canon not being set means theres so much room for interpretation, but i don't think hector or isaac would be as broken up as they are if they didn't feel something for each other. for me, it all tracks and part of the fun is seeing new ways to interpret their dynamic (except no one makes content for their game counterparts anymore after netflixvania 😢)

• Netflixvania!Hector/Isaac - sorry but i just can't get on board the Forgehusbands thing here. in this version, the most chemistry they have is barely tolerating each other as colleagues. its not even animosity, just straight up indifference. then hector spends some months in his own personal hell being Lenores plaything probably just trying to not lose his sanity while isaac is thousands of miles away consumed by the thought of revenge but otherwise living it up. Issac doesnt even really save Hector in the end…? and idk why but the writers were really pushing a Lenector agenda so there really isn't much of anything to ship here. N!Isaac's too dry and serious about his own misanthropy without any of the mindless, fanatical devotion to Drac's cause CoD!Isaac has, while N!Hector is just. barely a character tbh with how passive and contradicting he feels (and i will CURSE the writers for forever squandering his character when he probably has the most official, coherent material dedicated to explaining his whole deal!!!). there's not much in this canon that drives them towards each other in a way i find compelling, but if someone out there could take on the challenge and actually show how they end up getting together (as friends or romantically) i'd be interested in that! because the current status quo where they're Inexplicably An Item From The Start is a little stale tbh

• Hector/Rosaly - YESSSSSS i love how their relationship is depicted in both PtR and the manga series! (favorite panel of all time: "Oh, you bit right away") i've seen some criticisms of this ship and specifically Rosaly essentially being Lisa 2.0 and a namedropped source of Man Pain™ for all of CoD's intro cutscene before never being mentioned again and. yeah, that's all true. BUT its so soft, and quiet and loving. they really are perfect for each other <3 and it's an interesting parallel for Drac/Lisa, and how Hector doesn't go on a genocidal rampage after losing his beloved in the exact same way, despite his own misanthropy still holding strong. does that say something about Hector's character, or was it all just Death's scheming going exactly as planned?

• Hector/Julia - nnnnooo…. come on man. you cant fuck your ex's (that you killed btw) sister that just so happens to look like your recently deceased wife. who was murdered by aforementioned ex. god the baggage going in all directions here... thankfully, even in canon its only implied at best, if you turn your head and squint. i like 'em as Just Friends, thanks - 2 magic wielders that share a bond through being persecuted by humanity, and for losing a mutual someone they cared for deeply. (side note: wish we saw more of Julia! i love that for what little we got of her, she does seem to mirror Isaac, in ways only siblings who are close can)

• N!Hector/Lenore - no and FUCK no. i actively hate this pairing. the only acceptable interaction between these 2 is Hector staking Lenore through the heart with a smile on his face. and before anyone comes for me, it has NOTHING to do with the fact that it's a m/f ship, because as mentioned above, i adore Hector/Rosaly. it's not even because it's abusive, you CAN write and enjoy darker relationship dynamics but. this just wasn't it. if they were going for an enemies-to-lovers kind of thing, they failed spectacularly at establishing the 'to lovers' part. the only reason i enjoyed their S4 interactions is because it's seemingly the only time in the entire series anyone talks to Hector with any level of respect, even if it was just dumb sex jokes.

• Hector/Alucard - this one surprised me, for simultaneously seeming to hold both statuses as 'squarely defined as a rarepair by most fan's standards' but also 'there were at least a good few pages worth of the Hector Castelavnia tag on Ao3 that was just these 2 as the main pairing'?

not really sure how i feel about this one - i like them as individual characters who have a lot of parallels going on (probably because Hector is supposed to be like an 'improved' version of Alucard from what i've read?)

i like the idea of their netflixvania versions trauma bonding after the shit in S3 because good lord they both need someone who can understand what they've been through. but they don't interact at all in the netflix show, so no dice there imo. under a more cynical lens, my feelings are something like "you only ship these 2 because they're both soft prettyboys you wanna see fucking huh"

if you go by the games canon and lore then they're just about the same age and logically would have interacted at least occasionally in their time at Castlevania but ofc we dont see any of it. theres some ancient fanfics out there that expand on this with alucard, hector, and isaac all being childhood friends before they grew up and had to kinda move into their respective roles and protocol and formality and work kinda made them drift apart and i find those very cute <3

i think this pairing could work honestly, they're both generally kind-hearted albeit tragic souls with a cold disposition who experienced the madness of Castlevania and Dracula's vengeance firsthand. there's gotta be something you can pull outta there. mmmaybe not quite friendship either but.... kindred souls. they have that "prince and his knight" kinda vibe, at least aesthetically, which i can get behind! and i like what i've seen from the exceedingly rare pre-netflixvania fics that exist, and even the netflixvania fanfics are kinda cute (please can we move away from the theme of N!Trevor brutalizing N!Hector out of mistrust just as a chance for N!Alucard to swoop in and save him? shit is damn near ubiquitous even in my very brief time exploring)

• Hector/Trevor - (i should specify i'm referring to their games versions exclusively here. N!Trevor isn't even aware of N!Hector's existence afaik) i dig it, there's just the very inconvenient fact that Trevor's supposed to be married to Sypha lol. and i dont really see a trephacard type of situation happening here (not that im crazy for trephacard now that i mention it. it's cute, it's wholesome but eh, not much substance to it? im realizing i like my ships with a pinch of tension)

so much comedic potential! a fun ship to entertain, but i feel like no one seems to make any content that captures their dynamic well. so ultimately this is a "the best ship is friendship" type of relationship for me. i have a headcanon that Trevor tries, really, really tries, to reach out and befriend Hector post-CoD in a way he might not for other people, out of guilt and concern he'd end up like Adrian (except at least Adrian has the option to wake up and rejoin the world, if he felt like he was finally ready someday. Hector, for all his demonic powers, is still very much human and is shown not once, but twice, ready to let himself go peacefully from this world because he just can't envision a future for himself after Castlevania and losing everything that's important to him. and i generally just like Trevor being a Genuinely Good Person, despite being a bit of a pompous hot-head. miss me with whatever netflixvania was going for)

• Hector/Dracula - ….okay so a certain tumblr user's AU got to me and i do enjoy how dark and fucked up this is <33 and thats pretty much exclusively how i view this ship - always a power imbalance, never wholesome. that's all i have to say about it, don't really wanna go into specifics and squick anyone out but uhh yeah. it's not pretty lmao

[beantothemax]

Onto Mirabelle! (And then I'm going to sleep it's like 2 am here-)

Mirabelle, to reflect what I said with Sif, IS the main character of this world. Chosen by the Change Divinity, being immune to time stop....just like you said in another ask! And it all makes for an interesting, if a little cliché character. It is something that I will be saying a lot in these analysis, because I believe the devs managed to make a believable rpg party while still putting their own stuff.

She is the chosen hero, but she really doesn't act like one. We need to remember that everything we see is in the context of the end of the journey: and so, it wouldn't be ridiculous to expect the characters to have grown into their roles. Yet, Belle is constantly unsure, and constantly downplaying her abilities. It's seen across the game: she panics and need to be reminded of battle strategies, is struggling to stay positive, and a simple lack of enthusiasm from sir "I constantly look like I just woke up and don't understand what's going on" Sif is enough for her to doubt herself. It's obvious that the fact that she wasn't supposed to be the chosen one is weighing on her.

In her relation to the others members, she feels like the most passive in the interactions (though were I am right now, it is slowly changing for the better: a book club project with Dile, venting her frustrations about book thieves and noisy roommates...). She still seems very close to everyone else, but rarely is the one in front of the situation, which I just thought about, is an interesting parallel with how Sif is the one leading the way instead of her, even though she's the classic RPG MC.

Beau and her have a relationship of uplifting each other: almost every time they talk, it's to support the other's ideas, or simply encourage them. It is apparent that they were the first two in the team (as implied in game I'm pretty sure, by the fact that she went directly to ask the guardians for help). Dile seems like she plays a big sister role to Belle, rather than the mom or grandma that the game describes. They have a few interests in common, and Dile loves learning while Belle loves talking about her beliefs. Belle is to Bonnie a big sister, and it's pretty apparent. She is kind and caring, while also being able to scold him and play the role of adult when need be. Finally, I already talked about Sif, but it would be unfair not to say that the supportive role he plays, she plays too. She is the one taking care of waking him up, reassuring them when their joke didn't work...it's a mutually beneficial relationship.

The fact that the dungeon we explore is the place where she lived her whole life makes for very important and interesting evolution to her character. At every turn, there is someone she knows, something she remembers. And so I believe we will see an evolution of the passive hero towards a more active personality, while keeping what makes her her.

Conclusion: pretty. Makes ding ding when she walks. She's the embodiment of cool noise appreciation.

And also I love her very much.

@jayandthejets THERE BE MORE

weh……… miribelli spaghetti………….

mirabelle is SUCH a character!!!!!! she always trying so hard to stay positive no matter what!!! her interactions with the others make me want to explode!!!!!! She [REDACTED] and doesn’t feel [EXPUNGED] AND [POURED APPLE JUICE ON MESSAGE SORRY :(] they all care so much about each other it hurts!!!!!!

ding ding indeed…

[hungwy]

Um......why not just move to discord if you don't want people seeing what you say?/g We aren't "overhearing" you this platform was made specifically for this purpose.

You click follow on a blog to see their posts, that's the essential mode of operation for this website. It's passive. How any of that is actively used is the website's culture and your own decisions. How you interact with me is completely your choice and not forced by the construction of this website in any way. You can choose to never say a single thing. The internet in general is made in this way that people pretend to have familiarity with total strangers and sometimes its really good but other times it's incredibly frustrating. So when I complain that people are pretending to be way to close to me, it's because they don't have to be -- and that they shouldn't be, because what happens between friends and strangers is different and switching those behaviors can be upsetting. I don't like some people's jokes, I don't like some people's attitudes and friends and vibes or whatever. Everyone is entitled to be a hater. My complaining will hopefully make those people reflect on their behavior towards what ARE still strangers (even if you clicked follow on that strangers blog to see the strangers posts.) I'm not a blorbo because you laughed at my jokes or whatever - - which was the original point of the post anyway, that I had weird people putting me on a pedestal for having points on a website. I'm literally some guy and need to be treated that way. Judging by the notes many agree with me.

