#so I naturally wasted time writing an analysis instead

[xvxblahhhxvx]

I think Dazai's backstory is really cool in how, despite having more information about it than most other characters, majority of his life is just one giant noodle incident.

Yep, that's the line I'm going with as an introduction to this analysis. Just bear with me.

To start off, for those who don't know, the term "noodle incident" originates from the (amazing) comic Calvin and Hobbes. In it, the whole idea is that Calvin did this unspecified thing in school that involved noodles, but it's never confirmed what exactly happened. It's only referenced in passing, and it is clear that it was not good. Applied to general fiction, the term Noodle Incident refers to an event that is often referenced, but never clearly explained, and what is important is the characters' reactions and feelings towards it. The principle idea behind it is that imagining what said incident could be is way more significant and impactful than anything it would actually be if it was said. It's not the event that's important, but the effects and responses to it are. *for more info, I recommend Overly Sarcastic Productions trope talk video about it*

Now, how this plays into Dazai's life is that, while it is extremely evident that he likely has a horrible, tragic backstory, we never really get to see much of it. The earliest we are introduced to him, he is already suicidal, and he has lost most in hope in existence. These feelings are tempered a bit when he first joins the Port Mafia, but they come back all too quickly. And while you could argue that him being in the Mafia is a large contributor to his depression,the main reasons why he seeks escape clearly transpired before he ever met Mori.

Dazai was already trying to commit suicide at fourteen, which is how he met Mori. Something happened earlier in his life, but we don't know what. Asagiri himself says that he left Dazai's core, the reason he wants to die, vague on purpose. We aren't given many details, and honestly, we aren't given much backstory to it either. The two biggest hints that we get is when he is speaking to Odasaku. First in The Day I Picked Up Dazai, and the second from Dazai and the Dark Era.

We have no idea who or what Dazai is referring to. From all that we have seen, all the backstories and light novels we are given, the only people that we know of whom Dazai actually lost were Ango and Odasaku-for Ango, it was that special friendship, and Odasaku, it was his life. And even so, it isn't much of an explanation, because he was obviously suicidal before he met them, as evident from how he speaks to Odasaku, and losing them wasn't a catalyst for Dazai's depression. (As a matter of fact, it was actually the first step towards improvement, but that's a different analysis).

Yet for how much we don't know about Dazai's life, I think it's done in such a way that it doesn't really matter. It's a noodle incident, in that sense. Because it's not about the events that actually transpired, it's about how that affects Dazai and the way we see him. Don't get me wrong, I would love a full, confirmed backstory, but Asagiri doesn't seem to intend to write it, and that makes Dazai's character so beautiful. It's also one of the reasons why the dark era, especially the light novel, is so tragic. Because yes, you can argue that as far as tragic backstories go, losing two friends isn't near the most awful, especially not in this universe (I'm not trying to play the "which character has more trauma" game, but compared to, for example, growing up in an abusive orphanage, it's relatively not as inherently tragic. That doesn't make it any less horrible though). But the point of the backstory isn't just to explain the reasoning why things ended up the way they did, why Dazai left the Mafia, boo hoo his friend died, but Odasaku and Ango represent everything in Dazai's life, everyone from his past we never got to meet and I'm not sure if we're ever going to. They symbolize all the things in his life that mattered to him, everything he never wanted to lose but did. The last scene in the bar, where the three of them meet up for the last time, Ango leaves, the picture with the three of them laughing and smiling, the whole thing is meant to serve as a microcosm for Dazai's life as a whole. That he feels he's always going to lose everything, and that's why he wants to die. We don't get details, we don't know the specific events, but we're left with the emotions that gives us an important glimpse into this character's mind, more than his life, and that's what makes him such an interesting character that's left open to interpretation and analysis. We aren't privy to the tragedy, but the aftereffects of it. And, almost as if to prove the point, Odasaku dies the next day. Right after Dazai says he always loses everyone, further cementing the idea that there's almost a curse surrounding him, a void of loneliness that may never be fulfilled, which is as much as Odasaku tells him when he dies.

Whatever happened in Dazai's life before fourteen was probably something horrible and tragic. Maybe he had a family. Maybe he had other good friends. Perhaps he even believed in the goodness of life and humanity. But what's really cool about the way he's written is that the exact events are not important nor necessary to understanding his character. His life is one big noodle incident, yet because of that, we're able to glean an almost deeper understanding about him, by leaving the details in the dark and exposing only the raw, humane emotions left behind. The most important part about any backstory in fiction isn't about what actually happened, it's about how does this affect the character now? What lasting impact did it leave on them, and how is it evident in the way they interact with the story in the present? This is something that Asagiri nails on the head when it comes to his backstories. And I think the lack of clear information about Dazai's backstory, yet all the information we do end up getting about him, is one of the reasons why Dazai is such an interesting and intriguing character in the series.

Thank you all for you time. You may now return to your procrastination.

[haggishlyhagging]

[Note: Dworkin’s analysis of Wuthering Heights is astonishing. Below is her first paragraph. I suggest reading the novel as well as Dworkin’s analysis in its entirety.]

"Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone," wrote Charlotte Brontë of her deceased sister, Emily. Wuthering Heights, her one novel, published under a male pseudonym before her death at thirty, also stands alone. There is nothing like it—no novel of such astonishing originality and power and passion written by anyone, let alone by a nineteenth-century woman who was essentially a recluse. Nothing can explain it: a worldly, obsessed novel of cruelty and love that surpasses, for instance, the best of D. H. Lawrence in both sensuality and range; an act of passion as well as a work of intellectually rigorous art; a romantic, emotionally haunting, physically graphic rendering of sadism as well as an analytical dissection of it; a lyric and at the same time tragic celebration of both love and violence. "It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath," wrote Charlotte, who admitted to being somewhat repelled by the book. "Nor was it natural that it should be otherwise; the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors." So was Charlotte, but she wrote Jane Eyre, a novel of civilized pain and outspoken dignity. Both women had a deep understanding of male dominance, which does suggest that, for women, the family is Blake's famous grain of sand. Emily did take the family as a paradigm for society, especially for the creation of sadism in men. She showed how sadism is created in men through physical and psychological abuse and humiliation by other men; and she wrote about femininity as a betrayal of honor and human wholeness. She was indifferent to sex-roles per se, the surface behaviors of men and women. Instead, she exposed the underbelly of dominance: where power and powerlessness intersect; how social hierarchies emphasize difference, fetishizing it, and repudiate sameness; how men learn hate as an ethic; how women learn to vanquish personal integrity. She anticipated contemporary sexual politics by more than a century; and, frankly, I don't think there is a contemporary novelist, man or woman, who has dared to know and say so much. There is nothing to explain her prescience or her prophecy or, for that matter, her radical political acumen; except to say that Emily Brontë seemed to share with her monster creation, Heathcliff, a will that would neither bend nor break. He used his will to create pain for those he hated. She used hers, no less ruthlessly one suspects, to live in a self-determined solitude, to write, and, finally, to die. Shortly after her brother, Branwell, dissolute and self-obsessed, suddenly died, Emily got consumption, and wasted away with what seemed a premeditated fierceness and determination. On the day of her death, she got up and dressed and groomed herself and sat on a sofa and sewed. She said a doctor could be called and soon she died. Branwell had died in September 1848; Emily died in December. "She sank rapidly," wrote Charlotte. "She made haste to leave us. Yet, while physically she perished, mentally she grew stronger than we had yet known her. . . . I have seen nothing like it; but, indeed, I have never seen her parallel in anything."

