#she’s isn’t a perfect victim and she’s the most consistent character in the books and yall hate her for it 🙄

[easypeezysilverbreezey]

ivypool they will never ever make me hate you. god forbid a traumatized mentally ill woman behaves in a way that isn’t woobifiable to you :/

[throwawayasoiafaccount]

When I see stuff like this I kinda want to bash my head into a wall:

To start off, I’m not sure whether this person was commenting on book or show Cersei, but honestly, it doesn’t even matter because she’s so much more than the ‘ambitious villain’ or the ‘murderous girlboss’ tropes in both the book and show.

(Of course, I do have my issues with the way Cersei was written in the show like most people but this is simply a rant post so I’m not going to go through the differences of Show vs Book Cersei)

Cersei is a female character who was shaped by her environment, who’s insecurities were created by her environment, and she’s a woman who’s idiotic mistakes can be traced back to how her environment shaped her. She’s much more than a murderous girlboss, she’s both a victim of the system and also a beneficiary of it, while also acting as an agent of it to keep the status quo while also desiring what the system denied her.

Cersei is NUANCED and complicated and even now people hate that about her and want her to have been a purely evil woman handcrafted in a vacuum, ignoring the context of her life because readers would rather not engage with Cersei’s victimhood and nuances because that ruins their idea of: She Was The Problem and Always The Problem. (People would rather say that she deserved her walk of shame instead of interacting meaningfully with the theme of systematic gender-based violence that is so prevalent in Cersei’s story. The exploration of patriarchal violence in Show Alicent’s story is done so horribly in comparison.)

And what really pissed me off about these tags is that this person has clearly decided that they don’t care to interact with the nuance of Cersei and are fine with flattening her, and yet they shit on others for not liking Alicent.

Because of the way Alicent is written in this show, she almost always has a ‘woe is me I can do no wrong’ attitude, which of course drives people away from the character (woe is me I deserve to take a child’s eye 🥺). However, what actually annoys me is how she’s made out to be stupid, foolish, ignorant, and inconsistent due to the horrible writing of this show, all of which are deviations from her book characterization. Also, I despise it when people want me to support writing decisions and changes made in adaptations that are downright misogynistic and are meant to attract the male gaze.

But what pisses many people, including myself, off is how the changes made negatively impacted many other characters. Alicent’s terrible characterization is like a black hole that distorts and warps the whole story! It’s annoying af!

So when people like this say: ‘She’s nuanced and people just can’t handle it 🙄;’ I say: No. She’s horribly written and a different character from the book and people have a right to be critical about these changes that stripped a female character of 1) her agency and 2) her intelligence!

And the thing is, there was little reason for the writers to have made all these changes to Alicent’s characterization! In the book she is an interesting character with clear motives and understandable reactions. She’s cunning and ambitious and acts the way a noble lady who became queen would. And despite her clear ambitions and dislike of Rhaenyra, she still makes a comment wondering about who would protect the Princess from Ser Criston, and yet she then takes Cole into her service after his falling out with Rhaenyra. That’s a perfect example of nuance! Show Alicent could never compare to book Alicent’s clear moral values and consistent disregard of said moral values in pursuit of power.

And because of this, Book Alicent isn’t easy to stomach. It’s hard for most people to come to terms with a character like her and it’s even harder for people to feel sympathetic for her at the end when she went mad with grief.

On the other hand, Show Alicent was designed in a way to garner pity, and when the writers felt like her current arc wouldn’t be enough to garner the specific reaction they wanted they would then throw in a time skip and suddenly she’s completely different and yet still Thee victim. She’s designed to be as sympathetic as fucking possible! The camera angles, the background music, and the lighting is set up in a way to make sure you the viewer feels pity or sympathy for her! Cause that’s her role in this series! She’s thee Ultimate Victim!

But too bad for the writers as many people are fed up with this kind of inconsistent writing. Even when the writers created a whole new challenge for Alicent where she’s shitted on by the green council and forced to face the beast she helped to raise, I and many others could never feel any satisfaction as it was clear that once again Alicent was being made to be Thee Ultimate Victim who was just led astray by the patriarchy and was a victim of it and was only just realizing it so don’t you pity her don’t you feel sad for her and now she’s trying to do the right thing so pls pls pls pity her 🥺~ So it shouldn’t be surprising that many people are annoyed by these eNLiGhtEnEd changes that have led to a complete deviation from the source material.

To summarize: Cersei is an excellent fucking character who’s by no means easy to stomach, and because she’s not easy to stomach she’s often reduced to annoying ass tropes by dumbasses who are reading above their comprehension level. But when you actually try to understand her, you can easily see why she turned out the way she did and you can feel sympathy for her while understanding that she’s both victim and perpetrator! On the other hand, Show Alicent is a mess and HOTD is trying to make her serve a different narrative role than she did in the books so ofc people are going to be unhappy with the changes as book readers are once again faced with the annoying reality that the writers don’t give a fuck about the source material.

[hchollym]

I have a question about Fleur. You and a lot of other people act like she is this unfairly victimized character, but if I remember correctly, wasn't she really rude in canon?

It seems like you're genuinely asking and not just bashing the character, so I'll give you an honest answer.

I feel like Fleur tends to be treated by her stans in a similar way that Percy is (see this post). She's an interesting character because she is flawed, but then antis will go so far overboard with criticism that it causes a knee-jerk reaction to just say, "You know what? Forget it. She's perfect."

She has a lot of great qualities that are often overlooked. She is brave, fiercely loyal to the people she loves, and willing to forgive others (such as Molly & Ginny).

She's also more relatable than people tend to realize. Yes, she's this gorgeous part veela character, but some of her experiences are pretty consistent with any other person on the planet.

For example, look at this scene from Book 4 after the Second Task:

“Fleur Delacour, though she demonstrated excellent use of the Bubble-Head Charm, was attacked by grindylows as she approached her goal, and failed to retrieve her hostage. We award her twenty-five points.” Applause from the stands. “I deserved zero,” said Fleur throatily, shaking her magnificent head.

Most of us have felt self-critical and disappointed in ourselves at one point or another.

In that same book, it's clear that Fleur has a crush on Cedric & is constantly trying to flirt with him, yet when she asks him to the Yule Ball, he turns her down to go with Cho instead.

Again, most of us know what rejection feels like, so we can see ourselves in that situation.

Is Fleur flawed as well? Of course. Everyone is.

She can definitely be arrogant and rude:

“She looked at me like I was a sea slug or something. Didn’t even answer..."

&

Meanwhile Fleur Delacour was criticizing the Hogwarts decorations to Roger Davies. “Zis is nothing,” she said dismissively, looking around at the sparkling walls of the Great Hall. “At ze Palace of Beauxbatons, we ’ave ice sculptures all around ze dining chamber at Chreestmas. Zey do not melt, of course . . . zey are like ’uge statues of diamond, glittering around ze place. And ze food is seemply superb. And we ’ave choirs of wood nymphs, ’oo serenade us as we eat. We ’ave none of zis ugly armor in ze ’alls, and eef a poltergeist ever entaired into Beauxbatons, ’e would be expelled like zat.” She slapped her hand onto the table impatiently.

&

'No, no, silly boy,’ said Fleur with a tinkling laugh, ‘I mean next summer, when we – but do you not know?’ Her great blue eyes widened and she looked reproachfully at Mrs Weasley, who said, ‘We hadn’t got around to telling him yet.’ Fleur turned back to Harry, swinging her silvery sheet of hair so that it whipped Mrs Weasley across the face. ‘Bill and I are going to be married!’

&

‘She ’as let ’erself go, zat Tonks,’ mused Fleur, examining her own stunning reflection in the back of a teaspoon. ‘A big mistake, if you ask –’

&

Celestina ended her song on a very long, high-pitched note and loud applause issued out of the wireless, which Mrs Weasley joined in with enthusiastically. ‘Eez eet over?’ said Fleur loudly. ‘Thank goodness, what an ’orrible –’

&

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Ron. ‘Gravy, Fleur?’ In his eagerness to help her, he knocked the gravy boat flying; Bill waved his wand and the gravy soared up in the air and returned meekly to the boat. ‘You are as bad as zat Tonks,’ said Fleur to Ron, when she had finished kissing Bill in thanks. ‘She is always knocking –’

So clearly, Fleur is not perfect, but one of the major problems is that JKR seems to constantly exaggerate secondary female character's flaws (like Fleur, Lavender, Parvati, etc.) to fit in with the negative stereotype of feminine women.

Plus, it's very frustrating that Fleur is the only female competitor in the Triwizard Tournament, and yet she consistently does worse than her male counterparts on each task. That's misogyny and absolute BS on JKR's part.

So to summarize, Fleur fans do tend to be very protective of her (to the point of erasing her flaws), but it's a direct result/backlash of fandom's/society's opinion on the worth of feminine women.

Thanks for the ask! 😊

[politalysis]

# What has happened to JK Rowling?

Growing up in the early 2000s immediately made Harry Potter a huge part of your childhood. Even if you never read the books or watched the films, you can probably name the three main characters. Even if you weren’t interested in Harry Potter in the slightest, you probably know your Hogwarts house. It’s incredible what Harry Potter did for our generation all over the world. Children would stay up on their eleventh birthdays anxiously awaiting a Hogwarts acceptance letter, knowing full well that owl was never going to come. Our imagination kept the dream of going to Hogwarts and learning magic alive anyway. Even now at the age of 23, I can for the most part keep a conversation flowing with anyone who has read the books or even just watched the films. You could even go as far as to say it was our generation’s Lord of the Rings.

JK Rowling came from very humble beginnings. She suffered with depression in her childhood and early teens, and lost her mother to multiple sclerosis in 1990. These struggles inspired her a lot when writing Harry Potter. She channeled her grief and pain into her writing. In 1992, she married a man she had met whilst living in Portugal, but Rowling suffered domestic abuse at his hands and the couple separated a year later. She lost her job and moved to Edinburgh in Scotland, where she had to sign up for welfare benefits, which left her a poor and depressed single mother spending her time writing in coffee shops. When she finished writing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, twelve publishers rejected the opportunity to publish the book. Once someone finally agreed to publish the book, it became the best selling children’s book of the year.

We all know how the story goes from there. Rowling wrote six more Harry Potter books, eight films were made, and Rowling went from a poor vulnerable single mother to a multi millionaire in the space of a few short years. Harry Potter is now a global brand estimated to be worth about $15 billion. The last four books have each consecutively set the record for the fastest selling book in history. Rowling is now the richest author in the world, with a net worth of $92 million. But as well as money, JK Rowling has over 14 million followers on Twitter. This gives her massive influence as well as money. Rowling seemed to initially use this influence for good, spreading mental health awareness, LGBT inclusivity, interacting with fans and creating a website for all us Harry Potter fans to determine our houses and let our wands choose us.

I remember being 8 years old when Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince was released, and I was attending a religious school where some parents complained and called to ban Harry Potter over the controversial decision JK Rowling made regarding Dumbledore’s sexuality. Rowling had made the claim that Dumbledore was gay. Looking back, the controversy was ridiculous and I can only imagine how embarrassed some of those parents must be. I also remember as I got older, re-reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I noticed more that the emotion behind Dumbledore’s relationship with Grindelwald was one he held with a romantic love. So years later, when several members of the LGBT community attacked Rowling for only deciding Dumbledore’s sexuality after the books were written, I publicly defended her with my knowledge that that simply wasn’t true. I had this image of Rowling in my mind, that she had always been on the right side of this debate. She had always been inclusive and supportive of LGBT people as far as I could see, and I just didn’t understand the issue. Rowling had always expressed a centre-left political perspective, and although I didn’t agree with all her views, they seemed relatively uncontroversial.

When Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was released, I hated it. It was a literary disaster, completely disrespectful of the original book series, the characters were a shell of the characters we had grown up with, the plot was almost deliberately ridiculous and overly elaborate and I immediately dismissed it as not canon. I have never forgiven JK Rowling for publicly stating the book was canon. She almost destroyed a whole two decades of her own hard work and the franchise that she’d built that had been like a home for a whole generation. All because she wanted to grab a few extra quid for a terrible book she didn’t even write. To this day I can’t help but wonder if she has even read the book. If I had written the masterpiece that is Harry Potter, I would view the Cursed Child as an insult. Perhaps I’ll even write a review one day, just for fun. Rowling also annoyed me by going back on her story, regretting pairing Ron and Hermione together and not pairing Hermione with Harry. Ron and Hermione are my favourite couple from the story, and their relationship had so much meaning. I couldn’t believe that the author who wrote such a clever and consistent relationship between two beloved characters could ever regret it. At this point in my life, I was beginning to wonder if perhaps Rowling was losing her mind. It was almost like she was trying to destroy her legacy.

As more years passed, the Fantastic Beasts films were released. The first film looked promising, but the second film was yet another disaster. Again, it was inconsistent with the franchise as we knew it, for some reason Hogwarts was full of people wearing 3 piece suits instead of the robes they wore in the Harry Potter series and Minerva McGonigall appeared as a teacher despite the fact that canonically there is no way she could have been old enough. The film was a disaster with both fans and critics hating it. Amongst this mess came controversy in December 2019. Rowling lost all respect she had once held amongst the transgender community when she made a public statement supporting Maya Forstater, a British woman who lost her employment tribunal case against her employer who fired her over transphobic comments. Six months later on June 6 2020, Rowling criticised the term “people who menstruate” and stated: "If sex isn’t real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives." Rowling’s views on these issues were heavily criticised by GLAAD and even by the actors from the Harry Potter movies including lead actors Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.

Rowling published a 3,600 word essay in response to the mass criticism of her views four days later. The essay did her no favours, as she wrote: “When you throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman then you open the door to any and all men who wish to come inside.” She seemed to be suggesting that trans women are often just men disguised as women in order to trick or even harm other women. This obviously angered the transgender community even more, and women’s refuge shelters that allow trans women were reporting no rise in violence as a result, children’s charities that support gender non conforming children were criticising Rowling, she was being made to give back awards and ultimately Rowling was labelled a Trans exclusionary radical feminist, a term often abbreviated to TERF.