As for the discord thing, it's not really the same, is it? It's not a microblogging platform. It's a chat. I'm not in any fandom, I don't have any strong drive to theorize about movies and games or recapsulate my experience with them, I don't like one-on-one talks with strangers, and I don't like the weird drama that always blossoms in those environments. Being socially involved in a discord is too much talking. Im a parallel play kind of person. My tumblr posts are little flowers that my bumblebee followers can choose to smash or pass or whatever. My contributions herr amount to growing my own little tulip field that other can come and look at if they choose. Some people just keep pissing and shitting in my field of flowers and I kill them for it. But I love my little field and all the weird bugs (mutuals) that visit me

[heartslobbf]

let’s talk about perfuma. imo, she’s one of the best characters in the show despite being underdeveloped, and i wanna explain why. she could’ve been extremely average, just some lanky flower girl that doesn’t believe in violence and loves everyone, but she is so much more than that (and it pisses me off that y’all reduce her to that).

in her introductory episode, perfuma is clearly in denial about the horde almost destroying plumeria. she doesn’t want to acknowledge the problem, wants someone else to take care of it for her. she’s scared of change, and that is because change makes you vulnerable. if things always stay the same, there’s a whole lot less danger and uncertainty, and therefore you’re safe. secure. perfuma’s kingdom is dying and she can’t bear to accept it because it is unknown to her. it’s putting her in a position where she is no longer secure. this fear of vulnerability can also be seen at the beginning of 1x10 when the princess alliance falls apart and she literally says ‘being together makes us vulnerable.’

the thing is, perfuma isn’t wrong. look at her choice of words. she says that being together makes them vulnerable, not weak. here, she kind of has the words mixed up, but we see that by s5 she has come to understand the difference. that’s what’s so great about perfuma, her motivation to do better, her hunger for self-improvement. it’s why she’s such an important part of catra’s redemption, actually, because she embodies the kind person catra is or wants to be.

let me explain: perfuma is an angry, impatient, short-tempered character. we are shown this again and again with her passive aggression to others and how easily mermista can annoy her with trivial things (sitting in her seat in the war room, for example). catra is also an angry, impatient character, but perfuma works every day to manage those emotions. she knows she needs them, she uses them as a tool (calling catra out, for example, is a time they were practically pivotal for getting her point across) but she also acknowledges they can hurt the people she loves. we know she does a meditation ritual each morning and we see in 4x02 how quickly she can unravel without it. she wants to be better. she puts the work in. that is such a valuable lesson for a character like catra who has always felt she’s just not good enough, she’s always going to be this angry and unlovable and no one can do anything about it.

so, 4x02. it’s a brilliant episode for perfuma’s character, really, and the first proper development we’ve had since 1x04. we see her anger, her impatience, but we also see her self-doubt. her belief that she’s inadequate, ‘just a flower girl.’ this is also when we get introduced to her little mantra that becomes a bit of a motif later on, ‘i can do this.’ we know perfuma doesn’t wholeheartedly believe this, but she says it anyway because she wants to. perfuma wants to be better. she will do whatever she can to be her best self, whether that be actually conquering her gripes with cacti or realising there’s a loophole with the roots (love that conflict resolution by the way, another good deconstruction of hero bs by spop).

this episode is also significant because it comes back to perfuma’s fear of change, of vulnerability. she’s thrown into a situation she doesn’t want to be in, one she feels miserably unprepared for, and she hasn’t done the one thing that puts her at her best beforehand, but she pulls through in the end because she is surrounded by people that support her, that listened to her and consoled her when she was vulnerable. 4x02 teaches perfuma the power of self-worth and the power of true, mutual, unconditional love, which can only come with vulnerability.

and this is where her character gets really interesting, in my humble opinion. ngl, one of the reasons i love perfuma so much is because she’s a pisces and i am too. i’m not gonna go astrology hoe on you rn, i’m just using this to demonstrate the part of her character that teaches others. pisces, if you don’t know, love to play therapist. we like to help the people around us with whatever strifes they may have because we think we’re fucking great at it. perfuma actually is.

you know how i said perfuma learns the importance of self-belief and vulnerability? yeah, she teaches both of those lessons to other characters in s5. like i said, perfuma is a character who values self-betterment and also happens to be a pisces, so when she sees scorpia, riddled with so much self-doubt and such low self-esteem, her immediate response is just i’m gonna teach that bitch how to love herself. and she does!

i’ve seen some people say they don’t like scorfuma because it seemed as though the writers just decided to ‘fix’ all of scorpia’s problems by giving her a girlfriend. that’s very dumb, first of all because they aren’t even together by the end of the show, they’re just interested in one another. second, the whole point of she-ra is that we’re stronger together. scorpia doesn’t go through growth in s5 because a girl likes her, she goes through growth because someone is showing her support and love for the first time in her life and that empowers her. you know, the worth that scorpia finds in herself doesn’t hinge on perfuma, like it did with catra. it’s about her as an individual, and perfuma so clearly makes it about that when her big lesson revolves around singing. scorpia loves singing. perfuma tells her she should do it because she enjoys it, a sentiment you’d never hear in the horde, and when scorpia does sing, she is actively rejecting the people who did make all her self-worth hinge on them catra. she’s doing something for herself, because she enjoys it, because it makes her happy, because she can.

it’s that same mantra: i can do this, i can do this. i really love how this was brought back from 4x02, how perfuma repurposed something that taught her such a valuable lesson for someone else. perfuma and scorpia are great foil characters actually, both constantly underestimated and thought of as weak by their groups, but some of the strongest characters in the show due to their deep value of love and self. i can do this, and i know i can because you believe in me, because i believe in myself. it’s brought back again in 5x10, when the last thing perfuma says before scorpia breaks the beam is ‘i know you can [pull through]’. she tells catra she believes in scorpia. it’s that belief, that support from other people that empowers the self to believe it too. we are stronger together, you know??

anyways, onto vulnerability. return to the fright zone is in my top ten episodes of the whole fucking show and you might think that’s a bit weird but i don’t. 5x10 encompasses so many important themes of spop so well and tells them with scorfuma and spinnetossa, our two side lesbian couples. this is significant since perfuma literally draws a parallel between her and catra at the end of the episode, and catradora and spinnetossa have always been significant to one another. i’m gonna say it, perfuma is the reason catra is finally able to confess to adora in 5x13. i’ve already talked about how important perfuma is to catra’s motivation to improve, but she literally makes catra rethink everything about strength and vulnerability, two words catra has a lot of feelings about.

catra fears vulnerability. we know this. she has such a deep love for those important to her but is never able to articulate it because she worries she’ll be taken advantage of, shot down, laughed at, whatever. all of this stems from the abuse she suffered at shadow weaver’s hands and her attachment issues, and it’s also why catra pretends to hate scorpia’s very open displays of affection and love: she sees it as weak because she has been taught to, but it’s all she ever really wanted to be.

we also know perfuma used to fear vulnerability. she doesn’t any more. the entirety of the episode leading up to her and catra’s heart-to-heart is her being vulnerable, putting herself in a position where she’s in danger but believing it’s worth it. and it is. despite what everyone said to her, perfuma is right: it was worth it. she got through to scorpia, even if it was only for a moment. she literally spells it out to us and catra with one of the best lines in the whole show: it’s hard, keeping your heart open. it makes you vulnerable, but it doesn’t make you weak, and i have to believe it’s worth it.

back in 1x10, perfuma was right: being together makes you vulnerable. horde prime tries to use people’s relationships against them, that’s literally the plot of save the cat, the point of pitting catra and adora against one another. he sees them as weak, just like shadow weaver deems adora’s feelings for catra ‘confusing’, just like light hope insisted adora was a danger to her friends as long as she was around them. they were all wrong. yes, they’re vulnerable. perfuma acknowledges that vulnerability puts you in danger, that it’s difficult to do that, but she knows it doesn’t make you weak. weakness vs strength is a big conflict in 5x10 literally introduced to us with netossa’s theories on everyone’s weaknesses in the first few minutes.

like perfuma says, friendship isn’t a weakness. it’s her greatest strength. her belief in love is literally what saves her and adora’s lives, it’s what saves everyone who got chipped, glimmer, bow. belief in love, both of others and yourself, is what saves adora in her dying moments. perfuma summarises she-ra’s entire fucking message to us repeatedly in 5x10 and she tells it to catra because catra is the one who will do the most with it. that glance at adora, it’s obvious what it means. perfuma is telling catra she should be open with adora about her feelings because you have to believe it’s worth it.

you won’t get anywhere waiting for other people to make the move. she-ra couldn’t heal plumeria’s lands, so plumeria had to fight their own battle alongside her no matter how much they felt unable to. the rebellion couldn’t move mara’s ship, so perfuma had to despite thinking she wasn’t strong enough. the reason they always win in the end is because they have each other, they have love and support and people motivating them to do better. just like perfuma motivates herself to do better.

it’s the mantra. i can do this. i can be vulnerable and still win, because i have love. and it’s hard, it’s so fucking hard to be vulnerable when you’ve feared it all your life and you’re so angry, so hurt, but you have to believe it’s worth it. and it is. it is, it is, it is, love is stronger than anything and being vulnerable for the people you love is the only way you can ever get what you want from them. perfuma as a character embodies that, having learnt it herself, and teaches the lesson to one of the characters who needs it the most.

adora is dying, and catra loves her, and she knows she does, and she just has to believe. adora is dying, and she loves catra, and she knows she does, but she doesn’t believe. not until catra teaches her too, in that moment, to realise they were all wrong, light hope, shadow weaver, horde prime. adora doesn’t need to let go, she needs to hold on and believe she will be pulled back up by the girl she loves. she needs to believe she deserves it. that it’s worth it.

and it is.