-Andrea Dworkin, Letters From a War Zone

[kookies2000]

Am I really about to do a full analysis of The Last Wish? Yes, yes I am. Starting with characters!!! One by one!!!

Perrito

Spoilers

One thing about Perrito is that he is so darn pure and tragic. When the trailers came out, I noticed people were sceptical about Perrito. Saying how he might be annoying and take away from the film. People even compared him to Olaf from Frozen. Which was a shock to me. I thought people loved Olaf from Frozen but I guess I was wrong. After a day of thinking on this, I finally understood why people thought this. Side characters that are usually used as the comedic relief can sometimes flop. They can be annoying and take away precious screen time from characters that the audience wants to see. But with Perrito, that is never the case. He doesn't waste a single screen time. In fact you end up wanting more from him. He's just so darn positive and sweet even after what he went through. He was thrown away by his owners for being the runt of the litter. But he was so positive that he thought they were playing tag. So every time they tried to throw him away, he would end up returning like it was all a game. And then one day, his owners drown him in a sock. And it's just sweet to see Perrito so positive about this. The sock they try to drown him in, he turns it into something happy and keeps it as a sweater. I guess it's his positive view that makes him so likeable. He leaves a positive impression on Kitty when she has a talk with him about trust. What I love about their talk is that Kitty doesn't push Perrito to not trust anyone and Perrito doesn't push Kitty to trust him or Puss. Just that she has to trust someone. The conversation just feels very natural and healthy. Now let me talk about how his childlike view doesn't clash with the dark themes of the film.

Olaf and Perrito comparison

I'm not bashing Olaf, I'm using him as an example. If I see a single bad comment about Olaf, I will hunt you down for insulting him and writing a strongly worded letter!

I adore the first Frozen film. It was wholesome, cute, magical, and just phenomenal. And Olaf as a character blended in perfectly with the environment that was created. The film was near to perfect and every character shined. But then Frozen 2 came in. Frozen 2 had darker elements that were fantastic. I loved the concept and the way the story was told. I do have a few issues with it but this isn't about Frozen. This is about how Olaf's positivity clashed with the darker elements. Olaf is supposed to have a childlike view of life just like Perrito. The two characters are put into similar situations. Innocent, naive, and trusting characters who are struggling to understand the more serious issues around them. The difference is, Olaf, clashed with the darker elements while Perrito helped embrace the darker elements. Olaf in the second film still has his innocence and childlike wonder. He goes to the library to read about life and soaks up knowledge like a child would. He even has a song about how everything will make sense when he's older. And that's a strong beginning to Olaf's character. It only starts falling apart when Olaf doesn't really learn about his surroundings. Does he understand that Elsa died? Or that his kingdom committed genocide? You can argue he's still a kid but he never shows his emotions or thoughts about the situation. Instead, he remains positive and tells jokes to cheer up Anna. It's cute but it feels pointless. I still love Olaf as a character, I just wish they would let him take time to process what was happening around him.

As for Perrito, he helps embrace the darker elements instead of just being positive all the time. His positivity influences both Kitty and Puss. For Kitty because of his conversation with her. Seeing things in a positive way isn't bad at all and we could all use a friend or someone to trust. For Puss, it's the panic attack scene. Puss is in a very vulnerable state and Perrito follows him. The moment is very tender and quiet. No dialog or humor, just the sound of the heart beating like crazy and hyperventilating. The moment is so darn sweet because Perrito doesn't talk or try to make Puss laugh, he's simply there for him. He places his head on Puss and that's enough to calm Puss down. And I feel like this is something many people forget easily. You don't need to talk, you don't need to say a word, you just need to be there. Listening and making sure the person who's venting knows your listing. This just reminded me of a personal experience of mine. A few years ago I was very vulnerable to panic attacks. All my friends did exactly this. They didn't try to throw in flowery words or jokes, they were simply there and made sure I knew they were listening. I only lost one friend, thank God because he was actually a jerk. And that "friend" tried using flowery language and false promises. Which only made things worse for himself and I. So yeah, the panic attack scene was very meaningful to me and made me cry. And this is what I mean by Perrito embracing the darker elements of the film. He doesn't fight off the heaviness of the moment. He doesn't try to bring light into the darkness. Instead, he goes into the darkness and lets everyone feel what they need to feel. He helps the emotions flow out properly. And I LOVE that!!!! Perrito isn't oblivious to what's going on, naive yes but not oblivious. He knew what to do when Puss had a panic attack. He knew how to talk to Kitty about her issues. He helped Puss and Kitty strengthen their relationship. And he helped Goldie find out what she wanted. Oh, and his moment with Goldie was adorable. You can tell from this moment that Perrito isn't dumb, he's positive. Baby insults him and instead of being upset, he joins in. He's aware he was insulted but he puts a positive spin on it. He's aware he's an orphan like Goldie and compliments her family. This makes you wonder, is he aware that he's an attempted murder victim? And he chooses to remain positive?

I'll talk about his final arc on the Wishing Star section. But man. I adore how well written he is.

Next is Kitty.

[that-gay-jedi]

Listen it's been a while since I went on a rant about letting your unwanted thoughts and emotions serve their evolutionary purpose but LISTEN.

So I've always catastrophized, right? And as soon as lil teenage me accepted that my catastrophizing might be a habit worth breaking, for years and years there were so many pressures on me to either redirect the thoughts of a worst-case scenario into thoughts about less awful scenarios, or to force myself to think about something else entirely, but that never worked for me.