JK Rowling is the perfect example of how money and influence can make someone forget their roots so easily. For someone who survived poverty, domestic abuse and sexual assault, she is so lacking in self awareness and how the things she has said and done can be harmful to transgender people. It is widely reported that transgender women are at more risk of harm in female restrooms than cisgender women. With acceptance becoming the norm, transgender people are feeling more safe to come out now than ever before, and so the rise in numbers of the community is huge, especially amongst our generation who grew up with Harry Potter. For a young transgender teenager to grow up wondering how Hogwarts would accommodate them, only to hear the author who gave us Hogwarts in the first place disapprove of equal rights for transgender people, must be very disheartening. However, JK Rowling has proven that she has no idea how powerful the legacy her books created really is. She was tasked with following up the Harry Potter series, and what she gave us was inconsistent and very poorly written screenplays. I have read better sequels on tumblr. Lots of them. Hogwarts doesn’t belong to JK Rowling, it belongs to the fandom. And I’ll be willing to bet my last penny that if Professor McGonigall witnessed any bullying of transgender students in her classroom (or indeed the girls bathroom!) she’d absolutely defend the victim without a moment’s hesitation. Hermione would decorate the Gryffindor common room with little blue, pink and white flags in support of a transgender first year who’d just been sorted into Gryffindor. Luna Lovegood would sit and befriend any trans student who looked lonely, and Ginny would dish out a bat bogey hex to anyone who dared pick on them. No matter what JK Rowling thinks, Hogwarts is not hers to ruin. It is ours. Regardless of what makes us different, Hogwarts is our home.

[ladybirdwithoutdots]

why Emma 2020 changed the proposal scene a bit?

I understand why some book fans don't like Emma bringing up Harriet in the proposal scene because, yes, in the book she thinks keeping Harriet’s embarrassing secret is the only thing she can still do for her friend. I get it doesn’t seem so canon compliant for her to tell him there; pointing that up is valid because you are just noticing a major difference between the book and the movie, and it might even seem contradictory for Emma’s character that she does the very thing that in the book she doesn’t want to do for a valid reason. However, I also understand why the movie makes this choice, and I think this is a case in point of what it means 'adaptation' and a creative team having to reconcile with the big differences between a movie and a book when it comes to storytelling and story structure. One major difference between a book and a movie is that in a movie, they show what happens in the story from an outside perspective where canon is limited to and defined as, essentially, only what the characters make you see, and what they explicitly say. If something doesn’t happen on screen then it isn’t real in the story.   A novel, on the other hand, tells a story from an inside perspective and is allowed, through a narrator (the author or the protagonist or another character) to make the reader actually know more than the characters in the story may know in that moment. The problem with a movie adaptation of this book in particular is that you can't read Emma's thoughts in a movie, and a lot of things about this book are based on her thoughts and a ‘narrator’ who can help you understand the motives of the character beyond what the character is explicitly telling others in that moment. That’s why, among other things, this movie chooses to make Emma’s feelings for Mr Knigthley obvious (on her face, in her reactions, in her jealousy) for us from the beginning, and regardless when she realizes them herself, instead of reducing it all only to the scene where Harriet confesses loving him herself, and Emma realizes her own feelings for him through the obligatory explanation scene with flashbacks, voiceovers or an added conversation between her and another character (though you could say that the added moment here where Harriet realizes, and thus says that Emma loves Mr Knightley too might serve that same function still).

I think that with the infamous proposal scene and its on screen adaptations, there are, surprisingly, two ‘issues’ a creative team may face:

1) The first issue is that, in the book, Emma is torn between her relief and joy that Knightley loves her back, and her anguish about Harriet for she doesn't know how she is going to face her and tell her that the guy loves her..and that she loves him back.  She takes her time and actively avoids Harriet because she feels guilty and that, for a time, ruins her own happiness a bit.

Given how many things still happen in the book between Mr Knightley’s proposal and the wedding, and the fact it’s near impossible for the creative team to put everything in a movie, if you only see Emma being happy about his declaration of love there (as if she doesn’t know Harriet wants him too) and then them getting married, it might seem like almost erasing her feelings from the novel a bit and make it seems she doesn't feel guilty about Harriet, or doesn’t care about her being in love with Mr Knightley too. That would go against her character growth a bit for she'd look, once again, selfish and lacking empathy and critical thinking about herself.

Of course, if you read the book you also know that she does think harsh things about Harriet after the latter tells her that she loves Mr Knightley (and she thinks he wants her too). Emma regrets including her in her circle, she thinks she has turned her into arrogant, vain girl for thinking Mr Knightley would really marry someone like her. However, all of that isn’t mutually exclusive with the fact she also matures, she does see her own responsibilities and arrogance and she blames herself for Harriet’s inevitable humiliation (the second!).

Too long don’t read: book Emma cannot be indifferent about the fact Harriet wants Mr Knightley too, and she isn’t.

In light of that, it’s easy to see why Autumn de Wilde changed things a bit in the movie and, in a way, tried to still insert that part of Emma’s thoughts from the book that would be very hard to include without a narrator’s voice. It’s also a change consistent with their own version and the fact they try to make Emma a better friend in the end ...

Emma really kind of gets everything she wants in the end, and we thought a lot about watching the movie after she behaves so badly and has this epiphany and she’s totally different now,” de Wilde said. “We really felt like we would not be able to enjoy it unless we saw Harriet transformed by their rift.” The solution: pushing Emma to actively make things right with Harriet and her best suitor before Emma can accept a much-desired proposal of her own.

Indeed, you could say that Emma gets it easier in the book than in the movie because in the novel everything works in her favor without her having to face Harriet and make any personal effort to help her.

This movie, instead, wanted Emma to really earn her happy end a bit more, and called her out on her faults in the funniest way possible during the proposal scene, well emphasizing her state of mind and conflict through the infamous nosebleed, that also ruins her perfect, poised appearance symbolizing her humanity and the fact that no matter how much she tries, she can’t keep a false control of everything and always be ‘perfect’ (and the beauty of that metaphor also lies in the fact that Knightley isn’t one bit grossed by what is happening, he still tenderly touches her face, he’s all love and concern for her. He’s the one person who always loved her with her imperfections too, he won’t love her less just because she’s human).

By making Emma reveal Harriet’s mess to Mr Knightley in that moment, not only you have a version of the events that is consistent to this movie, you also have an Emma that, in some way, is still consistent to the Emma you also read in the book, albeit just in her thoughts. It also emphasizes Emma's character growth all the more.

For sure, I agree with de Wilde about that. That said, if I want to play devil's advocate here I have to say that while Emma gets it easier in the book, their version kind of erases Harriet/Robert’s agency a bit for I prefer them finding their way back to each other (in the book) without any interference. I also maintain their ‘let’s do better for poor victim Harriet’ myopia results in them not really making Harriet act as a real friend for Emma, not even in the end, leaving their relationship very unbalanced simply because they didn’t realize that their Harriet, even more than her book counterpart, was wrong too and she too had to make amends and apologize for her own blindness about Emma’s feelings, and her selfishness and uncalled for anger when she realized Emma loved the same guy she wanted for herself. This is what happens when you have critical thinking about your main character, but not so much about the secondary ones; creative teams often forget that just because someone is the protagonist (and they get the happy end) and they may be wrong about something, it doesn’t mean they are wrong about everything.  I honestly feel really bad for Emma in that ‘I refused Robert Martin because of you’ scene in the movie because it really is the one moment where she is doing nothing wrong, and Harriet has no right making her feel like she’s the bad guy for loving a guy she had know since forever just because her ‘friend’ had decided she wanted him and deluded herself he wanted her too. If that scene is supposed to make me feel bad for Harriet they failed because it makes me find her annoying.  Maybe it’s personal experiences too for I well know what it means when you think you have a friend, but in reality that person doesn’t care about your feelings much, and just takes for granted that your purpose and your focus is just helping them. 

2) Another issue writers might find in adapting the confession scene from the book to a movie version is Mr Knightley's agency too.

Here’s the thing: her behavior in that scene is confusing to Mr Knightley for, in one moment she seems to not even want him to propose to her, but the next he understands that she loves him back. The poor man despaired, his heart broke when she seemed to reject him.

Austen, in her function of narrator, acknowledges this inconsistency in the book and she's like, yeah it must be very confusing for the guy but people rarely tell the whole truth to each other all the time and he's too happy in the end to ask himself why Emma acted so weird with him, and what matters the most is that he knows she loves him back and they can be finally together.

Still, he’s going to be all the more confused when, later, he tells her that Harriet has accepted Robert’s second proposal and where he expected Emma to be unhappy, given her oppositions to the guy before, he’s very surprised by her 180° and happiness for Harriet instead. He even says that.

Once again, I think if you are adapting the story for a movie where you don't have a narrator’s voice keeping the balance a bit and explaining what the characters can’t explain, it might seem like making this part of the story a bit unresolved for him (and him and Emma). It might not seem fully satisfying that he doesn't get an explanation and their misuranderstanding isn’t fully cleared up.

This movie resolves that by having Emma confess him that, basically, her confusing behavior was because she was scared he wanted to propose to another woman (because she loves him but she didn’t think it’s her he actually loved!), and then when he tells her that it's her he loves, she reciprocates but is also overwhelmed because there is still the issue of Harriet and it ruins her party in that moment because new Emma cannot be indifferent.

This Knightley can make sense of her behavior much better than in the book  and if he's still so happy in the end, it’s because he understands that Emma didn’t reject him for she actually loves him back, and in this version she needs to make amends with Harriet and Robert Martin before she can accept her own happy end. 

I also like what the director said about this scene, especially this point:

“I wanted to make that scene so romantic, and then just turn it on its head, because to say just like, they’re not perfect, they’re both just like a hot mess, and seeing Mr Knightley and Emma panic and try and solve a problem together is just as romantic as the proposal” 

you know what? I agree with her.

Let's be honest, btw, Emma trusts him. Book or movie, this is a fact. She may not tell him about Harriet there but I think even in the book’s canon, it’s not so impossible to imagine that one day, when it’s safe for her to because Harriet is happy with Robert etc, she may tell him the whole story to explain her behavior to him a bit more... and have a good laugh together about the absurdity of it all.

I shouldn’t need to say this but yeah, an adaptation doesn't 'replace' the book said adaptation is based on. It's not like this is the definitive story now. I just have no real issues with changes if there are reasons for them and they make sense with a particular version, and I don’t have issues with adaptations trying to find ways to include even those things that might actually be in the book too, but they seem impossible to convey in a movie. All things considered, this movie actually is one of the most faithful to the book and historically accurate adaptations of Austen ever made. When I watched it the first time, having read the book many times, I was really surprised by how much of the book’s text is included in this version and not really modernized or altered.

I maintain that this version of the proposal scene is as ‘valid’ as the others too. Given Austen doesn't write Emma's answer in that scene (you only know she makes him undestand in some way that she loves him back  and they agree to marry), it's fair to point up that all the adaptations had to create that part on their own to fill where novel doesn't tell you every detail (same thing with the dancing scene: Austen puts the proverbial fade to black there, and whether Emma and Knightley were overwhelmed by dancing together in the book, it is their business just like their honeymoon, or whether they make out during their  engagement...). Emma kissing him right there and then like it happens in other adaptations isn't a more likely scenario for a lady in regency era’s context than her getting a spontaneous nosebleed, just saying.  If anything, Austen’s depiction of her female characters was influenced by the fact that, at the time, while a man could be explicit and very emotional when declaring his feelings for  a woman, a lady had to keep her cool and couldn't tell a guy she loved him so men had to understand a woman recipricated them through their own subtle messages and codes. This isn't to say other adaptations are wrong for making them kiss there, and for adding more romance to that particular scene (just like it isn’t wrong for this adaptation to make the dance scene and what happens afterwards more emotionally charged than it usually is, and choose to also emphasize Emma’s own feelings for him a bit more), but it isn’t wrong for this adaptation to do something different and place a kiss in the other romantic scene instead (when he tells her he'll move to Hartfield) so that the romance isn’t resolved in his confession scene only.  Expecting all adaptations to be the same and interpret things in the same way means making things a tad too formulaic, tbh. And I don’t know why I should even want that. Personally, I like every version of that scene makes sense with their own adaptation, I don’t consider it a ‘flaw’ but a good thing.

I find it annoying when people reduce the love scene in this movie to the funny nosebleed thing only, anyway.  It seems like misrepresenting it a bit to pretend this adaptation is just silly things when it really isn’t like that (and even the nosebleed actually has a purpose for the director that is NOT ‘silly’ tbh).  Regardless the fact I actually like the whole scene including the funny twist in the end too, it’s still a romantic moment and his speech is actually delivered in a way that is very moving to me because Johnny Flynn makes the feelings of the character come across as so real on screen, and you can also see on Anya’s face (they are both crying!) all the confusion and love and amazement. I honestly have no complains about how the part that is written in the book, his speech, is delivered here because it’s really well done and the acting is on point. I really love the way they conveyed all the emotions on screen and I even felt like they conveyed some things about him better than previous versions.

[solatude]

ATLA Unpopular Opinions

I’ve had some thoughts about various aspects in Avatar: The Last Airbender. So, in order of least to most controversial, here we go:

Sokka looks better with his hair up. Sokka’s wolf tail is one of the more unique hairstyles in the show, at least for the guys. He looks so basic with his hair down. The wolf tail adds to his personality, his dramaticness, and humor. How can a water tribe warrior fight with hair in his face? Please also refer to his topknot in Book Three.

Sokka didn’t have as much pull as fans think he does. Pull, in this context, means to attract someone romantically/sexually. First of all, Toph is a child, so I’m not counting her because a 12 year-old crushing on a 15 year-old should be nothing more than that---a crush. Yue and Suki pulled him first, as he fell for them before they fell for him. Suki could care less for the sexist guy who insulted her on her own island; but teaching him the ways of the Kyoshi warriors, plus a kiss on the cheek had him blushing---HARD! He thankfully changed his mindset after that. Yue, while she barely had a choice, had accepted her role as princess and was prepared to dedicate her life to the values of her tribe in an arranged marriage. The amount of times she ran away from Sokka was both tragic and hilarious. But that only made Sokka want her more, she never chased him. To be honest though, he was probably the first guy who treated her normally, despite her status. I think she mainly wanted a friend, but was surprised to find a potential lover in Sokka. Plus he made her laugh. Ty Lee thought he was cute, but Ty Lee thinks everything is cute. That is all. If you wanna talk about pull, Aang had Zuko risking his life chasing him for three seasons (I’m joking, don’t think too deeply about that).

Azula and Katara are almost equal in power. I get that Azula is a firebending prodigy, but sometimes her skills are overestimated by fans and she’s made to seem as though she can overpower everyone. It makes perfect sense that she lost to Katara in almost every fight. Before meeting her, she’s only ever fought nonbenders, firebenders, and earthbenders. She never had experience fighting a trained waterbender, so her losing to Katara shows that even she has her limitations. Whenever she did win a fight against her, it was because she got help from her friends, brother, or subjects. Katara never hesitated to fight her, and being 14 years-old herself, allowed for an even exchange of combat. Let’s be honest, what bender would go up against Azula fearlessly except the one who’s element puts out fires?