[an-a-for-every-occasion]

I’m all here for CRWBY to revisit Yang/Mercury parallels whenever he comes back.

Sure, they have the gold/silver thing and the mechanical limbs and the fighting styles and all that jazz, but their personalities and their dynamics with other characters are also so interesting to compare.

Yang was introduced as a hothead, but also as a kind and friendly person who was willing to do a lot for the people she loves. This was the direct opposite of Mercury, who is aloof to the point of speaking to no one in cannon who’s alignments aren’t neutral/evil unless he is doing so to fight a bitch (despite the fact that he was pretending to be a goodie-goodie in Volume 3).

Where Yang is a hothead, Mercury plays at being unaffected. Where she’s friendly, he’s mocking and sarcastic.

However, Yang has changed as a character from the Beacon days, both from trauma and from growing older. She’s less spunky, more mellow. Her anger isn’t quiet the same as it used to be; her aggressiveness has turned more defensive and her emotions are more controlled.

On the other hand, it’s clear that post-V3 Mercury is not as unaffected by the world as he would like to appear. He is terrified of the situation he’s gotten himself into, and unlike Yang who was able to grow and fight through her fear, Mercury is still hiding. He reacts to his harsh reality with the same mocking sarcasm he’s always used (Emerald, V8) or he lashes out like a wounded animal (Tyrian, V6).

There’s also their relationships with the other characters. There’s the obvious contrast between their fathers (and their absent mothers), but I’m even more invested in their other relationships.

Yang’s two most prominent relationships are Ruby and Blake. Ruby, the sister who “always knows the right thing to do,” and Blake, the partner who ran away. Both of these descriptions could also apply to Emerald and Mercury’s relationship, specifically now that Emerald has defected.

Yang and Mercury, for all of their strong fighting presences, have generally followed their leaders in order to make decisions. Yang trusted Ruby’s leadership, and Mercury acts passive in the hopes he will survive to live another day. We saw Yang in V8 try to choose a different path than Ruby, but in the end, Ruby and Yang are on the same side and need to be working together.

Mercury has really only shown to care about one person on the show: Emerald. And for him to grow, he should be following in her footsteps. He needs to do the right thing, and leave Salem.

How Mercury’s character will change is unknown at this point, but Blake leaving severely affected Yang’s character growth in V4, and I’m expecting Emerald’s departure to do the same for Mercury. I’m curious if he’ll react similarly to Yang, feeling betrayed that Blake left, or if he’ll be resigned to the fact, knowing that she was never going to stay.

I would love for these two to have an actual conversation in a future volume. I don’t know if they’ll ever really like each other, Mercury redemption or not, but I would love for them to see to see the similarities in each other and have some type of mutual understanding.

TLDR; Mercury and Yang still have potentials to be foils and that should be utilized, especially if Mercury’s going to be getting a redemption arc.

[bestworstcase]

I like your thoughts on how Rapunzel was handling things wrong in “Rapunzel: Day One.” The episode tries to imply that Cassandra is wrong for not sharing her feelings with Rapunzel, but is a Rapunzel really the person Cassandra should be opening up to? Rapunzel never respects Cassandra’s boundaries. Cassandra’s a private person. Rapunzel doesn’t respect that. And just because Cassandra doesn’t want to open up to everyone doesn’t mean that she’s bottling things up.

ok so this is gonna be a long one bc tbh i like. fundamentally disagree that RDO, the narrative of RDO, in any way positions cassandra as the one at fault for the emotional conflict between her and raps.

to digress a bit - while tts is not immune to Aesop Episodes (e.g. rapunzel's enemy or you're kidding me) wherein the characters close out the story by talking about What They've Learned, ultimately i don't think tts can or should be read as a morality play. it's a story where sometimes characters just... fuck up and the narrative doesn't waste its time on hand-holding or spoon-feeding us the moral.

anyway, i submit that RDO is what i'll call a False Aesop Episode. it follows the basic structure of an Aesop Episode (protagonist acts badly -> protagonist learns a lesson) but the lesson rapunzel learns is a bad one. it's like if you took... say, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" as an aesop, the False Aesop here is rapunzel confidently eating a rotten apple and then being blindsided a few months later when the doctor who kept begging her not to eat food with maggots in it steals the moonstone from under her nose and runs off into the night with her new demon pal--

and that metaphor got away from me a little bit but you get the idea.

#1: constructing the conflict

the episode opens with cassandra. she's training; we see the sword fly out of her injured hand; lance suggests she take a break, and she answers, "thanks to rapunzel's little trick at the great tree, i have to relearn everything using this hand, so breaks aren't really an option."

she isn't harsh about it. her demeanor isn't all that different from her normal self—she even segues into a very typical concern (that the woods are dangerous and they should all be on their guard) and banters with lance a bit.

what this communicates, immediately and succinctly, is that:

1. cassandra's injury is severe. it's disabling. she's either in immense pain or she's lost all the strength in that hand or both.

2. cass is really upset about this, and not happy with rapunzel.

3. nevertheless cass is keeping her feelings more or less in check; the worst anyone could say about her is she's being a bit more curt than normal.

which is to say, she's acting quite reasonable. she's not taking out her hurt feelings on anyone else or being mean or lashing out, and she's not hiding her injury either. the most concerning thing about her behavior here is actually that she's focused on training so she can do her job instead of on healing or resting or taking care of herself.

then there's a pan over to rapunzel, who is angrily watching this play out while venting to pascal. "i get why cass is mad at me," she says. "she told me—" huge disdainful rolling of eyes here "—not to use the decay spell back and the tree, and i did, and she hurt her hand. but if she had just listened to me and stayed out of it, this all could have been avoided! and i feel like we could work things out, but she refuses to talk about it!!"

line this up against cassandra's behavior and spot the differences.

cass is focused on her injured hand. cass is upset because rapunzel accidentally mutilated her in the great tree. that's what this conflict is about for cass; her injury, and how she feels about being injured.

by contrast, rapunzel thinks the conflict is about them not listening to each other. she does acknowledge that cass was injured, but 1. she puts the blame on cass, and 2. has shoved the fact of the injury to the periphery of the conflict. it's not important, it's just a natural consequence of the real conflict, which is cass being mad and petty and refusing to talk to her about how she's unfairly blaming rapunzel for something that wasn't rapunzel's fault.

[i will add here that this behavior from rapunzel is 100% not knowing how to handle guilt and externalizing it as anger, and this thread of rapunzel burying her guilt gets picked up again in rapunzeltopia; it isn't that rapunzel doesn't care that cass is hurt, so much as she's just not emotionally equipped to process these feelings in a healthy way so it mutates into...this.]

and where cass handles her feelings in a pretty reasonable way, rapunzel rants and raves and draws cass as a literal monster with fangs and claws—she's stewing in her out of control emotions and concludes that she just has to find a way to force cass talk to her, which she does shortly thereafter by ordering—not asking—cass to come with her to search for parts to fix the caravan.

#2: the breakdown of communication

i've said it before but it bears repeating: cassandra might not be perfect, but she's a good communicator. in s1 and the front half of s2, she shares her feelings with rapunzel readily and frequently. when she tries to set boundaries with rapunzel, she's able to be clear and specific about what she needs. when she expresses frustration with eugene or her dad or rapunzel, she's very articulate about exactly what she's frustrated about. she can recognize when politer, softer refusals are being ignored and become blunter and more specific to ensure the message is getting across.

the moments when cass struggles to communicate are noteworthy because they're not normal. they signal that she's in acute crisis. think of how her unhinged rant about adira in RATGT heralded a complete emotional breakdown. she clams up in RDO because it's the only thing she can do to protect herself. because rapunzel is an inexperienced nineteen year old who learned all her social "skills" from a manipulative, egotistical abuser and nowhere in the series does that show more than in RDO.

rapunzel knows cass doesn't want to talk about the great tree, so she isolates cass from the rest of the group with the intention of forcing her to talk about it anyway. she's passive aggressive at first: chattering about inanities and trying to bait cass into 'opening up,' and acting vexed and guilt-trippy when she finds out cass brought owl along. she broaches the subject by going "too bad there's not an open-up-to-your-best-friend-about-the-thing-you-guys-are-fighting-about wand, huh?"

then she leads with "i know you're mad at me, but i did the right thing. i didn't have a choice," which... what can cass even say to that? she acknowledged cassandra's anger in one breath and followed up with "but you're wrong tho" in the next. that statement makes cassandra's feelings about her debilitating injury into an argument about Who Was Right.

this is a game that cass tries very hard not to play. "look, if you feel that way, then it's fine. we're good," she says, which is a statement that is not true at all on its face but - what it means is that if rapunzel wants to turn this into a debate about Who Was Right, cass will concede because that's not an argument she's invested in. cass does not want to put her feelings on trial so rapunzel can pick them apart and decide whether she deserves to have them or not.

so she disengages. the sun sets. they camp. rapunzel pokes her again, this time with a more direct approach: "cass, i need to talk about what we both know is going on between us."

and that's when cass throws up a WALL. prior to RDO, when cass is pressed on her feelings, she either: 1. opens up and explains to the extent that she's able (e.g. under raps or RATGT), or 2. flatly shuts the conversation down (e.g. cassandra vs eugene). but in RDO?

"there's nothing to talk about."

"i never said i was upset."

"what makes you so sure that you know how i'm feeling?"

this is cass falling off the end of her rope. this is a cass who spent the last year and a half with rapunzel running roughshod over every boundary cass exhausted herself trying to set. this is cass maybe a few weeks out from rapunzel screaming at her in front of all their mutual friends and then telling her "i am going to make decisions you don't agree with and i need you to be okay with that" when cass tried to open up about her deepest insecurities. this is cass spiraling into despair because she's seen that her best friend cares more about assuaging her own guilt and exerting her authority as a princess than she does about cassandra's feelings.

this is the moment when the friendship dies.

