#like no one really associates the US with war on part with our media but the image we project

[whimsycore]

We need to stop normalizing war and calamity with specific countries and regions. When we do that it causes massive lack of care from people outside of these circles because they “expect” violence and suffering. When we think about countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Middle Eastern and African countries because of the association with war, death, and poverty people in the west do not jump to help. It’s intolerance and apathy at its core. Remember this when you watch the news. None of this is normal. Imagine if this was your family.

[charmwasjess]

It’s curious to me to see fans (and more importantly creators) talk about Jedi critical views as partly sourced from their own damaging experiences with religious institutions. I’ve been thinking a lot about this since The Acolyte, and asking myself why, as a person with a dump truck load of reeking religious trauma in my history, I have such good associations with the idea of the Jedi - specifically with them as a faith-based institution. 

Note: These are my reflections based on my experiences with my specific religious community in a time and a place. This is not an attack on faith groups more broadly, nor an argument people are wrong for not liking or liking the Jedi based on their own religious experiences. I’m just sharing about my life. 

My trauma, specifically, so be nice to me.

Until the age of 17, I was raised in a corrupt, fundamentalist evangelical institution which controlled every aspect of my development: church, my social life, and my education. When I say corrupt, I’m not throwing words around lightly. I mean leaders in my community ended up being prosecuted and my “school” got ultimately shut down. 

I’ve found it often easier to be funny about this period of my life, to tell sarcastic stories about the ridiculousness of my schooling: the weekly literal 9 hours of Bible classes, or later, my college friends needing to teach me basics so I wouldn’t fail rudimentary science courses because “the Bible was our science textbook” for my entire education. Easier to laugh than to acknowledge the fact that for most of my life, I was stuck in an abusive, evil cult that attempted to ingrain misogyny, xenophobia, and homophobia, and taught me lies about basic history and science.

During that time, the prequel films came out. I got into Star Wars, particularly the Jedi stories. Okay, I was obsessed, with a kind of frenzied desperation. I saw the Jedi Order as the antithesis of my own toxic community rather than a reflection of it. While I was living in a repressive, rule-based culture that sought to control every smallest detail of my life and my choices didn’t matter, I saw the Jedi Order as a route of imaginary escapism, partially because of the strong contrast between the depiction of Jedi faith and my own community.

I remember needing to read a few forbidden secular books (aka classic literature) for my senior year literature college prep course. (The AP test was used by colleges, not controlled by my school, so it had things on it I wasn't allowed to read.) I was only allowed access to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment because a school board member had gone through every copy the school had and used a sharpie to mark out any word, or in fact, any idea that she found personally problematic to the faith. I read that book like a blackout poem. 

The difference between that kind of suppression and control, and Palpatine’s sneering implication of the Jedi Order keeping secrets, “It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you,” felt like night and day. 

Even the Jedi concept of chosen celibacy felt quite different from the enforced abstinence which would end only when my sexual autonomy would be turned over to a future husband for his use. Such depictions of chosen celibacy (and later, asexuality, though thankfully I was out of the community by the time they got ahold of that one) were condemned as a perversion of God’s intended purpose for the body, no different from the dreaded homosexuality or masturbation.

And let me tell you, contrary to sympathizing with a fictional depiction of a like-mindedly-restrictive faith group, the leaders in my church really hated the concept of the Jedi. Partially, this was part of a larger rejection of fantasy media - the decade of hyperpopular Harry Potter saturation and a growing perception among my religious authorities that normalizing magic and witchcraft and other gods, and engaging with such genre of fiction would offend the jealous real-life higher power we served. Those of you who knew me back then can go back to my old teen account and see me lowercasing the word to “force” lest I offend the one true God.

But I mean the theology of it, too. It’s hard to overstate how popular and culturally present the prequel trilogies were when I was growing up. I absolutely sat through sermons that critically referenced Star Wars as anti-Christian and documented the differences. I was preteen and teenager in this era - youth messages were targeted around media that my age group consumed. Star Wars was everywhere: on cereal covers, on pizza boxes, on the back of Pepsi cans. 

I think another thing that’s sometimes forgotten is how political the prequel trilogies were at the time. Attack of the Clones came out on the onset of the Iraq War and the Patriot act - Palpatine’s assumption of emergency powers in a time of orchestrated “crisis” felt deeply relevant and deliberate. My community was right-wing conservative, the evangelical base that would evolve into the Christofacist Trump alt-right. For that reason, it was also anathema.

I think most importantly, when my access to secular peers was entirely restricted, I was able to make friends online who also loved the Jedi Order. That was such a strong antidote for both the ignorance about the world that I was deliberately taught, and the teenage loneliness that my church-school institution weaponized. None of that has anything to do with the depictions of Jedi faith as restrictive or not, but it feels significant. It was the love of a story that brought me community, when the other story that might’ve brought me community came with a barbed wire fence around my personal autonomy and very identity.* 

I hope I don’t sound like I’m attacking people who DO have a gut reaction against the Jedi because of religious trauma. (Or indeed people who are Christian - obviously my community was an incredibly fucked up outlier.) Really, we’re the same people, dealing with the same issues in different ways. I’ve healed a lot since I was a miserable thirteen year old taking solace in my Star Wars books and fanfics, but there are still some religious-affiliated things I just need to avoid - I don’t enjoy documentaries about church cults ala Under the Banner of Heaven, or stories like The Handmaids Tale. I don’t judge anyone for taking a look at a series centering around a religious order and needing to nope out of that part. 

But I do wish Star Wars creators weren’t working through their own issues by using the Jedi Order as their avatar for all religious institutional evil, because to some of us, it was, and remains, a very healing space for exactly that kind of damage.

*Ironically, my cluelessness about what being queer actually meant really shielded me from a lot of the homophobia. I wasn’t one of those "evil gays"; I just, unrelatedly, wanted to fuck girls as well as guys.

[my-castles-crumbling]

Hi! Argentinian again

I need to make a little bit of context: Our public college is free for students. You still paid for copies, textbooks and everything you need, but going to class and receiving your degree is free. Also we don’t have college housing (I don’t really know how it’s called bc it’s not a reality in my life), you must have your own place to live.

Update: almost all public college are in a type of strike where the students occupied the university building as a protest. Right now we have occupied 66 around the country. Also some nationals high schools are in this strike too.

Right now our teachers are making 150usd per month, while the basic you need to not be homeless it’s around 115 usd per month, and to not be poor it’s 305 usd (all this per person, not family)

So the students started the strike for our teachers. Right now my best friend it’s one of the students occupying the building and my girlfriend it’s having classes in this situation. Classes take place in the street, so anyone could go to listen. Right now we are in exams times so they are taken it literally at the street or without power in the classroom. (Because there ir not enough money to paid the bills). I’m not studying for personal issues, but if I was studying, I would be in strike too.

The police legally can’t intervene at college, but they are doing it anyway on some ones.

But this is not the only issue. I don’t know what interest you have, but considering that we are in marauders fandom I think that it’s an interesting moment to watch because it’s kinda like Voldemort ideas arising.

Milei is the president, so it’s Voldemort.

The order of phoenix could be parallel with former president Cristina and their followers (Kirchneristas), considerating that Dumbledore it’s not a saint. A lot of people hates her and the movement. This election was like in your election the republicans didn’t have a decent option and someone else more extreme right wing than Trump emerged and promise to be the solution to end the democrats (that we could associate more with the Kirchnerismo). So all the right wing parties, republicans and majority of IDK but I don’t want the K with power again choose him and everything go to hell.

We have more than a 100% Interannual inflation. Basically, some cookies last year cost $570 and now $1780 (in Argentinian pesos) (I have a ticket bc I eat a lot of this cookies). But salaries such as teachers' salaries remain the same.

Milei takes ‘Kirchnerista’ as a slur, and everyone who disagrees with him gets called that (even if they’re not at all).

Also he literally said that he admires Margaret Thatcher. In our country she is really hated. Context: in 1982 we went to war with UK for the Malvinas Islands. These islands are in our territory and we claim them as our own since independence, but they were invaded by UK in 1833 when they tried to colonize us (after our independence from Spain). The UN has been debating for years that they should give them back, but the UK has a veto right.

The islands itself are not the main issue: in this war our soldiers tended to be between 16 and 20 years old, and 649 died in combat, and more committed suicide in the following years, mainly due to the lack of government support post war.

Today still a sensible topic, as so much alive people remember those times or lost someone loved, so declaring that you idolise Thatcher that was the Prime Minister it’s not kind.

But the most important part: he closed the national public news agency, which was the regulator for the news about their showing reality and not false information. So we really don’t know what it’s happening if someone doesn’t tell us. For example, some news channels are saying that all strikes are over and that college it’s working normally, but if you go to them this is not true at all. So it’s so messed up because we are blind on our own. If I hadn’t had people that I love in the strike and social media, I wouldn’t have known.

So yes, you could watch in real time why people don’t fight for their rights. I would said freedom, but Milei brand that words.

So this is our life now. I really hope you have better luck with the elections.

Wow. Honestly, it's terrifying to hear about so many countries struggling with such horrible things, and like...it's just..nobody is helping each other. I do have to say though, as a teacher, it's amazing that students are striking for teachers. Like...I can't imagine my students doing that.

I'm wishing you luck as well, and please let me know what I can do to help <3

[estrophore]

Signalis Post (barely coherent thought vomit)

So I finished signalis on Monday and i think ive just about recovered enough for me to make a gush post about it on tumblr dot com, which i think i have to do cause i dont think any other game has really hit me as hard as this one. Spoilers obvs.

Being pre-transion, with that associated depression and closing off from oneself, ive always found it difficult to get out my feelings, even in private with just myself, and yet signalis has filled me throughout with its beautiful romantic melancholy and left me genuinely sobbing for the gay robot and her space girlfriend (almost worried that if id played this game on estrogen it might actually have just killed me on the spot). the only other times i can think of where i really cried were playing We Know The Devil near the beginning of the year, which really fkin hit the part of me that struggles to accept myself, and that time i rewatched the last episode of she-ra after reading the ‘Word War Etheria’ fanfic, which brings the characters so much more to life i fell for them all over again.

Signalis is a game that calls back to a lot of classic horror like resident evil and silent hill, which i havent got round to playing any of yet, but i think nostalgia works both ways sometimes and i’ll be playing them sooner now. sometimes horror gets stereotyped as all death and violence, some games fill themselves with skulls and corpses, and big ugly monsters and basically shout ‘DEATH!’ in your face repeatedly and it all just comes off as a bit garish and ridiculous and not actually very scary really. Signalis sits at the other end of that scale (with some of my other fav horror games like soma, cry of fear) where its environs are most usually just… quiet. Still. Muffled. Sad. just as often as theres tension or creeping fear because of this i find theres a strange kind of comfort too. Maybe its just that in most other genres of games theres so much of music, UI elements, pickups and interactibles with vibrant design. Here, theres room for your mind to just occupy the space. A soft fog. A dimly lit room. An empty train. Snow out a window. Liminal spaces that dont expect anything from you.

Signalis is a game thats just simply, unapologetically gay, and i dont think i would have been quite so invested in Elster and Ariane’s relationship if they were a straight couple. Its why representation is important, if art’s way for us to explore our emotions then its important to have media that we can relate to. Even Adler’s role isnt typically masculine. Our replika characters are manufactured, designed for certain roles in the base. Notes from the tough Stars and Storchs in the shooting range, the dollish Eules with the fairy lights and music player in the dorm. I couldnt help but think of groups of Eules sat around chatting, together, and im yearning for that feeling of togetherness, of understanding a friend that closely. I somehow missed the couple in the mineshaft (next playthough, ill find you v_v ). Despite the harshness of life in the Eusan nation (especially for the gestalts) the characters in it are defined by their feelings of belonging and hope. With the obvious parallels to east germany, i think of posters of cosmonauts and space travel from the time. Propaganda, sure but also made with the genuine belief in something greater. When the events of the game take this away, well, we find the last Kolibri, whod rather lose herself than lose her [ah. Im not sure theres a word here to properly describe the relationship they embody]. Its a game defined by loneliness.

We dont lie up at night scared by some corrupted android. We arent stuck with horror at the flesh everywhere, not on its own. We lie awake thinking about Elster and Ariane’s love for each other, the horror of their decline, the futility of trying to hold on forever. Its existential horror done perfectly. It shows an ending postponed and stretched far beyond its limits, and so squarely reminds you that you do, in fact, have to die one day. You’ll break down. One day you’ll say your last words to the people you love and you wont even know you have. Ariane’s final few diaries arrive with the full force of the narrative behind it, like a spear through my heart. For the record, I got the promise ending. Im still sad. It's a game about raging desperately against an unfair ending. I might think about this game for the rest of my life. I would sincerely say its an artistic masterpiece, by the sure definition of video games as art.

I like that the story leaves a lot open and abstract. I think it makes the emotional themes takes centre stage more. And i havent had nearly enough time to sift through it and come up with my own takes, we’ll need a few more playthroughs for that. And theres so much more to say that cant go in just these few paragraphs! Signalis is a game about two girls who had to run away from everything to find someone they belonged with. The universe may be cold and bleak, but you have to try, you might just find something beautiful, even if it doesnt last forever. I think if anything, we should all have the chance to find love and happiness like that, and we shouldnt have abandon a world that doesnt work for us to do it.