Ursa was not a bad mother. Ursa was a victim of an abusive, arranged marriage. For context, Fire Lord Azulon wanted Ozai to marry Ursa because she was the granddaughter of Avatar Roku, and he felt that they would produce powerful heirs to the royal family. Ursa was forced to leave her village, family, and fiance behind for this marriage; because who would dare turn down the request of a Fire Lord? Ursa never really loved Ozai, but he never cared. He just wanted to increase his status and power. Ursa is often criticized for giving Zuko attention over Azula, while scolding Azula and not showing her any love. However, Azula was praised by Ozai, and as a result showed more of an obedience towards him. Ozai showed a great disdain for Zuko. Ursa was simply doing her best to show Zuko how much he mattered. He was living in his sister’s shadow, while being neglected by his father. I also really feel for Azula, because she was only valued for her firebending skills, and she probably had no emotional outlet that she trusted to help guide her. However, I do think Azula was too far along for her mother to really help her. Ursa encouraged Zuko to play with Azula; she genuinely wanted her children to get along like any other parent. I just don’t think there was anything she could say or do to encourage Azula to be less destructive and show remorse for her actions. She should have never called Azula a monster, but she was a woman filled with fear. She feared her abusive husband and the repercussions of speaking out against him, she feared the destructive tendencies of her daughter and the ways she hurt other people without caring for how they felt, and she feared for Zuko’s life for not living up to the impossible ideals of the royal family. Ursa was not a perfect mother, but she tried given the little power she had. Also, to be fair, we only see Ursa’s life from Zuko’s perspective in the show. Azula probably had many memories with Ursa but she most likely blocked them out to hold space for firebending forms and her father’s approval; one of which she never really secured.

Bloodbending is overrated and unnecessary. Some fans claim that Katara should have had a more positive reaction to becoming a bloodbender. However, it was never in her character to be so controlling, especially against another person’s will. Bloodbending is also not as useful as it’s made to seem. Since one can only bloodbend on a full moon, you would have to wait an entire month to even utilize the skill. That’s extremely inconvenient and because you have to wait until nighttime, it’s even less practical. How often does Team Avatar fight during the night compared to the day? They would be sleeping if anything. Also, when your team consists of an agile airbender, a master waterbender, a powerful earthbender, and a weapons strategist, plus Appa and Momo; why would anyone need to bloodbend? Most of the Gaang’s enemies never required that level of power in order to be defeated. Bloodbending is also VERY niche. If this is allowed, should bonebending be allowed since there are minerals in bones? Should soundbending be allowed since sound is produced from vibrations? I admit it’s a really cool ability, but it’s not that important in the grand scheme of things. Also, speaking of Katara...

Katara gets too much hate. I’m not sure if it’s the surge of new fans since the Netflix debut or the repressed thoughts of old fans but lately Katara’s character has been mercilessly criticized. It’s been said that she brings up her mother too often, and that she’s overly emotional and selfish. First of all, Katara was eight years-old (and Sokka nine) when her mother was murdered. During the run of the show, only six years have passed since then, as she’s 14 when she finds Aang. She lives with survivor’s guilt due to her mother lying about who the last waterbender was so that Katara wouldn’t be taken prisoner. Unfortunately, the firebender soldier Yon Rah wasn’t taking prisoners that day, implying that he was going to murder her. Katara mentions her mother only a handful of times, usually to relate to another character who lost someone close to them in an effort to empathize (Aang, Haru, Jet, Zuko). People forget that she saw her mother’s dead body after running to get help. It was definitely wrong for Katara to tell Sokka that he didn’t love their mother the way she did in the Southern Raiders episode, and she definitely should have apologized. But, she was right. Sokka was shown to be closer to his father. She was in extreme emotional pain and instead of being comforted, she was criticized by Aang and Sokka for wanting revenge. How many times has Katara sacrificed something for the sake of others? She barely had a childhood considering she took on a maternal role in her tribe after her mother’s death. She had to deal with Sokka’s sexist comments, she had to suppress her talent for waterbending, and she felt isolated and alone because the one parent that was alive left to fight in the war. When someone needed encouragement, Katara was always there to encourage them. When someone needed help, she never hesitated to assist them. She often put herself in harm’s way if it meant someone else didn’t get hurt. For a 14 year-old girl in a war torn world, she is immensely brave. How many times has Zuko gone on and on about his honor, or lashed out at his Uncle for a seemingly small reason? How many times has Sokka talked about meat? Or Azula and her speeches about controlling and manipulating people? Toph and her rebelliousness? Even Aang’s laid back attitude turned into carelessness every now and then. Every character has a crutch that they attach themselves to, but Katara isn’t given the grace that other characters have been given. Yes, Aang lost his entire nation, and Katara would never know what that felt like. However, Aang wouldn’t know how Katara felt either. Aang was in the presence of children his age and was able to travel around the world to make friends (i.e. Bumi from the Earth Kingdom and Kuzon from the Fire Nation). He was taught to be less detached, so his idea of family is very different from Katara’s. He never witnessed the dead bodies of his people firsthand, though he did see Gyatso’s skeleton later on. Katara grew up in a world ruined by war. She had little to no friends, and the one person she was closest to left her life very early. Her tribe was VERY small and I doubt she had a lot of people to talk to. She had never left the Southern Water Tribe before, so it’s very likely that she was going to stay there her entire life had she not met Aang. She’s been accused of not allowing Sokka to feel sad about their mother, but why should she? It’s not Katara’s job to burden the weight of Sokka’s emotions, especially about their mother. She cannot force Sokka to open up about his feelings, that is something he must do at his own free will. Sokka hides his pain behind his masculinity. He’s protective because he feels guilty about not being able to do anything to help his mother. He doesn’t even remember what she looks like, he could only picture Katara’s face in her place. He felt even worse when his father left and he, understandably, couldn’t go with him. Sokka is not upfront about how he feels, but Katara should not be blamed for that. Overall it may be said that Katara was a flawed character that has recently been more scrutinized for her flaws than acknowledged for her strengths. We can do both, but there’s been an imbalance. She successfully revolted to free Haru’s father as well as other prisoners of the Fire Nation. She guided her friends out of the Si Wong desert despite the obstacles that stood in their way. She healed Aang and Zuko when shot by lightning, ultimately saving their lives and the lives of many other people who have been physically hurt by someone. She even washed Sokka’s underwear and sewed his pants. We can cut the girl some slack if she wants to talk about her mother, can’t we? She’s the glue that holds everyone together. Katara’s emotions make her a stronger fighter. Her trauma has shaped her into someone determined to master waterbending and has allowed her to be more empathetic to those around her. But she shouldn’t have had to go through all of that. She was forced to mature faster in order to survive. Katara can sometimes be arrogant, misguided, oblivious, and doubtful, yes. But she is also resilient, brave, selfless, and generous. That is the duality of her character. She is NOT to be disrespected. After all, as she said to Sokka in The Painted Lady, “I will never, ever turn my back on people who need me!”. And she hasn’t.

Iroh should be banned from the Earth Kingdom. It’s not an unpopular opinion that Uncle Iroh is a war criminal, but I just don’t think he should be allowed anywhere near the Earth Kingdom; either temporarily or permanently. Yes he played an instrumental role in Zuko’s redemption, with tea in his left hand and wisdom in his right. However, that does not excuse his invasion of Ba Sing Se. He laid siege to the impenetrable city for 600 days. Surely hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent people died under his commands. He broke the lower ring, home of the poorest members of the Earth Kingdom. The only reason he stopped was because his son, Lu Ten, died in battle; not aware that many citizens also died as a result of his actions. How many children’s lives has his army taken away? How many sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, and grandparents have died under his siege? Not only does he get to establish a business and earn money, he is elevated to the upper ring of the city; meanwhile an entire population can barely afford food and stable jobs. I understand that is was for plot purposes, but It’s a slap in the face to allow him to thrive in the city after Aang defeated Ozai. His wanted poster should be everywhere, not just for supposedly betraying the Fire Nation, but also for crimes against the Earth Kingdom. The very least he could do was shut down his tea shop and hand the building over to a family who may need it, and establish a tea shop in the Fire Nation. I’m not saying Iroh couldn’t be redeemed for his war crimes, but it definitely would take more than what was seen in the show for him to be forgiven for them.

Anyways, let me know what you think. This took an ungodly amount of time to write.

[meherya]

I like Dara and Ali as characters, but it really seemed in the 3rd book, the author poured all her love for Ali into the book. And it felt so weird that Ali, as the ONLY muslim character, lusted over Nahri, and was like a religious zealot, calling women whores. Dara was also wrong, but I wish the author put more background into him, because she made it seem like he was manipulated to commit genocide. And his redemption arc should have been better.

There is so much to unpack with this ask...  So I’m just gonna put it under the cut

Let’s address Ali, Shannon has consistently written him with love, like from his first chapter to the very last. Did you forget where he helps the Shafit in COB? did you forget him helping Nahri build the hospital in KOC?  Also, he isn’t the only muslim character? He’s the most devout, and I think it’s really shady of you to call him a ZEALOT, because he staunchly follows his faith... There’s nothing bad about being devout? He doesn’t like it when others want him to compromise himself as a person, like when Muntadhir tries to convince him to sleep with a dancer, that’s not who Ali is. Does he react rudely? Yea, because he’s awkward and is insulted that Dhiru won’t respect his choice. Also, this weirdly sounds like the answer to this bad uquiz, which @whatdoesthefuturebehold addressed here 

I genuinely think you read this series differently from how everyone else did if you think Shannon only hyped him up in the last book. He’s consistently written as someone who fiercely cares for those he loves, and for what he believes in. His character has always been about growth and learning from mistakes. He starts off as a sheltered and religious teenager, and grows into an adult who recognizes his mistakes and fixes them but still follows his faith. Also, I think you’re really off-base about him lusting after Nahri, when any time he had feelings about her he immediately pushed them aside and chastised himself for feeling such way for his friend/his brother’s wife. Why villainize him for having a crush? Why are we not villainizing Dara, a 30 something year old who’s been around for a thousand years for “lusting” over a 20 yr old Nahri huh? Let’s not forget, Nahri and Ali are the protagonists, Dara’s inclusion only happens in the second book and I heard through the grapevine that wasn’t even supposed to happen in the first place. 

As for Dara, I don’t think you know what a redemption arc is… There is no redemption arc, he doesn’t go through substantial character development and barely learns from his mistakes. The whole point about him being manipulated is weak. The Nahids told him to commit genocide and he did. Even when his father was against it, he still went ahead and did it. At the start of the series he is a man who hates Shafit and worships Nahids, and throughout out KOC he aids Manizeh, who plans to commit another genocide (with the Geziri and Shafit). He continues to help Manizeh terrorize the people of Daevabad and thinks she would be the perfect leader, if she wasn’t insane. He has the one moment where he kills her, and that’s only because he realizes that she was the wrong person to take back Daevabad. He constantly feels sorry for himself but not for his victims, to the point even the Daeva priest tells him to get his head out of his ass and care for his victims rather than himself. He never redeems himself to the Shafit that he murdered, or the Geziri. Dara says and does a variety of vile things throughout the series, and him being a bound Daeva really lost its sympathy appeal when he came back, and rather than taking the chances he had to walk away from destruction, decided to walk right into it. 

You need to realize, Dara and Ali are foils. Ali is what happens when you follow the righteous path that you paved yourself with your beliefs, and Dara is what happens when you follow orders and don’t grow a backbone of your own. 

I’m not one to have an intellectual conversation about this, but the replies to one of my posts has probably the best discussion about their respective characters I’ve ever seen, and you can go through the replies here 

[theinvisibledreamergirl]

The Grinch Girl

Pairing: Ethan Ramsey x MC (Klaw Craig)

Warning: Nope only fluff content and bits of sadness.

Word count: ~2.3 k

A.N: Hello again folks! Did you miss me? Well this fic came out unexpectedly and wasn’t even planned lol. But I hope you enjoy this and Merry Christmas! And I know you’re impatiently waiting for Part 6 of my OH AU 1 but still is in progress. THIS IS MY FIRST STAND-ALONE FIC EVER OMG AND I’M REALLY NERVOUSSSS.

———————————————————————

Basically from all of the staff of Edenbrook Hospital there was a certain someone who didn't like Christmas as everyone else- Dr. Klaudia Craig. This wasn't something new for everyone because they knew she detested it.

She was occupying herself with lots of different cases in order to escape from the festive moments and the cheering voices of her colleagues ready to decorate the Infamous Christmas Tree.

At least that's what she thought.

She wasn't into the winter holidays or any kind of other holidays. Maybe she was a Grinch but as much as she had information about him it was completely another history- he hated people but not Christmas. Whereas she hated both of them.

Klaw didn't have any particular reason to be angry with anyone but she couldn't bare the fact to be involved in such kind of parties. Lousy and noisy people were always a migraine for her and would drink two strong pills in a day at least saving from that horrible sinusitis.

Her free times would always consist of reading books or scientific researches on internet for new developments in oncology surgery as she was eager to see the latest news. Furthermore she would watch BBC every time when the British Government released new announcements about the future of the country whom she dearly missed it. Maybe for others it was such a granny thing but for her was the best cure.

And as for today she was stepping into the corridors seeing the nurses chirping and decorating the railways and doors in which she let an exasperated sigh while shaking her head.

Why do they like them so much? It's completely nonsense. All of that glitter. Everyone seems so happy but I'm sure this is a façade.

Well clearly from her point of view it was maybe a façade but actually everyone was happy and was enjoying at its fullest. And that's why she hated it.

She never got to celebrate any holidays with her family as they have been always busy in their works and didn't pay too much attention on how this would reflect on their daughter's character in the future. They would always justify their lateness in house because of the "duty". God she thought that word would never get out of her mind.

When one of her patients asked her to do the Gingerbread House together she stared blankly as she had no idea what was this thing and she immediately regretted her lie to the kid.

Oh yeah of course I'll help you but until i finish my shift alright?

The little girl was smart and understood that she wasn't telling the truth and aside from that she could tell that the doctor standing opposite her wasn't even pleased about it and she let a mischievous smirk.

"You don't know what Gingerbread is, don't you?"

The doctor gulped hardly as ever. The patient saw her hesitation and asked sincerely.

"Don't worry I'll ask someone else but can I ask you why don't you know about the Gingerbread?"

"Mary, I think you need to rest now after your long surgery, right?"

"Got it doc."

With that she trailed off furiously as she didn't want to awake again that memory.

She hated herself.

She didn't want to be like this.

Harsh.

Cold demeanor.

Selfish.

And afraid to be happy.

When she went to the elevator she heard Sienna calling from behind.

“Hey Klaw!"

Oh god please don’t tell me she’s going to invite me to that party.

"Hi Sienna, how you've been?"

"Perfect! May I say everything is going to be awesome and I can't wait to celebrate with all of us in our apartment! You'll come too, right?"

God she wanted so bad to celebrate. But her logical answer was always ahead of what heart truly wanted. You can say without fear that she was an introverted ass.