#3: the memory wipe, cassandra's apology, and the false aesop

the details of the tangled-but-cass shenanigans are not super important for the purposes of this discussion. suffice it to say that cassandra lashes out in the heat of the moment, seriously harms rapunzel by mistake, and spends the rest of the episode trying to repair the damage, then apologizes to rapunzel for hurting her. this is, obviously, the correct thing to do when you hurt someone, even if it was an accident.

you see the parallel here, yeah?

rapunzel hurt cass with magic by accident, and then made cass's hurt feelings all about her, blamed cass for the injury, twisted the facts to justify her own indignation, picked a fight about Who Was Right and invalidated cassandra's feelings, and pushed and pushed and pushed until cass blew up and lashed out at her.

cassandra also hurt rapunzel with magic by accident, and then she set aside her own hurt feelings from the argument they were having before to focus one hundred percent of her energy on brewing a cure and keeping amnesiac rapunzel safe, readily admitted her fault, and offered an earnest apology for losing her temper as soon as she could reasonably do so.

if RDO were a true Aesop Episode, this would be the lesson, and rapunzel would of course learn from cassandra's good example and reciprocate by apologizing for the accident in the great tree and her abysmal behavior afterwards—and in a reflection of how cass shared how bottling up her anger allowed it to erupt in a catastrophic way, rapunzel would probably confess that her demanding, selfish behavior came from a place of feeling awful about what happened and terrified that it would ruin their friendship.

but RDO is a False Aesop Episode. rapunzel isn't emotionally equipped to handle the intensity of her guilt, and she lacks the social insight and empathy to draw comparisons between what she did to cass and what cass did to her, so she can't connect the two situations in her head to understand what she's doing wrong. the true aesop flies right over her head, and instead what she learns is this:

1. she was right about cass being upset

2. backing cass into a corner fixed the problem

3. friends really do "just know"

4. being pushy and forceful was the right thing to do.

because the thing is, when cass apologizes for the accidental memory wipe, she truthfully explains why she acted the way she did—she's furious and she didn't want to talk about it, so she held it in as long as she could and then exploded when the pressure became too much—and for rapunzel, i think the explanation and the actual apology get conflated. meaning, cass says "i'm sorry for what i did out of anger" and what rapunzel hears is "i'm sorry for being angry."

and because of that misunderstanding, from rapunzel's perspective her own indignation has been validated and her behavior justified, because she was right all along and cass shouldn't have been angry with her in the first place and now everything is fine--

but it's not fine.

we're not supposed to share rapunzel's perspective here, because she's flat out wrong. nothing is really better and nothing has really changed, except that rapunzel got the talk she wanted and stops putting this intense pressure on cass. so as we enter the house of yesterday's tomorrow, rapunzel is taking it for granted that things are fine with cass, and meanwhile cass is still injured, still angry, still as aloof as she can be without getting rapunzel breathing down her neck again... and then she meets zhan tiri, who gives her everything she needed and couldn't get from rapunzel.

like, to my mind, this is the entire point of RDO, that rapunzel makes this catastrophic mess of trying to patch things up after RATGT and comes out of that mess wrongly thinking she succeeded. the episode is presented through the lens of rapunzel's perspective, but the lines are very wide and i absolutely think the intention is for the audience to read between them and understand the reality that rapunzel has sort of blinded herself to.

[cto10121]

Does R&J Play With Gender Stereotypes?

So I came across this piece of meta by @hamliet that rather intrigued me:

There’s also another layer here: the imagery Romeo uses for Juliet (the sun) and that Juliet uses for Romeo (the moon) is the inverse of how imagery was typically presented in those days. The moon was feminine; the sun, masculine. Even if we look at Romeo and Juliet’s respective character traits, Romeo is the flighty, impulsive, love-struck one who cries all the time, while Juliet is the decisive, bold, and loyal one. That’s the first thing Juliet declares to Romeo in the balcony scene: that she will always be loyal, and she shows this in every choice she makes in the story.

Let’s break this down.

“the imagery Romeo uses for Juliet (the sun) and that Juliet uses for Romeo (the moon) is the inverse of how imagery was typically presented in those days. The moon was feminine; the sun, masculine.”

Romeo does indeed call Juliet the sun, but Juliet never calls Romeo the moon—or likens him with anything symbolically feminine, come to think of it. The closest she or the play gets is a small but clear association with night: Romeo has “night’s cloak to hide me from their eyes” and Juliet implores “loving, black-browed” night to give her her Romeo. Even then it is so that he can “make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night / And pay no worship to the garish sun.”

Instead, Juliet consistently uses the same love language of authority as Romeo does with her, calling him her lord, husband, knight, “day-in-night,” “mansion of a love,” “god of my idolatry,” and, (my particular favorite), “tassel-gentle” or “falcon.” “Pilgrim” is the lowest social rank she uses, but of course she is following Romeo’s pilgrim-and-saints flirtation and its wink-wink bilingual allusion to his name. Romeo’s use of “sun,” then, could be viewed in the context of both lovers conferring cosmic/earthly authority, beauty, ownership, and sovereignty to each other—the Elizabethan equivalent of calling each other wife/husband. And of course they begin doing that immediately after they marry.

Even if we look at Romeo and Juliet’s respective character traits, Romeo is the flighty, impulsive, love-struck one who cries all the time, while Juliet is the decisive, bold, and loyal one.

Definitely not. Romeo is plenty decisive and bold—making the first move in wooing Juliet, climbing the orchard wall, showing himself to Juliet, immediately agreeing to marry her, nearly killing himself when he thinks Juliet might not take him back and, er, actually killing himself for her. I wouldn’t say he is impulsive, either—though he makes decisions fairly quickly, it is almost always with some deliberation beforehand (“Can I go forward when my heart is here?” “Shall I hear more or shall I speak at this?” and his monologue after Mercutio’s exit) and of course there are instances in which he restrains himself (“I am too bold” and his monologue after Mercutio’s death). The most accurate description of Romeo is that he is a risk taker—at least when he is well and truly motivated. And even then it does not rob his deliberation or even his wits.

He is also not flighty. In fact, he proves just as loyal as Juliet—as soon as he meets her, he forgets about Rosaline and leaves her clear behind. He doesn’t once waver in his conviction that Juliet is for him and makes plans to die with her (and does!). His love for Rosaline is clearly framed by the narrative as shallow, performative, and passive, and the verse bears this out. He was never in any kind of relationship with Rosaline—his love was an unrequited crush that he was at perfectly liberty to have ditched, frankly. After that, it’s Juliet, Juliet, Juliet until he dies.

Also, once more, Romeo is no crybaby. He explicitly cries a total of two times—one even before the events of the play, when he pines over Rosaline under a grove of sycamore, and another when he’s 1) seen Mercutio get mortally wounded, 2) killed Tybalt, 3) learned that he is banished from the city, and 4) mistakenly believed that Juliet no longer wants him (the Nurse’s reply is vague enough to be misinterpreted); at the very least he is devastated to have been the cause of her pain. Anyone would break down in those circumstances. Juliet herself breaks down on hearing the news and arguably is more verbally vehement than Romeo—namely, that even the words “Romeo is banishèd” are worse than if herself, Romeo, her parents, and Tybalt were dead. She ends that monologue with a passive suicide threat: “And Death, not Romeo, take my maidenhead!” How anyone can argue Juliet isn’t as lovestruck as Romeo is beyond me.

What Shakespeare was most likely aiming for was showing the mutuality of R&J’s love with parallel scenes and even language. Both have chances to act strong, decisive, and bold, both show vulnerability and great emotion and passion, both are lovestruck. Both demonstrate so-called “masculine” and “feminine” traits, which is almost always culturally-and time-based, anyway. There are only a few key differences between the two—almost all of the above traits, however, they both share. It’s almost as if…Shakespeare understood that no man or woman had all masculine or all feminine traits.

Moving on to the conclusion:

In other words, Shakespeare was deliberately playing with gender and its stereotypes in the play, which gains an even more interesting layer to it when you consider that Shakespeare was himself almost certainly bisexual (his sonnets are preeeetty explicit). It’s not a patriarchal narrative; it can well be seen as a queer narrative in a patriarchal society. And it shouldn’t take two kids having to kill themselves to get society to realize how effed up it is. It isn’t an out-of-touch play, but instead one extremely relevant to our society 500+ years later. 

In other words, Shakespeare was deliberately playing with gender and its stereotypes in the play, which gains an even more interesting layer to it when you consider that Shakespeare was himself almost certainly bisexual (his sonnets are preeeetty explicit).

You just opened up 200+ years of fandom wank, OP. I’ll just do a quick sum-up.

The Sonnets are a complete mess. They are contradictory as hell, there is clearly more than one persona speaking, there is evidence that Shakespeare edited and revised them, evidence they were published with his permission, quite a few sonnets are based on pre-existing sources, and, most damnably of all, none of the most likely candidates for the so-called Fair Youth and Dark Lady fit the narrative of the Sonnets perfectly or even satisfactorily—if there is even a clear narrative to these things to begin with. Sonnets were artificial works whose clichés and conventions were heavily satirized in Shakespeare’s own works—Berowne’s own rant-y sonnet swearing he would never believe in love sonnets comes most readily to mind. They were usually not meant to denote an actual real-life relationship, although there was a kind of “game” in trying to figure out which parts are true and which ones fiction. At least one sonnet sequence had a completely fictional addressee (Fulke Greville, I think).

Shakespeare’s sonnets do break a lot of these rules and conventions, and radically, and as they seem to have been compiled over many years, they lend themselves to autobiographical speculation. But, as a bit of a poet myself, I feel this: No one writes 154 sonnets—plus a whole narrative poem!—to one lover or even multiple lovers. Poetry is much less personal than laypeople think. Outside the sonnets, Shakespeare is not linked to any man romantically, and, besides his wife, only to two women (unnamed citizen’s wife and Jane Devanant).

Even if we assume Shakespeare’s bi, though, that doesn’t mean R&J is a queer narrative, which brings us to…

It’s not a patriarchal narrative; it can well be seen as a queer narrative in a patriarchal society.