[cyborg-squid]

saw a video thumbnail, with a picture of Molar Boatwork Ishmael of course cause it's talking about Vellmori's harassment and departure, wih the text "Gender War" over it

like. no. it's no "Gender War" (and it's not about Molar!Ishmael not being "fanservice" enough either), it's violent misogyny pure and simple. and while these Korean instances of it (dating back to well before PMoon was involved) are super shocking to some of us because it may be the first we've heard of the situation over there, it's not like a unique thing either. there's shit like this all over the globe, it's not uniquely Korean or Chinese (see the Black Myth Wukong stuff) or anywhere else, some people are just noticing it in those places when it affects the media (mostly games) from there they consume, but you can find it here in America or in the UK or across Europe, we just tend to be more desensitized to it in our 'homes'. cuz the PMoon thing led me to looking up some of the history prior, and wow, the levels of misogyny in Korea are super high and super scary! and then you can go look at another country, and maybe the forms it takes are different cuz of socio/political/economic/cultural/etc reasons and the ways it manifests may look different, but it's scary bad there too! and you remember that misogyny is a global force that is nowhere near done being fought.

that was a long digression. but anyway it makes me mad when people say that the PMoon situation was part of a "Gender War" when it really was. not. One, things in Korea is not a "War" it is feminists getting beat into the ground (metaphorically and literally) at any sign of resistance and using alternative methods to push back, that is not a "War". and Two. well i almost said that, in the case of the PMoon stuff, misogynist "fans" were jumping at shadows or seeing things where there was none, but that's not the right way to put it actually. it's that some men will find any excuse to use violence against women (and those who associate themselves with them) and if they can't find a "reason", they will make one. because there was no "reason" to go after Vellmori and PMoon, and hell it's even unlikely that any of them knew enough about her to dislike her as a person, and it was not like she was a female in a position of power they were striking at yadda yadda, but they were able to take out their hate for women as a whole on her because she was one they were able to reach, and almost wholesale fabricated "justification" for doing so.

and while i'm willing to cut PMoon a lot of slack, and I truly believe their views and intents are in no ways aligned with the harassers, they really really fucked up with how they handled things. for now i believe what they said about Vell leaving voluntarily, I don't think she was 'fired' and I imagine being on the receiving end of such harassment, specifically because she is more 'visible' as one of PM's artists, would make anyone inclined to leave a position. but then I can also imagine that a legal/PR department/whoever at PM breathed a sigh of relief when she did because "Whew, she's leaving voluntarily, saves us the trouble of firing her". not that they were planning too, idk who knows, but her leaving on her own (IF! IF that is what happened) removes that option from the table. but then any goodwill they could have earned by not!firing goes out the window with their vague statements and long delays and threatening legal action against some fans who just wanted the truth. like i said, i don't think PM was a bad faith actor in this or trying to acquiesce to harasser's demands, i am willing to chalk some of their response up to just. idiot management in a time of crisis, bumbling and focused on appearances but not actively malicious, which is again understandable, but still a really fuckin bad look. and i guess while leaping to Vell's defense and really pushing back against the misogyny would have been the right thing to do, it probably woulda made the harasser crowd even more mad at them, and would confuse more normal fans who hadn't heard about what was happening (which explains a lot of PMoons long silences, "If people don't know, why bring it up?". Roosterteeth did a lot of the same thing and, i mean, it's not a dumb move. just a shitty one)

Anyway. It's not a "Gender War", it makes me mad when people call it that, especially when people Youtubers are only talking about it in respect to their/our vidya games. It is misogyny and violence.

[yukipri]

Following from your tags on the Galidraan post, there's actually a canon(-ish) source that states that the Darksabre was chosen by VIZSLA as their symbol of the Mand'alor: Tor Vizsla's in-universe Ba'jurne Kyr'tsad Mando'ad, which is included at the end of the real-world book, The Bounty Hunter Code. Direct quote is: "To ensure we would be led by the most powerful, we decreed that any could challenge the Secret Mand'alor for leadership of Death Watch. And, as our symbol of authority, we chose the Darksaber, an ancient weapon liberated from the Jedi long ago." (Please ignore my editing in the image.)

(The whole text of the Ba'jure Kyr'tsad Mando'ad is on google sites: https://sites.google.com/view/bajurne-kyrtsad-mandoad/title-page)

Yep, I have that book, it's actually a really fun reference, all the books in that series are! <3

But yup, see, this is another part where I see how Legends doesn't quite match up with current canon. The info in this book is Legends, specifically Legends as published in 2013. But in New Canon, given how the Darksaber is treated in Rebels and now in the Mandalorian, I feel like it being solely the symbol of "the Secret Mand'alor" is kinda BS—it's much more treated as the symbol of ALL of Mandalore.

Of course, one could interpret all of this through the lens that Clan Wren is part of House Vizsla so all of Sabine's story is biased (I'm still not happy they made that association...), and Bo-Katan used to serve Pre so of course she's got Vizsla bias, and Din was rescued by Death Watch + Paz is in his covert so presumably his covert also has strong Vizsla/Death Watch bias.

New canon is so incredibly Vizsla/Death-Watch centric, perhaps "Vizsla's Mand'alor" is the only Mand'alor that matters anymore. Which. Ugh. But kinda feels that way.

Anyway, while it isn't based on anything official, I do feel like if the Darksaber existed when Open Seasons was written, there might have been some more history with it there. Because keep in mind, even though they're both Legends, Open Seasons still predates the Code book by over a decade, and much of Legends isn't consistent.

My own take is that IF we go by the premise that the Darksaber is the symbol of the rightful leader of all of Mandalore and NOT just Death Watch, then it should make sense that at different points of time between the Darksaber becoming the symbol and the "present," it would have passed between different clans, especially since modern Death Watch is an extremist terrorist organization that has not been depicted as being the rightful anything tbh.

Therefore to me, the Darksaber is more interesting if it's a neutral symbol planetary leadership, which may have originated from Tarre Vizsla, someone who is not synonymous with Death Watch of the Clone Wars~onwards eras. Vizsla may claim that it's only a symbol of them and their Mand'alor, but again then that makes a distinction between that and a leader who unifies all of Mandalore.

It's more interesting if Jaster and Jango once had the Darksaber and were recognized as leaders, and perhaps that too was part of why Tor Vizsla was so determined to take them down, if he felt they were unfit to wield it. His underhanded tactics in getting rid of them would then mean that he didn't win the saber in fair combat, which means that when Pre presumably inherited it, its current presence in his family isn't rightful in the first place, and perhaps he never knew. That then leads to the question of whether any current claim to the Darksaber is legitimate if the last true wielder was taken down by Vizsla manipulating Jedi from the shadows, never lifting a finger himself. That kind of moral debate of honor, of understanding the messy past of Mandalore...that kind of juicy drama, I am all for.

To be clear, I'm biased, and none of the above is me saying "this is the right way to interpret this media." This is just how I, personally, am choosing to internalize it. I don't like Death Watch and don't think they have been depicted as honorable in ANY media they're in. It does not make any narrative sense, at least to me, to put them on a weird pedestal while stripping Boba, Jango, Jaster, and the other True Mandalorians of all historical and cultural relevance. IF the Darksaber is a symbol solely of Vizsla leadership, then I cannot imagine WHY anyone would want to make it into a cool fun symbol to build a franchise around and give to a hero character. So I'm hoping that canon will eventually lean a bit towards my personal interpretation, even though I have little faith that it will.

If it doesn't, eh, that's alright! I'm more than capable of making my own lil stories and entertaining myself!

Anyway, this response went a bit longer than I expected but yeah, those are my thoughts on the Darksaber and how I've personally chosen to combine Legends + New Canon!

❀ ❀ Send YukiPri an Ask! ❀ ❀

[rimeiii]

People were posting resemblances between the different representations of the WHB demons in other media a while back and let me introduce to you the fucker (affectionate) that is GBF Belial. And I implore you to search up Parade's Lust and listen to the song in its entirety. It's a great song and encapsulates Belial perfectly (though I still greatly prefer Paradise Lost over it).

Dude's literally one of my faves in GBF despite him being an antagonist, it's just his raid battle is annoying. And this may have been a snippet from a convo back when his raid first dropped but our sentiments regarding said raid battle remains the same.

Also am I the only one who finds it so unbelievably weird that WHB's Beelzebub has had no overt references to his title as the Lord of the Flies (unless I'm missing something)? One of SMT's renditions of Bubs is a giant fly, and even GBF's has a skill called 'Black Flies' in his raid...

As an aside I love how the Belial trailer in GBVS has a clip of him getting his ass handed to him by Bubs. It really reflects their current relationship; they were forced allies back in What Makes the Sky Blue 2: Paradise Lost, with Belial still being wholly loyal to Lucilius, whose goals (return the world to nothing) are at ends with Beelzebub's goals (take over the entire world).

Also no mention of the entire Fallen race in SMT? They're all demons from the Ars Goetia, and the way some of these demons are so different is quite intriguing I'm ngl. Off the top of my head:

Naberius, or Nebiros, is a necromancer who has one of the most bullshit mechanics in Devil Survivor 2, where he'll continuously revive himself in the place of any living demon teams. In the SMT multiverse, he, with Belial, is responsible for turning Alice into a Fiend by infusing her with demonic magic, causing the human to be driven insane before dying and finally becoming the Fiend she is known for today. All because she wanted to have friends.

Belial is also in SMT! And is so fucking annoying to deal with in Devil Survivor, because he has an NPC stuck in a ring of fire that you have to heal continuously, because she takes damage every turn and her dying is a lose condition. He is a participant of the War of Bel, an ongoing war between the Bel demons to prove themselves worthy to Babel, making them the King of Bel and by extension the king of the demons. He fights the MC as he is the reincarnation of Abel and also part of the War after slaying Beldr. Another fun fact about Belial and Nebiros: in at least one SMT title, the fusion recipe for Alice is Nebiros and Belial, referencing their role in turning Alice into the Fiend we know today.

Eligos, or Eligor, is often an early to midgame demon who specializes in physical skills. He often takes the form of an armored humanoid riding a horse.

Dantalian, or Dantalion, is portrayed as a scholar with many heads, holding a large book. Oftentimes a magic-oriented demon.

Astaroth carried me in midgame SMT Devil Survivor as an early Tyrant demon aha. MP recovery is always nice lmao. He's depicted as a naked, blonde man riding a giant snake.

Morax, in Strange Journey, is the boss of Sector Antlia, the first dungeon of the game. He has a skill called Gehenna, which is a partywide chance to inflict Fear. He's easy as long as you can use ice magic - I fused Apsaras and had other Law demons like Archangel or Hamsa for co-op attacks. Depicted as a humanoid with a bull for a head, he believes humanity's true nature is one of eternal conflict and conquest, reflected in how the latter half of Antlia is a war-torn battlefield.

For the demon kings in SMT, given their associations with the Seven Deadly Sins, they do have their own depictions. The two that I'm most familiar with (and has the largest roles across multiple entries) are Satan and Beelzebub - the latter of which I briefly touched upon earlier. So let's talk Satan first!

Satan, in the SMT multiverse, is on the side of Law, the side associated with angels. As a result, he and Lucifer (the usual Chaos route representative) absolutely detest each other. This is particularly obvious in SMT 2, where he is YHVH's right-hand man and a foe in the Chaos and Neutral routes. Interesting to note is that he betrays YHVH upon realizing His machinations wiped out all life on Earth, which happens on the Law path.

Yeah, the SMT multiverse is kinda fucked up like that. There's a reason why I'm a Neutral route truther, apart from certain endings (like the new Strange Journey Redux endings for all routes).

As for Beelzebub, one of his most relevant roles is as a participant of the War of Bel in Devil Survivor, in which Belial is also a participant. He has a special attack that inflicts the Egg ailment - a ticking time bomb that goes off after one turn, inflicting heavy Almighty damage to the victim and spawning a team of maggot flies right beside the team with the victim. Bring your ailment clears!

As for the angels, apart from the standard SMT fare of Archangels where they're loyal to YHVH's will (although at least once Gabriel isn't as blindly loyal to YHVH as the rest, like in SMT 2), GBF has the Four Primarchs!

Gabriel is the Primarch of water. Kind-hearted and motherly, yet deceptively smart - she destroyed her own wings in What Makes the Sky Blue so her powers cannot be used by the event's antagonist, Sandalphon, to destroy the world.

Michael is the Primarch of fire. A tactician, fierce in battle, and a commander, her close association with combat meant that she had the most trouble adjusting to a peaceful life after the events of What Makes the Sky Blue 3: 000. She tried her hand in acting and is decent enough at it actually!

Raphael is the Primarch of wind. The most silent and thoughtful of the four Primarchs, he is known to be able to heal others using his winds. Also the easiest Primarch to be bullied imo, because Fire has a lot of busted DPS characters in exchange for very limited sustain options (I run Yukata Silva, Wilnas, and Michael - Wilnas has hit 10 mil CA damage with Silva's CA debuff).

Uriel, who was presumably killed by Gabriel in WHB, is the Primarch of earth. Which is ironic in GBF terms, because earth has elemental advantage over water. Anyways, he loves sparring and is the most boisterous among all the Primarchs!

As for other demon references in GBF:

Morax appears once again, this time as Magisa's familiar. Most of her playable forms incorporate her fighting with Morax, usually as a source of additional damage (counted as skill damage for the most part). Also is a dark composition of Summer Magisa, Fediel, and Lich is overkill, because that's my main dark comp...

Mammon is a Primal Beast. Same with Avaritia. They're both event antagonists - Mammon being the main antagonist of Detective Barawa and the Jewel Resort Incident (also depicted as a female in this game!) and Avaritia being the main antagonist of The Inner Light. Both stories are about greed, and The Inner Light in particular talks about how greed can destroy relationships. It's one of the events that made me cry, apart from the What Makes the Sky Blue trilogy, Together in Song, Lonesome Dragoness, Marionette Stars, and you., and Home Sweet Moon.

Leviathan is the Primal Beast who serves as the Auguste Archipelago's guardian. Mellow and gentle, but turned violent due to the Erste Empire's machinations, and the main crew managed to calm him down. Thankfully it never got past the point of going berserk, but the raid battle Leviathan Malice is a decent enough interpretation of what could've happened to him should the Erste Empire continue. Also memed to hell and back because of his sprite, as if he's laughing at your bad drops.

Satan is also a Primal Beast who, ironically, isn't the Satan-adjacent figure (that role goes to Avatar, who looks similar but is a different being entirely). Notably, Satan is part of Lyria's April Fools skin, with him riding on the Demonbream that she's stuck in (it makes sense I swear). Video here - Lyria is the blue-haired girl in white (WHOA-WHOA-YEAH!!!!).