"Uhm actually I won't."

Sienna's smile immediately faltered and shook her head in confusion. "Why?” Before Klaw could explain herself she abruptly said “Look If you're worried about those scumbag surgical residents, don't worry we won't invite them. And also-"

"Sienna it's not about them. It's just..."

"Just what?"

I don't celebrate Christmas Eve and I don’t have any intention to because I just simply hate it.

“It’s about patients Si and we have lot of work to do especially Dr. Ramsey won’t let me to finish the shift that easy so I’m leaving-”

“Not so fast gorgeous." a sing-along voice stopped her. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Oh, Bryce." She put a plastered smile while laughing nervously. As always. "Uhm, well I have to go to a patient now heh."

"Tsk. I don’t believe any single thing what you’re saying girlie.”

She wanted to seem so believable but this time was out of her luck. Before she would protest again he interrupted.

"Come on Klaw. We already know you've been working your ass since five in the morning and you haven't even eaten anything today needless to say- you haven't even wished us for Christmas."

"Oh really?" He nodded "Well- Merry Christmas Bryce!"

He frowned in confusion and was crooking his eyes in suspicion as she sounded differently from usual. Something was wrong and he was about to ask her again when he heard that annoying voice.

"Rookie!" Klaw's eyes widened but in the meantime she thanked him in silence for saving her.

"In my office."

"Yes Dr. Ramsey."

With that she excused herself to Sienna and Bryce who stayed mouth agape and Sienna was finally the one to break the silence.

"So...Plan A and B are ruined right?"

"Yeah" he slid from his pocket the phone in which he called a number. "Jackie." He let a defeated sigh. "Tell the others we need a plan C. That old man Ramsey destroyed everything."

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

When the elevator reached the 3rd floor Ethan guided Klaw to his office gently pushing the door for her to enter first. They made an arrangement before she started her residency- to remain professional but her gut feeling told that something not good was about to happen.

What was weird was the fact that the lights of his office weren't turned on but only those of his little Christmas Tree. She rolled her eyes annoyingly.

Great. Now I have to deal with another Christmas enthusiast.

He saw her expression and when she turned as if questioning, he gave her a rueful smile. "Please sit."

She did as he said raising her left eyebrow. "So? What is the reason you called me?"

"Simple. I want to find a treatment for a patient whose brain is not functioning as usual." He said ironically which she didn't get it.

"What are her symptoms?"

Even though it was not an usual question he would ask as every time- she was ready to show her high diagnostics knowledge despite being a surgeon.

"It's a difficult case and a rare one. I'm not sure if you're going to handle it."

"There's nothing I can't handle Dr. Ramsey." She said while raising her head in confidence. "Remember what you said to me in my intern year? When there isn't a path, you make your own."

"Fair well. This girl is about 5 years old and she doesn't celebrate Christmas because she hates it. What do you think we should do?"

"What? I don't-" Then it all clicked.

It was about her.

"You too?" She scoffed in disbelief while standing up "I really can't believe this!"

When she was reaching the door handle a strong grip on her waist held her in place and growled in her left ear that made her shivered. "You're not going anywhere!"

"What happened with being professional Dr. Ramsey huh?"

He shut his eyes and inhaled sharply. "Please. Tell me what's wrong. I know that you're worried about something."

"You don't deserve to know anything!" With that she kicked his crotch with her left knee letting herself free from him. That self-defense instinct she had- it was going to be the death of him one day.

"And you don't tell me what should I do!"

"Is that so Dr. Craig? Remember that I'm your boss."

"Ouch. So scary. What are you going to do then? Pin me to the wall?" She let out a weary chuckle "Remember Ramsey- I'm not going to play hot and cold game again with you because I've had enough! And don't even try to do the victim's face here 'cause you know that it's your fault that we're in this position now!"

She was the most infuriating woman he had ever met in his life and maybe this was the reason why he wanted her so badly. Her gorgeous face etched to his mind every night before sleep. When she was always angry she looked like a goddess to him no matter how and he would bow down just for her. One word or only one action from her and he was her slave.

"What happened Dr. Ramsey? Cat got your tongue?" said in a sing-along voice and when he didn't answer she wanted to use the opportunity to leave but his eyes were trailing her full parted lips.

No. No. No. Don't let him kiss you Klaw. Just don't.

But his actions were faster than she thought and her fear came to life. He kissed her such gently that made her cheeks blush enough to stop arguing. When they parted Ethan set both of his hands to her face trailing her cheekbones and temples saying in a soothing voice.

"Now, will you tell me what is going on with your cold behaviour?"

She nodded forgetting everything in what they agreed on. Maybe she would regret it later but it seemed that she didn't care for now.

---------

"So that's why I hate it. I mean I don't want to hate Christmas. It's just I don't want to leave the impression to the others that I hate holidays. I don't want to look like Grinch but still...Ughh I don't know.” she placed her palms in her temples. “I feel such in shame now like I don't even know what Gingerbread is!"

"Why haven't you searched on the internet before?"

"Well this is the case. I've never shown interest in it. The only thing that I would search were always something about science in general and projects for school. And I've never received Christmas gifts before which makes me well-" the last words she said almost in a whisper. "- not appreciated person."

Ethan could see himself in her somehow. After his mother left he didn't want to celebrate Christmas anymore as that day was one of the worst of his life. But his father Alan insisted that his son should see his future and letting that pain to go by every year celebrating and reminding him to be a strong man just like now. Whereas for Klaw he felt his jaw clenched in frustration when her parents now that they weren’t anymore never celebrated and not even letting her to go at least at her best friend's house.

"Do you think I'm a Grinch Girl, Ethan?"

When she called him in his first name he felt his chest warming as she was slowly becoming more openly to him.

"No." He said without hesitation. "It's clearly that you were raised like this and you should not blame yourself for that. You're not the only one who doesn't celebrate Christmas Eve. There are many people who don't even know what Christmas is so-" he put a strand of her brown hair behind her ear. "No, you're not a Grinch but...A grumpy one may I- agh!" he winced when she pinched his arm then smacked it furiously.

"That hurt."

"You deserved that."

"Seriously? I'm trying to understand you whereas-" she cut him off guard with another kiss but on his cheeks instead.

"Thank you. For always being nice to me."

"Hey, you know I would do everything for you?"

"Yeah, I know. But what am I going to do now?"

"First things first" he stood up from the couch where they were staying "You're going to say to everyone who you meet the magic words: 'Merry Christmas!'"

He chuckled when she let a groan. "And then you're going to pick some gifts in the shop for your friends because this is the value of this holiday- sharing is caring. And about gifts-"

He went to his drawer of his white wooden-metallic desk to reveal an object packed in a rectangular shape with a white strap.

"Wait is that-?"

"Yes it's for you". She stared at him. "Open it."

She took it hesitating at first because this was the first gift ever someone made especially for her and was fidgeting her fingers not knowing where to start because she didn't want to ruin the way how beautifully it was packed.

When she let go of the strap she gasped when there was an old book of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey and there were two milk chocolates Fin Carré which was her favourite flavour and a little card were was written:

I'm sorry for being an asshole.

Merry Christmas Rookie!

E.R

"So...uhm do you like it?" He scratched the back of his neck nervously. " I know you're a bookworm and I remembered that Oscar Wilde was the only Irish author whom you didn't read so I went to the National Library and asked if there was still an old copy of it and luckily it was the last one."

She immediately left the gift in his couch and pressed a lingering kiss on his lips and said in a whisper while tearing up "Merry Christmas Ethan. And I'm sorry too for being grumpy and harsh to you."

"You don't have to apologise to me. Your friends and your patient Mary need to hear this. Okay?"

"Okay. Seni seviyorum. [ I love you ] “

“Uhm what?”

She giggled “I’ll tell you when the year ends.”

“But-”

“A girl has to keep some secrets, right?” said when she opened the door and left contently with it.

For the first time in her life Dr. Klaudia Craig felt a radiation coming through her body.

She was happy and grateful.

P.S: The words ‘seni seviyorum’ come from Turkish language. And no- my MC is not Turkish but British lol. She is a polyglot that’s why.

Perma tag: @starrystarrytrouble | @junggoku | @maurine07 | @nadeen-ahmed11 | @hopelessromantics4life  | @lillylavander20 | @caseyvalentineramsey | @custaroonie |  @miss-smrxtiee  |  @drstellavalentine | @archxxronrookie  |  @binny1985

if anyone else wants to be tagged please let me know! xoxo

[yourwakingnightmares]

Scott Summers Character Study

Okay, does anyone else have those characters that they don’t follow full-time, but they always come back to? Kind of like that old sweatshirt you keep: sure, you have new ones, and they’re great, but that old one is just comfortable, and perfect.

Scott Summers has always been that character for me; like, sometimes I might go months, or years without writing, or looking up anything Scott Summers related... Then something happens, and boom. There it goes, I’m on a roll again. And so... Here we are with my rant of the day.

Buckle in folks, this is gonna be a long one.

I think a lot of people have dismissed Scott as a character, saying that he’s ‘flat’, or ‘one-dimensional’. And if you only periodically glance at comics, or peruse through the movies, I can see how you’d come to that conclusion.

Because unlike Logan (who I do enjoy, this isn’t an anti-Logan post), whose story is easy to follow, easy to understand, Scott’s story is nuanced; it’s something developed over time, with small hints and glimpses thrown in.

For example... what we find out is that Scott is the way he is, because Xavier made him that way. Xavier needed a leader, but he was stuck with Scott: a boy who had lost his parents. A boy who’d suffered from a horrific brain injury. A boy who’d been experimented on, and mind-raped by Nathaniel Essex, also known as Mr. Sinister for Scott’s formative years following his brain injury. A boy who escaped a sadistic telepath, only to end up in the hands of an abusive criminal.

So what does Xavier do? Well, he smooths out those edges; he puts subtle compulsions to turn Scott into the leader he needs him to be. He takes the edge off of the worst memories, and turns them into something distant; something that Scott can look at like a movie starring someone else as the traumatized kid.

Now, don’t misunderstand me: Scott was a brilliant leader. He had the tactical ability, the logistical knowledge to be a leader, even without Xavier. Which is what makes what Xavier did that much worse.

Because what that means is that Scott could’ve gotten there on his own; he could’ve been that leader without Xavier screwing with his head.

Xavier took a kid who needed a home, who needed stability, who needed therapy, and said, “Aha! I know a quicker route! Screw that other stuff; that’ll take years to be effectual! I’ll just do a bit of mental landscaping, and wall off the emotions he felt; I’ll just take the edge off those memories! Surely, nothing can go wrong!”

Looking at Scott’s relationship with Jean from this perspective also sheds new light on it: Scott’s mind had been violated by three telepaths, all of whom had only their own goals in mind. Mr. Sinister, Jack Winters, and Charles Xavier all were concerned more with Scott as means to an end, than they were with Scott himself.

Enter Jean Grey. A young girl, who is a freak even by mutant standards. She struggled to keep her telepathy under control, and we’re frequently shown in comics, books, and even the movies, that she picked up stray thoughts from almost everyone, leading to some very embarrassing moments for everyone. She was an outcast among outcasts.

Not to Scott though. When everyone else is worried about keeping their thoughts locked up tight around Jean, when everyone else is avoiding her so she doesn’t accidentally read their minds... Scott embraces her. He falls in love with her.

And I don’t think we truly ever look at why. Because here was a kid who had every justifiable reason to hate Jean -he’d spent roughly half his life being a plaything for telepaths, people who plucked out things they didn’t like, or added things they wanted. Out of everyone at the Mansion, Scott truly had the best reason to fear and/or hate Jean; out of all of them, Scott best knows the dangers of having a telepath rooting around in other people’s minds. But he doesn’t. Instead, he falls in love with her.

Why? Don’t misunderstand me, they had things they loved about each other in their relationship, but how did it even begin? Why was Scott so open and accepting about Jean’s fragile control over her telepathy in their teenage years?

Because he’d never had any say in who played in his head to begin with. To him, Jean’s accidental slip-ups were nothing compared to the other telepaths he’d interacted with. While everyone else saw Jean’s powers for what they were (an invasion of their most sacred thoughts, accidental or not), Scott was so screwed in the head that it wouldn’t have crossed his mind to be angry or upset about it.

This isn’t to malign Jean, or her and Scott’s relationship; after all, Jean hadn’t done anything wrong either. But it casts a rather dark shadow over the beginnings of their relationship.

But why does Scott become so enamored with Jean? To the point where, after her death, he marries a woman who -although he doesn’t know it -is quite literally a clone of her?

Because Jean was the first telepath who didn’t screw with his head; probably the only person who truly knew what was going on in Scott’s head, and didn’t run screaming. Although he would later meet another, for many years, Jean was the only telepath Scott had had in his mind who didn’t remake his mental landscape.

And think about it: how many people would’ve been comfortable having a lover who literally knew what you were thinking, 24/7? That’s not being mean, that’s just pragmatism: we rarely share our innermost thoughts with anyone, and yet we see that Jean was as comfortable in Scott’s head as she was her own.

We see that Jean’s death devastated Scott; for the first time, he went against his programming. For the first time, we start to catch glimpses of Scott beyond what Sinister, Winters, and Xavier created.

Now, what Scott did to Madelyne was wrong; there’s no two ways around it. However, what can we learn from this, when viewed in context with everything else?

Following Jean’s death, Scott acted like a man who’d lost a piece of himself. He starts searching for his past (finding his grandparents in Alaska), where he meets a woman who is practically the physical twin of his soulmate. Within months, Scott proposes, and they get married, eventually having a son (and we won’t even get into the fact that Scott allows Madelyne to name his son after a man who nearly broke him).

As an adult, these actions can only be looked at as selfish, and reprehensible. But what if we look at it through a different lens for a moment.

These actions would be considered ‘normal’ by teenagers, and young adults; hell, most of us went to school with couples whose story emulated Scott and Madelyne’s. Scott’s first and only girlfriend dies tragically, and he decides to try and learn more about his past -for the first time since his parents died. He meets a girl, rebounds hard, and gets married quickly, only to realize what most adults already know: rebounds never work, and never last. Looking at Madelyne was a benefit at the start, but as time went on, it became a knife in his chest: she was the physical twin of Jean, after all, but she wasn’t really Jean -in fact, Madelyne and Jean had very little in common beyond the physical.

Any healthy adult would have understood this; that physically looking like someone doesn’t mean two people are the same. While this doesn’t excuse Scott’s treatment of Madelyne, it at least gives us a reason. He’s acting out, searching for his origins, and falling in love with a girl who looks like the only person who loved him for who he was. Just like a teenage boy would do.