A queer narrative that has its lovers express their love through the language of heterosexual marriage (husband, lord, wife, lady, pilgrim/saint), and commit suicide by a chalice-and-blade symbolism that mimics heterosexual sex (Romeo drinking a “cup” of poison and Juliet stabbing herself with Romeo’s dagger. Freud couldn’t have done it better). If Shakespeare was thinking “gay allegory!!!” he would have had to at least change or erase the symbolism (straight coding?) of the double suicide, or have Juliet attribute to Romeo explicitly feminine imagery. He would have to have done some major plot rejiggering. He would have had to, in short, change the whole story.

(Unless by “queer narrative” you mean “anything that has an emotionally constipated male lead who doesn’t growl sexily and a female lead who doesn’t cry/faint at the drop of a hat.” That’d be most every narrative, lol.)

Also, I’m hard-pressed to think of love romances that are 100% patriarchal narratives, and those that do (Casablanca, maybe?) are not really true ones, anyway. Patriarchy inherently opposes all romances of love and sex, including heterosexual. It demands that men be raised as soldiers to kill enemies, slaughtered, and discarded, and women as chattel and land to be bought and sold. Marriage was that transferral of property. Having children is necessary, not out of love and care for them, but to propagate the species and create even more future warriors and womb incubators. It grudgingly accepts only (mostly straight and like maybe 1 or 2 gay) love narratives that can be subsumed into this narrow paradigm, but the tension of interpretation is always present. Ideally, it prefers to ignore, diminish, scorn and mock, or even suppress them. I suspect most people’s problems and discomfort with R&J stem from this pathology, this deep-seated unease over anything that touches on human experience patriarchy can’t quite control or subsume.

Shakespeare was obviously no lover of patriarchy (in his personal life, though…well, it’s debatable). His plays resist it greatly to various degrees, and R&J is no exception. R&J hews much closer to the reality of heterosexual love and love in general, which are informed by, though are not inherently tied to, patriarchy (as are gay relationships, sadly). Shakespeare is just being a good writer in throwing most of that rotten apple away; it doesn’t apply to what he was trying to do, anyway. R&J’s challenge to patriarchy, though, is heterosexual in nature.

And it shouldn’t take two kids having to kill themselves to get society to realize how effed up it is. It isn’t an out-of-touch play, but instead one extremely relevant to our society 500+ years later. 

True dat.

[hamliet]

Hello! I love reading your bnha meta, and I've found your stuff on Hawks particularly interesting. I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the role Tokoyami might play in his arc? I was talking with my brother about Hawks' arc being a tragedy, and he said that he wasn't convinced because he's sure Tokoyami is going to have something to say about it. I personally think it would be weird for him not to be involved somehow, given the prominence he had with Hawks in the last arc.

Good question! Again, I’m bad with specific plot points, but I’ll give this a shot. 

So on the one hand, Tokoyami is cool but he is not a very important character. He does not really have an arc to speak of. It is a little late in the game to give Tokoyami an arc, and without an arc, it’s kinda odd to have him play a prominent role. Plus, if he saves Hawks, there’s not an arc there: Tokoyami saved Hawks already, and thinks he’s a good person, so unlike Ochaco-Himiko, Shouto-Touya, and Deku-Shigaraki, Tokoyami saving Hawks doesn’t challenge Tokoyami to grow in any way. So, this runs the risk of feeling a bit cheap. 

However, one way I could see this working though (and am gonna hope for it) is that Hawks might be inspired to repent from attempting to go after Dabi (which I do think he’s going to do) in part by Tokoyami. For example, if Tokoyami reveals that his quirk went out of control back in the Forest Training Arc to the point where Dark Shadow hurt Tokoyami’s friends, Hawks could draw a parallel to Touya and his quirk. 

I also do think that even if Hawks’s arc is fundamentally tragic, it’ll be redemptively tragic, not nihilistically or cynically so! So Tokoyami playing a redemptive symbolic role for Hawks isn’t necessarily mutually exclusive with tragedy. I also think Hawks will be a hero in the end, even if he dies and has a tragic spiral (the latter pretty likely, the former who knows, I think so but I’m again a character survival pessimist). Meaning, regardless of whether he lives or dies, even if he has a very tragic fall and tries to kill Dabi and ends up hurting Enji instead, I think his final moment in the manga--final moment living or dying--will be heroic. Hence why I’m currently expecting redemptive death but am fine with being wrong. 

I guess because--though this isn’t directly part of your ask--there seem to be so misconceptions about what I mean by tragedy, I’ll drag out Arthur Miller’s “Tragedy and the Common Man” again:

Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly. In the sense of having been initiated by the hero himself, the tale always reveals what has been called his tragic flaw," a failing that is not peculiar to grand or elevated characters. Nor is it necessarily a weakness. The flaw, or crack in the character, is really nothing--and need be nothing, but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status.

There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker’s brightest opinions of the human animal.

 For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.

The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force.

Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief-optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man.

(I don’t necessarily agree tragedy is more optimistic than comedies nor that they are inherently better stories, but I do agree with the sentiment that the best tragedies, the ones that actually leave an impression and last through centuries if not millennia--like Icarus, Romeo and Juliet, etc--are tragic because they did not have to be that way. It’s not life sucks and then you die. It’s chances to grow that make it tragic, it’s circumstances that are cruel but that can change (like how, despite the fact that they died and should not have had to, Romeo and Juliet’s love saves Verona). Good tragedy redeems even the darkest of times through glimmers of hope. Even King Lear, one of the bleakest tragedies I can think of, ends with the “good” side winning the war, so there’s hope of a new beginning. 

Even if Hawks doesn’t survive his tragedy, we see through others that he could have. (Again because I think I’ll get an ask if I don’t clarify: the reason I am pessimistic for Hawks but not for the Villain Trio is not because Hawks somehow is worse or deserves tragedy, but because the narrative set up is different, see other posts for details about what I mean by that). But even if his tragedy takes him, I think he will die a hero and specifically in an act of redemption after a low fall. 

[zuzuslastbraincell]

For the salty ask game: 6, 10 and 16? <3

6: Has fandom ever made you enjoy a pairing you previously hated?

I never used to like kataang or maiko much, but I’m good with the former and really like the latter now.

while I’m still not a big fan of the kataang (without wanting to write an essay: ember island players ruins it for me), I’ve softened on it a lot largely just from seeing the content for it on here. they’re just honestly very sweet? I don’t know if it’ll last for practical reasons, but the idea of aang & katara offering each other hope from the beginning and until the end is just lovely. 

as for maiko, I absolutely love the strength of mai & zuko’s dynamic (platonic or romantic) just from their boiling rock interactions alone. I feel like a lot of early s3 maiko very much demonstrates that they have some communication difficulties to work through together (thinking about the beach in particular here, but also the ‘are you cold?’ scene, as well as the break-up via letter interaction, that’s the big one) and in a sense mai represents part of zuko’s ‘ideal’ life as a perfect prince that he realises that he has to break from in the first half of s3, but I’ve come around to the idea that if they spent some time working through their communication issues they could really have something lovely? I do also think mai deserves a short break from the stifling culture of nobility/time to explore herself first, but after that? totally could work. like, i’m personally really attached to the gay zuko headcanon and always have been but a lot recent mutuals are maiko shippers and i’ve become very attached to maiko as well because of them (in parallel universes of course).

16: If you could change anything in the show, what would you change?

so many things....

1. less racist, more sensitive worldbuilding. crucially better south asian rep, clear south asian rep. this also means including removing the caricature of guru pathik and changing the design of combustion man (and p’li) not to include a reference to shiva. the show’s philosophies and vocabulary owes so much to south asian culture and the lack of representation in that aspect alone is shocking.

2. references to the fact that there are some air nomad survivors / descendents in hiding in various and that being a late s2 / s3 subplot. (maybe aang is still the last airbender tho? but certainly his culture won’t die with him). the culture isn’t perfectly preserved / has changed with time and enduring hardships, some things have been lost, but there are still survivors clinging on, proud. maybe it’s this community that helps with him the avatar state, not a random guru? or they could help him with his s3e1 dilemma about ‘blending in’, as many of them have discarded certain aspects of appearance in order to hide? i feel like this could add so much to aang’s arc in the latter half of the show.

3. better writing of the white lotus, with the white lotus as a international resistance org that operates in all nations, that uses old man’s pai sho club as a front. they’re introduced as opposing the dai li in ba sing se, as trying to organise resistance in secret, have ties to some local revolutionary/radical factions as they have a long standing rivalry with the dai li (& part of the reason the dai li side with azula is to crush the white lotus and resistance to their reign). iroh is not grand lotus but merely gets recruited in s2, as part of a redemption arc.

4. a subtle iroh redemption arc where iroh realises he cannot simply be passive and perhaps let the treasonous thought ”hm, maybe it would have been better if the avatar fought sozin” cross his mind - he needs to take a more active role in opposing the fire nation, and he joins the white lotus. i think he also needs to reckon quite specifically with the cost of the siege of ba sing se, he needs to make amends to those hurt from it on both sides - be confronted by fire nation defectors who left after the siege because why were their deaths less important that his son’s? as well as encounter how the siege left scars on the lower ring, in a less visible way (untrained lower ring residents formed resistance militia and generally died in huge numbers; plague and starvation greatly affected the lower ring, etc.). no iroh as a moral authority here - he’s morally grey trying to become good. also he doesn’t stick around in ba sing se, he realises the jasmine dragon, as lovely as it is, isn’t true redemption either, and at the end of the series he stays in the fire nation.

5. leading into point 3 (and 4): in s3 the gaang encounters and works with grassroots underground resistance in the fire nation. i think this is a better message than ‘oh the fire nation is a soceity ridden by class division that exploits its poorer / less privileged people and its own environment as long as it doesn’t affect the elite, and turns even its most privileged children into traumatised child soldiers and is indirectly hurt by its own colonialism and imperialistic culture, and that’s deeply sad’ - i think a better message is ‘the fire nation is a society with all those problems and you can do something about it. you can stand up. even though that’s scary.’ this resistance group is around for day of black sun (in fact they’re vital to it) and then you see a key member in boiling rock too.