((my wind otk is pitiful - i'm a water and dark main))

Anyways I'll add on to this if I find more, but I just wanna say this sort of shit tickles my GBF and SMT brain a lot. So...

[tinamaetales]

The Odds Are Never in Our Favor

“There's no morning glory, it was war, it wasn't fair” – Taylor Swift, The Great War

It is very rare for me to rewatch a show or movie unless I consider it an all-time favorite. Most of the time if I like something, I will just watch some clips, high lights, or my favorite scenes but I do not really watch the entire show again. However, these days I just cannot find myself the energy to watch a new series or movie; I feel like I am not ready to introduce myself to new characters and new “worlds.” Most of the shows or movies that I started watching, I ended up dropping after a few episodes. For movies, lately I have been finding myself browsing through twitter or tiktok after about 20 to 30 minutes into the movie. I just do not have the energy and I do not know why. Then suddenly, my tiktok fyp was filled with Hunger Games content. At first, I got curious as to why it is trending again then upon checking, I realized that all the four films are now available on Netflix and sometime this year a prequel will be released. And since I am familiar with this series, I decided to watch it again – all four movies.

I was 16 years old when the first Hunger Games movie was released. Since it was trending on social media, I decided to watch it with my friends. I have no background about the series, I did not even watch its trailer so I have no idea what to expect. And obviously, I have not read the books (until now, please do not hold it against me). At that time, I just view it as another dystopian genre film. I ended up liking it and I also watched the next three movies from the series. I liked the film but it did not really resonate with me. After I watched the last film, my thoughts were just this: It sucks that it happened to them but at least it made them stronger and now they are free. Looking back, I realized how tone deaf I was. But then for someone as young and naïve as me during those times, I feel like I should forgive my younger self for not having the kind of empathy I should have, right? I was 16 when I watched the first film and I was 19 when I watched the final film of the series (basically the same ages as Katniss when she volunteered as tribute and when the war was over) and back then I do not have the same knowledge and life experiences that I have now. I guess it is true when they said that people change because I did change and it is because I have been through so much from the last 8 years that my perspective in life and me in general have changed drastically. And after watching the Hunger Games series again, I have found a new appreciation for it….and has, in some way, installed a different sense of fear in me.

Art imitates life. Life imitates art.

There was a phrase I came across online (I cannot remember where I read it, though) that says “Remember kids, the next time somebody tells you ‘The government would not do that’ oh yes, they would” and I cannot help but associate it with The Hunger Games. The plot of the Hunger Games can be summarized this way: the government uses violence to instill fear so they can control the people. In this series, a country called Panem has 12 districts and they are being governed by the Capitol. As a way of punishing the people from the rebellion that happened years ago, they have this survival game called “The Hunger Games” in which each district must offer a boy and a girl, called as tribute, to represent their district. In the Hunger Games, the tributes must fight each other to death as there is only one winner or “victor” And while the idea itself is already horrendous, one will be shocked with the way people from the Capitol find it entertaining. For the people in the Capitol, the Hunger Games is not a brutal way of having kids from each district fight each other to death but a reality game show held every year for their entertainment. It seems like for them, the Hunger Games is a normal part of their lives. It is entertaining because they are not the victims. It is entertaining because they are the spectators and the children involved are meant to provide them entertainment. It feels like it is a sporting event wherein the audience does not care if the athletes get hurt because it is part of “their job” And while the idea of Hunger Games seem to be only possible in the fictional world, I cannot help but think how in some ways it could happen…. or it already happened?

In school, history is my favorite subject. As a young kid in school, I treated history as an interesting subject but I never really immersed myself with the moral lessons we can learn from the events from the past. I find the stories of people from the past interesting but I lack the empathy to fully understand how these events have changed the course of the world. And now as a young adult, reading history books would often give me the feeling of discomfort like there is something sharp stuck in my chest. Really crazy how life can make you experience the worst just so you can have the character development you desperately need. But the thing is, I am not the only one who acted like this. In fact, there are a lot of people who do not even find studying history interesting. It is not easy to keep on looking back when you have the present to live and conquer, right? Yet, if we do not look back and learn from the mistakes of the past then the cycle would not end. Like what the famous Filipino historian, Ambeth Ocampo, said: History does not repeat itself, it is we who repeat it and such words are true. One could argue that the Hunger Games is impossible in real life but there are a lot of events from the past that already proved otherwise. Remember the Gladiators? During those times in the Roman Empire, people called as the gladiators (most of them are slaves or criminals) are put into the Colosseum to fight each other to death just like in The Hunger Games wherein tributes were put in one location so they can fight each other to death and all these battles are happening while the rich people watch as if it was an entertainment show, totally ignoring that people are dying for their entertainment. In the present time, maybe we can say that the possibility of the Hunger Games is impossible but is it really? Does it really have to be a direct copy of what was written in the books for us to realize how close we are to becoming like Panem? I do not think so.

I can remember how people, especially from my own country, would advocate for the reinstatement of the death penalty so that people would be afraid to commit crimes. While there is a part of me that understands where they are coming from, I must disagree with them. I disagree because I am aware of how crooked the justice system in my country is; justice is reserved for the rich and the privileged and in the end, the poor and the marginalized are the ones who will suffer. When most of my fellow countrymen seemed unbothered by the war on drugs, it was the time I realized how easy it is for people to advocate for something, let us say violence, when they are not the ones affected by it. I find it disgusting that instead of proper judicial procedure, the authorities have resorted to killing the people who they suspect to be drug dealers/ drug users. I find it disgusting that instead of addressing the problem of addiction, killing is the solution they imposed. What happened to rehabilitation? What happened to giving everyone an equal opportunity to defend themselves in court? Another example I can think of is when the innocent civilians, especially the women and children, suffered the most when the US invaded Iraq as a response to what happened on 9/11. I truly understand the sentiment for revenge as many people have died during 9/11 but I feel like the actions following it were not moral at all. Yes, people have died during 9/11 and they deserve justice but does it have to be in the way it was handled? It somehow mirrors what President Coin wanted after they had won against President Snow and the Capitol, to hold a symbolic Hunger Games featuring the children of the capitol. I just find it appalling and disgusting to let the innocent suffer in the war orchestrated by the oppressors.

The gray area

The first time I watched the Hunger Games series, I liked Gale because he was the “best friend” of Katniss. I liked him because he was someone she can rely on especially when she went to compete at the Hunger Games and Gale was the one who provided for Katniss’ family. But as the series progressed, I knew that it has always been Peeta and Katniss. And even though I liked the best friend guy, I am team Peeta. Peeta is just the man, you know? He is THE standard. 

As I mentioned, it was tiktok that made me become interested in rewatching the series. But what intrigued me is the amount of people on the app who hate Gale. Sometimes I feel like they hate Gale more than Snow and Coin and I do not like that. So here is my opinion about Gale Hawthorne:

Not everything should be taken into black and white. There are what we call the gray areas and that is what I think Gale belongs to. We know that in every story there are the heroes and the villains. The heroes are the good ones while the villains are the bad ones. But what about those in between? English is not my mother language so forgive me if I am not using the word anti-hero properly but that is how I would like to describe Gale even though he is a supporting character in the series and not a main one. You see, Gale is also from district 12 and has been a close friend of Katniss for years. I guess they grew up together and the hardship they endured in living in district 12 is what bonded them. What most people forget is Gale is a kid too, just like Katniss and Peeta. And while we can all argue about how at least Katniss and Peeta turned out good despite everything they have been through, I believe that Gale should also be given the same amount of empathy. He was a victim of the system too. And, we all have different ways to respond in similar situations. Gale might not have experienced the traumatic hunger games like the protagonists but he also experiences something traumatizing. I mean, district 12 was bombed and wiped out by the Capitol, it was his home! He saw the evil ways of the Capitol with his own eyes and while he was not able to save everyone, he did try his best to save as many as he could. What he experienced at the hands of the Capitol is something that should not be taken lightly. Like I said, he was also just a kid. All he wanted is for his loved ones to survive and for the rebellion to succeed because only in ending the tyrannical rule of President Snow can we see the end of the years of suffering of the oppressed. And when you are at war, there really is no distinction between the sinners and the saints, right? For people like Gale, they must do whatever it takes just to make sure that they succeed by all means possible. In war, there really are no real winners, everyone loses. Just like what Taylor Swift said, “There's no morning glory, it was war, it wasn't fair” But let me also point out that I am in no way justifying the killings during war, what I am just trying to point out is that why are we so pressed to put the blame on Gale when it was President Coin who ordered the bombings? Gale was a kid who got entangled in a war against the oppressors and in his mind, the end justifies the means and who taught him that? It was the system of the Hunger Games brought by the Capitol. So why are we so hard on a kid whose mindset was a result of the years of oppression and fighting back by whatever means necessary is the only way he knows how? If we can extend a little amount of sympathy for some villains, why can’t we do the same for “anti-heroes” like Gale? He was a victim too.  

If we are so eager to put all the blame on Gale, then what about the career tributes? For the career tributes, killing is just part of the games because they were conditioned to that kind of mindset. They were even trained at special academies to ensure that their districts will always win the games. The career tributes sort of reminded me of the young men, mostly those who just turned 18, who were drafted to fight in the war. Or I guess the closer example I could think of was the Hitler Youth wherein they “brainwashed” the children into the ideology they wanted to instill and, in this way, they were able to gain a strong control of the youth who will all eventually become soldiers during World War II. Looking back, we could see that the establishment of the Hitler Youth was effective in recruiting young people into believing the same sick ideology of Hitler. Their young minds were indoctrinated with the Nazi philosophy. It was scary to think how tyrants would take advantage of the young minds to further their oppressive agenda. After all, a person who was conditioned in a certain belief at such a young age is easier to control. Just like the careers, they were raised to believe in a romanticized version of violence and killing is just part of the game. It was as if they were taught that the life of others, those who are different from them, are cheap. 

At the end of the day, the careers and people like Gale were all just victims of the system. I do not think it is right to put all the blame on them. These are kids who were indoctrinated with a romanticized version of survival which involves violence. So, if we are so keen in hating them for the decisions they make, then it is just proof that the oppressors’ ways are effective because instead of blaming them, we blame the youth. I did not like how some people would say “Yes, the kids were victims of the system but it was their decision to volunteer at the games….it was their decision to kill others…” No, it was not really the case. People who were conditioned in a “cult-like” mentality lack the rationality to know whether something was good or not. As I keep on mentioning, they were raised in a different kind of mentality and they were exposed in an environment that romanticizes the use of violence. Just like what Haymitch said, “Remember who the real enemy is” And it was President Snow. It was never the youth. 

If we burn, you burn with us

The Capitol’s stronghold of the districts was effective because they used the divide and conquer strategy. They made the districts become each other’s enemies through the hunger games so they have become divided instead of united in fighting the real enemy - President Snow. Moreover, the exploitation of people’s fear became an advantage for the Capitol. They have instilled in the people’s mind that disobedience would result in brutal punishment; the Capitol depended on using violence as a tool to make people obey them. It is not just a division of the citizens through the districts but also a division between the people in the Capitol and the people from the districts. Capitol citizens live inside a “bubble” where they find the hunger games entertaining. Of course, one will not see a problem about something that does not affect them. What I find surprising about the people from the Capitol is how they reacted angrily and even wanted to cancel the games when Peeta announced that Katniss is “pregnant” because suddenly they find the games brutal…..suddenly, they care about the innocent baby that can die during the games….suddenly, they care about life. They started caring when an unborn fetus is involved and not when the government is putting 24 children in an arena to fight each other to death. Sounds familiar, right?

It is the divisiveness of the citizens that allows oppression to thrive but once they wake up and decide enough is enough, they can become a force to reckon with. In every revolution, I would like to believe that there are people who are already wanting to break free from the oppressive rule but they just needed a certain spark or a symbol that can inspire them to unite and fight together, the people of Panem found it in Katniss.

While brainstorming over how I can discuss Katniss’ Mockingjay in this blog post, I suddenly remembered my own country’s version of it through Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio. My country was under Spanish rule for more than 300 years and suffered greatly. My own people were treated like slaves in our own country. There have been attempts or acts of resistance but they were not as big, as organized, and as influential as the Katipunan founded by Andres Bonifacio. And what led to it? Books. Jose Rizal wrote two novels reflecting the Filipino society of his time, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Those books are said to have inspired Bonifacio to create the Katipunan. And it was the Katipunan that helped the nation to find its voice and fight for its freedom. The act of resistance led by Bonifacio started when they, Katipunan members, tore their cedulas in the infamous cry of Pugad Lawin. This became the first steps towards the fight for freedom.    

The road towards the revolution with the Mockingjay as its main driving symbol was a small unconscious act of defiance that awakened the people of Panem. At first, I thought it was when Katniss and Peeta decided to eat the night berries at the same time so that there would be no winner at the 74th Hunger Games which sent Seneca into panic and just announced that they are the winners but then it was not it. The small unconscious act of defiance happened when Katniss laid down Rue’s body after she was killed and surrounded it with flowers because that one simple gesture from her showed empathy. That gesture showed how people from different districts should not see each other as enemies because they are all victims of oppression. And with Katniss showing that she has empathy for Rue, it awakened the hearts of the people of Panem. After the Hunger Games, people from different districts started to show their own ways of defying the capitol especially with painting the Mockingjay symbol in public areas. Those events made President Snow act towards removing the symbol of hope, Katniss, but not in an obvious way since she has become a favorite in the Capitol; Snow decided that for the quarter quell, they will choose the tributes from the pool of victors in each district and in this way, he secured Katniss’ death as she is the only female victor from district 12. But I guess he overestimated Katniss and underestimated the other victors. You see, Katniss never wanted to be the Mockingjay or the symbol of the revolution; she just wanted to keep her loved ones safe. But in sending all the previous victors into the 75th Hunger Games, it awakened the others. When they held hands after the interviews, it showed how when the oppressed unite and fight back together, they can end oppression. Pretty ironic because it was Snow who said, “Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous” and it was that hope that ignited the fire in the people to fight back. It is when the people realize their strength through being united that allows them to shake the system.