Now, again: this behavior is unacceptable. As a society, we teach boys this, and they learn through experience. It’s a life lesson -however, it’s one that Scott never got to learn. Scott never got to be a teenage boy; he never got the chance to learn, because Xavier had turned him into his perfect little soldier who never questioned him from such a young age (and prior to that, his only consistent interactions were with the men who abused him, mentally and physically).

Later, we see Scott with Emma Frost -a woman most consider to be a villain, a woman who had fought against the X-Men before. Why?

Well, firstly, let’s consider the implications that Scott chooses another relationship with a female telepath. Sure, with Jean, we explained why they ended up together, but by the time Scott meets Emma, he’s older; he’s more experienced. Why does he put himself in a relationship with someone with the same telepathic abilities as the men who nearly destroyed his very sense of self as a child?

We have to remember that, at first, Emma simply offers to telepathically counsel Scott; to try and piece together the shattered void of his mental landscape. Meaning that Emma was the first person at that point to see the emerging Scott Summers -Jean knew the Scott that had been created, manipulated, and ordered around by Xavier, but following Jean’s death, we start to see glimpses of the real Scott. And Emma is the first telepath to get to see inside Scott’s head, as he starts to throw off the remnants of what Xavier had turned him into.

And she starts to fall in love with him. Unlike with Jean, there are no demands or expectations in place; Emma accepts him for who he is. He questions his loyalty to Xavier? Emma’s okay with that. He questions who he actually is? Emma offers to help him find out.

(Please note: this isn’t knocking Jean; she was as much a victim of Xavier as Scott was, in her own way).

But for the first time, we see Scott Summers start to come into his own; we see him making decisions, expressing opinions, expressing wants and desires outside of life as an X-man. We see him show doubt of Xavier, we see him struggling with who he actually is, and who he was made into.

And Emma... Emma just accepts it. She accepts Scott for who he is, with no agenda, no pressure, not expectations.

Moving a head a bit, let’s look at the action that turned Scott into one of the most reviled comic characters: his killing of Charles Xavier, while under the control of the Phoenix Force.

Now, you can look here for my opinions on Xavier, and why I think we should’ve all been celebrating his death. But let’s look at this for a moment.

Most people’s reactions to this were ‘Xavier raised Scott! Scott was like his son! Scott was one of his first students! How could he?!’

I think the better question, when we look at all the events in Scott’s life is... how did he refrain that long? Xavier’s betrayal of him was so much worse than Sinister’s or Winters’ because Xavier did it as a friend. As a parental figure. Sinister just rewrote, erased, or destroyed things in Scott’s head as he pleased, simply for kicks. Winters’ used his -admittedly limited -telepathic abilities to force Scott to help him steal.

But Xavier saved him from that, right? Xavier gave him a safe place to stay. A place with no more experiments, no more mind-control, no more pain. He earned Scott’s trust, gave him a home, a life, and a purpose.

Only... he didn’t. Xavier betrayed Scott, in a way that Sinister and Winters couldn’t have done. Because Scott didn’t trust them. He trusted Xavier, and Xavier fucked with his head just as badly as Sinister had done. Whereas Sinister and Winters had taken a sledgehammer to Scott’s mental landscape... Xavier just chiseled away at it until it became something he wanted. 

I’m going to end this here, because really, there wasn’t much of a point to this post, other than to detail out a lot of thoughts that have been kicking around for a while. If you agree, or disagree, I’d love to hear it. 

[actualbird]

nobody asked but pat gill is so fucking hot to me and im going to tell you why im attracted to him | a 2.3k word long post where i hold you, dear reader, hostage

[SCENE: You, the reader, are tied to a wooden chair in an empty room with nothing but a small table and a projector. You pull at the ropes that tie your hands together behind your back, but then the door opens and I stroll in. I am dressed in a full black suit and am also wearing shutter shades. I am also holding a powerpoint clicker. The fancy ones with a laser pointer in them. You shudder in contempt for you know that you are about to witness a horrible lecture.]

Hello, reader. I know you know why I’ve brought you here. I’m here to discuss something very important to you. Don’t look at me like that, it is important, I swear. I am here to tell you why I find Pat Gill hot.

[I switch on the projector. My presentation slides flash to life on the wall. Behind your back, you locate the feel around the knots tying your hands.]

This is not a presentation where I will convince you that Pat Gill is hot. No, I wouldn’t prescribe my tastes onto anybody, that’s not nice. What I will do is explain in horrid, vivid detail why I myself find Pat Gill hot. 

Like everything I do, I cannot dive in without first setting up some kind of framework or system of analysis. What I am trying to explain is how I find another person attractive, and that has thus pushed me to make the AHG Criteria, a criteria made up of the three principal characteristics of a human which makes me attracted to them and is also, coincidentally, the sound I make when I see images of Pat Gill. 

The AHG Criteria refers to the following:

Appearance: the most shallow but noticeable of characteristics. Here, I will explain just what it is about Pat Gill’s perceivable flesh prison that gets me so upset in an attracted manner.

Humor: I love a funny human and humor theory is one of my side interests. Here, I will dissect two specific instances of Pat Gill’s humor, bringing in references and related literature, in an effort to explain why his sense of humor is stellar.

Good at presenting things: I am very attracted to competence, but one skill I hold in very high regard is the skill of explaining and conveying information. Here, I will analyse Pat Gill as a communicator.

So let’s jump right into it. 

Pat Gill’s Appearance is, frankly, an anomaly to me. This is not to say that anything about his appearance is strange, but that, quite honestly, as handsome as he is, he’s basic. He is white, he is tall, he is thin, he has black hair and a slight beard (though currently he is sporting more of a moustache, which I’m still into). At first glance, one wouldn’t pay him much attention. I sure didn’t, until I watched more and more videos of him. I sure didn’t, until I realized.

His Appearance is basic, but his vibes, which I am including in the criteria of Appearance, bring his Appearance to life. Pat Gill looks a little unapproachable, with his resting sad face; but, when he smiles, he is so shameless and happy. Pat Gill looks like somebody you’d see leaning on a wall outside a bar, looking up at the sky, and you wonder just what he’s thinking about---wonder if you could get lost in his thoughts. Pat Gill looks like somebody friendly--- once his resting sad face gives way---somebody who would help you pick up your stuff when you bump into him and the contents of your bag spill out. Pat Gill looks like somebody who would use his goddamn turn signal. Pat Gill looks like somebody who would pet many dogs, as many dogs as he physically could. Pat Gill looks---

[As I prattle on, your fingers explore the knots behind your back. In your mind, you are mapping out the knot’s shape and orientation, thinking about how to undo them. When you tune back into my voice, the slide on the projector has changed and I have shifted topics.]

Let’s move onto the next criteria. Humor.

Paul McGhee in his book Humor: Its Origins and Development brings up Göran Nerhardt to define humor as “[...] a consequence of the discrepancy between two mental representations, one of which is an expectation and the other is some idea or percept” (McGhee 14). Nerhardt’s definition of humor is one that relies on incongruity: wherein there is an element that is not in accordance with the other elements. An incongruous element is one that is not the expectation, and in this subversion of expectation, humor is achieved. What is funny in a humorous situation, is then, what is unexpected to a certain degree. Humor, and the reaction to it, is due to the recognition of the incongruous. 

Despite this incongruity, there is still an internal logic to anything humorous. This internal logic is different for each humorous situation, and consists of everything within the situation; the set-up, punchline, characters, etc. It is this internal logic that allows for jokes to “make sense.” It is that internal logic that helps us get from one element to the incongruous element, realize their relationship, and thus find the whole thing funny.

Incongruity and internal logic are one of the many characteristics of humor, and they are the ones I will be focusing on. With those definitions in place, let’s talk about what you’re here for: Pat Gill.

Pat Gill is a funny guy. If I tried to analyse every single instance he was funny, I would never shut up. You wouldn’t want that, would you?

[You shake your head no. God, no.]

Right, so I’ll just be focusing on two instances of his humor that stuck out to me (originally, I wanted to discuss three, but then I saw that the length of this post was getting kilometric, so I cut it down to the essentials), these of which I think is a good marker for the kind of sense of humor he has.

The first one is my absolute favorite tweet of his:

This tweet is, at first glance, a lot. Pat Gill doesn’t wait for the punchline to be incongruous, he throws incongruity straight at our faces with the opening line, and one may think that that’s a bad move. Not necessarily. It’s just a ballsy one. It’s a move that doesn’t spoonfeed the audience with the internal logic, you have to work for it. As you read through the tweet, the internal logic starts to come through the incongruity. The literal dramatic situation of the tweet is a persona talking about the good state their nemesis is in. The language of the tweet keys us in to the kind of Medieval vibe, like a scheming duke in the hallways of a castle. The punchline comes after the last comma. The monolog of the nemesis’ good fortune will be interrupted by the persona’s attack on their life.

This tweet is an example of the bedrock of many of his jokes. He doesn’t give a damn if he makes sense or not. He will throw you into the deep end of the joke and it is up to you to tread the water. However, if you do manage to keep afloat, his internal logic will bring you to the punchline and, thus, satisfaction.

[Your fingers have been working on the knots steadily as I speak. You try your best not to react as you start to feel something give way, and you keep working quietly.]

The second instance of humor I want to discuss is the Solid Snake Skincare Routine dialog he wrote and performed with Brian in episode 8 of Gill and Gilbert. The full transcript is as follows:

Pat (as Solid Snake from Metal Gear Solid): Colonel, how do I know which moisturizer to buy, and how do I know it’ll match my skin type?

Brian (as Colonel from Metal Gear Solid): Unfortunately Snake, there’s no way to tell for sure. Certain retailers will offer samples, but in most cases, it’s up to you to purchase a product and try it out.

Pat: Sounds expensive.

Brian: It is, Snake. And the cost disproportionately affects women.

Pat: Women?

Brian: Societal norms in the west dictate that a woman’s value is tied to their appearance, and the thing every woman has…

Pat: Skin!

Brian: Right.

Pat: So, we expect women to attain a higher---So, we expect women---women, to attain perfect skin, and we also expect them to pay for it?

Brian: All while paying them less for doing the same jobs as men.

Pat: So Colonel, that means…

Brian: Yes, Snake. It is imperative that you give your money to women.

Pat: Right.

Like the tweet discussed before, Pat Gill shoves incongruity in your face immediately. Solid Snake, super cool spy dude (?? I don’t fuckin know anything about video games) talking about skincare. He expects you to keep up, and if you do, you are rewarded by a surreal yet lovely conversation between Snake and Colonel talking about the intricacies of skincare, but then things get really interesting. The topic shifts to the societal expectations of beauty and how it ties into womens’ experiences. This isn’t a grand woke moment or anything, but it is a surprising shift in subject that is perfectly in tune with the internal logic of the conversation. The punchline is amazing, giving all your money to women, yet it is also written in a way that does not imply that women are the butt of the joke. The butt of the joke here is the surreal vibe of the conversation as a whole.

This dialog builds upon the bedrock of Pat Gill’s humor: he isn’t afraid to go places. This is something that is apparent in many of the Unraveleds that he writes (Dark Souls Bosses is a very good example), he brings in real issues, makes the jokes funny, but never treats the marginalized or the victims of these issues as the butt of the joke. In Susan Purdie’s book The Mastery of Discourse, she remarks that to joke about a certain topic, to make something the “butt of the joke” can degrade this topic and bring it down lower, in the process shifting the power to the joker instead (Purdie 59). Pat Gill is aware of that power dynamic and never jokes at the expense of those who are struggling. He instead makes us laugh at characters, at situations, at surreality.

[The knots tying your hands are almost undone. You just need to bide your time. You’re so close to escaping from this thirsty pseudo intellectual motherfucker]

The last criteria I need to discuss with you is GreatAtPresentingThings. 

Pat Gill has done a lot of presenting. For this, I will be analyzing just one of the many videos where Pat Presents Things, my favorite among his “X is Y because of Z” videos, “Why Bloodborne and Muppets are the exact same thing.”

I’ve talked about this video in a previous long post analysis about Pat Gill, but let me talk about it again. Pat Gill, on camera, brings up an absolutely bonkers fucking thesis: that the horrible monsters in Bloodborne are similar to the Muppets because of how they use character design. 

Pat Gill, as a presenter, is very lovely to listen to. The cadence of his voice is not only extremely relaxing and makes me feel like a tranquilized zoo animal that Pat is talking to very gently about video games, but his voice is also very easy to follow. There are many voices on the internet, and I have a bunch of sensory issues, so a lot of the time, even when I want to listen to somebody, I just can’t because of how their voice grates at my ears. Pat Gill’s voice is not that. It is of a good speed and good vibe that not only puts me at ease but makes me want to listen.

Pat Gill uses gestures. This is most apparent in this video, where he does that cute thing when he says Shape, Movement, and Texture. Here are screenshots of it because it’s so fucking cute, what the fuck.

I know, I know, what do gestures have to do with presenting things? Well, if you told me “shape, movement, texture”, six minutes later, I wouldn’t fucking remember any of those. But with these gestures, those words do stick. When words stick, the explanations behind those words stick as well. When words and explanations stick in your mind, congratulations dude, you just learned something! Pat Gill when talking, and whether it is scripted like this or unintentional like a random gesticulation, the movement catches my attention and I become a more rapt listener.

Honestly, I could go on and on about Pat as a communicator and---

[Before I can speak, you bolt upwards from your chair, finally having gotten the ropes loose. Quickly, powerfully, you grab the projector from the table and smash it over my head. I stumble and fall to the ground, and you look down at me as your chest heaves.

As I slowly lose consciousness, you hear me say, softly, but with so much fervor:

“Pat…..Gill…..hot.”]

Thanks for reading! 

(Read my other unhinged analysis essays at actualbird.tumblr.com/tagged/nobody-asked-but. If you have a suggestion for an unhinged analysis essay I can write, send me an ask!)

References:

McGhee, Paul E. Humor: Its Origin and Development, W.H. Freeman and Company, 1979, pp. 1-41.

Purdie, Susan. The Mastery of Discourse. Harvester Wheatsheaf. 1993.

[inkdemonapologist]

Okay but I do actually want to know both the things you love and the things you could rant about from DCTL?

OH BOY UHHHHHH okay lets see, I'm gonna see if I can do the "add a readmore after you post it" thing and see if that'll keep it stable.......

But also, much like Sammy, I am incapable of shutting up unless you strike me in the head with a blunt object, so uh, forgive my wordiness:

THINGS I ENJOY:

- DCTL gave us Sammy's ink addiction and like, if you had asked me before all this "what would you most like to see in a franchise?" I would not have answered "one of the characters drinks ink accidentally and then discovers that he can't stop" but boy that sure is my favourite concept that I LOVE to see handled literally any other way than how the book handled it!!!