KNOW WHAT WORKS???? I let my brain give me a run-through of the worst-case scenario(s) once each, ONLY once each, and then I write out a detailed plan for exactly which actions (other than suicide) I can realistically take to mitigate them, and HERE'S THE IMPORTANT PART, I let it run with every realistic reason those options might not be available to me at the relevant time and what I will do instead, letting my contingency plan grow its support network of other smaller contingency plans until I run out of fears to catastrophize and have a nice little roadmap of all the ways I can depend on myself to make the best of The Horrors.

And I DO run out of fears to catastrophize. I DO reach a point where I trust myself and feel prepared.

Plenty of former therapists and books tried to teach me that the anxious brain respects no limits and holds to no purpose, that it will conjure an endless supply of things to fear when the realistic dangers run out. That if I let it run, it will never stop, and if I get on that ride with it I will dragged along behind it indefinitely.

I believe we do both a disrespect to the history of human beings as a whole, which is suffused with foreseeable traumas whose warning signs so often could not be seen with the naked eye or understood with pure rationale, and a disservice to anxious people when we forget that these are some of the tendencies that have kept humans alive generation after generation. Anxiety exists to check for dangers we might not otherwise see, because sometimes those dangers are real.

We know from academic analysis of recent and current events that among the most likely survivors of natural disasters and large-scale accidents are those who have survived a similar threat before, people whose experience lends them a degree of knowing what to do and what to expect. Imagination exists to safely enter unsafe places such as these. To perform a mental walk-through of your own fears coming true isn't a failure of discipline, it's more like conducting a fire drill.

You wouldn't conduct so many fire drills you can't do anything else with your day, but you certainly wouldn't call them a waste of time. You wouldn't want to get so obsessed with fire prevention that you're afraid to cook, but you'd want to be conscious enough of the dangers avoid them when you do cook, and familiar enough with what happens when precautions fail that you don't toss cold water onto a grease fire.

I couldn't break the unhealthy habit of catastrophizing by ceasing to catastrophize entirely, I broke it by setting a realistic limit on how often and for how long I catastrophize. By acknowledging that this much-derided habit actually serves a worthwhile purpose, I could find that there WAS a realistic limit to be set.

You know that thing about how horses are more well-behaved if they get enough exercise, how human-kept animals in general act out less and stay healthier for longer when they get enough enrichment?

Let the horse run. Let the cat hunt, let the fish swim. Let the anxious mind run, let it tire itself out doing what it was born to do, let it explore the futures you wouldn't want to materialize- let it protect you. And when you've put it through its paces, you might find it now allows you to stable it. It might not piss in your shoe or fly around your head at night or eat your guests anymore. It may curl up by the hearth like a satisfied cat.

[lyrabythelake]

One Step at A Time (Legend & Wild)

This was was written for Whumptober for the fracture/are you here to break me out? prompt and I never posted it because I intended to write a recovery bit at the end which never happened whoops

Legend didn’t know how long he had been sitting in the dungeon. He guessed he was underground considering the lack of natural light, the stale, musty air, and the lack of windows. His cell was small and the darkness only made it seem smaller, the stone walls seemed to encroach on him as he lay on the dust-muffled floor, back propped up against the wall, and his leg throbbing to the beat of his chest. 

His leg was broken, he was pretty sure of that, though the lack of light hardly allowed for a detailed analysis, the crack that had sounded after the Blademaster of Wild’s world had slammed his foot down onto it didn’t leave much for the imagination. That and it hurt like a bitch.

It was a special kind of torture being isolated and in pain, the darkness letting up not an ounce of distraction and the cold so intense that he couldn’t help the muscles clenching and unclenching around the broken bone as he shivered. He had tried to escape the first day, but now, well into his third, he was too exhausted to waste energy on moving.

Footsteps approached down the hallway and he quelled the hope that rose within him, willing himself not to be lulled by the idea that he could be rescued. No one had come to his cell since he had been captured bar the one Yiga who dropped off his food and water once a day, and they had already been and gone this morning, which was why it was a genuine surprise when the footsteps didn’t pass, but instead approached his cell door.

He smiled in relief as Wild’s face came into view through the metal bars.

“Are you here to break me out?” Legend asked, cringing slightly at the hoarseness of his voice.

“Nah,” Wild replied with a smirk. “Just thought I’d stop by for a quick visit. How’s it hanging?”

“Pretty damn shit. The Yiga Clan needs to work on their hospitality, that’s for sure.”

Wild was already running his hands over the metal door, feeling for overlooked cracks or weaknesses in the structure. He wouldn’t find any, Legend had spent hours doing the same.

“The lock looks pretty old from this side,” Legend suggested, “if you had the tools, you could probably pick it in a few–”

Crash!

Legend covered his head automatically as the entire door swung open, the lock and half the stone wall next to it lying ten feet down the hallway.

“--or you could blow it up. Also a valid option.”

“We need to move quickly,” Wild told him seriously through the haze of disturbed brick-dust. “I managed to sneak in here without being seen, but they’ll have definitely heard that. Can you walk?”

“My leg– I think it’s broken. A potion should fix it up enough to get out of here, though.”

“I don’t have a potion.” Wild’s expression was unrestrainedly concerned as he knelt to have a closer look at Legend’s left leg.

“What do you mean you don’t have a potion?! Who goes on a rescue mission without a healing item?”

“There wasn’t time to make one before I left,” Wild hissed. Legend flinched as he pressed down on his bruised calf.

“Are you telling me not one of you had one to spare?”

Wild said nothing. Legend sighed.

“They don’t know you’re here, do they?”

Wild bit his lip. 

“It was easier if I went alone. We were taking too long to come up with a plan.”

“Time’s going to be pissed,” Legend told him.

“Yeah, well, I’m hoping he’ll be more forgiving when I come back with you. Now hold still, this is going to hurt.”

Wild unhooked his slate from his belt, tapped several buttons, and a piece of rope and a long stick appeared seemingly from nowhere.

“Are you ever going to tell me how that thing works?” Legend asked.

“Would if I knew.”

Wild held the stick up to Legend’s broken calf and began to secure it to his leg with the rope. Legend clenched his teeth against the inevitable pain, grasping Wild’s shoulder hard as something to ground himself with. Nausea bubbled inside him as he felt the bone shift ever so slightly beneath his flesh.