And like any tyrant, President Snow resorted to double up the violence and manipulate the people more through using the media to further his propaganda. When he felt like the people were getting stronger, he inclined towards using more violence. He keeps on preaching about law and order and how the people, or as he called them the rebels, are the “bad ones” because they instigate chaos. And when it comes down to the final “showdown” between the hero and the villain, Katniss ends up shooting Coin instead of Snow. But Snow was killed by the mob. I find it symbolic and justified. Katniss as the Mockingjay ensures that as the Snow regime falls, someone else’s rise to power, Coin, will be prevented. The revolution won not just with Snow’s downfall but also with the prevention of another tyrant on the rise to power. By removing Snow and Coin in the picture, a true new chapter for Panem is guaranteed. The people won but their way towards victory was paid for by the blood of those who died and it is now up to them, it is now in their hands to make sure that the blood that was shed will not be wasted. In the end, Katniss acted on Coin’s words “May her arrow signify the end of tyranny and the beginning of a new era.” Because it truly was a beginning of a new era for Panem.

No winners, just survivors

What makes Katniss different from the other protagonists/heroes is that she was never the “chosen one” She was more of a hero by coincidence and by the people’s choice. All she wanted was to keep her sister safe; she never really imagined that in showing empathy for Rue, and defying the rules of the game (night berries) would lead her towards becoming the Mockingjay. Katniss is an underdog story. She was never the special kind. She was never the “best” among her fellow tributes. In fact, the careers are even highly skilled compared to her. She was not the “chosen one” because of destiny but because people chose her to be. They find a certain kind of awakening and relevance with her which makes the Mockingjay symbol become effective. Even in the climactic battle in the Capitol, she was not the one who win it all for them. Bombs exploded twice and then the next thing we see is the people have won against the Capitol and Snow was captured and is now just waiting for his execution. Katniss may have shot an arrow to Coin to prevent another tyrant on the rise but that was it. After all the chaos, Katniss went back to district 12 alone. And by being alone in district 12, she finally got the chance to face the aftermath of everything that happened to her since she volunteered for the 74th Hunger Games. And her dealing with trauma was heartbreaking to watch. This is what sets Katniss and the Hunger Games series apart from the other stories of the same genre. It was not a happy ever after type of ending. It was realistic. Painful yet truthful.

The series have taught me that war is nothing but destructions. There is no reason to sugarcoat the victory of the good ones against the bad ones because in war, there are really no winners, just survivors. And most of the survivors must live the rest of their life dealing with trauma and sometimes, guilt. Katniss described it best when she told her child “Did you had a nightmare? I have nightmares too. Someday, I’ll explain it to you, why they came, why they will never go away. But I’ll tell you how I survive it. I make a list in my head, of all the good things I have seen someone do, every little thing I can remember. It is like a game and I do it over and over. It gets a little tedious after all these years but… there are much worse games to play…” because these words are an accurate representation of how some wounds can never fully heal. Yes, there are better days but the pain will always be there; sometimes, we just have to accept how to live with pain. Years have passed and Katniss was able to build a family of her own with Peeta but the scars from the past will always be there. And you know what makes this truly heartbreaking? Both Katniss and Peeta were just teenagers when it all started. They were just kids who ended up scarred for life. Now, I can’t help but think about all of the children in war zones having to live this kind of reality. While for some of us the war is just a part of the history or something that we read about in fiction books or watch in movies and series, for others it is their reality. It is frustrating and heartbreaking to know that the kind of atrocities shown in the movies and in the books are happening in real life.

 x,

TinaMae

 PS, I never expected this to be this long but somehow, I feel like I still did not fully discuss everything about the Hunger Games series. Maybe I’ll write a part 2 of this someday (but I will focus on other characters like Effie, Haymitch, Finnick...)

[bopinion]

2023 / 31

Aperçu of the Week:

"It's really beautiful. It feels like God visits everywhere else but lives in Africa."

(Willard Carroll Smith II, better known as rapper and actor Will Smith)

Bad News of the Week:

Free speech and Russia - unfortunately a contradiction. Politically effective opposition and Russia - likewise. Independent judiciary and Russia - ...and again. If someone is then known as a "Kremlin critic", he has lost three times over. Also in court. As happened again in recent days. First, Vladimir Kara-Mursa has lost his appeal. Who, after working for "Open Russia", was already twice the victim of a poison attack and in the spring of 2022 held an anti-war speech in Arizona. Enough to sentence him to 25 years in prison for treason.

And also Evergreen Alexei Navalny - who, unfortunately, after the poison attack on him at the end of his recovery in Berlin returned to Russia. A real conviction offender! - was once again on trial the day before yesterday. This time on the charge of "founding an extremist organization." So one can call political opposition naturally also. He got (additional) 19 years of imprisonment. Sidenote: the new trial was not taking place in a regular court, but directly in Nawalny's penal colony in Melekhovo, without public or media access. No, I refrain (albeit laboriously) from mentioning Guantanamo Bay in this context....

Good News of the Week:

I am not a megalomaniac. Nor am I a psychic. Still, I was surprised on Monday to read about an action that may have been inspired by my little thematic foray into "hidden costs" (and that they should be visible to consumers) last week. It's about a promotion by German grocer Penny, the discount subsidiary of retail giant Rewe.

Penny is labeling products with the prices it would have to charge if environmental impact costs were actually included, as part of a promotion - unfortunately limited to one week and only for nine products. This leads to smaller and larger price increases. And these are hardly surprising. For example, that the vegan schnitzel only increases by 5%. But the Maasdam cheese by 88%. And the Viennese sausages double themselves with 94% nearly in the price.

Naturally that is a PR Stunt. Critics, such as the far too conservative Farmers' Association, were quick to use the nasty term "greenwashing". I don't care. I am happy about the basic thematization. Which, in the store of a discount grocer, should also reach people who don't consume media that take up the topic. Any form of attention is fine with me. After all, how could I rant about the consumerism of someone who can credibly assure "Really? Oh... I didn't know that."

Personal happy moment of the week:

We live in the countryside. The mooing of cows, the bleating of sheep and the clucking of chickens are part of our everyday soundtrack. Sometimes nature comes very close to us. For example, a hedgehog is currently building a nest under a bush by our terrace. And it took us two days to find a little field mouse and release it back into the wild unharmed. And we all had more fun with it than stress.

I couldn't care less...

...about Rishi Sunak. He started out as the supposed savior of the post-Brexit UK. And proves to be a gravedigger for the planet. The latest example of ignorance is over 100 new drilling licenses for oil and gas production in the North Sea. On one damned day. God save the earth. The Brits won't.

As I write this...

...we are at home (still) discussing a movie we saw Friday night. In the biggest movie theater in Bavaria. In the original English. And it wasn't "Barbie". We can't get rid of the Pandora's box that Robert J. Oppenheimer, the "father of the atomic bomb", opened almost eighty years ago. A look behind the scenes of the Manhattan Project, dramaturgically designed by Christopher Nolan's team to be highly worth seeing, should be a must for all of us.

Post Scriptum

Europe's history on the African continent is anything but a good one. At least until this century. Yet we struggle to come to terms with the colonial past in a mature way. And with an unbiased view of the 1.4 billion people who live (or survive) there. See the current dithering in dealing with the coup in Niger. Just when our peacekeepers are withdrawing from the neighboring country Mali.

That the basic problem is called "understanding" is proven by a look at history: In November 1884, Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had a five-meter-high map of Africa hung up in Berlin. For three months, representatives of the European powers and the United States looked at this map. And negotiated how Africa should be divided up. As can still be seen today - on the map and on the basis of past and present conflicts - simply with a ruler. And without regard for peoples, landscapes or ethnic groups. Who is still paying the bill for this today? Hint: it is not the Western powers.

"Africa is not a country" is the title of a new book by Dipo Faloyin. The African-American was born in Chicago, grew up in Lagos and now lives in London. Primarily an editor for Vice, his subject has always been Africa in all its complexity. And enlightenment about precisely that. Now he is making his internationally acclaimed book debut. The German subtitle is "The manifesto against stupidity, laziness and simplicity in dealing with the multiformity of the African continent." Sounds like a must-read.

[illumax]

Taking The Arrow - Process

Breakdown of the painting process

“1308AD.  France.The Templar Order has fallen. King Philip IV has a price on the heads of its remaining members and associates.  Three Knights, Pierre, Jean, and Reynaud are on the run and head for the Order’s last bastion of safety: The island monastery and fortress, Mont-Saint Michel.  There they are presented with an opportunity to fight the king using dark methods. Soon, they are met with an untamable evil that turns Mont-Saint Michel from haven to prison. They will discover that not only does evil lurk beyond the walls of the monastery, but the actions of the past torment them within the walls of their own minds.” 

Over the last while, I have had the pleasure of illustrating a phenomenal book by Dalton James titled “The Night’s Many.” With his permission, I am going to share some sneak peeks of the finished illustration, as well as some insights into the process of making each one!

Our first image is titled Taking the Arrow. This scene is a flashback of one of the characters to his time during a war in England. During the battle, he is hit with an arrow (surprise) and is lost amid the chaos of bodies and presumed dead.

Now that we have a little background, let’s dig into the process.

Thumbnails/ideation

Every illustration should start with thumbnails and ideation. Admittedly, I tend to work on loose leaf paper and sometimes misplace them. So this is the only one I could find.

This image provided a unique challenge as I wanted to somehow capture the chaos of the battle, and those few moments of calm that the character had before blacking out. A major theme of this flashback was being lost among the fallen soldiers and I had this image in my head of being tangled up and swallowed by a mass of bodies. This would create a sort of pocket of solitude despite being in the middle of the battle.

I also took this time to research some period style armor and weaponry just to get an idea of what I would be working with in the image. Taking some time do studies helps us better understand the shapes and forms in an object, so when we get to the final piece, we are more comfortable exaggerating or putting them in different positions.

Preliminary Drawing - Blue Pencil and Graphite approx. 5”x8”

Once the concept was nailed down, it was time to move onto the preliminary drawing. This was done in a moleskine notebook using a non photo blue mechanical pencil and graphite.

A lot of my work tends to have a single figure or character in it, so this was really fun to try and fit as many bodies in as I could. Using things like the spears and arrows I created “blocks” for the viewer to keep them in the image. Everything swirls around the central figure and directs the eye back to his face and the arrow in his chest.

Final Drawing - 12”x16” Graphite on Toned Watercolor Board

After the composition was solved, I scanned, enlarged, printed, and transferred my sketch to a toned piece of watercolor board. (The tone was achieved through a wash of acrylic). During the transfer, I refined my drawing to really get the shapes I was after. Sidenote, that is one of my favorite hands I have ever drawn.

Now onto painting.

Final Painting - 12”x16” Acrylic and Charcoal on Watercolor Board

My Primary concern in the painting stage was to get the values established and have enough color in there to really manipulate digitally at the end. I used a very limited palette, and had fun figuring out the lighting and creating some texture.

I wanted there to be grit in the image so I was not overly concerned with making things look really neat and clean - it is a battle after all. I also played a lot with simplification, such as his chain mail. It really is just a shape with some tiled brush strokes in there to add texture.

Final Illustration - 12”x16” Mixed Media with Digital

Once the painting was complete, I again scanned it and started my digital edits. This is one of my favorite parts of the process as I am totally free to experiment. Pushing and pulling colors, values, and textures. It is really easy to fall down the digital rabbit hole and end up over editing, so I have to be careful.

As you can see, I added more color to the image, particularly the skin tones. I also warmed everything up.

I have been experimenting with introducing some vector based elements in my work, and brought that in through the arrows and spears. This is a theme throughout the illustrations for the book. It is a way to create emphasis, and kind of tone down a little bit of the violence (I want to help the viewer see past the gory details and focus on the themes and messages in the story).

All in all, I am quite happy with how this turned out, and I am looking forward to sharing more images with you. There are about 24 paintings in total for this book, so it will be awhile before they are all finished, and even longer before we get through all of them!

I would love to hear your thoughts on the piece, and if you have any questions about the process drop them down in the comments!

Until the next time,

B.

[c-is-for-circinate]

For a long, large part of my life, being queer in a media landscape--finding queerness in a media landscape--has meant theft.

I'm a Fandom Old, somehow, these days, older than most and younger than some, in that way that's grown associated with grumpy crotchetyness and shotguns on porches and back in my day, we had to wade through our Yahoo Groups mailing lists uphill both ways, boring and irrelevant anecdotes from Back In Those Days when homophobia clearly worked differently than it does now, probably because we weren't trying hard enough. I've seen a lot of stories through the years. I've read a lot of fanfic. (More days than not, for the past twenty years. I've read a lot of fanfic.)

When people my age start groaning and sighing at conversations about representation and queerbaiting, when we roll our eyes and drag all the old war stories out again in the face of AO3 is terrible and Not Good Enough, so often what we say is: you Young Folks Today have no idea how hard, how scary, how limiting it was to be queer anywhere Back In Those Days. Including online, maybe especially online, including in a media landscape that hated us so much more than any one you've ever known. And that is true. Always and everywhere, again and again, it's true, we remember, it's true.

We don't talk so much about the joy of it.

Online fan spaces were my very first queer communities, ever. I was thirteen, I was fourteen, I was fifteen--I was a lonely, over-precocious "gifted kid" two years too young for my grade level in an all-girls' Catholic school in the suburbs--I lived in a world where gay people were a rumor and an insult and a news story about murder. I was straight, of course, obviously, because real people were straight and anyway I was weird enough already--I couldn't be two things strange, couldn't be gay too, but--well, I could read the stories. I could feel things about that. I would have those stories to help me, a few years later, when I knew I couldn't call myself straight any more.

And those stories were theft. There was never any doubt about that. We wrote disclaimers at the top of every fic, with the specter of Anne Rice's lawyers around every corner. We hid in back-corners of the internet, places you could only find through a link from a link from a link on somebody else's recs page, being grateful for the tiny single-fandom archives when you found them, grateful for the webrings where they existed. It was theft, all of it, the stories about characters we did not own, the videotaped episodes on your best friend's VHS player, one single episode pulled off of Limewire over the course of three days.