6. no combustion man. honestly? weak writing. would much prefer zuko attempting to ‘stealthily’ track the gaang on the false premise of a ‘welcome home tour’ where he slips out under night to try and chase them down - this would mostly be alluded to in a few scenes. i also think this would get zuko to realise how much the fire nation itself has been hurt from war. i think the main early s3 plot points e.g. the beach episode still happens, as does the war meeting. i feel like zuko would need extra firepower to be a decent s3 threat - maybe he takes mai and ty lee with him? zuko ultimate lesbian ally takes bored lesbians from the palace for a knife throwing chi blocking field trip kjfshdj i’m joking. but seriously we could also have a combustion bender on board as well as a potential new character (i’m imagining someone like a younger p’li if i’m honest, same age range as zuko), as long as they have a character beyond being a scary assassin. maybe they defect early to the resistance group before the day of black sun, tell zuko they should too (but zuko doesn’t listen)? that’d be rad.

7. the existence of grassroots resistance would basically allow for the series to end with zuko being offerred the crown, but deciding to give it up / end the royal line. rather than a power vacuum, or iroh, the existance of resistance means there are clearly people (i.e. adults) who can fill that space. maybe this is a bit optimistic of me but i would just love to set up a scenario where zuko doesn’t become a boy-king of an imperialist nation and where absolute monarchy doesn’t continue, where there’s a clear shift in system. i understand the narrative power of zuko acknowledges he has inherited wealth and power that has been gained through exploitation and imperialism, and dedicating his whole life to undoing the damage his family has done, but i think he can do this without being the fire lord? in fact not being the fire lord is a good first step. zuko finds another way of doing exactly this.

8. talked about this a lot recently but better toph s3 representation & greater ties to the earth kingdom. also, i’d just appreciate a lot more flavour from the earth kingdom as a whole, and more prominent characters from there?

9. okay i’m not sure there is quite honestly space in the narrative for an azula redemption clearly on screen in as much depth as zuko’s but 1. i’d like iroh not to treat her horribly, thanks, and maybe even try to reach out to her at appropriate moments, maybe we see him (comically) say a lovely warm hello during her s2 appearances, maybe we see her play pai sho with him in s3 while he’s in prison in return for some secret info he’s not actually giving her while he’s not-so-subtly suggesting she should defy her father (but it’s too little too late, he already *chose* zuko in her eyes, and perhaps he did and is only just beginning to realise that) 2. i would like some hope and optimism at the end for azula. her breakdown is truly tragic but it feels like pain for pain’s sake in a sense - i would have loved for the finale scene with zuko & ozai replaced with a scene where someone visits azula and tells them they’ll be there for her and/or they love her. perhaps iroh, perhaps zuko (though i think that one would be more complicated obviously). i would love a post-finale scene where iroh sets up a tea shop somewhere in the fire nation where we see azula out the back, finishing up wiping down/mopping the patio, and before aang goes inside to say hi to his friends, we see them bump into each other - azula bows deeply, a clear apology, and aang accepts it. then we see azula runs off to go hang out with some friends before we follow aang inside as he encounters his own friends.

basically i’d rewrite a lot of s3. i’m dearly, dearly attached to s3, especially the second half, which has some of my favourite episodes of the entire season, but i think it’s flawed.

[multimetaverse]

DOAFP 1x08 Review

Matters of Diplomacy was a great and dramatic ep that exploded the tensions at the core of the show’s story lines. Let’s dig in!

It was a wise choice for ep 8 to be just a day later than ep 7 in universe as it allows the momentum and tensions built in ep 7 to carry forward to ep 8. We see different types of relationships being tested tonight: the platonic friendship between Elena and Sasha, the crush/platonic friendship between Bobby and Liam, and the romantic relationship between Gabi and Sam

Bobby’s story line took big strides forward tonight. I think by the end of this ep even the most casual of viewers will have clued in that Bobby is gay and likes Liam; nothing has technically been said aloud but that kind of jealousy is unmistakable. Bobby and Gabi’s story lines share some parallels tonight as it was Bobby and Gabi who made sure that Liam and Sam would be at the dance and the dinner and it was Bobby and Gabi who mess things up

For Bobby it has been all of a day since he had a moment with Liam and he’s still giddy over the tennis ball trophy Liam gave him and Elena’s talk about the dance being where true feelings are revealed clearly got him hoping that if he and Liam went to the dance that something may happen. And that talk with the married gay hairdresser gave him a bit of a confidence boost

Among the many cool things this show has done so far is to feature both adult and kid lgbtq characters and actually have them interact like we saw with Cami and Bobby in ep 7 and Bobby and the hairdresser in ep 8. It’s nice that Bobby has these in universe role models and if the show goes on long enough I’d expect Cami to help Bobby

I was shocked that Bobby lashing out included an actual physical fight. In many ways though it is true to the teenage experience where wild mood swings and poor decision making skills are common. We’ve seen Bobby get frustrated or upset before but never this angry and for such a chill guy as Bobby to get so aggressive really shows the depths of his feelings and confusion and disappointment

I also want to commend the show for writing Bobby as such an active character and for giving him an established hobby and supporting characters dedicated to his story line. On Andi Mack we saw Cyrus get jealous but he was never allowed to act on that jealousy like Bobby does and he was certainly never allowed to get angry even when it would have been the realistic response and he was usually a passive character. The fatal flaw in Cyrus’ story line was that he was never given a hobby or team or club of his own so when his sexuality story line was being heavily censored or when the writers were screwing things up there was nothing to fall back on. At least with Bobby they can always fall back on tennis related plots if things go downhill and that will make a world of difference in making Bobby seem like an actual main character

I’ve said from the start that I don’t think Cartero is mutual and the dance did nothing to change that. The symbolism of Liam not wanting to stop slow dancing with a girl and go off with Bobby isn’t subtle. Certainly Bobby’s anger was caused in part by being hit in the face with the fact that Liam is straight. I’ve been surprised that so many people in this fandom who have come from the Andi Mack fandom have been comparing Cartero and Tyrus when all the evidence points to Cartero being the Jyrus of doafp. As I said in an ask last week, the dance serves the same function for Bobby as seeing Jonah ask Andi out at the Space Otters dinner served for Cyrus

I think for doafp it would be wise to separate Bobby’s sexuality story line from his ship story line in any analysis of the show. Cyrus’ sexuality story line was much less censored than his ship story line with TJ and in part that’s because Disney had less of a problem showing Cyrus with a hopeless crush on a clearly straight boy then they did with showing him with a requited crush on another gay kid. And of course there was never any problem showing Cyrus dating Iris. There’s a reason why Cyrus could talk about his crush on Jonah several times but never once got to talk about his crush on TJ and why Cyrus could say the word gay when coming out to Jonah but Cyrus and TJ had to have a silent handhold when they came out to each other. I expect Bobby coming out to his friends and family and using the word gay will be much less censored and drawn out then it was on Andi Mack but I think Bobby actually dating a boy is going to be much harder for the show to depict if they’re renewed. Hell even Seblos which is the only canon gay ship on Disney + has had several of their scenes cut in two different eps

There’s a saying that history doesn’t repeat but it does rhyme and I can only hope that Brandon Severs Jr doesn’t become the Joshua Rush of the doafp fandom. It’s great that he ships Cartero and wants to promote the show but he’s not just another fan and can’t act like one. In the Andi Mack fandom there were lines being blurred and crossed by actors and writers and it made things messy and unpleasant and I really don’t want to see that happen with doafp. I’m sure Brandon means well but people will take his tweets and likes as hints for the show’s future and as of now the show itself and his tweets are telling very different stories It’s one thing to support Cartero but so far there’s no evidence that Liam is gay and there’s never been a bisexual character on Disney before so unless ep 10, which is the only Liam ep left, has an unprecedented twist all this hyping he’s doing will end up being somewhat baity

I’m glad Sasha stood up to Elena who has really been a bad friend to her lately. Of all the relationships that took a hit this ep it’s Elena and Sasha’s friendship that has been around the longest which makes this fight all the more painful to witness. It looks like this conflict will play out through their school trip to Tallahassee and I hope Elena really makes it up to Sasha somehow. Also interesting to see Jessica back in the mix; she’s making up with Sasha but not Elena while at the same time not having atoned for her ditching them in the first place. As always it’s refreshing to see this show so openly tackle the reality of puberty and not shy away from discussing periods and body hair 

Gabi and Sam truly are hetero goals. I like the focus on the adult problems we’re getting on the show. In some ways their conflict has the highest stakes and there’s not going to be an easy solution moving forward. For Gabi this must be a nightmare of sorts, watching Sam play the same role Robert did and worrying that it might end the same way. Sam was right in saying that he’s been going along with what Gabi wanted but that he’s a part of this relationship as well. We know Gabi flees Miami next week and drives Elena to Tallahassee so we’ll see if she decides that she’s ready to try and move forward with Sam or if she’s not ready

We learned tonight that Elena and Bobby don’t speak Spanish which suggests that Robert didn’t speak it either. We also learn that Robert was shyer than Sam (and I guess Bobby is named after Robert). Also get a nice little continuity nod with Francisca believing the same story about Iguanas in toilets that Liam’s grandmother believed 

I really like that Disney + lets characters get away with saying what the hell and pissed off, it’s so much more natural than having kids with squeaky clean vocabs

I really enjoy seeing Elena pine after Joey when he’s just this dweeby kid

Elena and Bobby have such a true to life sibling relationship

The Beluga whale song prank was a good one imo

Looking Ahead:

If you’re on twitter and instagram there’s already a campaign to get the show renewed and might as well start it now when there’s still some hope

Monyca seems to have clued in that Bobby cares more about Liam than her and I hope she dumps him. Setting aside his sexuality, Bobby just hasn’t been a very good boyfriend

Looks like the last two eps take places in a fairly short span as Elena is on the school trip for both eps. I’m very excited to see how all these plots resolve, especially Bobby’s. Hopefully the show gets renewed as it really is something special

[goodlifewrites]

I wanted to actually respond to this specific review by Celine Griffyndor:

“to me, Harry is a dick, why didn’t he say what he really thinks about the other boy? and also Harry agreed to go with a girl he didn’t even know and threw Ginny to the enemy, I thought Harry would try to talk to Neville to call Ginny. Harry doesn’t really look like James’ son, unfortunately, he has the profile of a withdrawn teenager (as well as growing up with his uncles). I really liked the fic proposal and the plot, congratulations on your creativity and writing. however, this Harry is an idiot and I also agree that he does not deserve Ginny, are you sure he has already kissed and been with other girls? why would Ginny be interested in him? It is quite contradictory. this last chapter left me very frustrated”

I think the review is fair, if a bit tactless.  But let’s go point by point:

“to me, Harry is a dick, why didn’t he say what he really thinks about the other boy?”