- I like what it added to Tom and Allison and Norman!! Like, it's not big twists on their characters or anything -- we already knew Tom felt he was doing the wrong thing, so getting to see his CRUSHING GUILT over creating the machine isn't New Information, but it's nice to see and understand more of him; for all of them I feel a lot more attached to them after getting to see more of them as people.

- Like 90% of the "I LOVE IT" category for me is how the book handled Joey, and Buddy's relationship with Joey. The way Joey isn't a Sinister Mastermind Who’s Just Screwing With Everyone but just manipulative in a more mundane way -- someone who thinks of himself as just the guy with the vision to call the shots; he wants what he wants and this is how he's learned to get it; he exploits people not through devious schemes, but just by offering them something that they want or need and asking too much in return, expecting their loyalty for his favours. And the way he interacts with Buddy, making Buddy complicit with him and keeping Buddy off-balance and insecure while making him a favourite and treating him as Special is just PERFECT --  gives a lot of content to kind of extrapolate off of when pondering what must've drawn the others in and convinced them to ignore the red flags. I was initially frustrated with the idea of Buddy not being an artist and jUST DECIDING TO LEARN TO ANIMATE ON THE SPOT ("I've never done this before but I'm sure I can just do an artist's job" is a weirdly common throwaway thing in media and as an artist iTS A PET PEEVE) but actually the way they use his plagiarism to make him trapped in a lie in ways Joey doesn't even realise ends up being a neat echo of other employees (coughTOMcough), who were involved in much graver sins but suddenly felt they couldn't object or they'd lose their one chance, just like Buddy. There's a lot here that I think is really great.

OKAY THATS THE GOOD STUFF, LET'S COMPLAIN ABOUT SAMMY:

- Uncomfortable Bigotry Vagueness that we all knew was gonna be in this list -- I dunno man, a guy committing a microaggression and getting startled and defensive when he's called out for it doesn't necessarily completely ruin his character I GUESS, but the way this was handled is just SO WEIRD AND VAGUE that it's uncomfortable and it doesn't seem to serve any real purpose. "Is Tom black?" is a question I actually have to ask because the text sort of implies he is while also dancing around it and apparently Word of God said he's not??? which makes Buddy's comment nonsensical???? And I mean, you could go that route, since Buddy wonders to himself if Sammy talks to everyone like this -- HE ACTUALLY DOES!! Even within the text of the novel, he uses "Joey" instead of Mr. Drew, which is consistent with his audiologs in the game -- but that makes the writing suggest "this character THINKS this guy might be racist but actually they're reading too much into it and it wasn't racially motivated at all, he's just a jerk!!" wHICH IS SOMEHOW EVEN MORE ICKY??? Anyway like yeah I guess it's not inconsistent with his character that while Sammy Lawrence may not have any specific grudge against minorities he has probably not checked his privilege or done the work to challenge his own internal biases, but “Your Fav Probably Contributes To Systemic Racism In Ways He Hasn’t Considered, As Do We All When Our Assumptions Go Unchecked” is still a wild thing to wade through in a fun story about demonic cartoons

- but yknow so is T H E   H O L O C A U S T

- Sammy's voice is wrong. I'm actually okay with him being a weird awkward asshole, I already kind of assumed he was and that's part of why I like him!! but there's so many places he doesn't quite... talk like himself? And not just in terms of word choice, like -- so in his monologue at the end, he's described as talking so quickly that his words are "tumbling out faster than he can speak them," which initially seems fine; like yeah, that's a Standard Scene we're familiar with, the person who's been Driven Mad With Insight becoming more and more manic as they try to convey it -- until I tried to imagine it and realised that Sammy doesn't talk like this. That's a really consistent quality I always notice about his voice; whether he's almost giddily excited in prophet mode, or he’s his irritated and overworked human self, or he's violently angry and his voice has that echo effect -- he always speaks very deliberately. He enunciates carefully. There's some circumstances where I'd buy this as showing that he's Not Himself, but I feel like those would kind of need to be in the middle of his transformation, not at the end of it.

- In fact a lot of the scenes with Sammy kind of have this feeling -- that it's not necessarily an exploration of Sammy as a character, but that he is filling a trope or archetype role here. Once he's fully transformed he excitedly describes the process as more of a mental compulsion, which is in contrast to his weird yeerk-infected behaviour when trying to get ink from Miss Lambert. Both of those scenes don't seem wrong on their own because they fit tropes we know -- but they feel weird when you try to fit them together.

- I also just in general am not a fan of the ink acting like a weird yeerk. It can be a parasite I guess but when it starts overwriting and puppeting people and crawling around to enter their body that's just a completely DIFFERENT kind of supernatural story and it’s not what im here for!!!

- THE FREAKIN!!! HE WILL SET US FREE!!!! WHY????????? SAMUEL LAWRENCE WHAT IS HE SETTING YOU FREE FROM??????? Sammy has No Motive for any of what he's doing, other than just Ink Made Me Do It. The whole thing that was INTERESTING about Sammy as a character is the contrast between this frustrated, ornery musician with no specific love for the cartoons he works on, and the manically devoted cultist he becomes. What happened in the middle there? What made him desperate enough to shift his mindset so much? "Something supernatural made him do things that don't benefit him in any way" is a very boring answer to this question!!! Susie was a victim who implies that her transformation has forced her to do things she didn't want to do, but we can still see her motive -- she wanted to be Alice, so she took a sketchy offer to try to get what she wanted. Even now, her violence echoes that goal -- to be a more perfect Alice. What did Sammy want? WHO KNOWS. Even in his ink-addled state at the end, we don't understand what he hopes the Ink Demon will even do for him, and in fact he seems to be responsible for creating the very scenario he's begging Bendy to reverse in the game.

- [sighs loudly into my hands]

- Overall I'm left wondering if the author just..... didn't like Sammy Lawrence? And I don't mean that in the sense of him being a rude jerk -- like, Joey is not a good person, but the author seems to be interested in him and in what makes him tick. There doesn't seem to be that same interest in Sammy. Sammy's role in the story is that of a monster, transformed into something murderous, unable to prevent or choose it. He's not a victim of anyone but the ink, no one had to manipulate him or figure out how his brain worked or what he wanted or what he feared or give him any reason to do the things he does -- ink got in his mouth and overwrote his personality. And we don't even get to see that change, not really. He starts out angry and defensive and continues being angry and defensive up until his very last scene, denying his ink-stealing but not really much else. We see all his prophetic sketches but we never see hints of this in him, we never see him start to act more excited and hopeful, we never see him seek out the demon he desires to please. Why do we never see Sammy struggling between his dismissive angry front and a building religious fervour he can't quite suppress? We don't get to see any of the in-between. There's no interest at all in why or even what it looked like as Sammy became what he became, when, to be honest, I suspect interest in precisely that is one reason he's such a big fav.

- It's funny, in a "cries into my hands" kind of way, when Sammy is just knocked in the head while monologuing and immediately removed from the story without further mention, like...... that sure is the pattern with him, isn't it, he just tries very very hard and never actually gets to matter, but it also fits right in here, too, in this book that doesn't want to think about his motives -- he rambles nonsensically, explaining nothing, gets one trademark phrase, and then is hastily removed so the story doesn't have to think about him anymore.

...................I think that's most of it.

...

Y'all............ I'm not ready for Sent From Above.......... I'm just not.... I'm not emotionally ready...... like..... Sammy has to be in that right..... he’s Susie’s boss and she has that big crush on him..................................... I’m not ready

[officialotakudome]

New Post has been published on Otaku Dome | The Latest News In Anime, Manga, Gaming, Tech, and Geek Culture

New Post has been published on https://otakudome.com/wandavision-season-1-review/

WandaVision Season 1 Review

The new era of Marvel Television begins with WandaVision. Following the events of Avengers: Endgame, Wanda Maximoff has continued her grief stricken life in wake of the death of her lover Vision. With her powers ever growing Wanda takes the small town of Westview hostage to cope in a mind-binding super hero take on classic and modern sitcoms.

WandaVision is a 2021 superhero sitcom, it is produced by Marvel Studios and distributed by Walt Disney. It aired exclusively on Disney+. Season one is currently available in its entirety. 

Editor’s Note: Near complete to complete spoilers for WandaVision and the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole may be present within this review. 

The next stage in the Marvel Cinematic Universe begins in WandaVision.

WandaVision begins a new era for the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the first of insanely big budgeted TV series for the Disney+ platform. After the shut down of Marvel Television and incorporating it into Marvel Studios proper many were worried about the future of Marvel properties coming to the small screen. Thankfully while it’s not necessarily on traditional TV the small form Marvel content will continue in even greater heights due to Disney’s push for it’s streaming platform. And WandaVision is already a big part of that move. Acting as an homage to classic sitcoms old and modern WandaVision is a superhero trip that’s for fans of all Marvel content.

WandaVision’s consistent roller-coaster ride story keeps viewers on their toes.

THE GOOD: The series takes place sometime after Endgame. The world is still recovering from the snap reverse & the fact that time has skipped for a majority of the world. Wanda, still grieving over the loss of her lover Vision has lost control of her powers and even some of her sanity. She unknowingly uses her powers to change the small town of Westview into the image of the TV sitcoms she watched with her family as a child. Fearing her power Wanda is investigated by S.W.O.R.D a government agency meant to be the space focused version of S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Monica Rambeau has a particular interest in Wanda sympathizing with her after losing her mother to cancer. Believed to be having a waning mental state Wanda changes the world design of Westview based on different eras of TV sitcoms. Wanda is eventually revealed to be mostly sane choosing Westview as her method of coping having lost Vision twice.

As the world design changes so does the storyline Wanda created for the series, including the title, aspect ratio, and cast of characters. Wanda becomes pregnant and soon gives birth to twins. Meanwhile S.W.O.R.D has been sending in agents in an effort to stop Wanda and save the citizens of Westview. But they instantly become apart of Wanda’s Westview upon entering. Even the sympathetic Rambeau becomes a victim of it. The more S.W.O.R.D. intervenes the more erratic Wanda becomes in retaliation. Rambeau eventually regains herself after escaping Westview and returning to real life. 

Vision becomes suspicious of Wanda after strange interactions with his co-workers & neighbors. The twins have also begun aging at an accelerated rate and also gain superpowers. One night Vision finally has enough and questions Wanda only for her “brother” Pedro to appear. This Pedro is in the form of the FOX’s X-Men universe, but Wanda has complete recognition of him. S.W.O.R.D ramps up it’s attack on Westview and Vision finds the exit for the altered Westview. As he attempts to escape the area, Wanda’s powers resists him and he’s nearly erased. When his son feels Vision’s pain Wanda increases the reach of the altered Westview which encases others including Darcy who was helping S.W.O.R.D. 

Vision and Darcy become apart of the rebooted Westview with slight memory loss. Vision recognizes Darcy and they work together to return to Wanda. However, the world is rejecting them causing a multitude of distracts that stop them in their tracks. Eventually regaining their memories Vision flies off to Wanda, leaving Darcy behind. Wanda feels as if she’s losing control of the world and Agatha Harkins who kidnapped the she reveals she was behind all of the chaos. Agatha reveals that she is an actual witch from the Salem trials era and wanted to absorb Wanda’s powers to control the Darkhold an ancient spell book with powerful magic. Agatha also reveals that Wanda holds the title of Scarlet Witch an ancient witch with chaos magic abilities. S.W.O.R.D unveils a man-made version of Vision which was made from the original with intent to be controlled on their command. 

As Agatha threatens the boys in front of Wanda and Vision returns only to be attacked by White Vision. A dual battle ensues between Agatha & Wanda and Vision & White Vision. After a conversation Vision returns White Vision’s memories causing him to abandon S.W.O.R.D. and fly off. Agatha & Wanda’s fight makes it to town where the citizens memories have returned. Begging Wanda to free them she complies only to stop when Vision & the boys begin to disappear. Monica who had returned to the world with her DNA changing her into a superhuman offers to help Wanda. She & the boys along with Vision fight and defeat S.W.O.R.D who were intervening. 

Agatha has released magical runes which has taken over the altered Westview. Just as it appears that Wanda has been defeated she reveals that she tricked Agatha. Taking control of Agatha’s runes Wanda transforms into the Scarlet Witch and defeats Agatha. Instead of killing Agatha she returns her to her fake Westview personality as a hostage planning to use her vast knowledge in the future. 

Head of S.W.O.R.D, Director Hayward is arrested for his actions. Monica and Agent Woo who had been trying to protect Wanda take care of clearing her name as she heads off with her family. As she releases Westview from her control she says goodbye to her family. Monica is visited by a Skrull posing as a human who invites her to the S.H.I.E.L.D station in space. Wanda studies the Darkhold in her Scarlet Witch form and suddenly hears her children crying her name.

WandaVision is a story of overcoming loss and grief.

Initially, WandaVision is rather slow paced, but picks up around episode threeish. As a fan of nearly all of the sitcoms parodied I think the series personally connects with me more than the average viewer. I was able to get all the references and inside jokes, but I can see someone who isn’t particularly a fan of even one of said sitcoms being lost & put off from the direction. Also just wanted to shout that I was shocked a bit seeing the Malcolm in the Middle repping, but happily so as it’s probably my favorite sitcom of all time. This was surprisingly laxed in action compared to previous MCU work. However, given the focus was to establish magic, multiverses, and other key Marvel elements into Phase 4 this is understandable. Though I can see the heavy focus on story & world building being a major turn off for casual MCU fans. In regards to the action, while it was there it’s what you’d expect from a big budgeted Marvel project. However, I must stress that there’s a rather large absence of it.

The twists and turns that start to unfold midway through the series is a fun ride. And WandaVision knows how to have fun with itself. Commercials were used as inside jokes and one even references Hydra. Kathryn Hahn as Agatha also kind of stole the show with her always on energy. She flourishes with the comedic villain character type. The acting as a whole is probably some of the strongest currently in the MCU.

The series features big implications for the future of Marvel Studios.

THE BAD: The series is a slow burn in such a way that you may have to take small breaks. Normally binging would be an advantage here with every episode being available. But even so it can be a turn off until about episode three or four when things really kick into place. There’s also some balancing issues with the storytelling. Like for example there’s a mailman who frequently pops up as if he’s an important character to the show like Agatha, but it goes no where. There’s a handful of times where it felt like the story went there with certain threads. Also viewers should be warned that this is lacking on action compared to previous Marvel efforts. With most of said action being restricted to the final episodes.

WandaVision is a successful first entry into the Disney+ Marvel TV era.

OVERALL THOGHTS: WandaVision isn’t perfect, but it sets up the future of the MCU in a beautiful way. Though there are a few pointless teases and some stories feeling like they were flat out dropped. Despite this, WandaVision (mostly) lives up to it’s hype. Even with some early opening hiccups for the series. Otaku Dome gives WandaVision an 80 out of 100. 