It was theft, we knew, to even try and find ourselves in these stories to begin with. How many fics did I read in those days about two men who'd always been straight, except for each other, in this one case, when love was stronger than sexual orientation? We stole our characters away from the heterosexual lives they were destined to have. We stole them away from writers and producers and TV networks who work overtime to shower them in Babes of the Week, to pretend that queerness was never even an option. This wasn't given to us. This wasn't meant for us. This wasn't ours to have, ever, ever in the first place. But we took it anyway.

And oh, my friends, it was glorious.

We took it. We stole. And again and again, for years and years and years, we turned that theft into an art. We looked for every opening, every crack in every sidewalk where a little sprout of queerness might grow, and we claimed it for our own and we grew whole gardens. We grew so sly and so skilled with it, learning to spot the hints of oh, this could be slashy in every new show and movie to come our way. Do you see how they left these character dynamics here, unattended on the table? How ripe they are for the pocketing. Here, I'll help you carry them. We'll make off with these so-called straight boys, and we only have to look back if somebody sets out another scene we want for our own.

We were thieves, all of us, and that was fine and that was fair, because to exist as queer in the world was theft to begin with. Stolen time, stolen moments--grand larceny of the institution of marriage, breaking and entering to rob my mother's hopes for grandchildren. Every shoplifted glance at the wrong person in the locker room (and it didn't matter if we never peeked, never dared, they called us out on it anyway). Every character in every fic whose queerness became a crime against this ex-wife, that new love interest. Every time we dared steal ourselves away from the good straight partners we didn't want to date.

And: we built ourselves a den, we thieves, wallpapered in stolen images and filled to the brim with all the words we'd written ourselves. We built ourselves a home, and we filled it with joy. Every vid and art and fic, every ship, every squee. Over and over, every straight boy protagonist who abandoned all womankind for just this one exception with his straight boy protagonist partner found gay orgasms and true love at the end.

Over and over, we said: this isn't ours, this isn't meant to be ours, you did not give this to us--but we are taking it anyway. We will burglarize you for building blocks and build ourselves a palace. These stories and this place in the world is not for us, but we exist, and you can't stop us. It's ours now, full of color and noise, a thousand peoples' ideas mosaic'ed together in celebration. We made this, and it will never be just yours again. You won't ever truly get it back, no matter how many lawyers you send, not completely. We keep what we steal.

.

Things shifted over time, of course. That's good. That's to be celebrated. Nobody should have to steal to survive. It should not be a crime, should not feel like a crime, to find yourself and your space in the world.

There were always content creators who could slip a little wink in when they laid out their wares, oh what's this over here, silly me leaving this unattended where anybody could grab it, of course there might be more over by the side door if you come around the alleyway (but if anybody asks, you didn't get this from ME). We all watched Xena marry Gabrielle, in body language and between the lines. We sat around and traded theories and rumors about whether the people writing Due South knew what they were doing when they sent their buddy cops off into the frozen north alone together at the end of the show, if they'd done it on purpose, if they knew. But over the years, slowly, thankfully, the winks became less sly.

A teenage boy put his hand on another teenage boy's hand and said, you move me, and they kissed on network TV, in a prime-time show, on FOX, and the world didn't burn down. Here and there, where they wanted to, where they could without getting caught by their bosses and managers, content creators stopped subtly nudging people around the back door and started saying, "Here. This is on offer here too, on purpose. You get to have this, too."

And of course, of course that came with a whole host of problems too. Slide around to the back door but you didn't get this from me turned into it's an item on our special menu, totally legit, you've just got to ask because the boss throws a fit if we put it out front. Shopkeepers and content creators started advertising on the sly, come buy your fix here!, hiding the fine print that says you still have to take what you've purchased home and rebuild it with your semi-legal IKEA hacks. Maybe they'll consider listing that Destiel or Sterek as a full-service menu item next year. Is that Crowley/Aziraphale the real thing or is it lite?

And those problems are real and the conversations are worth having, and it's absolutely fair to be frustrated that you can't find the ship you want on sale in anything like your color and size in a vast media landscape packed full of discount hetships and fast-fashion m/f. It's fair to be angry. It's fair to be frustrated. Queerbait is a word that exists for a reason.

There's a part of me that hurts, though, every time the topic comes up. It's a confusing, bad-mannered part of me, but it's still very real. And it's not because I'm fawning for crumbs, trying to be the Good, Non-Threatening Gay. It's not that I'm scared and traumatized by the thought of what might happen if we dare raise our voices and ask for attention. (Well. Not mostly. I'll always remember being quiet and scared and fifteen, but it's been a long two decades since then. I know how to ask for a hell of a lot more now.)

It's because I remember that cozy, plush-wallpapered den of joyful thieves. I remember you keep what you steal.

Every single time--every time--when a story I love sets a couple of characters out on a low, unguarded table, perfectly placed to be pilfered on the sly and taken home and smushed together like a couple of dolls, my very first thought is always, always joy. Always, that instinct says, yay! Says, this is ours now. As soon as I go home and crawl into that pillow-fort den, my instincts say, I will surely find people already at work combing through spoils and finding new ways to combine them, new ways to make them our own. I know there's fic for that. I've already seen fic for that, and I wasn't really interested last time, but the new store display's got my brain churning, and I can't wait to see what the crew back at the hideout does with this.

Every time, that's where my brain goes. And oh, when I realize the display's put out on purpose, that somebody snuck in a legitimate special menu item, when the proprietor gives me the nod and wink and says, you don't have to come around the side, I know it's not much but here--there is so much joy and relief and hope in me from that! Oh, what we can make with these beautiful building blocks. Oh what a story we can craft from the pieces. Oh, the things we can cobble together. Look at that, this one's a little skimpy on parts but we can supplement it, this one's got a whole outline we can fill in however we want. This one technically comes semi-preassembled, and that's boring as shit and a pain to take back apart, but that's fine, we'll manage. We're artists and thieves. I bet someone's pulling out the AU saw to cut it to pieces already.

And then I get back to our den, which has moved addresses a dozen times over the years and mostly hangs out on Tumblr now (and the roof leaks and the landlord's sketchy as fuck but at least they don't charge rent, and we've made worse places our own). And I show up, ready for joy--ready for a dozen other people who saw that low-hanging fruit on that unguarded table, who got the nod and wink about the special menu item, who're ready to get so excited about this newest haul. Did you see what we picked up? The theft was so easy, practically begging to be stolen. The last owner was an idiot with no idea what to do with it. The last owner knew exactly what it could become, bless their heart, under a craftsman with more time on their hands, so they looked away on purpose at just the right time to let me take it home. I show up every time ready for our space, the place that fed me on joy and self-confidence when I was fifteen and starving. The place that taught me, yes, we are thieves, because it is RIGHT to take what we need, and the beautiful things we create are their own justification. We are thieves, and that's wonderful, because nothing is handed to us and that means we get to build our own palaces. We get to keep everything we steal.

I go home, and even knowing the world is different, my instincts and heart are waiting for that. And I walk in the door, and I look at my dash, and I glance over at twitter, and--

And people are angry, again. Angry at the slim pickings from the hidden special menu. So, so tired and angry, at once again having to steal.

And they're right to be! Sometimes (often, maybe) I think they're angry at the wrong people--more angry with the shopkeeper who offers the bite-sized sampler platter of side characters or sneaks their queer content in on the special menu than the ones who don't include it at all. But it's not wrong to be mad that Disney's once again advertising their First Gay Character only to find out it's a tiny sprinkle of a one-line extra on an otherwise straight sundae. It's not wrong to be furious at the world because you've spent your whole life needing to be a thief to survive. It's far from wrong. I'm angry about it too.

But this was my den of thieves, my chop shop, my makerspace. Growing up in fandom, I learned to pick the locks on stories and crack the safes of subtext at the very same time I learned to create. They were the same thing, the same art. We are thieves, my heart says, we are thieves, and that's what makes us better than the people we steal from. We deconstruct every time we create. We build better things out of the pieces.

And people are angry that the pre-fab materials are too hard to find, the pickings too slim, the items on sale too limited? Yes, of course they are, of course they should be--but my heart. Oh, my heart. Every single time, just a little bit, it breaks.

Of course the stories are terrible (they have always been terrible). Of course they are, but we are thieves. We steal the best parts and cobble them back together and what we make is better than it was before. The craftsman's eye that cases a story for weak points, for blank spaces, for anywhere we can fit a crowbar and pry apart this casing--that's skill and art and joy. Of course we shouldn't have to, of course we shouldn't have to, but I still love it. I still want it, crave it. I still thrill every time I see it, a story with hairline cracks that we can work open with clever hands to let the queer in.

That used to be cause for celebration, around here. I ask him to go back to the ruins of Aeor with me, two men together alone on an expedition in the frozen north, it feels like a gift. And I understand why some people take it as an insult. I understand not good enough. I understand how something can feel like a few drops of water to someone dying of thirst, like a slap in the face. If it was so easy to sneak it hidden onto the special menu, to place it on the unguarded side table for someone else to run off to, why not let it sit out front and center in the first place? I know it's frustrating. It should be. We should fight. We should always fight. I know why.

But my heart, oh, my heart. My heart only knows what it's been taught. My heart sees, this thing right here, the proprietor left it there for you with a nod and a wink because they Get It. It's not put together yet, but it's better that way anyway. It's so full of pieces to pull apart and reassemble. I bet they've got a whole mosaic wall going up at home already. We can bring it home and make it OURS, more than it was ever theirs, forget half of what it came from and grow a new garden in what remains.

And I go home to find anger, and my heart breaks instead.

[persephonis-gardens]

Not just that but the paratext surrounding the franchise can heavily influence how people go into the text, their feelings when reading it, and even their interpretation of subtext.

It's safe to say the films represented a massive uptick in the book's readership

A whole thesis paper can be written about the films and how they handle and mishandle the themes if the books and the inherent irony of adaptation of books about the spectacle of child mortality and war becoming itself a spectacle. I won't get into all the details here but it's likely a lot of people saw the movies before reading the books. Instead of going into those details I want to focus on some of the paratext at this time in the height of the franchise's popularity:

Here's Subway's Catching Fire promotional sweepstakes saying "have you ever wanted to participate in the child murder spectacle? Shop at Subway!"

After the first Mockingjay movie came out the messaging switched from "killing kids for sport is cool!" to "fighting in a civil war is fun!" Hasbrp released the Nerf Rebel line of toys, better known as "💖Nerf guns for girls🌷" which was meant to capitalize off of young girls who were fans of the Hunger Games franchise (as well as Disney's Brave, though the marketing is very obviously skewed towards one of these with the braids and bird wings and grungy graphics)

Really reminds me of the cheesy propaganda scene in Mockingjay like "JOIN. THE. FIGHT." that's clearly meant to be a parody of military propaganda but was absolutely taken way too self-seriously and even used in trailers for the film.

Finally there's the rise of YA Dystopia as a canonized genre and all the tropes that come with it in both literature and film. This was arguably made possible by the success of the Hunger Games franchise singlehandedly. While there are better and worse entries (each with their own butchered film adaptations) in the YA Dystopia genre, our associations with the genre as a whole sort of flies in the face of the Hunger Games' core themes

And the cultural shockwaves of that genre and its dissonant amalgamation of themes and aesthetics are still seen today in those shitty "the number above your head is how many breaths your allowed to take" "you can have one of 4 colors as your super power and I just got my color but it doesn't exist" tiktok videos.

Tldr, a lot of misreadings of the hunger games and "media illiteracy" is in large part due to THAT'S HOW WE WERE TOLD TO INTERPRET IT BY CORPORATIONS AND THE CULTURE INDUSTRY. All the marketing was focused on the cool bow and arrow fighting and becoming a victor and joining a rebellion and love triangles so THAT'S HOW WE WERE CONDITIONED TO ENGAGE WITH THE TEXT. The issue is capitalism and the ways it resists meaningful critique on a widespread scale through co-option and capitalist realism.

The Hunger Games 2023 Renaissance and Gen Z's "Bad Media Literacy"

So, not sure how it's going on other social media, but The Hunger Games – that will be referred to as THG in this little "essay" – is having a massive "renaissance" all over TikTok. And I've seen, more than once, unfortunately, people saying that Gen Z people have bad media literacy.

My issue with that is one specific argument. One about the people who have been genuinely surprised with nuances and details they didn't notice in the first they read it.

Which's such a stupid argument. Even more when, as I've seen, made by people who read the books as they came out and watched the movies as they came out. They tend to be in the younger side of the Millennials.

Do you know when Gen Zs were born? Here:

So, let's say the specific years are from 1995 up to 2013.

Here's when the trilogy was originally published;

As you see: a significant part of this generation couldn't read or wasn't even born when these books came out. That's how young this generation is.

But also, the oldest ones were between 13 and 16 as the books came out. It's unfair to expect that a 13-year-old will read THG and see the same subtext and nuances and have the same interpretation as people 18-and-above.

It's not bad media literacy that someone in their mid-to-late 20s is seeing things in a trilogy they've read ten or more years ago.

I, for example, read these books in 2013. They came out in 2010/1/2 in Brazil. I borrowed them from a classmate who had the money to buy them as they came out here. I was 15. Then got my hands on PDFs and read them in English later in the same year, I was 16. I never noticed a lot of subtext and nuances and shit when I read them ten years ago.

Both because of course I wouldn't, I was a teenager. And I read it as an escapism for some stuff. They were fun. I read the trilogy in a week – which's fast when you have school, schoolwork, almost all the home chores and the responsibility of taking care of an adult – and I wasn't looking for anything but a distraction. For a little bit of fun.

People roughly my age are seeing these videos and talks and are learning details and nuances they didn't before. It's fun, it's nice. I'm having a blast to re-read those books aware that they're more than what I thought they were back in the day.

Don't belittle people for not understand deeper and more mature topics when they didn't have the age and maturity to understand those topics.