“There,” said Wild. “See? No need for a potion after all.” 

“Easy for you to say, you don’t have to walk out of here on a broken leg.”

Something clattered from down the hallway and the two of them startled. Their time was up.

“Come on,” said Wild, offering Legend his hand, “just hold onto me and you’ll be fine.”

With Wild’s help, Legend levered himself up onto his good leg, swaying slightly as the days without sufficient food caught up with him.

“You good?” Wild asked. Legend nodded, worried that if he opened his mouth he would actually throw up.

The hallway beyond the cell was just a little lighter than what he had become used to the past few days, a torch burning low throwing shifting shadows up the walls, not quite strong enough to light the other cells to a point of visibility. It was disconcerting; Hylia knew what kind of creatures the clan hid down here.

The first Yiga they encountered seemed to manifest from the darkness itself, a small one, perhaps a scout before the true calvary arrived. Without missing a beat, Wild produced a weapon from beneath his cloak and threw it hard. Blood sprayed from the Yiga’s chest and they screamed, disappearing in a shower of paper notes. The weapon flew back, and Wild caught it casually, like he hadn’t just brutally cut open a real, living person–or something resembling one, anyway.

“Is that a boomerang?!” Legend asked.

“Yeah, why?”

Legend stared at him with raised brows, not bothering to hold back his incredulity. Another two Yiga apparated from the darkness, and the boomerang sliced through them too.

“What?” Wild asked, not even a hair out of breath. “You’ve got a boomerang, I know you do, I’ve seen it.”

“Yeah, but I don’t usually use it to break my friends out of weird banana cult prisons. I would ordinarily use a sword for that.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t have a sword, so…”

“You don’t have a–?! Wait, so let me get this straight. You sneaked off by yourself to infiltrate an insane gang who all want you dead without healing potions or a real weapon?”

“I think I’m proving quite well that a boomerang is, in fact, a real weapon,” Wild contended as he sliced another Yiga through the chest with a perfectly aimed throw then wiped the bloodied boomerang on his tunic once it was back in his hand. “But yeah… when you say it like that…”

Hobbling along the corridor, all his concentration focused on breathing through the pain and not falling over or, as his increasing lightheadedness foretold, passing out completely, he didn’t notice their dilemma as they turned the corridor apart from Wild’s dry “Ah.”

In front of them stretched an almost comically long flight of cobbled, uneven steps.

“You factor this into your impeccably thought out plan?” Legend asked, deadpan, because if he had actually let himself feel any emotion at that point it may well have ended in tears.

Wild sucked on his teeth a moment, thinking. Fortunately, the Yiga seemed to have thinned out somewhat, perhaps because they were scheming a proper takedown after their initial attacks had failed.

“I’m going to have to carry you,” he concluded.

“No,” Legend replied firmly.

“Do you have any other ideas?”

“Could you even carry me?” He looked Wild up and down sceptically. He was taller than Legend, though not by much, and slimmer. Sure, he was probably packing quite a bit of muscle under his tunic given his occupation, but Legend had it on good authority that he was heavier than he looked.

Wild made an offended sort of noise.

“Of course I could!”

“Well even if you could–which I highly doubt, by the way–I wouldn’t let you.”

“Okay, do enlighten me with your brilliant alternative plan, then” Wild said as the boomerang left yet another trail of blood, and an impressively hefty body, in its path back to his hand. “And hurry up, I’m not going to be able to hold these guys off forever.”

“I’ll walk,” Legend told him with a gritty determination that didn’t quite quell the dread churning inside him. He tried not to look at the sheer length of the stone staircase in front of them.

“Legend–”

“I’ll be fine. Let’s go; like you said, we shouldn't hang around.”

Wild eyed him with a mixture of pity and doubt, but ultimately decided against voicing any of it out loud. 

“Alright then,” he said reluctantly and held out his arm for support. Legend took it gladly. His pride may have stopped him from being carried like a damsel in distress, but hell if was getting up these steps without some help.

The first step was agony. Even putting all his weight onto his right leg and hopping like a deranged rabbit, his left leg was forced to bend to manoeuvre himself up. Wild grunted as Legend leaned even more of his weight onto him.

“You alright?” Wild asked, and Legend realised with dismay that he was already out of breath–from the first step. 

“‘Course,” he grunted back.

The second step had him squeezing his eyes shut tightly from the pain, and by the third his vision was swimming with dark spots. 

“Three down… a hundred more to go,” Legend said lightly, looking up at the staircase that seemed to be getting longer and more arduous everytime he glanced at it.

“Ledge, I really think–”

“I’m fine,” he snapped.

The fourth and fifth steps had him biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood lest he vocalise the sheer torture of feeling the bones shift in his calf. By the sixth he was undeniably lightheaded.

“Wild, I–” he swallowed, suddenly feeling very nauseous and slightly numb.

“You’re going to pass out, aren’t you?” Wild said like he had been anticipating this for the last five minutes.

“No, I–”

The world grew a little foggy, his vision misting up like the glass of his windows on a quiet winter morning. Okay, so maybe Wild had a point. 

However, his stubbornness had always been one of his major downfalls, as Ravio never hesitated to remind him, and he attempted to hop up to the seventh step despite his body’s clear warnings. 

“Please let me carry you,” Wild told him, his voice a distant whisper in the flooding waters of his consciousness.

His vision tilted alarmingly, and he managed to force out a last “I’m fine,” before he knew no more.

[theghostbunnie]

Hey, I just want you to know I really like your work! It's beautiful and really creative, and I think you understand these characters to a T, cause your headcanons are extremely in character.

Speaking of which: do you have any headcanons for David and Gwen, both individually and as friends?

AAAAAAAAAAAA TYSM THAT'S SO SWEET 💖💖💖💖 I tried to awnser this the other day but realized I was multiple paragraphs into a character analysis and not HCs (if any of you guys left me an ask and I haven't awnsered it yet I still always appreciate it I probably just plan to draw something for it or haven't got the time rn)

When David says something like "before nature took me against her bosom I was in clown school in france" (I'm not kidding he says bosom lmaooo) but he knew he loved nature at age 10, so either he was there before age 10 or the nature not yet embracing him bit meant he was withheld from it. Either his mother sent him there (cannonicaly doesn't have a dad) or he had the WEIRDEST college "figure yourself out, experiment" phase and I'm guessing the latter. He had a sudden spark of a new special interest and wanted to try pursuing it but his clowning instructor(?) scared him out of it after awhile.