Of the ways one could describe Harry, I doubt “dick” would be one of them for not badmouthing someone else to another person. But a lot of people have issues with Harry not telling Ginny what he really thinks of Jean-Pierre.  For me, I wrestled with whether this felt true to canon Harry.  I thought about his relationship with Ginny, why they work so well together. And part of that is their understanding of each other’s needs.  This helps me answer the question of why Harry would refuse to badmouth Jean-Pierre to prevent them from dating. Because he knows it won’t work.  He knows how stubborn and independent Ginny is. Her deciding to be friends with him is an act of rebellion against her family, even if she agrees not to be so open about it.  Harry feels that telling Ginny how awful Jean-Pierre is and how she shouldn’t date him won’t actually work.  That Ginny will do what she wants to do, or do the opposite of what other’s tell her.  Putting down someone else won’t make Harry look good in Ginny’s eyes, he assumes.  Of course, there is also the fact that Harry has stubbornly decided nothing can ever happen with him and Ginny due to their families.  So he is doing the “noble” thing in not dissuading Ginny from dating Jean-Pierre.  Because in the end, he will never get to be with her anyway, so why fight every boy who wants to date her. Ginny, of course, is aware that Harry is being noble.  She isn’t so dense, so keep that in mind when she agrees to go with Jean-Pierre.  Ginny has her own game she is playing.

and also Harry agreed to go with a girl he didn’t even know and threw Ginny to the enemy,

Let’s try to avoid treating Ginny as if she has no agency.  Harry didn’t “throw her to the enemy.”  He did the noble thing and let Ginny make her own decision.

Harry doesn’t really look like James’ son, unfortunately, he has the profile of a withdrawn teenager

I’ll admit I’ve struggled with this a bit.  Harry does come across a bit too reserved and passive at times, even for my liking.  But I really try to consider the context of his upbringing and what canon shows.  Canon shows Harry does not love popularity.  And my Harry similarly shies away from the adulation.  But Harry in canon stands up to bullies and can be a tad confident and very sassy.  I feel like I did show this side of him in my fic. The big issue with Harry is that he is weighed down by his father’s expectations, yet also rebels against them.  So its a constant internal struggle between rising to those expectations and shunning them, which often causes indecision, and perhaps some passiveness.  But I would hardly call him “withdrawn.”  He has friends, he plays Quidditch, he celebrates his triwizard victory. He acts flirty with Ginny.  I don’t see him as withdrawn, just that he likes to keep his friend group small.  He still is suspicious of others due to his experiences at Beauxbaton and being a Potter.

Having said all that, I do think I can do a better job of showing Harry taking the initiative. Hopefully you all will appreciate that.

this Harry is an idiot and I also agree that he does not deserve Ginny, are you sure he has already kissed and been with other girls? why would Ginny be interested in him? It is quite contradictory.

Honestly, this is a very fair criticism.  I don’t think I’ve done enough to show why Ginny would like Harry.  In canon she likes his bravery, but to this point, I doubt he has shown much of it.  But Ginny and Harry clearly get along well and have a lot of fun together. Ginny also admires his quidditch skills and the risks he takes during the game. So perhaps he is a bit braver than even I give him credit for.  Maybe the fact that he isn’t gung ho about competing in the tournament?  But in canon he wasn’t really enthused either.  And in my fic, he did go up against a dragon with determination.  So actually, Harry has demonstrated a lot of bravery.  

I think what you mean, and others who have made a similar complaint, is that Harry is dumb for not pursuing Ginny, despite all the signs she is giving him. And to that, I say:  Yes, he is but its understandable.  He’s being noble and trying to do what’s right by his family. Harry deep down is aware that there is mutual attraction between him and Ginny.  He may be telling himself there isn’t, but that’s just self-preservation.  It’s easier for him to pretend she isn’t into him because then it makes his decision not to pursue her much easier to follow through on.  Also, consider in canon that Harry didn’t pursue Ginny during 6th year in large part because of Ron.  He didn’t want to jeopardize the friendship.  Is that really much different than what he’s doing now?  And all I will say is that in canon, Harry wasn’t going to do anything with Ginny until he got caught up in the moment and kissed her in the common room. Perhaps that will be another parallel???

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 14 - Candy Page 27

==>

Alright, back from a brief excursion.  I really, REALLY wanna fucking finish this.  I want to see ROXY UNZOMBIFIED goddamnit, or at least get a REASON for her zombification, even if it’s just some Dirk-like villain who just cliffhangers himself away like a fucking asshole.

Also, comment on John’s whole rant... I guess John DID kind of want to be important.  Or... well, not “important” per se, but rather at least impactful in his friends’ lives.  It feels like they’re all walking dead through their own unsolved problems, trying to put on a pretty face, and nothing he tries to do matters, even attempted kidnapping.  He feels as useless as Dirk THINKS he is, but he never really was.  Gosh, I wish he’d pulled off that absurd kidnapping.  Freeing people from this sort of thing is supposed to kind of be his jam?

Okay, reading the new page.

FUCK.  TEN YEARS???????

Pff, John’s kid and sorta!Vriska.  Yeah I can buy that.

Also I love how they type out “Harry Anderson” every single time as his full first goddamn name.

--God damnit, how is Gamzee still fucking things up ten years later?  Hasn’t someone considered killing him?

Karkat and Meenah, also unsurprising.  Too bad Dave has to die unsatisfied.  >:(

Hm... this sorta!Vriska also has a weird Capitalization Quirk for Important Words, huh?  --Oh right, Kanaya raised her.  That might do it.

Hm, eyepatch?

Alright, the world’s falling into chaos.  Did the world HAVE to fucking fall into chaos in BOTH TIMELINES where these supposedly-went-through-a-successful-journey heroes managed to eek out victory despite opposing reality’s greatest tyrant?  Pfuh.

--and right.  Alt!Callie reinforces the idea that even though this possibility “wasn’t canon” -- which... means Meat is?? D: -- that the lives within still matter when looked at within their own bubble.

JADE: while abstracted heavily, and fully freed from all forces of narrative gravity, these events still represent possibilities that slept within the hearts of all who reside here.

Mhmm, part of an extension of themselves, their uniqueness, their hopes and dreams and... whatever WHOEVER did to fuck Roxy over.  Jesus DICK what’s happened to her I need to know you’d better fix this.

And somewhere within that mess, John Egbert is the best man at Jade and Dave’s wedding. He lasts nearly two hours before he gets a ruinous case of the sniffles.

Maybe they worked it out into ALMOST full mutual love?  Even if Dave’s 70% gayness goes totally unsatisfied?  I mean, I can hope, right?  :(

Dammit, Jade, couldn’t you have done this properly?  :C

and everyone knows that John has lost his family to Jane Crocker.

What the shit?!???

What drove Roxy away was him being depressed and just an all-around huge wet blanket who was impossible to live with. John is totally ready to own the fact that he was a bad husband, but maybe not the fact that he was a bad enough husband to drive his wife to passively support a brewing genocidal dictatorship. She looks happier, though, whenever he’s caught sight of her behind Jane—Calliope faithfully at her side—in any of the propaganda broadcasts that Jane passes off as business press conferences. By the time Roxy finally cut things off between them, he hadn’t personally seen her smile in years.

WHAT.  THE.  SHIT.

WHY DID ROXY DO ALL THIS THEN.  WHY DID SHE OF ALL PEOPLE, ONE OF THE MOST FORCEFUL AND SMART AND COOL--- GUHHH SHE JUST VOIDED HER WILL JUST OUT OF OBLIGATION TO JOHN OR SOMETHING?????????? WHAT THE FUCK WHYYYYYYY

Characters choke.  Characters make bad decisions.  That’s fair.  Andrew’s said that before.  But John was VISIBLY RECOGNIZING HOW OUT OF CHARACTER ROXY WAS ACTING.  WHYYYYYYYYY DID IT HAPPEN, WHY SUDDENLY DECADES OF MISHANDLED RELATIONSHIP WITH ABSOLUTELY NOBODY POINTING OUT THE OBVIOUS WHAT THE FUCK.  AND ROXY WAS THE ONE WHO STARTED IT AND PUSHED INTO JOHN UNTIL HE ACCEPTED.  WHY.

WHY.

Read.  Calm down.  Read.  There had better be.  A FUCKING.  ANSWER.

Hi military rebellion leader Karkat.

KARKAT: OH MY GOD JOHN, STOP BEING SO FUCKING PATHETIC FOR JUST A MINUTE. COULD YOU DO THAT FOR ME? JOHN: i don’t know. that’s a pretty big favor you’re asking me there, karkat.

heheh

JOHN: i dunno. it doesn’t seem responsible, really... to dedicate my life to something so important when i’m in a place where i can’t even find the energy to think that getting out of bed in the morning is “important.”

Depression stuff, yeah.

John really needs a psychologist who isn’t just Rose.

pff, yifftrain.

That’s how the years pass. Faster and faster the longer it goes. 

What.  The.  Fuck.

We’re not going to get any answers are we.  Roxy just acted out of character for no reason, didn’t she.  This is-- no, Andrew’s too GOOD at this for that to-- I mean--  is there a big answer he’s just not telling us-- FUCK!!!!  D:

AAAAAAAA

This sucks.  This sucks this sucks this SUCKS.  But I’ll keep reading.  I have to know.  If I’m ever going to be able to stand, like, i dunno... homestuck rp i guess? i should probably keep reading.  and hope i recover.  eventually.