[skippydiesposting]

something I think is really interesting when analyzing pieces of media made by creators who are very thorough and precise and in-depth with their themes and foreshadowing and underlying message are the decisions they make about what not to include.

for instance in Skippy Dies you have Ruprecht as a pretty stereotypical nerdy genius kid. we all know that chess is one of the most pervasive and classic tropes used to shorthand a character as booksmart. and there are definitely opportunities to throw that in, he has plenty of other classical "smart kid" interests, we even know that the school has a chess club that he's a part of. but Ruprecht never mentions it. instead, the game that is mentioned multiple times in association with him is Yahtzee. and I think that's really brilliant because although chess could be used as that kind of genius shorthand the way a lot of other things do, it also has very strong thematic motifs. things like war, hierarchy, good vs evil, sacrifice, et cetera. (some of which are in some way thematically represented in other parts of Skippy Dies, because most things that exist are, but I digress.) and those don't really have a lot to do with the rest of Ruprecht's arc and personality and themes. instead we have Yahtzee, which is a game that has very little of a strategical component and is a lot more about random chance and stochasticity. this ties in a lot better with a lot of the other things Ruprecht is fixated on and later struggles with: randomness in the universe, being unable to control an outcome, repetition, et cetera. it makes more sense thematically.

similarly with Nope, a movie that is in large part about the relationship between humans and animals, I think it's interesting to note that there is no mention of dogs. there is, of course, a ton of things to say about the relationship between the human species and dogs, and from an outsider's perspective you might expect that a movie with those themes would have something to say about that: they're the animal that most people have had the most interactions with and they're a huge part of our society. but Nope is focusing specifically on the ways that animals are exploited by people and misunderstood by humans and anthropomorphized in a way that dogs just don't represent thematically. dogs are domesticated and basically co-evolved with humans, and although I do think it's true that Nope should make you think about the relationships and levels of respect you have with all animals in your life, including dogs, it would have weakened the theme that's it's trying to portray of don't fuck with animals you don't understand, and I think that's brilliant. it just really shows an attention to detail and a commitment to message that I really appreciate and love to see.

like I just think that sticking very close to your theme and making all parts relevant and meaningful to the message you're trying to convey is super important, and I think that when the depth and the proper care and attention is given to that message--instead of just shoving every sort-of related thing you could possibly reference into a box--that's what makes really great art.

[tobeornottotc]

Chess and KinnPorsche 1/?

First of all isn’t this picture so glorious, gives me goosebumps because it looks so magnificent and powerful despite it just being board pieces, maybe it’s the gold. Either wat I feel like this is a massive representation of what seeing the major family chess pieces are like, I also like that it’s gold in this picture since that’s their meta colour, but they are probably also seen as the white side of the chess game, it doesn’t really matter what colour they are, all we know is that in KinnPorsche, since episode 1, we have been introduced to an analogy of chess. And this is a metaphor, a symbolic choice used in these type of storylines. Normally when someone is playing chess in a meta show, it means that it’s used for foreshadowing, mirroring, or just explaining a certain dynamic the audience will have with certain parts of the story. In KinnPorsche the series, the person who introduces us to chess is big daddy Korn, he is the supposed leader of the major family, but he sets his son instead as the new boss as the story begins because he’s become poorly. Playing chess in a story normally shows someone being strategic, calculating and controlling, depending on what role they align themselves too. With Korn he doesn’t put himself on the board but rather the watcher and master of the game constantly winning every single scene we see him play chess in. But I could focus on the puppet mastery that is Korn’s character in this show as shown by his control over the game and his manipulation of certain pieces in it, however I want to explain more about the other pieces, I want to break down how chess so far has shown roles of certain characters and then speculate or explain why some other characters become other chess pieces and what it symbolises for them in this game.

So first of all, chess is you know competition between two sides. There are two groups of people with their own leaders that need protecting and strategy systems in a war, that needs to get to the other side and  ensure defeat somehow. Either way, they leave no options for one side’s power being captured and removed, or it ends in a situation where people are forced to give up to the other side, or just accept defeat. Chess is all about using these powerful pieces with each of their own skills to get to the end and destroy the defence and attack systems created by the other side one step at a time. In KinnPorsche we have two sides very much introduced in episode 1 and 2. That’s the major family side, mostly the side we are on, because our main characters play roles on that side, this side is seen as the protagonists, the ones who need to win and are more human and moral in terms of how the audience views them. They are kinder, less strategic, just powerful and wanting to keep and protect that power however they are attacked by all sides, always  being betrayed or hurt.

Then we have the second side which is the minor family side. This is the side of the younger brother and his own businesses surrounding the mafia family. This family so far from ep 1-7 are connected with greed, fear, lies, and manipulation. They are seen as antagonistic and monstrous always leaning on the moral ‘black’ side of things. So obviously they are the black pieces because that’s sadly what’s normally associated as the bad side on the morality spectrum whilst white represents purity, and goodness. It doesn’t really seem apart from the role of one character in the show so far, that the minor family are really fighting in a war against the major family but obviously with known story tropes of two brothers thrust on a throne forced to fight for it, there is always going to be competition between them, royalty, politics, and gang tropes in media always have a shunned family member feeling misused, or looked down on and hiding their intentions along the way. I don’t think it’s surprising to say knowing movies like Lion King, Greek mythologies like Zeus vs Hades, and the Godfather and other stories such as this that there is always betrayal despite the fact someone keeps being submissive and kind on the surface to the other side.

In this case Kan smiles a lot and he embraces his role but for some reason his son moves in ways that seem creepy, villainous and hateful against the other side of his family. They are not okay with the lack of power they have. But Korn and his side also know they’re in this war, in the mafia you have to always lose trust for people and always know who’s at your back and Kinn mentions repeatedly to Porsche that yes they are to be distrusted. And that’s a big thing.

So we have two sides, the white/gold side being Kinn’s side the major family, the other being Vegas and his family and their intentions. The goal? Power and control over the whole family assets. As you do in mafia storylines. So like chess there will be trickery, manipulation, and sacrifices, and long games of waiting and backstabbing and dangerous modes of attacks. There will be waiting for someone to be weak. But overall there will be pieces that feel like they have no choice but to play their role. The question is do the pieces know why they are even in this game and how are they dealing with the scary weight of being forced to participate and lead one of these kings to victory. This part will focus on the main roles in the chess board, the kings and queens.

The Kings:

So as mentioned, Korn is meant to be the leader of the major family, he’s meant to be the King, however he sits outside and watches over the game, purposely removing himself and controlling it through his children especially Kinn who he has bestowed responsibility of being his heir in the future. In their board Kinn becomes the King, Korn believes he’s the one needing protection and if weakened would ruin the whole game for them. So he raises Kinn up and lets him know of his role and responsibilities. So what is Korn supposed to be in this game, he acts as the bishop but he isn’t because the show already has foreshadowed his part as the puppet master of everyone, he’s the one playing the game, choosing the parts and controlling the pieces, even when he plays for the other side. He’s one who knows everything in the game despite his weak disguise of not being part of it. He owns the game.

Kinn as the white king is meant to be protected, and plays his role of leadership towards the ending of the game, he’s meant to be strong and cold and cruel to ensure he has subordinates follow him and respect him, however, Kinn is a hopeless romantic and kind and this normally gets him weakened and defenceless, since it’s easy to fall for manipulations and tricks by the other side using that. So Korn focuses instead on the other pieces in the game since their role is to protect and defend and fight for Kinn, he chooses to place to distract and remove the second side completely before the responsibilities fall on Kinn properly. On the other side it feels like Kinn’s counterpart is Vegas, because he’s the one thrust in the same kind of position as Kinn, brothers both responsible for most of the job roles in the sides of the family, however Kinn is put on the throne explicitly with no doubt or push from Korn, but Vegas’s father has not yet yielded to Vegas.

This means Vegas is just another piece on the other side, not the main piece that wants the power and the control. for themselves This is why in episode 2, when Kan is first introduced he questions Kinn’s leadership, he shows disagreement with how he runs things especially with his body guard, showing he feels slighted to be controlled by someone younger and someone who got the position because of nepotism when it should have been his after Korn went ill. So Kan is the king of the other side, he’s the one who’s the rival in the war, the one who if they win, the power would go to, he does his role by keeping silent, smiling and giving Vegas all the power and weaponry to go behind the scenes and sort out any issues and find any weak spots. He sends Vegas in episode 2 to keep an eye on Porsche, because he realises Korn plans to use him as a piece in the game he doesn’t understand why though. He also uses Vegas in episode 7 to manipulate and control situations to ensure the minor family looks like they’re on major family’s side when in reality they are clearly part of the incentives for the rebellion by Don and they blindside him by the way he calls Vegas a traitor. They are probably also behind moles, and Kinn getting targeted and constantly captured because he is the king on the other side who they see as weak. So Kan seems like he’s doing the same thing as Korn, not getting his hand dirty, playing with pieces, but unfortunately for him he’s actually on the board as a piece too, he’s also being manipulated by the player of the game, and he’s also being watched and observed, he’s just to greedy to notice just how scary that is. So if he’s the king where is does that leave Vegas

In summary with the Kings:

White King: Kinn, he’s been given this responsibility, he’s the most targeted on the board and he’s meant to become the next heir after his dad dies of the whole mafia system. The second side’s attack is towards him, everyone tries to manipulate and capture him with different things. Kinn is meant to play a massive role towards the end of the game if he wins, all the power of both sides belong to him and if he loses everything falls apart including all the pieces on his side of the game

Black King: Kan, he’s been slighted the opportunity, wiser and older than Kinn, his uncle controls the other side of the board, he doesn’t get his hands dirty on the surface, smiling and calculating moves and using all his pieces as pawns and tools to protect himself, but he targets the throne, he waits for weaknesses, and calls out choices (Porsche) to know what’s happening. He’s Hades to Korn’s Zeus, he feels taken advantage of so he waits. If Kinn loses he’s the one who’ll be the new king and the minor family will become the major family instead. However with minor in their name it seems Kan has never won in the board since birth, he was always given inferior status and always overlooked.

The queens

The queens in chess are the most powerful part of the board, surprisingly able to by guiding the king, control most of the strategies. There's a heavy role put on them, to ensure that by the end of the game they are at the King's side ensuring he doesn't fall. This means the queen is strong, strong! Like whatever they own, or have or do is important and powerful enough to change the outcome of the game. However at the end of the game the victory always go back to the king, that's who is the one in charge, the one the main players are trying to keep safe, the queen is a weapon, a piece just as every other piece on the game below the king but the one who actually has the ammo, and the strength to destroy everything if they so wish. Getting the loyalty and the love of the queen on your side as the king is paramount to helping him lead and guard his throne. The queen on the other hand? As long as they are given what they need they should be fine, but if they aren't, then the throne would be turned upside down. Which brings us our two queens.

Porsche, or what he’s been set up as is the White Queen to Kinn's White King, I fear for him and anticipate him too. I fear because Porsche unknowingly becomes a piece in this game, being in a piece in the chess game is not good in this environment, you have no choice but to fight, you will be forced to play your role whether you know it or not. The queen is the most important piece of the board, the weapon, the defence, the one with the most power and knowledge of how to destroy the other King. She is not to be played with. The question is yes as a bodyguard who becomes incredibly skilled, Porsche could play that role, or as the love interest of Kinn it may symbolise him as his partner however, it also foreshadows there’s more to Porsche that we still don’t understand. Whatever Porsche has or owns is key to unlocking the defence mechanisms for the white side, and destroying every piece on the other side. The queen is someone who has knowledge or a connection that can easily overcome most of the game play in the war if used properly. Korn intends to connect Kinn to his queen (people have said to give him his own Chan but it’s more than that), meaning the game maker knows more things about this piece than we do, this isn’t just because he wants loyalty but he wants loyalty from Porsche as a way to trap him and make him become a weapon and puppet on their side. The queen is just as much a puppet as the other pieces, she’s also giving her life to ensure her man is protected and her power is the same. Porsche wants to protect Kinn now because of love which wasn’t his father’s intentions,  but Korn would gladly use it and manipulate it to ensure whatever is hidden inside Porsche will be used to its full potential. Kan and Vegas both know Porsche is important, they both keep trying to remove him  because he’s a threat the question is why?

And then you have Vegas. Oh Vegas, the boy who feels forced into all of this too. Vegas acts like he wants the power, and that he even wants to be the king of the piece, he seems given the most autonomy in the game, he’s strategic, cunning and smart, and cruel perfect for the role of the queen, but he’s also just a weapon, a pawn of his dad, sent to do his bidding without choice. Vegas is the queen because he’s meant to be the last line of defence for Kan, Kan has groomed and forced him to be strong, mighty and violent beyond belief to ensure no one gets past him. Reasons Vegas should be feared, he also like the queen contains knowledge, steps, and strategies that can defeat and wipe out the other side too. Vegas knows a lot too, he probably even knows more about the game than Kinn and Porsche know. The minor side knows how much power Korn has, they know his real self because they’ve seen his control and hate it, so while on the white side we see him as a dad who’s kind and set apart from the board, who’s nice to his kids and worried for them, the second side views him as a cunning monster who hurts them.

Vegas’s goal is to wipe out the major side why? What does he know or want from them (apart from greed for the throne and control) that makes him become a pawn easily used and controlled by his father to destroy them. Why does he hate them so much?. Either way I’ve been saying not just their positions in the game, but Porsche and Vegas mirror each other a lot in this story, they both have a lot characterization choices in common and it's intentional, however Vegas is put in a negative light and has too many masks, it’s hard to see his real self or understand him until we see him break. But just as Porsche’s real self beneath the queen piece is just a boy who dreams of protecting who he loves, staying alive for who he cares for, and forced into this life with no choice, Vegas who has a lot and is targeting him may just be the same. Spoiler he is the same. Either way, Vegas is an important piece of the game, he will be in the last line of defence of this war but there’s a piece that can defeat his power from the other side apart from the king and queen, if he’s ever vulnerable or blindsided. Who could that be?