I HC David wanted to be a clown bc he loved all the family friendly etiquette rules especially, ontop of the obvious making people happy and entertained.

David cannonicaly loves the zodiac signs and allthat and potential hot take but that man is a Sagittarius ♐.

David is stubborn and I feel this is an obvious fact about him but I wanna go further in depth with a HC that sometimes if he doesn't like something he won't just be in a general ol denial about it, he will full heartedly actually believe hisown truth instead.

Maybe not a "David as an individual" HC but I like to believe he respects, and likes QM's company alot! (When the man isn't being *too* off-putting) like when he's telling that ghost story about respecting your elders we see a cabin with a framed picture of silhouettes that look like QM were related to them and even the book in the story has that octopus God on it. So I assumed that was actually a real place somewhere in the woods David saw at one point/QM took him to. Either during his time as an employee or a camper himself. Also Quarter Master seems *at times* to be annoyed at David. Not like body language or facial exspressions I just get that vibe from his attitude and phrasing. He lied when he told him "fighting animals is apart of his culture" to get him to leave him alone about it I just know it.

Gwen is an anime watching "otaku" or atleast had a phase and has probably watched unheard of semi f*tish series that only lasted 10-12 episodes with really long title names. Genuinely rewatching the show so much of her screentime is hating her job in different ways or reading, writing, or playing VR 🌽. Or being a hopeless romantic. (She could've stayed with Graggle but only liked him for her monster f*tish and to romanticize herself as this YA novel MC)

She definitely LOVES x reader fics and takes on a slightly new persona in her fantasies.

I HC her with a bit of stage fright and her love for music being casual instead of a passion, that ontop of wanting to make something for herself is why she didn't piggyback off her dad's career and go into music. His career did atleast pay for whatever degree she wanted to persue (how she was able to get so many) and her fear of wasted potential is what made her have so many to begin with.

She partially willingly puts herself into positions where she gets burnt out to the point she's gotten kinda used to it.

So that's kinda why she can call it out early in David and tell him when he needs to have a break in that one EP.

David offering Gwen to read one of her stories she writes to the campers leads me to either believe he doesn't know what she writes is 🌽 or that and she also shares her sfw writing with him to get his opinion. (Which is nearly always positive but I feel like people forget David has his moments even if HE'S unaware of em) like "This chapter is excellent, Gwen!! Gosh, I'm just on the edge of my seat!! And there's only half the grammar mistakes of last time! :DD" and he fully means that as a compliment.

David also definitely got Gwen into astrology. She only cares about learning facts about her own, finding out the birthdays of celebrity and fictional characters and then seeing if they're compatible. Woman with identity issues? Eats it up.

They both loved Bob Ross before they met and it was one of the first things they bonded over as they were becoming friends. I HC Gwen was chipper at the job at the very first bit but it QUICKLY wore her down, David going off that first impression kept his excited team-loving liking of her, where as Gwen as she got to know him over those first weeks grew really annoyed with him as a coworker, but once getting to know him further than that the friendship started to become mutual.

[maisha133]

I totally agree that while I really enjoyed the rest of the series, ACFTL was a little underwhelming. It almost seemed, to me, like she had a bit of writers block and instead of taking the time she needed to write the story she wanted to tell, she rushed to finish SOMETHING because she had to.

Also I feel like all of Apollo’s scenes were to, like, ASSURE us that he really is the bad guy? And idk. I feel like it wasn’t really needed, or could have been told without making him a narrator.

I also really liked your analysis that Jacks’ and Eva’s relationship never really GREW. It was very static, as shown by the “snark-save-swoon-snark” thing you mentioned.

Some more pining would definitely have been nice.

My biggest plot hole though was in the Caraval series (stop reading if you haven’t read that one yet or this is a spoiler) says that immortals become mortal if they fall in love? And that’s just not brought up this whole time for jacks. So what the heck.

I agree with everything you said!

I am so grateful for Stephanie for writing this story and completing the book as soon as she could considering that some authors taking years to write one. As you have mentioned, everything felt so rushed and did give off a feel that she didn't really know what to do with plot, like she had a vision and she tried to execute the best she could and it just didn't hit. However, I think the problem with that is that Stephanie tried to "subvert the expectations of the audience" ie Evangeline not being the reincarnation of the first fox to make the storyline engaging, but it just came off as confusing. I only mention Evangeline being the reincarnation of the first fox because of the very obvious hints throughout OUABH and TBONA-there is a great post explaining this theory very well + a good portion of the audience already suspected that as well? I just felt that she didn't need to make things complicated, she could have just kept the plot simple.

I agree about Apollo. We really didn’t need to read chapters on what a villain he was. He was just a waste of of writing imo. I don’t know if Stephanie was trying to make us understand him from his pov, but him erasing Evangeline’s memories was so irredeemable, that I couldn’t sympathize with him at all.

On Jacks. Yes! I get his playful and teasing nature, but other times his "cold" moments came off as annoying. The condescending and patronizing dialogue he would have with Evangeline at times pissed me off considering all that she went through.

So I haven't read Caraval, but I am aware of this plot point! I also think it was not mentioned as to why Evangeline and Jacks are telepathic with each other and does it continue after the curse is broken????

At the end of the day, I am grateful that we got a story with a Evajacks ending. Really hope sometime in the future Stephanie writes a follow up with Evajacks. Evajacks wedding plssssss. Still love Evangeline and Jacks tho, just wished there relationship could have developed better.

[alovelyburn]

Yhe best berserk meta award is yours and it is mostly because In my opinion you understand the story and you are not delusional I love every content but smtms ppl think too much about Griffith/Guts They are important but not as much as others makes them be They were never great love story They could be but like guts/Casca their potential was wasted long time ago They will never get any valid romantic confirmation ever unless we count possibilty of Griff offing himself for guts which is weak Especially since someone else is now in charge with just the info from Miura Thank you for taking off the shipping glasses while writing analysis

Man, that's a loaded beginning, sdafljknsdf.

Anyway I'm not going to get into how people who aren't me approach things, I can only speak for myself. SO....

I think for me the relationship between those two is the... second most important single thing in the series - the first being Guts himself, the individual, since he's the protagonist. But even though I think it's the most important thing, it's still only one of many different important things.