But that’s only part of it. Above this Earth, the dead cherub is still meditating, waiting for the day when she can have her own heroic apotheosis. Waiting for the day when she can confront the one she calls the Prince. And on this Earth, John is just waiting for the day that feeling finally stops. That feeling that he’s still waiting for something, and the even worse feeling that years ago, he missed his only chance to put an end to it. If you stand on a very high hill at dawn, you can watch your shadow move in an arc around you.

Yeah, reinforcing that John would be happier in the timeline where he did something and -- at least temporarily, since there’s hope of future revival -- “died” because of it, even if he wasn’t clear on why what he was trying to do even really mattered in the whole scheme of things.

...which is pretty weird when you consider the ending of Homestuck didn’t try to express that messa-- no, wait.  I guess it did?

Yes, everyone went to the post-victory planet to live out indefinite lives, but there WAS still the stage play.  Proving that John, at least, WOULD eventually step outside the happy ending to instead risk his life doing something important.  They earned both possibilities, really, to choose from at their will.

...Aren’t there another dozen pages or so left in this Candy segment, though??  Are we gonna follow their kids or something?

==>

...Okay so stuff still needs to happen here, plotways.  Good.  I think.

A flash above the clouds catches John’s attention: another ghost, falling down from wherever it is they come from. John follows after the light with an exhausted sigh. The novelty of dead trolls falling from the sky has really worn off over the years. But he might as well go warn the new arrival that they’ve landed in the middle of an imminent warzone. He sets down at the edge of the crater and peers through the smoke.

He recognizes the ghost immediately, because he sees a younger version of her almost every day.

JOHN: vriska?

Vriska’s face snaps up, eyes blazing. Eyes. Actual eyes, with expression, color, pupils, and everything.

JOHN: wait. you’re... JOHN: alive??

PFFFFFFhahahahah!

That’s pretty hilarious.  Vriska fell into the singularity and popped out here.

...Yeah, you can’t stand having missed the most “important” bit, can you.  Too bad.  You didn’t have the spotlight in the end.

==>

JADE: it is the one i have been waiting for all these years. JADE: we have run along parallel lines for what may as well be eternity, but my gravitational well has finally ensnared him. JADE: and now he is due to fall into this world.

Uhh, who?  Davebot or something, from the postscript?  Couldn’t be Gamzee, unless it’s, like... a different Gamzee.

“Chaos war”?  That’s a dramatic title.

==>

Hmm, reading reading...

Will Dad’s passing knock any sense into you?  Probably not.

...yeah, it wasn’t going to be that easy, was it?

Of course.  Of course Dad died saving the President.

Although, she’s going to assign fault to Karkat and then want to start a full bloody war over it, so, the opposite of having sense knocked into her then.

JANE: UGH! JANE: That... that fool!! JANE: I can’t believe that he would do this! JANE: How could he do this to me!?! JAKE: Janey... JANE: The human president could be anyone! JANE: My dad can’t be anyone but him!

Jane, you’ve become a real asshole.  :(

...Fuck you Gamzee.

GAMZEE: hEy. GAMZEE: Do YoU tHiNk ThAt MiGhT bE a BiT mOtHeRfUcKinG xEnOpHoBiC?

PFFFFHAHAHAHAHAAHAHhhh oh my GOD :’D

JANE: What? You think appealing to me with your disgusting little addiction is going to sway me?

Oh Jesus Christ that’s horrifying.  THAT’s what’s been going on.  I don’t want to visualize it, dear lord.

==>

Hahahah, catching Vriska up.  She’s practically curling up in a ball like Squidward in future shock.

PFFF PUTTING PARENS AROUND HER NAME SHE CAN’T STAND BEING IRRELEVANTIZED LIKE THAT

JOHN: i was supposed to go fight lord english, but i didn’t. so now we’ve gone beyond, like, the event horizon of canon. (VRISKA): What the fuck does that even MEAN????????

Wait, shouldn’t YOU know exactly what that means, Vriska?  Like, better than most people at least?

JOHN: all i know is that all of this is my fault.

:(

JOHN: it’s been turning around in my head like this for a while. i thought... JOHN: why does everything here fucking SUCK so much? JOHN: how the hell did we even make it from point A to point festering clusterfuck? JOHN: it doesn’t follow any kind of logic i understand, or any sort of basic sense i have about who we are as people... JOHN: and why? why have we all ended up so unhappy and... twisted up?

Yeah, a BUNCH of people have acted really goddamn out of character and it’s unclear why.

JOHN: i got everything i wanted. everyone got what they— JOHN: what i thought they wanted. JOHN: and that’s just it, isn’t it? JOHN: the more i think about it, i’m the only factor that matters to anything.

--What?!?  No!!!  You could SEE that this wasn’t what you thought they wanted right from the get-go.  It couldn’t have been YOUR imagination that this realm of alternative possibility was drawn from, could it?  D:

JOHN: whatever i did, or didn’t do, just... destroyed reality’s ability to, like, substantiate itself, or whatever. JOHN: like there’s a bug in the operating system of whatever force in this world that regulates cause and effect. JOHN: everything’s been unraveling. nothing that happens makes sense anymore. JOHN: and now i’m the only person out here who’s even real at all! JOHN: hahahaha.

That’s certainly an idea at least, that people started acting out of character as we went further from “canon”.  In fact, it’s kind of a slam at fanfics, maybe?  Acknowledging that they distort the characters by understanding them in different ways, sometimes, and.. hm.

(VRISKA): Hahahahahahahaha... Wow, I’ve never seen a guy get his 8ulge all the way down his own swallow chute 8efore! JOHN: wait, what? (VRISKA): Good fuck. Do you actually think reality gives that much of a shit a8out you? (VRISKA): Get real, Eg8ert. (VRISKA): It’s not like you’re me. JOHN: ok, well. JOHN: that’s fair i guess.

Heheheh.  ...Yeah, Vriska might pep talk him out of this self-deprecating theory of his.  Besides, I mean... is that the ONLY cause for this whole fucking situation?  That Roxy’s will got eroded to nothing arbitrarily either at random in a glitching non-canon timeline or because John kind of maybe thought something was going to happen and reality decided to run with it??

...heheh, “batterpanzers”.

I’m pretty sure caring what “c8non” is supposed to be is EXACTLY the thing you’re freaking out about, Vriska, whether you realize it or not.

Oooh, Gamzee.  Do we get to see Vriska kill him?

Yeaaah... redemption ain’t for THIS sp8der.  The ghost version of Vriska got the closest thing to redemption she’ll ever get; THIS version never learned any damn lessons and is not going to accept that she ever NEEDS to.  Also, you said her name in relevance-reducing parentheses.  Bad move.

==>

Yaaaay here’s the bunch of indigo blood we were promised!! :D

Where’s the nudity though? Maybe that’s coming.

He yowls as if he had actual testicles to be mauled, and for all anyone knows, maybe he really does.

It’s reassuring to see that while Andrew is more than willing to give us WAY too much genital detail in some cases throughout this epilogue, he still knows how to deftly exploit the parts of anatomy that still AREN’T explicitly characterized and remain intentionally vague for their impactful resulting humor.  :)

She lunges at Gamzee’s catastrophic face lips-first, and practically dives into his mouth, ramming her tongue into his

NOOO FUCK HE WAS ABOUT TO DIE AAAAAA D’:

FUCK  :(

Okay, back on to anything but this.

==>

Oh shit, double Vriska.  This might be bad.

...Phew.  Nice save, John.

JOHN: ha ha. yeah, right. because this is real life, right? JOHN: i guess reading narrative relevance into a bunch of dumb and totally random events is kind of lame and childish. ROSE: No, that isn’t what I meant at all. ROSE: By all means, apply a narrative to our lives. Up until a certain point, it would have been perfectly accurate to do so. ROSE: But not anymore. JOHN: because... it’s not canon, right? ROSE: Do you remember what I told you years ago? About the three pillars of canon?

Wuh-oh.

ROSE: As I explained to you on that morning sixteen years ago, there are three critical features of canon: essentiality, relevance, and truth. JOHN: yeah. ROSE: We have been untethered from the mooring of “truth” for some time now. ROSE: So while we, in our subjective experiences of conscious perception, feel in this moment that we have known each other for a very long time, technically it’s not true at all.

...Okay.  Okay.

So.  Were, like.

Roxy and Calliope affected by the, like... “untruth wave” of his choice not to go the hardest, because he made it in their vicinity?  And that turned Roxy into a hypnozombie with minimal apparent free will? :C

...Oh wow.  She’s thanking John that she got a chance to be happy in this side timeline, even if so many other people suffered.  Because of the fucking hell Dirk was about to unleash on her in the Meat timeline.  Fuck.

ROSE: In the silly wizard story I wrote when I was a child, ROSE: The realm most comparable to heaven existed in a state of subliminal conditionality, dependent on the inscience of the individual experiencing it. ROSE: Which is to say that it would cease to exist the moment you realized what it was. ROSE: And so, those with knowledge could never truly be happy.

Oh wow, huh.  Yeah, knowing you’re just in a fanfic kind of screws your appreciation for life around you, huh.  So John got fucked over a bit by his metatextual awareness.  :(

And... Rose was, like, cut off by his choice from her own metatextual awakening, maybe?  Hence her ability to appreciate a life somewhere disconnected from anything “canon”?

ROSE: But that isn’t me anymore. ROSE: I am blind against the veil of this world. ROSE: It’s all ambrosia to me. ROSE: I don’t care if it’s not true. I care even less if it’s not canon. ROSE: I have a beautiful wife who I love more than I thought possible, and a daughter who I am immeasurably proud of. ROSE: It can all be senseless, ephemeral noise that dissolves in the void. A whisper swept up by the wind before it’s uttered. ROSE: I’m still grateful to have felt this way.

:’)

Alright, this might be a pretty good way of accepting their potential happiness in different timelines as a potential substitute for Dirk’s mess.  I’m not sure HOW well I’ll be able to internalize it to stop the stomach cramps, but we’ll see.

We still have a little bit more left, though.  Next post.