In summary with the queens:

Porsche: Lover of the King, is loyal to him and him alone, wants to be free from responsibilities and roles and finds safety with Kinn. Is going to be great as a bodyguard (best defence and attack) and he's going to be wanted, targeted and prioritised. No one however knows what Kan intends to do with him not even Kinn, who still just believes his father is doing this for him to have someone he can trust. Porsche's choice can destroy the game, for both sides, same as Vegas.

Vegas: Sigh, son of the King, is also loyal to him and him alone and detests everything to do with the other side, feels slighted, and overlooked, and is a sadist who is numb to torture, pain and violence. His strengths are his ability to manipulate, wear masks and adapt to his surroundings, and weaponise everything he has. Vegas is also like the queen piece giving his ALL to the game, his loyalty and his knowledge he contains hidden from the other side could also destroy or remake the game depending what he wants to do with it. Vegas is seen as psychopathic, obsessed with power and control and pain, but the thing is like Porsche is on the other side, he has no choice in the matter, if he fails the whole side crumbles, if he fails, a lot is at stake. If his father is defeated everything falls apart. And like Porsche has his own goals for why he became unwittingly the queen, Vegas also has the same reason. Both Porsche and Vegas can also be stopped or defeated by the two parallel pieces on the latter side. Will discuss that in another post.

Anyways after spending time with KP, and looking at chess and watching videos describing chess, KP has most of their characters in the actual plot fit Korn's game, Korn has his own intentional laid pieces for this game, and Kan thinks he has his, however as mentioned, Kan isn't playing the game, he is a piece in the game, that's painful for him, there's no control no matter how much he thinks he's winning or ahead. Korn will always be one step ahead. Some of the pieces of the game are also corresponding to pieces of the murderboard Kim is looking at. Kim is the one trying to understand his father's game (while probably finding himself also playing a role unknowingly on the board), and he's the one who's also trying to piece things together, but there are somethings on Korn's side that can't be seen, for example he has plot armour because most of the pieces on his side are protagonists, he views love as weak (he's right) but he doesn't realise how much love and passion is what he needs to manipulate to get what he wants, it's how he basically will destroy the other side in every piece (and he doesn't even mean to sigh) but I'll go more into detail about that later once we see them expose their roles, I just feel bad for the other side they all never had a chance they were all going to be ruined because Korn is the one in control of the game from above. He was never in it.

[writingwithcolor]

I'm writing an AU of a movie that takes place in the 1880s USA, where a travelling white character and a Jewish character are waylaid by Native Americans, who they befriend. Probably because it was written by and about PoC (Jews) the scene actually avoids the stuff on your Native American Masterpost, but I'd still like to do better than a movie made in the 1980's, and I feel weird cutting them from the plot entirely. I have a Jewish woman reading it for that, but are there any things you (1/1)

2/2 1880s western movie ask--are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s? I do plan to base them on a real tribe (Ute, probably) and have proper housing/clothes and so forth, but right now I'm just trying to avoid or subvert awful cowboy movie tropes. Any ideas?

White and Jewish Men, Native American interactions in 1880s

I am vaguely concerned with how you only cite one of our posts about Native Americans, that was not written by a Native person, and do not cite any of the posts relating to this time period, or any posts relating to representation in media. 

Sidenote: if you want us to give accurate reflections of the media you’re discussing, please tell us the NAME. I cannot go look up this movie based off this description to give you an idea of what my issues are with this scene, and must instead trust that the representation is good based off your judgement. I cannot make my own judgement. This is a problem. Especially since your whole question boils down to “this scene is good but not great and I want it to be great. How can I do that?”

Your baseline for “good” could very well be my baseline for “terrible hack job”. I can’t give you the proper education required for you to be able to accurately evaluate the media you’re watching for racist stereotypes if you don’t tell me what you’re even working with.

When you’re writing fanfic where the media is directly relevant to the question, please tell us the name of the media. We will not judge your tastes. We need this information in order to properly help you.

Moving on.

I bring up my concern for you citing that one—exceptionally old—post because it is lacking in many of the tropes that don’t exist in the media critique field but exist in the real world. This is an issue I have run into countless times on WWC (hence further concern you did not cite any other posts) and have spoken about at length. 

People look at the media critique world exclusively, assume it is a complete evaluation of how Native Americans are seen in society, and as a result end up ignoring some really toxic stereotypes and then come to the inbox with “these characters aren’t abc trope, so they’re fine, but I want to rubber stamp them anyway. Anything wrong here?”. The answer is pretty much always yes. 

Issue one: “Waylaid” by Native Americans

This wording is extremely loaded for one reason: Native American people are seen as tricksters, liars, and predators. This is the #1 trope that shows up in the real world that does not show up in media critique. It’s also the trope I have talked about the most when it comes to media representation, so you not knowing the trope is a sign you haven’t read the entirety of the Native tag—which is in the FAQ as something we would really prefer you did before coming at us to answer questions. It avoids us having to re-explain ourselves.

Now, hostility is honestly to be expected for the time period the movie is set in. This is in the beginnings (or ramping up) of residential schools in America* and Canada, we have generations upon generations of stolen or killed children, reserves being allocated perhaps hundreds of miles from sacred sites, and various wars with Plains and Southwest peoples are in full force (Wounded Knee would have happened in 1890, in December, and the Dakoa’s mass execution would have been in 1862. Those are just the big-name wars. There absolutely were others). 

*America covers up its residential schools abuse extremely thoroughly, so if you try to research them in the American context you will come up empty. Please research Canada’s schools and apply the same abuse to America, as Canada has had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about residential schools and therefore is more (but not completely) transparent about the abuse that happened. Please note that America’s history with residential schools is longer than Canada’s history. There is an extremely large trigger warning for mass child death when you do this research.

But just because the hostility is expected does not mean that this hostility would be treated well in the movie. Especially when you consider the sheer amount of tension between any Native actors and white actors, for how Sacheen Littlefeather had just been nearly beaten up by white actors at the 1973 Academy Awards for mentioning Wounded Knee, and the American Indian Religious Freedom Act had only been passed two years prior in 1978. 

These Native actors would not have had the ability to truly consent to how they were shown, and this power dynamic has to be in your mind when you watch this scene over. I don’t care that the writers were from a discriminated-against background. This does not always result in being respectful, and I’ve also spoken about this power imbalance at length (primarily in the cowboy tag).

Documentaries and history specials made in the 2010s (with some degree of academic muster) will still fall into wording that harkens Indigenous people to wolves and settlers as frightened prey animals getting picked off by the mean animalistic Natives. This is not neutral, or good. This is perpetuating the myth that the settlers were helpless, just doing their own thing completely unobtrusively, and then the evil territorial Native Americans didn’t want to share.

To paraphrase Batman: if I had a week I couldn’t explain all the reasons that’s wrong.

How were these characters waylaid by the Native population? Because that answer—which I cannot get because you did not name the media—will determine how good the framing is. But based on the time period this movie was made alone, I do not trust it was done respectfully.

Issue 2: “Befriending”

I mentioned this was in an intense period of residential schools and land wars all in that area. The Ute themselves had just been massacred by Mormons in the Grass Valley Massacre in 1865, with ten men and an unknown number of women and children killed thanks to a case of assumed association with a war chief (Antonga Black Hawk) currently at war with Utah. The Paiute had been massacred in 1866. Over 100 Timpanogo men had been killed, with an unknown number of women and children enslaved by Brigham Young in Salt Lake City in 1850, with many of the enslaved people dying in captivity (those numbers were not tracked, but I would assume at least two hundred were enslaved— that’s simply assuming one woman/wife and one child for every man, and the numbers could have very well been higher if any war-widows and their children were in the group, not to mention families with multiple children). This is after an unknown group of Indigenous people had been killed by Governor Brigham Young the year prior, to “permanently stop cattle theft” from settlers. 

The number of Native Americans killed in Utah in the 1800s—just the number of dead counted (since women and children weren’t counted)—in massacres not tied to war (because there was at least one war) is over 130. The actual number of random murders is much higher; between the uncounted deaths and how the Governor had issued orders to “deal with” the problem of cattle theft permanently. I doubt you would have been tried or convicted if you murdered Indigenous peoples on “your” land. This is why it’s called state sanctioned genocide.

This is not counting the Black Hawk War in Utah (1865-1872), which the Ute were absolutely a part of (the wiki articles I read were contradictory if Antonga Black Hawk was Ute or Timpanogo, but the Ute were part of it). The first official massacre tied to the war—the Bear River Massacre, ordered by the US Military—places the death count of just that singular massacre at over five hundred Shoshone, including elders, women, and children. It would not be unreasonable to assume that the number of Indigenous people killed in Utah from 1850, onward, is over a thousand, perhaps two or three.

Pardon me for not reading beyond that point to list more massacres and simply ballparking a number; the source will be linked for you to get an accurate number of dead.

So how did they befriend the Native population? Let alone see them as fully human considering the racism of the time period? Natives were absolutely not seen as fully human so long as they were tied to their culture, and assimilation equalling some sliver of respect was already a stick being waved around as a threat. This lack of humanity continues to the present day.

I’m not saying friendship is impossible. I am saying the sheer levels of mistrust that would exist between random wandering groups of white/pale men and Indigenous communities wouldn’t exactly make that friendship easy. Having the scene end be a genuine friendship feels ignorant and hollow and flattening of ongoing genocide, because settlers lied about their intentions and then lined you up for slauther (that’s how the Timpanogo were killed and enslaved).

Utah had already done most of its mass killing by this point. The era of trusting them was over. There was an active open hunting season, and the acceptable targets were the Indigenous populations of Utah.

(sources for the numbers: 

List of Indian Massacres in North America Black Hawk War (1865-1872))

Issue 3: “Proper housing/clothes and so forth”

Do you mean Western style settlements and jeans? If yes, congratulations you have written a reservation which means the land-ripped-away wounds are going to be fresh, painful, and sore.

You do not codify what you mean by “proper”, and proper is another one of those deeply loaded colonial words that can mean “like a white man” or “appropriate for their tribe.” For the time period, it would be the former. Without specifying which direction you’re going for, I have no idea what you’re imagining. And without the name of the media, I don’t know what the basis of this is.

The reservation history of this time period seems to maybe have some wiggle room; there were two reservations allocated for the Ute at this time, one made in 1861 and another made in 1882 (they were combined into the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in 1886). This is all at the surface level of a google and wikipedia search, so I have no idea how many lived in the bush and how many lived on the reserve. 

There were certainly land defenders trying to tell Utah the land did not belong to them, so holdouts that avoided getting rounded up were certainly possible. But these holdouts would be far, far more hostile to anyone non-Native.

The Ute seemed to be some degree of lucky in that the reserve is on some of their ancestral territory, but any loss of land that large is going to leave huge scars. 

It should be noted that reserves would mean the traditional clothing and housing would likely be forbidden, because assimilation logic was in full force and absolutely vicious at this time. 

It’s a large reserve, so the possibility exists they could have accidentally ended up within the borders of it. I’m not sure how hostile the state government was for rounding up all the Ute, so I don’t know if there would have been pockets of them hiding out. In present day, half of the Ute tribe lives on the reserve, but this wasn’t necessarily true historically—it could have been a much higher percentage in either direction.

It’s up to you if you want to make them be reservation-bound or not. Regardless, the above mentioned genocide would have been pretty fresh, the land theft in negotiations or already having happened, and generally, the Ute would be well on their way to every assimilation attempt made from either residential schools, missionaries, and/or the forced settlement and pre-fab homes.

To Answer Your Question

I don’t want another flattened, sanitized portrayal of genocide.

Look at the number of dead above, the amount of land lost above, the amount of executive orders above. And try to tell me that these people would be anything less than completely and totally devastated. Beyond traumatized. Beyond broken hearted. Absolutely grief stricken with almost no soul left.

Their religion would have been illegal. Their children would have been stolen. Their land was taken away. A saying about post-apocalyptic fiction is how settler-based it is, because Indigenous people have already lived through their own apocalypse.

It would have all just happened at the time period this story is set in. All of the grief you feel now at the environment changing so drastically that you aren’t sure how you’ll survive? Take that, magnify it by an exponential amount because it happened, and you have the mindset of these Native characters.

This is not a topic to tread lightly. This is not a topic to read one masterpost and treat it as a golden rule when there is too much history buried in unmarked, overfull graves of school grounds and cities and battlefields. I doubt the movie you’re using is good representation if it doesn’t even hint at the amount of trauma these Native characters would have been through in thirty years.

A single generation, and the life that they had spent millennia living was gone. Despite massive losses of life trying to fight to preserve their culture and land.

Learn some history. That’s all I can tell you. Learn it, process it, and look outside of checklists. Look outside of media. 

And let us have our grief.

~ Mod Lesya

On Question Framing

Please allow me the opportunity to comment on “are there things you'd LIKE to see in a movie where a white man and a Jewish man run into Native Americans in the 1880s?” That strikes me as the same type of question as asking what color food I’d like for lunch. I don’t see how the cultural backgrounds of characters I have literally no other information about is supposed to make me want anything in particular about them. I don’t know anything about their personalities or if they have anything in common.

Compare the following questions:

“Are there things you’d like to see in a movie where two American women, one from a Nordic background and one Jewish, are interacting?” I struggle to see how our backgrounds are going to yield any further inspiration. It certainly doesn’t tell you that we’re both queer and cling to each other’s support in a scary world; it doesn’t tell you that we uplift each other through mental illness; it doesn’t go into our 30 years of endless bizarre inside jokes related to everything from mustelids to bad subtitles.

Because: “white”, “Jewish”, and “Native American” aren’t personality words. You can ask me what kind of interaction I’d like to see from a high-strung overachieving woman and a happy-go-lucky Manic Pixie Dream Girl, and I’ll tell you I’d want fluffy f/f romance. Someone else might want conflict ultimately resolving in friendship. A third person might want them slowly getting on each other’s nerves more and more until one becomes a supervillain and the other must thwart her. But the same question about a cultural demographic? That told me nothing about the people involved.