I also tend to think of Berserk as being... Okay I say that it's about Griffith and Guts' relationship because it's a sort of teal deer version of what i actually think. But I actually think of it as being about a number of larger concepts - all that yinyang and balance stuff, light/dark interconnection and interaction, the nature of humanity, free will vs fate, and cycles both cosmic and earthly, etc etc -- with Griffith and Guts' relationship being the single biggest and most important expression of those concepts.

A lot of these concepts are scales- individualism vs collectivism, rationality vs emotionality, etcetc, and generally you'll have each character embodying certain aspects of a scale and the relationship itself representing the entire existence of the scale.

I probably sound incoherent, so here's an example:

if you have a scale of "trees not forest" vs "forest not trees" then obviously Guts is on one side (focused on the smaller scale) and Griffith is on the other (focused on the larger picture) and their relationship reflects both the potentially complementary nature of those world views (where each provides what the other needs and thus they encompass all of the whole scale) and the potentially conflicting nature of the world views (where the two sides can't reach an equilibrium and end up competing instead.)

And you can just kind of go down the line with these things because they are pretty consistently opposite but complementary pieces forged from the same metal.

But it comes with each of them having their own... set of Things off to the side that reflect and deepen their side of that scale - Griffith and Charlotte (who represents his grand dream to redefine the world - big picture) vs Guts and Casca (who represents his desire for belonging and personal connection - small scale) being a good example of the complementary sideplots to the above.

Anyway that's really where I'm coming from on all this stuff. No one is entirely objective but I try to keep my bullshit out of my understanding of the series as much as I can, because ultimately I'm more interested in what stories are trying to say than what I'd like to hear.

Plus I'm like a super hardcore canon purist.

[redinbluee]

Sayonara Eri Analysis- a series

(feel free to skip the following intro)

Hello, I have decided that I will begin writing a series about Tatsuki Fujimoto's Sayonara Eri- I have been wanting to commit to writing about this oneshot for a very long time and I have finally managed to muster up the energy to properly write about this story. I hope you will enjoy this series (which will probably consist of roughly five parts, more or less), and I will try my best to update this as much as I can. I apologise in advance for my poor grammar and my rant like writing style which might be difficult to read. I'll jump right into it now.

Sayonara Eri was the first Fujimoto manga I have read, I still remember skimming through it quickly on the bus with low expectations in mind, but it ended up absolutely destroying me and consuming my brain. Since reading this oneshot, I have absolutely fallen in love with his manga, (thus my obsession began) and I immediately read Fujimoto's entire collection which became my biggest hyper-fixation. I would highly recommend you to check out this oneshot if you haven't yet (because it is that good). Even if you might not like it as much as I do, it is surely an experience of a lifetime. I won't waste time introducing the story as you can easily find a good blurb online, but I will conduct a deep analysis on every detail within this oneshot (because I am insane). I'll shut up now,

--------Spoiler warning----------------------------------------------------

Sayonara Eri, part 1

Most of Sayonara Eri's panels fit in the 2.35:1 widescreen cinemascope format with the exception of a mere few (depicting Yuta's true pov instead of from his smartphone camera). This form of panelling was crafted by the one and only Fujimoto which worked out beautifully and effectively- depicting Yuta's unhealthy habit of viewing his life through an outside perspective since the very start. The cinematic panels also allow the reader to almost "watch" the manga like a film- one of the main messages in the oneshot was to portray how one may alter their entire existence through technology through the power of deception. We were viewing Yuta's edited, romanticised film form the very beginning- already fallen straight in this false trap.

It can be observed from the beginning that Fujimoto has poured his heart into perfecting every minor detail in the story so his message could be delivered clearly (both visually and through language). I seriously admire him so much, he works incredibly hard and truly dedicates himself to his craft.

Yuta's childish, goofy nature is so precious. It's heart wrenching to see his playfulness slowly disappear through the story. Fujimoto excels at crafting realistic and truthful characters, Yuta speaks like a real person, you can imagine his mannerisms and tone just through the drawings and written dialogue- it's expressive, genuine, raw. I love it. Not every manga needs paragraphs of complicated, descriptive dialogue- Fujimoto excels at show, not tell. A lot of his messages are delivered visually (through facial expressions, background details or character mannerisms) or even through the tone in which the characters speak in (suggested through punctuation and word choices) This further increases the degree of realism in his stories- people normally converse using quick, simple language. Fujimoto doesn't fall into the trap of overexplanation or writing complicated, relentless dialogue that bores out his audience. It makes the story feel believable and truthful- allowing us to truly connect with it to an emotional and personal level.

After reading though the oneshot an embarassing amount of times- I managed to truly grasp onto the characterisation of Yuta's mom which I think was amazingly executed through the minimal screentime she had. It was obvious from the start that the visual appearance of Yuta's mom heavily resembled Makima- which I think was intentional. They also share an insane about of similarities in their personality and mannerisms. For instance- their manipulative, forceful nature, their role as an unhealthy motherlike figure, using others to fulfil their selfish desires, the way they were both introduced as "good people" in the beginning of the story- which was then revealed to be untrue. I found this detail very interesting. I feel like both Yuta's mom and Eri are figures who both represent the true nature of many human beings- how many of us are in fact self absorbed and untrusting- utilising deception to get by in life (to build an admirable self image, real or fake) and fufil our selfsh motivations through the use of people we surround ourselves with (without considering the consequences our actions have on others). Are people naturally selfish? It's scary to wonder how the people we trust might be constantly faking themselves and putting up an act. From what we learn from Yuta's mom later into the story, we get a glimpse of her true nature which was hidden behind closed doors. Left unrecorded on Yuta's glorified, romaticised movie footage. This made us pity Yuta even more, not only was his mom dead- she was also abusive, aggressive, foul mouthed and dismissive of her son's wellbeing. She was revealed to be a terrible mother.

This says a lot about how deceptive social media is- for instance. Yuta had the choice to include his mother's unappealing footage that revealed her true nature to the public- but he chose not to, and instead- he used the movie to remember her fondly through the minimal, heart warming moments he captured. Through just a phone, one's identity may be altered greatly, so much to the point where they might appear to be presented as almost a completely different person. Although Yuta had to live the remaining of his life bearing the suffering of his mother's death and abuse- he was able to offer others a glimpse of her beautiful moments, fulfilling his mother's wishes and allowing her to be remembered by others in a positive light. While Yuta remains to grieve in silence, he was able to spread a false impression of his mother who died tragically, so at least others could remember moments of joy, happiness and beauty that is precious. As Fujimoto once said- "ignorance is a bliss", sometimes it's better to not know a reality so one can live a more comfortable life, clouded by positive thoughts. This was what Yuta was able to spread to others through his highly edited film. It's undeniably untruthful, but it did leave a positive impact on the world. Without the movie, he wouldn't have met Eri as well (despite the fact that it could be argued that she was very toxic to him) but Yuta did manage to gain a fair share of beautiful memories with her as well. Sometimes, it really is better to be a bit optimistic and view the good in others- I think that I would rather live a life clouded by false joy than to be sunken into a depressing and brutal reality.

