no im gonna yap a little sorry
theres something about this. i watched the stream in my childhood bedroom where i first watched their videos back in 2015. i have my tatinof and ii posters on the wall and i dug out my tabinof from a box to bring to my apartment halfway across the country. who i was at 14 is so drastically different to who i am at 22, and yet so fundamentally the same.
when i started watching them, i was deeply anxious to the point that i was begging my parents pull me from school. and my mom said “what if you make friends on the internet?”
they are my comfort and so are all of you to be honest, finding this corner of the internet and the friends Ive made through it, it’s what made me get through my teenage years.
i dont think i have the words, or ever will, to be able to express exactly what this all means to me. i was in a pretty bad place mentally before the renaissance, and coming back to tumblr and the way things used to be brings me so so so much joy
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I am liking Jujutsu Kaisen, way more than I imagined I would, but I foresee it will let me down and it's keeping me from enjoying this as much as I could haha
I think the characters and dynamics are well set, and I think many of them have an incredibly good and deep potential, but I would be willing to bet they'll not get a proper development, enough for them to really hit. A well assembled set of gears is not enough to make the movement go, you have to wind the clockwork.
I think Gojo and Megumi have a fascinating and very complex dynamic, but I doubt it will be given the time and care that imo it needs to actually work. And it is going well enough for now! One could see the intimacy between them was deeper than the one Gojo had with, say, Yuji and Nobara ever since the very first few episodes despite the fact Fushiguro too was a first year. But the pieces forming what they have are extremely complex, and it just wouldn't be realistic if it doesn't show, even if in a not showing way, or if it doesn't have consequences or implications.
It's one of those dynamics that shape one's life, the way one regards the world, the way one establishes or not relationships with other people. It's one of those dynamics that could be full of fondness, gratitude, resentment, admiration, trust, and that imply intimacy, the good kind or the bad, even if in just the knowledge of someone who's been a constant through your life. It could, and would, imply a myriad of feelings, and probably in such a mix it could imply contradictory feelings too. Even the nothingness would weight, even the nothingness would be significant and meaningful.
Gojo took Megumi and his sister under his wing, the son of a man who murdered him, because of both selfish and selfless reasons. Megumi looks like Toji. What does Gojo feel about this? How does Gojo deal with this? How does Gojo go about taking care of Megumi? Would he walk him to school? Make him breakfast? Celebrate his birthdays making him blow candles? Did he take him to the zoo? Does the relationship between them feel professional or is it something more? Gojo appreciates his students, but is Megumi to him just another student? When Gojo faces Sukuna in Megumi's body, did he see the kid he raised, or does he just see Sukuna in one of his students' body? Did he have one faint wavering instant? And how does Megumi feel about this? Is he resentful of him? Resentful of the situation? Of the selfishness behind his actions? Does he feel like a pawn? Is he grateful? Does he resent feeling grateful? Would he rather not? Does he love Gojo? Does he feel nothing about him other than what he could feel about a teacher that sort of annoys him but knows he's reliable in his strength? Does he think it unfair, cruel or unfeeling that Gojo is close, closer perhaps, with Yuuji or Yuta, considering their story? When Sukuna slices Gojo in two, does the remnants of Megumi's soul tremble?
And not just Megumi and Gojo. Yuuji and Nanami, Gojo and Nanami, Yuuji and Fushiguro, Nobara and the boys, or Nobara and Maki, Todo and Yuuji or Yuta, Gojo and Yuta, Megumi and his sister. Gojo and Geto, even! If the pieces are well set, the dynamics are intriguing, interesting, and have potential to be deep, but then the characters have like two plot relevant scenes that punch you hard, but little more, it's not nearly enough. Especially not nearly enough for the enormity that is shonen dynamics and situations. And the potential existing at all, and then not delivering, makes it all the more frustrating when you're left with something mediocre that could have been so good.
The development of dynamics through not only a few plot relevant gut wrenching moving scenes, but also the smallness of life, is important. The friend who recommended this to me said that those things were just unnecessary filler, but I disagree. I think there's a big difference between a large amount of anime-only filler episodes whose existence is based on the fact they had run out of manga chapters to animate, and moments of quietness. The low stakes character-driven moments of quietness can be so telling and so insightful, and they are so satisfactory when brought back later in higher stakes situations. My friend teased me there was no scene of Gojo making breakfast to Megumi, that it would be an idiotic idea, but it would be so telling. How he makes breakfast, what they eat, if he tries hard or if it's all mechanised, if they have personal bowls or if they use whatever, if he just buys them some pastry on the way to school, if the way they have breakfast changes through the years, or if he doesn't make them breakfast at all! All that would be very insightful on their dynamic and its evolution. All that would give a glimpse on how they regard each other and why, even in the present. All that could become meaningful in tense situations and high stakes scenes.