[thesunwillshineonusagain757]

Reasons why I don’t like Beward/ Bedward/ Bellward

Not my gifs

Disclaimer: My intentions with this post are to expose what I thing about this ship . In no way, shape , or form do I intend to offend those who ship it . If you like it , who am I to tell you that you are a bad person for it , right ? But I wanted to put out there some of my thought so here it goes . ( and sorry this is a giant of a post )

He is old and she is underaged :

I know what you are going to say . But she isn’t underaged for the whole saga . But still he fell in love with a high schooler and he is safely more than 80, seeing that he says that Carlisle transformed him when he had got Spanish flu, and let me tell you . Spanish flu had three major waves , and the three of them were during the First World War so he was probably 20 when he was turned and he was turned in between 1914-1918 , that makes him at least 110 years old , and he is in love with an underaged school girl ... Let’s just say if he looked his age people would assume he had far different intentions with her .

Bella emotionally toys with both of the guys :

Then we will enter in this part of the conversation, Bella is a girl who literally has two supernatural beings at her feet, two men who claim themselves to be attracted to her, and Bella clearly decides very early on in being with one of the guys by the end of the first book, however, several times during the narrative of the series, she oscillates between the two even going so far as to ask that the other romantic interest kisses her when she is clearly in a serious relationship with the other man. I font know about you but for me she is coming across as quite shady and not in the good way .

Edwars is always jealous:

It is no secret that half of the conflicts in the twilight series revolve around the love triangle, and the ultra-ciumese attitudes of vampire Edward. If I had to count the amount of times Edward expresses his extreme jealousy towards Bella because of her relationship with her friends , but specially mister Jacob the wolfboy , I wouldn’t have enough hands . In my opinion a good relationship is based on trust you trust your partner , you must trust the people you love . “If you love it set I free”. But that is quite the opposite what mister Cullen does . He is overbearing and seems to not know th definition of boundaries. You may thing it’s him just being old school but for someone who has been around for so long , he might have to change his mind a bit. You also may justify that by saying it’s just because he love her , but let me tell you many of the approaches he takes to ensure her “ safety” are very in line with the actions of abusers .

The lack of respect :

Edward stalks Bella, he breaks into her room unbeknownst to her and follows her to the city when she goes out shopping, clearly not respecting her personal space or respecting her privacy. His justification is that she is so hopeless that she cannot look after herself, showing that he doesn’t even respect her judgement as poor as it may be, he literally treats her as if her brains of made of gummy bears. True, he ends up saving her from being assaulted but that doesn’t justify the stalking in the first place. If anyone breaks into your house to watch you sleep, you fucking call the cops! That’s not romantic, it’s creepy as hell and motherfucking terrifying.

Edward makes decision Bella just tags along:

Talking about gummy bear brain , Edward makes some big ass decision without even consulting Bella first . For example he end their relationship , without an explanation , and totally ghosts her after that . But not limiting himself to that he also shoved her into a car on the first movie and drove away with her because he put her in danger in the first place . She couldn’t tell her family where she was , she couldn’t go home because he would let her and she was scared . That is some major red flangs you don’t do that because you love someone you do that because you see them as your property.

The need they have for each other :

Listen healthy relationships are based on the affection that you have for someone , but that affection cannot be as crippling as the one they have . That is not love it’s callled obsession and is as far from healthy as it could be . The line where he says “ you are my life now” just comes to show that those two do not have a healthy relationship where they can distinguish themself from their significant other. Where they have a personally that is fully developed and being in love with each other is not personally trait .

It is the perfect example of a toxic relationship being disguised as a romance story:

Let’s face the music , this relationship has to many signs and red flags , to be considered anything but a toxic relationship . Bella, the main character, displays three characteristics common to victims of violent relationships. The first and perhaps most obvious trait is her consistent low self-esteem. Bella constantly reminds herself that she's uncoordinated, unsocial, and unattractive, is that she is particularly attracted to men who are forbidden, she is thus drawn to the “ bad boy” , and third, and most unfortunately, Bella is simply excited by violence, aggression, and danger; she finds it all thrilling. Bella's attraction to anything dangerous is clear in many cases through her human life. She rides a motorcycle because of the danger. When Edward tells Bella that he'll literally kill anyone who tries to hurt her, she get’s attracted to the violent nature he has. She is exactly the type of person a abused or even worst a sexual predator would look for and as we already noted that Edward’s does not help his case , I kind of see a pattern here .

In conclusion :

I used to like this paring as a young , naive teen but as I grew old I came to see the treacherous nature of this type of relationships where , so many red flangs are so apparent. I’m not saying you are a bad person for shipping it , I ask that you try to read into the subtext and the clear and alarming signs, of this ship . I’m not asking for you to stop shipping it , only asking that you have more of a critical mind when you read , watch and dive into fandom .

[beesandbooks1]

Discussion: The Surprising Sexuality of Bella Swan

To read this post on my blog instead, click here!

Blanket warning: This post will be discussing sex and sexual activity. Bella Swan is a minor in the beginning of the Twilight Saga, and thus this discussion concerns the sexuality of teenagers.

Bella Swan and her sexual awakening

When we first meet Bella in Twilight, she can be described as a pretty sexless and anti-romantic person. We find out through her experiences in the Twilight Saga that she’s never gone on dates, never had anyone express explicit attraction to her, and that Edward Cullen is her first real crush and love interest. She seems pretty analytical, all things considered, discussing her mother’s relationships with her father and stepfather pretty distantly. While she can almost understand attraction–pointing out that when her parents were young and more attractive she can almost understand why they rushed into marriage–she doesn’t openly acknowledge attraction as a motivation for anything until dealing with Edward.

Bella Swan has a very clear sexual awakening in Twilight. The first time she kisses Edward, she describes herself as burning up and suddenly losing control. In fact, throughout the rest of the series this is a common theme. Edward is constantly having to keep their kissing as chaste as possible to protect Bella from his dangerous venom (and his bloodlust) while Bella regularly describes herself as latching onto him, pushing him to go further. Bella experiences tangible sexual desire for Edward and continually tries to act on it, despite Edward’s fears and trepidation. We like to make memes and joke about how dedicated Bella was to having sex with him in Breaking Dawn, but that was just the culmination of a lot of encounters in which Bella’s desire and lust drive their physical interactions.

Bella’s autonomy versus Edward’s

This was an interesting and occasionally disconcerting aspect of the treatment of sex in the Saga. Edward asserts repeatedly that it’s too dangerous to do more than kiss and that he won’t risk it with Bella. He also later on asserts his desire to wait for marriage, placing his sexual autonomy in the way of Bella’s desires. This is actually surprising in a lot of ways. First and most obvious is the subversion of expectations. A lot of YA and New Adult fiction places women in the shoes of the autonomy debate, putting their desire to wait for marriage, love, or another important milestone before having sex for the first time (or just the first time with their partner) out as the obstacle that the man they are seeing must respect. While I don’t think it was Meyer’s intention to comment on the particularly distasteful way society ignores male sexual autonomy and the right of men to say no to sex, it’s still an unusual subversion of societal expectation.

The next reason I find Bella’s sexual desire and lack of care for marriage interesting is because of Meyer’s background. Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon, and the Mormon culture generally encourages waiting until marriage for women and has strict rules regulating sexuality for all young people in general. We see in other parts of Meyer’s writing where the Mormon values come into play, so it’s ultimately very surprising that the main POV character, Bella, who is largely portrayed as mature and wiser than her peers should be pushing for premarital sex against a man’s wishes. She ends up only agreeing to marry Edward because she wants to sleep with him, and a little bit because she wants to be with him forever. She figures their relationship will continue regardless of marriage but his conditions for sex are what finally convince her to marry at all. This is again a subversion of the usual expectations.

I also find Edward’s sexual autonomy interesting in the face of the almost sex positive Bella. Edward Cullen is a man that repeatedly says ‘no’ to sex with a willing partner because of his own values, regardless of which of those values are more powerfully motivating. He has no reason to fear being overpowered when Bella is a human, so he can and frequently does exercise his right to say “no” without fear of repercussions. After all, the biggest reason people will consent to a sexual encounter they don’t want is to avoid the potential consequences of saying otherwise. Edward resists Bella’s attempts to coerce or seduce him in part because he knows she cannot overpower him, as he is a vampire and can absolutely physically stop her if need be. Bella dances dangerously close to interfering with his autonomy by pushing him towards physical encounters he expresses discomfort with. And from Bella’s perspective, she doesn’t seem to be aware that she’s coming close to violating his consent. Again, I don’t think it was Meyer’s intention to point out that women are just as capable of violating sexual trust as men, but an interesting point nonetheless.

Sexuality in the rest of the cast

Sex is absolutely alluded to and explicitly discussed on occasion with regards to the rest of the cast–usually to reaffirm relationships. In particular, Rosalie and Emmett’s relationship is associated with implied sex and Jacob’s perspective in Breaking Dawn references implied sex as well. Unsurprisingly, outside of Bella and Edward’s direct discussions and engagements in sexual activity, sex is discussed without actually being discussed–probably due to the age of the intended audience and Meyer’s thoughts on premarital sex.

Rosalie and Emmett have a tempestuous and loving relationship, which Edward describes as having destroyed houses through sex. Rosalie and Emmett are the most conventionally attractive of the Cullens, and often come across as a heartbreakingly perfect couple. They love one another very much and go on elaborate honeymoon trips, frequently living separate from the rest of the Cullens as a married couple. Additionally, Rosalie’s story involves her assault leading to her death and her desire to have a family, specifically her wish for children. In many ways, Rosalie’s story is more grown up than the rest of the series in is tragedy and in her metaphorical struggle with infertility. It’s not wholly surprising for her character that she and her husband are the most clearly sexual of the characters, but it does stick out as unusually mature against the rest of the series.

Jacob’s perspective also reveals some implied discussions of sex. The first example comes when he himself goes to a park to deliberately attempt to find someone he can get over Bella with. The implication is pretty obvious: he intends to have a one nigh stand. That he doesn’t succeed can’t erase what seems pretty obvious. Thus we have a character without the hangups on premarital sex that Edward–the only other male character that expresses any degree of sexuality–has. Also, since much of the exposition relating to Imprinting is given by Jacob, Jacob does have to discuss sex to a certain degree.

Contradictory messages?

I’d say that as a YA author, having your eighteen-year-old protagonist marry straight out of high school and avoid premarital sex is making a pretty firm moral statement. I don’t know for certain if Meyer set out from the beginning to build a relationship with Bella and Edward that she hoped young girls would aspire to, or if she just couldn’t bring herself to put something she didn’t believe in into her books. From the commentary on the movie, I do know she was at least a little uncomfortable with Bella being sexualized as she was one of the people protesting how “sexy” Kristen Stewart looked during the scene where Edward kisses Bella in her bedroom. Despite this, Meyer wrote a pretty convincing sexual awakening for Bella’s character.

Up until Forks, Bella’s character motivation doesn’t include sex or relationships. She is pretty single-minded about taking care of her mother, and then a little bit about being a good kid. The implication is that before remarrying, Renee wasn’t very good about consistently paying bills and providing food, so Bella honestly had far more important things to worry about than boys (or girls). Her sexual awakening with Edward is actually a pretty interesting idea, then, because in Forks is the first time Bella has time to think about boys, relationships, and sex. And then Bella is repeatedly shut down in these urges by her partner, seemingly in an attempt to protect her. There are plenty of issues with Edward as a partner, we all know this (and I haven’t even read Midnight Sun yet), but I found his desire to save himself until marriage the least problematic thing about him.

How interesting is it that for three books we have the narrative of “Edward desires Bella but is scared of hurting her” before finally having “Edward’s personal choice for his sexuality is to save himself until marriage?” I would have much preferred if that had been out in the open, since without the discussion that takes place at the end of Eclipse, Bella seems to be the victim of being teased by Edward’s allure without ever being granted the payoff of more than a kiss–whatever vampiric danger reasons there are for not going further. Instead, we get the fact that Edward has been struggling with his preference for having sex after marriage without sharing this with Bella, who clearly was willing to respect that as she marries him for this reason. If Meyer was trying to portray premarital sex as a bad thing, she never really got around to it. Bella isn’t even considering sex until Eclipse, despite her growing sexuality, and the discussions she and Edward do have about it isn’t very respectful to the thoughts of either side of the issue.

Final thoughts

I know that it seems awfully pointless to discuss a niche topic in the context of a book series people aren’t enamored with, especially when it’s pretty clear the mos interesting parts of this were not the author’s intentions. I don’t think Stephenie Meyer intended for the Twilight craze to happen at all, especially when you look at the backlash that happened. While there are legitimate issues in the series–capitalizing on the Quileute tribe’s existence while also doing some pretty problematic things with the Quileute characters comes to mind–one thing that cannot be attributed to the series is the hatred of teenage girls that drove the hatred for the series. The vast majority of criticisms for this series came from people whose deep seated hatred of teenage girls led them to find every fault possible (except for the majority of the series’ actual faults). Needles to say, this backlash affected me in a number of ways as I was a teenage girl who initially liked Twilight.

This was not a conscious thought I had upon first reading, but I want us to consider being a teenage girl in a confusing world where half of popular media says relationships and making out and even sex are important and cool parts of being a teenager, while another half of popular media condemns teenage girls for exploring their sexuality however they may be comfortable. As a teenage girl, saving yourself is worthy of mockery and having sex regardless of the context is worthy of slut-shaming. To have a romance series endorsed by mothers as well as teenagers in which the teenage girl explores feeling sexual desire is pretty interesting. She’s not shamed for desiring Edward, it’s only natural after all. And the questions of consent and autonomy are danced around with his desire to save himself for marriage–an unintentional reminder that women are capable of sexual assault as well and that everyone deserves the safety to say “no.”

Do I think it’s revolutionary for Twilight to have included some of Bella’s sexual awakening? No. In fact, I think it’s one of the things that could have been improved if Meyer was a better writer or better re-writer to make a more impressive series. But I do think that Twilight is more notable for the deep hatred it inspired than its writing. I think it’s important to continue to discuss Twilight in the context of what it gave teenage girls and who opposed teenage girls having it. Edward wasn’t a great love interest, but one thing we can say for him is he never forced sex on Bella. He never pressured her, he wanted to wait for marriage. As a result, Bella’s sexual awakening is slower and paced out with her own growing desires and wants. She never has to rush through things because she isn’t having sex. And I think it’s good for teenage girls to have a character whose desires awaken in the first book but isn’t having sex until later, has sex with someone she stays together with and gets to grow with, and is never pressured into the sex.

[roominthecastle]

@alma37​ again, thank you for the reply! I only keep starting new posts bc I don’t want this to grow a mile long. now onto the points you raised:

It is so obvious ( to me anyway) at the beginning of TDC, when he sees Zoe, the look of shock and hope (or am I projecting again?), then the disappointment, but still a bit of hope, when he realises she is a descendant (same bloodline). 