Yuta lived a terrible life, but he was able to fufil the wishes of the people around him and pay homage to the people who he appreciated in life. It's incredibly sad, but also heart warming.

One thing I found interesting was Eri's mysteriousness. She was portrayed to look dream-like, literally mythological. She has no last name, we know nothing about her character background and we don't see her interacting with people other than Yuta and his father- not even her other close friend who was briefly mentioned separately. It then almost makes us question- was Eri even real? This is the result of highly editing and altering one's life to the audience- for a good length of the story, we were only faced with Eri's more admirable qualities, we truly know nothing about her. Just like how we might actually be viewing a false identity of an online celebrity. It's good for the audience- being able to be influenced and faced with such an attractive figure, but it's a different story when we are confronted with a reality told through a person who had the opportunity to truly witness their true character. I feel like Eri's overall "fakeness" was successfully executed through the vagueness of her character- we as a reader was able to fall in love with her quickly and easily, just for this impression to be broken into pieces once Fujimoto shoved us with a reality. Through just this repeated scenario, Fujimoto successfully reinforced his message to the reader.

Following onto the analysis of Eri's vague, mysterious character presentation- I would like to further expand on her arc. I'll answer a few commonly asked questions.

Was Eri really a vampire?- I think no

Was Eri really ill- I think yes

Did Eri really die- I think yes too,

Did Eri really like Yuta's movie- Most probably, no.

I'll answer the first two questions on this post, then the next two on the following post. On the third post, I am planning on further expanding on the symbolism of the explosions in the story along with Yuta's attempted su*cides.

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

Was Eri really a vampire?

I vaguely answered this on a reddit post, I'll paste it below-

( I personally think that Eri’s identity as a vampire and her “immortality” is the metaphorical representation of how her existence is preserved through Yuta’s memory and his movie despite the fact that she is deceased. Eri befriends Yuta with a clear motivation in mind- to be remembered fondly. Vampires feed off the vital essence of the living, and this dynamic can be vaguely seen in Yuta and Eri’s relationship. She fears to be forgotten, and wishes to be depicted in a way where she is lovable and admirable.

Yuta’s presentation of Eri was revealed to be overly idealistic towards the end of the manga, and I learnt that I was completely fooled by this twisted representation of this “dream girl” who was devoid of any flaw. There was no visual evidence of Eri’s true nature that was viewed through the perspective as an outsider- we only manage to perceive her through the lens of one singular person (plus Eri’s other friend, but there is no visual evidence of Eri’s interactions with her). Eri’s legacy is preserved after death through Yuta’s movie- even after many years, Eri’s youthful footage in the movie acts as a time capsule, preserved like a vampire while Yuta grows older and lives. Without Yuta (the living), Eri’s existence will only continue to live through the memories of Yuta, and her legacy will die and disappear off the face of the world- like Yuta’s mother, she is self obsessed and manipulative, using Yuta (a submissive and lonely boy with attachment issues) for their selfish wishes- (to be remembered by others beautifully, even through the heavy use of deception). The first Eri was the representation of her true existence while the second Eri comes in the form of a preserved memory, symbolic of the way how Yuta has never fully recovered from her passing. The explosion in the end is intense and cathartic- truthful and passionate, unlike the explosion in the first movie that was obviously edited in, leaving no damage on the hospital. However, the ending explosion actually caused wreckage. This marks the point in life where Yuta finally moves on and disassociates with his past in a positive manner- facing the reality of his situation and dropping the unhealthy habits of escapism that persisted through his youth towards adulthood.)- I hope this was clear

(*side note, there is no need for you to agree with my take, I'm just sharing my opinion)

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

Was Eri really ill?

Yes, I believe that Eri was ill. There is clear evidence to my take on this answer that was there since the beginning of Eri's character arc. Looking back all the way towards her introduction, we can recall that Yuta met Eri on the hospital rooftop. There is a high chance that Eri was at the hospital for checkups, something of that sort. She had no reason to be loitering on some hospital rooftop if she was not a regular visitor or a patient. A hospital scene is also difficult to script in real life (for a low budget movie), Fujimoto obviously likes to add tinges of fantasy to his work, but he only does that if there is a clear message/reason behind it. I don't see why a hospital scene, (in which Eri looked clearly ill) would be fake/ scripted for the movie.

I think it has to be true that Eri was ill- all this time, and it can be guessed that Eri had clear desire in mind from the beginning, which is wanting her death to be captured as beautifully as the way Yuta did for his mother. I doubt Eri really cares about Yuta, she is an incredibly self obsessed character.

Yuta was emotionally destroyed by the news of Eri's declining health. The entire point of Eri (also being ill) was to highlight Yuta's journey of reliving his childhood trauma, making his character arc even more tragic. This highlights the detrimental psychological effects one would have to endure after- growing to be attached to someone just to have the relationship crumble right in front of you and to also unwillingly be forced into a situation that brings a great deal of trauma... while Eri remained to be uncaring of Yuta's wellbeing, just like his mother. Eri most likely knew how much Yuta was affected by his mother's passing and the way others responded to his movie (Eri literally saw him try to jump off a roof), but she didn't care a single bit- instead, she dragged him into the same situation all over again, (probably planned from the moment she met him) just so she could fufil her personal desires.

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

Thank you for reading! I apologise for my low quality writing, it isn't my strong suit. Stay tuned for a new post!

[mi6015jadekail]

The Devil You Know/The Devil You Don’t Production Analysis

The Devil You Know/The Devil You Don’t was created using a combination of cel animation and rotoscoping. The technique used in the creation of this film is rather unconventional, as I don’t often block things out with storyboards, preferring instead to jump right into things. With storyboarding, I oftentimes find myself struggling to transfer what I want to happen in my head into partial snapshots—my instinct is always to block it out in full and thus it ends up becoming a full-fledged animation rather than a storyboard concept. Because of this, rather than blocking things out with storyboards, I instead jump right to sound design, using that in order to plan out the pacing of the animation and the direction that I want to take it. 