These moments also let the plot breath; if a lot is happening all the time, if every character is always experiencing trauma after trauma, the entire story is so emotionally draining that at some point you don't even care all that much. Besides, these nothing moments or low stakes plot arcs, besides deepening and developing dynamics, also let some in-world time pass, which would make the intimacy and bond between characters more believable imo; between Yuuji eating Sukuna's finger and their last confrontation in December how much time has passed? A few months? Am I truly to believe these characters are so everything to each other in only a few months?
Without some smallness, some repetition, some daily life, some low stakes not plot-centric development, the dynamics don't hit, they don't truly feel fleshed out, and dynamics as complex as the ones Megumi and Gojo have, or as supposedly meaningful as the one Megumi has with Yuuji or his sister, should be fleshed out if they're going to exist at all. Otherwise they'd risk making the writing feel awkward and fake. Besides, if the dynamics felt well fleshed out and realistic, they would shape the way the characters interact and act, and how they deal with situations, thus being plot relevant.
The shonen genre has so much happening all the time, the stakes are so high, the dynamics are so rooted in big events and the relationships carry enormous weight and implications. Yet they barely get developed, and it feels so stupid, so plain, the absence of something so important noticeable like a constant void, a shapeless nothingness present in every scene. It makes the characters feel like cardboard figures. Jujutsu Kaisen is already getting a better job than many, but I doubt it will do enough for what I've heard, and I fear I am bound to feel let down, and bound to feel unmoved.
After all, if not enough time and care has been given to develop a dynamic, I am not going to feel pressured by the high stakes; if not enough time and care has been given to develop the dynamic between Megumi and Yuuji, as good potential as it has I am bound to feel little for this last confrontation between Sukuna and Itadori, and his effort in getting Megumi back.
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More Laudna resurrection thoughts.
One thing I noticed that I’ve not seen anyone else mention is Laudna’s moment of paralysed silence when she first wakes up. This moment:
Or more to the point, the voice that she uses when she first speaks.
Two lines: “I... I don’t...”, and “Have you found anything else out about your Mum?”
And both of them are delivered in a different accent than her usual voice as Laudna - in a much flatter English accent. We noticed during the previous episode that Laudna’s voice was a little more cockney and less Mid-Atlantic when her younger versions were interacting with Imogen, and that seems to have continued here.
Two takeaways.
Firstly, in this moment of awakening, Laudna is having trouble nailing down which version of herself she is. When FCG looks at her surface thoughts he sees a flip book of the memories she has been reliving in Delilah’s hellscape. She seems to be embodying a version of them in her first stuttering words to her friends.
Secondly, I can’t be the only one who’s noticed how similar Delilah’s and Laudna’s patterns of talking are. They share inflections, choices of where to draw out syllables and put emphasis. The accent is almost identical. My thesis: Laudna’s very way of speaking has been shaped by Delilah’s presence in her head for the past 30 years, until she speaks more like her than her younger self.
Oh, and one final takeaway: how freaking brilliant is Marisha Ray to have thought about this characterisation and put it into practice in this moment in an almost throwaway manner. Nobody’s noticed it, or at least nobody’s commented on it. But it says so much about both the moment and about her sense of self - now, but also when she’s stabilised. A woman transformed and shaped by Delilah in all the ways.
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look i know we have like a mere ~43 minutes to tie it all up next sunday, but in addition to urgent matters, there is to me the very pressing issue of making clear what the actual fuck was up with that egregiously evil show lestat put on at the trial, weirdness and all. the one non-book-fans may not question bc, yknow. evil? as well as that entire first season where lestat was sold to the public as 500 pounds of pure asshole in a 10 pound sack
but i’m kind of nervous we’re not going to get clarity?
“If you noticed Lestat was acting a bit off during certain moments of the play, you were right to think something was going on. There are things in the second book in The Vampire Chronicles series, The Vampire Lestat, that better contextualize Lestat’s behavior in this moment. We won’t reveal that book plot here, but Reid says “seeds are placed” in the trial and in next week’s finale. At the time of publication, the series has not yet been renewed for a third season. If it is renewed, showrunner Rolin Jones previously told TV Insider that it will be an adaptation of The Vampire Lestat.”
(oh pls we all know the renewal is a sure thing but anyway—)
SEEDS ARE PLACED?
WE’RE PLACING SEEDS, AMC???
be for so real right now and do not tell me i have to wait another two years for the overdue “oh actually there were Reasons, i know we made him out to be a flaming (charismatic) dickwad for the non-book-reader to despise again and again and again, but actually lestat’s not soooo bad, not entirely, we were just fucking with your mind”
i’m breathing. it’s not sunday yet. maybe all will be well. i’ve only been waiting patiently since ’22 to have this poor bastard loathed 2% less in the court of public opinion. i have NERVES
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