My thoughts exactly. I mean, everybody projects onto fiction, it’s inevitable since we are not machines and this is a way to connect w/ characters. But I think as he is trying to find his bearings amidst all the new and shiny things, his mask slips there for a moment and the way he looks at her + that “Agatha...?” is quite telling, imo. He is much more attached than even he realized (or allowed himself to realize before) but that’s Dracula for you: he perceives and rationalizes many things but rarely interrogates himself w/ the kind of ruthless honesty Agatha unleashes on him. Their interplay reminds me of that scene w/ Clarice and Hannibal where she says, “You see a lot, Doctor. But are you strong enough to point that high-powered perception at yourself? Why don't you look at yourself and write down what you see? Or maybe you're afraid to.”

I didn’t see the crestfallen expression when Renfield told him Zoe was gone. I’ll have to re-watch this scene. For me, he always seemed indifferent. His tone was, imo at least.

It’s yet again one of those “in the eye of the beholder” situations, but I do feel he is at the very least bothered by the fact that, as Renfield remarks, his lady friend will take no further interest in him. Then he even tries to console him w/ that universal hand-on-shoulder gesture but it isn’t exactly well-received.

It’s just my spin on this but I think he’s struggling to come to terms w/ his feelings about this whole situation, and, as you also noted, Agatha/Zoe is not there for a while to be a sounding board and to unpack things for him/us, so he/we are left to our own devices. I think this is what truly sets the first 2 episodes apart from the 3rd and that may be why some fans struggle w/ it the most, too. Agatha is almost like a “meta presence” constantly interrogating the story itself (via Jonathan in ep1 and via Dracula in ep2) but she is silent for most of ep 3. At least to me, this is the most notable difference and it does result in a pace and perspective shift that isn’t to everybody’s liking, I can understand that.

As far as we (the audience) are concerned, I think a lot can be inferred from acting choices and visual-narrative parallels that consistently run through the entire story and inform unfolding events in the final part. To me, nothing feels as though it came out of nowhere, the seeds are all there. As far as Dracula’s concerned, in ep3 he is getting high on the unique flavor of not-giving-a-shit to cope. He is alone, he misses Agatha (a feeling that must be rather jarring to him), and he is aimless in this brave new world where he doesn’t even have to hunt anymore. He secretly longs to die a proper death but it is denied to him, and now he thinks Agatha, too, has passed on to somewhere he cannot follow. This is what he talks about w/ Lucy at the cemetery where he points out the undead, the eternal sufferers imprisoned in their graves, then looks to her as some sort of antidote, but that experiment is of course doomed to fail. Then Agatha comes back for him and shows him the right way out.

This idea of freedom-via-proper-death is also present in Stoker’s book: “I know that you must fight [...] but it is not a work of hate. That poor soul who has wrought all this misery is the saddest case of all. Just think what will be his joy when he, too, is destroyed in his worser part that his better part may have spiritual immortality.” I think this is what we see in that closing image of Dracula and Agatha joined together as light swirls around them, and I still think it is perfect.

I am pretty sure the smile he wears is directly related to her drinking his blood. I hope I didn’t read that one wrong, though. But the editing makes it look like he feels the moment she drinks.

I think it leaves room for several interpretations: it could v well be that he feels it, it could also be his reaction to seeing Jonathan’s portrait in the hallway and it is intercut w/ her outside the facility, or this could also be from Zoe’s POV - her imagining him grinning just like he later imagines himself staring at Lucy at the club. I think this is also in the commentary where it’s mentioned that that whole dance club sequence is more of a stylistic insert of sorts and Dracula isn’t actually there, it’s all in his mind. But if someone told me the opposite, that they think Dracula is there stalking his next victim, I wouldn’t argue w/ that, either, bc that scene is ambiguous enough to carry that interpretation, too. And the same goes for whatever happens when Zoe drinks his blood. And I fully agree that it was not a surprise to him regardless of when exactly he realizes what she did.

I also wanna hard second this:

I would take a second season however the writers would write it, as long as both actors/characters came back.

[natsspammityspamspamham]

Dino Watches Anime (Oct 26)

Recently Completed!

Tokyo Godfathers

Score: 10/10

There’s a reason why I gave this such a rare high rating. When I was watching it, I was internally like, “*excitement noises* I have not been this excited over an anime in such a long time, let alone for an anime movie. EVERYONE SHUT UP SO I CAN WATCH THIS EVEN IF I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT THEY’RE SAYING.”

It’s not often that you come across really good movies, let alone masterpieces like this movie. The art is so good, the story made me feel like it was Christmas in October, and the characters really made me connect. 

I know the subtitles used a whole lot of gay slurs and things like that, but Hana (the trans character in this tale) is treated well if we get past that huge hurdle. She truly owns up to herself. She doesn’t care what she’s called. She gets mad at people who misgender her. She gets mad if she’s forced to go to a men’s facility. She wants people to call her “an old hag” rather than “an old coot”. She just wants to be a mother even if she isn’t “biologically a woman” who can bear children. So when she comes across this kid, she thinks, “I will finally be a mother!” These are issues that real people face. These are issues that cisgendered people take for granted.

Madhouse really knocked it out of the park. Satoshi Kon is one of the biggest creators and directors in anime history. He’s known for horror and psychological works like Perfect Blue, Paprika, and Millennium Actress. I never expected him to be this good at making a movie that could move my soul like this. The characters were so far from perfect, yet I wanted the best for each of them. The way it handled everything was masterful. The dialogue worked so well and was witty, the voice actors (despite the main three not being in anything else for the most part) were so good at giving life to their characters, and the art blew me away in 2019 even though this was released in 2003. The only thing I didn’t quite like as much was the score during some parts of the movie, but it was subjectively good and just wasn’t to my taste (the Noragami soundtrack wasn’t a fav of mine either). 

Just... watch the movie. If you can watch it around Christmas. It’s good for you.

Saiunkoku Monogatari

Score: 7.4/10 

Yes, I binge-watched all 39 episodes in two days, what’s it to ya?! In reality, I just boosted the speed of the video.

Me throughout this show: Why do you all have triangle heads? What’s with that?

Okay, it’s the art style, and a lot of shoujo anime go with the concept that it looks good. Once you get over the art hurdle making me believe this was created in the early 2000s despite it being 3 years younger than Tokyo Godfathers, this turns out to be a really nice show. I just can’t believe they’re BOTH from Madhouse. 

Remember Snow White with the Red Hair? Remember Akatsuki no Yona? If you liked those shows, you’re going to like this one... except it relies more on the political plot. It’s mostly about a woman wanting to pursue her dreams of being a politician in a male-dominated world. She’s entasked with helping this mess of a king to get his act together, and as much as I can try to prove that it’s surprisingly progressive (given the art and genre), I think that’d be spoiling it a little. The only character that actually bothered me was the prince who was voiced by Tomokazu Seki who honestly was a bit annoying and sounded so fake for me. However, this anime made me appreciate Hikaru Midorikawa’s voice as well as Houko Kuwashima who I’ve only heard voicing dead moms and only a few good characters here and there. Seriously, both of their voices are great. Toshiyuki Morikawa sounds good too, but we already knew that. I don’t like the OP or ED (or a whole lot of the music), but that’s the case for a lot of these 2005-era anime. Just like a lot of the anime on MAL, I do think this is an underrated show, but it does have its pitfalls if you’re just craving for a quick shoujo without any politics.

Full Metal Panic: Second Raid

Score: 7/10

I binge-watched this entire season while my parents were out for dinner and something else. It only took me a couple of hours because I boosted the speed.

I wanted to get a gif specifically from this season, so this one will have to do. So much wasted potential will this character (who’s one of two twins). I know they were trying to play the whole “twincest” thing, but I’m personally not a fan. They provided some cool fight scenes even at a certain cringe cost. The fact that Kyoto Animation animated this bumped the art from a 3 to an 8. It’s crazy how much the quality jumped after a new studio took over. Unfortunately, they didn’t take care of the next season. I know the main ship in the series is pretty clear, but this season made it closer to canon (too bad it took around 13 years to make the next season).

Kara no Kyoukai (movies: 5, 6, 7)

Score:  Part Five: 7.5/10 Part Six: 5.8/10 Part Seven: 8.2/10

Not gonna lie, I watched the first four movies over a year ago and retained nothing. I had to read the Wikia to assist me and to begin with, I watched this to get into the “Type-Moon” universe (which consists of this and the Fate nonsense stuff), Yuki Kajiura’s score, and Maaya Sakamoto and Kenichi Suzumura voicing a couple. The score would probably change if I’d watched them regularly, but I digress because I watched movies 5-7 in one afternoon. Ufotable was pretty good at animating this and the voice acting worked really well. Yuki Kajiura’s music didn’t hit well at first when I was first watching the first few movies over a year ago because it wasn’t what I envisioned the score being, but once you get into the mood and mindset, it adds so much to the story. Although, I still really didn’t like part six. I thought it was a complete flop because I just want to get rid of anyone who believes i*cest is an okay thing. This isn’t Alabama. Go home. Not else to say here because this took so much commitment that I doubt anyone would watch it.

Paranoia Agent

Score: 8.6/10

With spoopy month coming to a close (already?!) I watched this anime earlier this month, but I forgot to write about it. That’s partly because there’s so much to unpack here. This was a thriller, psychological, horror anime by Satoshi Kon. That’s right, the first anime above was also done with him in the director’s seat. This anime was smart. There’s a reason why Robin Williams likes it! It was scary in the best of ways. It revealed a part of society that we see all the time but don’t talk about (especially in Japanese society where emotions are better kept concealed). Just the opening alone made me feel uneasy. The OP and ED were simplistic yet worked. I binge-watched the whole series because it was that gripping. 

It was a little confusing at times, but that’s also because that’s just a common thing with horror anime. That suspense keeps us going. It keeps us on the edge of our seats. Who’s going to be the next victim of Shounen Bat? Episode 8 came out of nowhere for me, and I liked it. There were several scenes that sent shivers down my spine in the best way possible. It isn’t always “scary”, but it gives suspense.

Aoi Bungaku

This one is going to be reviewed a little differently. Since it has specific arcs, I’m going to review them as such!

Ningen Shikkaku: 8.2/10

We start off with a bang. Osamu Dazai was a man of suffering. This story really shows that. In this story, we see a man who’s desperate to know what makes him human. We see this through the eyes of a fictional character, but I personally view this as a semi-autobiography.

The art was chilling. The voice acting from Masato Sakai was surprisingly good. A lot of the time, voice acting from live-action actors just aren’t that great. Every time you think this character will get back on his feet, he falls deeper and deeper. It truly did make me wonder what made me human.

Sakura no Mori no Mankai no Shita: 3.9/10

That moment when the only thing that saves this arc is Nana Mizuki’s singing. Seriously, her jazz songs were awesome. Can’t say that about the rest. I mean, the art is good, but it’s Madhouse so most of their stuff is already good. The story wasn’t that original. Mind you, this was probably during a period where foreign influence was strong, and I haven’t read the original story, but... this is basically Salome (the opera) with some differences. Both have a crazy woman with a fixation over lifeless decapitated heads. Both have men that are captivated with her beauty so they give her what she wants because of that reason alone, they both murder religious people (monk/shrine maiden and a prophet), and both eventually realize that women can be crazy when they demand a lifeless head because you know, that’s just a red flag. Above all, it suffers from tonal shifts. You can’t have a woman turning moe then demand you bring her another head to play with. You can’t have Masato Sakai playing another main character that doesn’t fit him! Seriously, he doesn’t have the voice of a brute and just couldn’t do it. Overall, this arc was a mess, and I’m glad it was one of the shorter ones.

Kokoro: 7.6/10

This looked like a masterpiece compared to the last arc. I haven’t read Kokoro, but this made me go, “Huh, I don’t remember this happening.” That’s because they chose a certain part of the book (near the end apparently) and just went off that and created its own anime-original episode. Despite that, it was pretty good! There were some screaming discrepancies which did hurt its impression (because it made it feel out of place to the point where even I, as an uneducated anime viewer, could clearly see).

(I think this is from Kokoro but I might be wrong)

Hashire, Melos!: 8.9/10

Would you look at that? It’s the best arc of the series. Hashire, Melos was great. It had me going from beginning to end, and it’s the only arc that doesn’t have Masato Sakai playing the lead character. The art, the pacing, the storytelling, the story, the sound, the voice acting, and the art direction complemented each other so well. It made me far more interested in the original. 

The Spider’s Thread: 6.6/10

If you look really close, you’ll notice that the creator of Bleach took over character design for this! It was okay. I found that it was a little cliche and lacklustre. Mamo is around so much that you probably have to do more than that to keep my attention, and this had the art going for it too. It just wasn’t that interesting. A heartless murderer is sent to hell after being executed. Moral of the story: Don’t be an asshole. Alright. Nice. I do understand that Ryuunosuke Akutagawa was one of the main establishers of the whole “Japanese Short Story” thing, but after seeing it so many times, I just didn’t get that same chill.

Hell Screen: 6.9/10 

Another Akutagawa short story! This one had far more of an impact because this one hit closer to Akutagawa’s heart. Knowing the history of this piece of writing, you can see his desperation to stay relevant and true to his craft. It’s about a painter who wants to paint the town but finds out the city isn’t the bright light he sees in his mind. Everything goes ablaze. The art for this is stunning. I probably would’ve enjoyed this story more if it was placed in the middle of the series run rather than being the last story. 

Recently Started

Africa no Salaryman

The animation for this is terrible. There is no way around it. However, at least it’s funny. Still, close to being on the chopping block. It has the papa lion who’s played by Akio Ohtsuka, the straight-man middle lizard played by Kenjirou Tsuda, and the scumbag toucan played by Hiro Shimono. Yes, they all play Hero Academia villains. The jokes are pretty good for me.

Given

Oh, would you look at that? It’s a music anime. *inhales* Music anime is a double-edged sword for me. I like having music interpreted and portrayed through one of my favourite mediums, but I don’t like them playing off music as some sort of easy gimmick and a joke. It’s like a shonen montage. “Let’s just have this guy train for two minutes and become a demigod”. But when you put an instrument into someone’s hand and demand the same, it sends me to another plane of angriness.  So far, the romance is kind of cute... but Mafuyu kind of annoys me since his role in the BL dynamic is so clear just by his voice. Same with Uchida. You can only play so many thugs a season. Kyou? Good. Chika? Good. This guy? Good, but don’t do them all back-to-back! I don’t like the BL dynamic being so basic. However, my mind can be changed if done right.

Shinsekai Yori

Very interesting premise, their eyes are cute, and I’m a sucker for these so I’m gonna stick with it.