Also, the first time I meet a new person from a very different culture, it might take weeks before discussion of our specific cultural differences comes up. As a consequence, my first deep conversations with a Costa Rican American gentile friend were not about Costa Rica or my Jewishness but about things we had in common: classical music and coping with breakups--which are obviously conversations I could have had if we were both Jewish, both Costa Rican gentiles, or both something else. So in other words, I’m having trouble seeing how knowing so little about these characters is supposed to give me something to want to see on the page.

Thank you for understanding.

(And yes, I agree with Lesya, what’s with this trend of people trying to explain their fandom in a roundabout way instead of mentioning it by name? It makes it harder to give meaningful help….)

--Shira

[potteresque-ire]

This post is Part 5 of the five-part meta series on the Zhang Zhehan (張哲瀚) Incident, based on what has transpired up to 2021/08/22.

1) The 2nd Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) & the Yasukuni Shrine 2) Post-War Sino-Japanese Relations; “Every Chinese should visit the Yasukuni Shrine” 3) The Summer of 2021: The Brewing Storms for One 4) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part A 5) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part B

5) My Thoughts on Zhang’s Incident, Part B

As a highlight to the mob nature leading to Zhang’s downfall, please consider the timeline immediately before and after Zhang’s losing his endorsements on August 13th (or, why August 13th really mattered):

August 12th, evening: Zhang’s 2019 attendance of a wedding at the Nogi Shrine (乃木神社) went on Weibo hot search, and into public awareness. The Nogi Shrine (乃木神社) is of far less fame than the Yasukuni Shrine, but was named after a Japanese general of the Imperialist Japanese Army who was also the governor-general of then colonial Taiwan.

August 13th, ~ 2 am: netizens uncovered photos of Zhang’s 2018 visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, which were spread onto Weibo and made the hot search.

August 13th, 1:39 pm: Zhang posted his first letter of apology that began with: “Today, I’m ashamed of my once ignorant self, and furthermore, wants to apologise deeply for my past inappropriate behaviour.” (今天我為曾經無知的自己而羞愧，更要對之前不當行為深刻地道歉。)

August 13th, 2 pm: Nabuo Kishi, Japan’s current Minister of Defence, and a right-wing member of the House of Representative, Yasutoshi Nishimura, made an un-announced visit to the Yasukuni Shrine. The date was 2 days earlier than the 76th anniversary of Emperor Hirohito’s surrender speech (August 15th), as customary for Japanese officials to avoid visiting the shrine on significant anniversary dates of the war.

August 13th, 4:39 pm: People’s Daily (人民日報) published an online critique of Zhang’s apology. “… As a public figure, to be so lacking in historical knowledge, so unfeeling towards the suffering of the nation, it’s too inappropriate. On matters of righteousness of the nation, testing is not permissible, challenges are definitely not permissible. If knowingly committed, one would pay a heavy price.”  (。。。身為公眾人物，對歷史常識如此匱乏，對民族苦難渾然不覺，太不應該。事關民族大義，不容任何試探，更不容有任何挑戰。若明知故犯，就得付出沈重代價。)

August 13th, 5:05 pm: CCTV News (央視新聞) posted the video of Nabuo Kishi’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.

August 13th, 5:33: Zhang was dropped from his first endorsement. He would be dropped by all 27 of them within the next 5 hours.

August 13th, 5:35 pm: Zhang responded to People’s Daily’s critique piece, stating he shall repent and learn his lesson, and that as a Chinese, he loves his country and the CCP.

August 13th, ~6 pm: S. Korean news reported that the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs had summoned the Japanese ambassador in Korea to protest the visit of the Japanese Defence Minister to the Yasukuni Shrine.

August 13th, 6:26 pm: CCTV News (央視新聞) critiqued Zhang’s apology. “Whether to take photos in front of the Yasukuni Shrine, or to attend a wedding at the Nogi Shrine, Zhang Zhehan touched the wounds of history, hurt the feelings of the nation. It cannot be blamed on “once ignorance.” Just now, a Japanese Minister went to the Yasukuni Shrine for “demon worshipping” (Pie note: demon, from guizi 鬼子), China firmly opposes to this wrongdoing of Japanese high officials…” (無論在靖國神社前合影，還是到乃木神社參加婚禮，張哲瀚都觸碰了歷史傷痕，傷害了民族感情，不能簡單歸咎為「曾經無知」。就在剛剛，有日本大臣到靖國神社「拜鬼」，中方堅決反對日本政要這種錯誤做法。。。)

August 13th, 9 pm: China’s Ministry of National Defence answered press questions regarding the Yasukuni Shrine visit by Nabuo Kishi and Yasutoshi Nishimura.

Not only did Zhang’s incident happened in August, 2021, it happened on pretty much the worst day for him in August, 2021; the latest of his incident interleaved the unfolding news of the Japanese high officials’ visit to the Yasukuni Shrine.

What I’d like to call attention to, however, is this: Zhang’s endorsements didn’t begin dropping until *after* People’s Daily criticism.

If the companies had been genuinely offended by Zhang’s action, why was the wait necessary? If their Chinese feelings were genuinely hurt, why hadn’t they moved earlier, in the morning of August 13th, when Zhang’s visit went on hot search? Were these companies also ignorant about history, the significance of the the Yasukuni Shrine? The Chinese government has far more important things to worry about than an idol, but what about these companies that had paid good money for their spokesperson? That watch the public opinion, the market carefully?

Even if they didn’t care about the war themselves, why hadn’t they dropped Zhang based on the expected public opinion? What does that say about what these market experts believed, or knew about the public opinion? What does that say about their assessment of whether their potential customers would, as their actual selves, stop spending money on their products because of Zhang’s Yasukuni Shrine visit?

Were the act of dropping Zhang, then, more an act of performative patriotism than anything else? Once the first company started, the rest raced to follow for fear of being the slowest one, viewed as the least patriotic one. Hence, the 5-hour storm of endorsements abandoning Zhang. This herd ... mob behaviour, in which actions were either not taken or all taken at the same time, was also observed in the timing of different online platforms removing Zhang’s works, and fandom content with his name.

A “bingo card” for netizens to cross out Zhang’s endorsements as the sequential drops happened. Similar cards for Kris Wu had circulated in July. 

Were WoH and Zhang’s other group projects removed because Zhang was unpatriotic, or was it because the online platforms (and the tech giants behind them) were trying to protect themselves? Youku explained WoH’s first-time removal as a technical glitch but then, as reports of other platforms removing Zhang’s content poured in, the series was removed again.  

How much is real when it comes to the thunderous online declarations of love and betrayal against China? 

Related to this: turtles may remember the Xinjiang cotton incident in March, 2021, how Chinese netizens harassed anyone who used, endorsed Nike. One may assume, with that outcry, that rage, that anyone with a reputation to keep, with ties to the Chinese state, in particular, have severed their ties with the brand.

As it turns out, the teams of the Chinese Super (Football) League, for example, have kept their Nike kits. The Chinese Football Association (CFA), which, despite being officially non-governmental and nonprofit, is managed by the State General Administration of Sports (國家體育總局), issued a statement on March 27th on Weibo that only criticised Nike’s “wrong actions in choosing its cotton source” (對耐克公司在棉花原料選擇上的錯誤行徑表達了譴責), and reserved “its right to further deal with  contract with Nike” (保留進一步處理同耐克合同的權力). It never cut off the contract with Nike: a 10-year sponsorship,  signed in 2018, which amounts to 3 million RMB (463,000 USD) in funds from Nike for each football club every year. The CFA statement was later removed from Weibo. Photos of the football players have simply had the Nike Swoosh covered up, or photoshopped away. 

Photos from the Shanghai Shenhua football club, with and without the swoosh (Source).

Life is practical in China … and darkly humorous, at times. As a Mao-founded regime should be, perhaps.

I got Asks wondering then: will our non-Zhang-related favourite stars and CPs, dramas and fandoms get affected by the incident?

At the moment, my guess leans towards a no. My basis is this: in the critique piece against Zhang, published on 2021/08/16, by 中纪委 Central Commission for Discipline Inspection—the CCDI, by the way, is the highest anti-corruption, rules and regulations body in China—I believe the reason Zhang was disciplined was clearly stated:

對於所有「拜鬼」行為，中國都堅決反對。但如果我們國內的公眾人物去靖國神社都不被譴責和追究，我們又怎麼挺直腰桿要求外國人不去呢？

“Regarding all “demon worship” behaviour, China holds firm oppositions. But if our own public figures going to the Yasukuni Shrine get no reprimands, no investigations of responsibility, how can we straighten our backs and demand foreigners to not go?”

This has led me to think the state has no ulterior motives in targeting Zhang: Zhang’s “sin” was limited to his visiting the Yasukuni Shrine as a well-known, public figure, and/but that was enough. And the punishment had to be given in a heavy-handed, high profile manner, given the “news “of Zhang’s visit broke out on August 13, 2021. The following observation may be my being over-sensitive, but in the timeline above, Zhang was reprimanded, and his first round of the punishment in full swing (dropping of endorsements), before the China’s Ministry of National Defence talked to the press, which happened later than it had to be (compare the timing with S. Korea’s). Short of removing Zhang’s hot searches—which netizens would’ve noticed—this ordering of events was necessary; otherwise, the Chinese government issuing a formal complaint against Japan for their Minister of Defence’s visit to the shrine would’ve co-existed on the hot search with the report of China’s own celebrity visiting the same place. I therefore believe the state’s reaction had nothing to do with how Zhang achieved his fame, the past and present projects he was involved in, the CPs he was coupled with. Other state agencies and media would likely be careful about not attaching these topics to Zhang’s case as well, so not to distract from the central message of the government that … the Japanese are very bad people in the summer of 2021.

(Whether they’ll attach them to the Clear and Bright campaign is another matter.) 

Another Ask ~ Will Zhang be able to make a comeback? In five years? Ten?

Looking that far ahead is difficult, but one thing has to happen for Zhang to return—the Japanese have to stop being very bad people according to the Chinese government, which isn’t likely to happen soon. The Japanese government has shown few signs that they shall soon revise their attitudes towards their World War II history  (Yasutoshi Nishimura, who went to the Shrine with Japan’s Minister of Defence on August 13th, is associated with a historical revisionist group), while China’s escalating military aggression in the Indo-Pacific region will be seen as a growing threat to Japan, likely push the country towards the right. 

And 5, 10 years later, Zhang will be 35, 40 years old. Even if he’ll be able to work in the industry again, it’ll be difficult for him to achieve the fame he has before. Also, just because the government no longer bans him doesn’t mean production companies will be willing to hire him; he’ll be considered high risk—policies of China are volatile, after all, and the decision to un-ban can be easily reversed.

(I’m so sorry, Anon, I wish I have a better answer for you.)

And... here’s a thought I’ll finally end this meta series with. I don’t see Zhang as the only loser in this incident. I don’t really see any winners in this incident at all. An industry is dangerous for its every worker if its narrative, its list of guilty is penned by cyber mobs and in the name of patriotism; if the accused cannot speak for themselves, aren’t allowed to grow; if its rules of appropriate conduct are every-changing (The Reporter in 2017 = OK; Zhang in 2018 = Not OK); if its workers are penalised not by their own deeds but their associations (the rest of the cast and production team of WoH and other Zhang-associated projects).

The think tank for the National Ratio and Television Authority (國家廣播電視總局; NRTA, ie, the Chinese visual media censorship board), in their criticism piece about Zhang, hinted at even rougher waters ahead, in light of Zhang’s (and Kris Wu’s) transgressions:

明星頻頻「犯事」，說到底還是行業內對明星藝德約束不夠嚴格。��瞭解，電影行業正在籌備全國電影界道德委員會，將對電影從業人員道德規範提出更高要求，並提出，要將明星藝德納入法治化的軌道中來，給明星藝德約束加一道法規之鎖，明確明星的責任和義務，將明星的個人行為與職業利益掛鈎。 “The ultimate cause of stars “getting into trouble” frequently is that the industry has not tied a sufficiently severe bind on the stars’ artistic virtue (Pie note: roughly, = professional ethics). Based on reports, the film industry is preparing a National Film Industry Morality Committee that shall raise the moral requirements for film industry workers. The industry has also suggested that the stars’ artistic virtue shall eventually be governed by laws, to add a lock of legality to the bind of artistic virtues for the stars, to make clear the stars’ responsibilities and obligations, to couple a star’s personal behaviour with their professional (monetary) gains.”

My interpretation of this: should the suggestions become reality, it shall be written in future film contracts that a star who commits an act that the state considers immoral will have to pay the investors the production cost of their projects, and possibly, the projected profit. 

To put some dollar signs to this interpretation: a high-profile star may work on one or more projects with a price tag in the order of 100 million RMB (~15 million USD); box office, merchandise sells, and long term profits expected from online streaming can raise that number by several fold. This is a sum that even the most affluent stars will have a difficult time affording—and that’s before considering the endorsements, for which current contracts already require the stars to pay the damages.

The key word here is that the offending act only has to be considered immoral, not criminal. Immoral acts range from not liking the CCP enough—an easy-to-understand offence—to deviation from the society’s 公序良俗 (“public order and fine customs”), which includes just about anything that disagrees with the state-defined mainstream values.

Stars are stars because they invite the imaginations of their audience, because they break boundaries: from the seemingly insurmountable humdrum of daily life, to something that can be much, much more.

Stars should, of course, be law-abiding; they should be patriotic. But a star who’s mainstream in every way? Are they still a star, something we regular people wonder about, dream upon?

Bind and lock, the NRTA think tank referred to these suggestions. It reminders me of a quote by the famous Chinese director, Feng Xiaogang (馮小剛), who, in 2014, complained to BBC—perhaps in a slip of tongue—that Chinese directors could be like “dancing with fetters” (戴著腳鐐去跳舞) when working with the country’s censorship system.

Yeah. It’s kinda like that.

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The Zhang Zhehan Incident Meta Series:

PART 1  PART 2 PART 3 PART 4 PART 5 <- YOU ARE HERE