For the sound design of this project, I didn’t write a full script, but rather a general sense of direction of where I wanted to take the story and what to include. Then, when it came time to record, review the notes that I had written and then proceed to do several takes all improvised. From there, I would listen to each recording trying to decipher which parts I liked of a certain take and which parts I didn’t—it also allowed me to figure out which delivery worked best with what phrasing. For me, I find doing it this way makes the dialogue flow more naturally; it prevents scenes that are supposed to be emotionally driven from becoming stagnant or even cliché.

As evident by my earlier statements, it’s quite apparent that I oftentimes don’t stick to the hard boundaries of pre-production and post-production, but rather use that as a rough guideline on how to proceed through the project. This in itself is a double-edged sword, it means that some parts of the project will be fully rendered and completed far before the deadline, while with other sections I had tried a different technique, and though the technique proved effective (in this particular example, I’m referring to several scenes in this film that were hand drawn verses a few scenes where I relied heavily on rotoscoping) the styles ended up looking vastly different, and as I didn’t want to waste several weeks of hard work, I had to come up with some creative ways for it to flow more naturally. Yet, in the end, I ended up using about two-three seconds of this twelve-second clip. I was able to pinpoint the reason the clip looked so different despite my art style still being the same; when I was rotoscoping, I was using a thinner brush in order to do the line art, when in comparison to the other bits I had drawn by hand, they had much heavier linework. I was able to utilise this information during another scene, where the main character, Phoebe, is running through a corridor and bangs her leg on a table. I was having difficulty figuring out how to make that look natural, so I recorded myself running into a table to see how that would translate into animation. Rotoscoping that scene with a thicker brush made it blend a lot more seamlessly.

In The Devil You Know, I decided that one way I was going to go about doing this was to play into the horror aspect and give the titular devil some sway over the film in the form of “glitches”, which I have carefully scattered throughout the film to highlight when things are different than they previously were. Because of this, I have made objects, such as a picture frame on one scene, simply glitch out and vanish. I utilised this technique a couple more times, such as making the fire from the fallen candlestick rapidly spread due to another one of these “glitches”. I think it is entirely genre determined, but when dealing with films that are outside our laws of reality, such as animation, it gives you plenty more freedom. I kept this in mind with my redesign of the devil, before he looked much more humanoid, but I thought it would be interesting to play into the otherworldly aspect. His form is always shaping as though it’s made of smoke, and though you see the wide, jagged smile on his face when he speaks, you don’t see his mouth move, only his eyes.

For future projects, I would probably try to work around my difficulty of creating storyboards in a timely manner by simply making a series of animatics, each more advanced than the last until eventually you’re met with the final project. In doing this, I hope that I’d be able to work an equal amount of time on the entire film rather than have some parts that are very well developed and others that are a bit more incoherent in comparison. I would also make sure that I don’t get consumed by my desire to make everything look flawless on its first attempt. Something that I find myself constantly needing to repeat when it comes to preproduction is that you’ll only improve the more you do something; holding yourself to an impossibly high standard and then getting disheartened when you don’t meet it isn’t going to benefit anybody in the long run

[dawndelion-winery]

Lorem Ipsum

Highschool au Ft. Arlecchino, Pantalone, Dottore

Arlecchino:

Has probably threatened everyone in class at least once, the teachers included

As you can probably guess, she doesn't have a lot of friends

But you sit next to her, so you figured you might as well try to get along with her

But then it seemed she misunderstood and assumed you were flirting with her

She starts treating you to lunch after that, to the point you're always seated with her throughout the school day

Now apart from death glaring anyone who irks her, she does the same to anyone who seems to bother you

She doesn't talk much to you, but she did tell you to blabber on if it made you happy

You figured it'd be alright to keep talking until she tells you to shut up because she wasn't the type to tolerate things she didn't like

The again you never thought she actually listened since she always looked so listless

Yet whenever you offhandedly mention someone giving you a hard time, you find them surprisingly cooperative the next time you discuss things with them

She always did seem a little happier when you told her the issue has been resolved

"Didn't I tell you? The situation will resolve itself once you distance yourself from these problems, just stick with me instead."

Pantalone:

Class treasurer, somewhat of a prick

But he does his job flawlessly, so no one can really complain

Except when he rejects their proposals for whatever class ventures they have in mind for "being too wasteful"

With that in mind, he's never gotten anything short of a perfect score for maths, ever precise in his calculations and analysis

He's the type of asshole to breeze through calculus and scoff at those who can't

He makes an amazing tutor though

With calculation embedded in his nature, he knows when to praise and criticise you, pulling at your strings to keep you motivated - even if your motivation is just to be praised by him

"Yes, good work, look at how much faster you got this one, you'll keep up the effort, yes?"

And you can't really say no to him when he faces you with that close-eyed smile and pats your head

It doesn't matter if you haven't gotten past the first part of the question for the past five minutes, you badgered him to tutor you first and he will get it through your head whether you like it or not

"You're not giving up already, are you? ...to think I had such high hopes for you..."

He says it like he's truly disappointed and sighs, resting his chin in one hand as his fingers tap his cheek like he's deep in thought

And of course, you being a simp caved hard and fast, hastily agreeing to give it another shot

"That's my diligent student," he says as he pats your head again, and you should be more concerned about how quickly his tune changed but frankly, he doesn't give you much time to ponder as he shoos you back to work

Dottore:

Terrible classmate, amazing seatmate

Pretty much an asshole to the class, but as his seatmate you're practically guaranteed to ace any science subjects you have

Taking notes too slowly and can't keep up with class?

"Write faster, fool," he says as he effortlessly scribbles down all the key concepts, seemingly irritated by the fact that you can't keep up.

Big mistake because now you're even more distracted by the way his long, slender fingers move so deftly with his pen

If he noticed you staring he didn't say anything, but you swore you saw the corner of his lips tug upwards in a smirk

You know you're in trouble when the bell rings and you realised you've missed nearly everything

Yet, for some unknown reason, it would seemed he felt a shred of kindness towards you, sliding the notes he so boredly scrawled over to you before packing up his things and leaving for the next class

His notes are like a cheat sheet to your entire syllabus

Which leads to you often praising how smart he is, to which he scoffs and tells you flattery won't convince him to keep helping you keep up with class

That's a lie, it does

It also convinces him to tutor you

Not the best idea when you're more likely to study him than you're work, though he usually remedies that by grabbing your jaw to turn your attention back to your papers

His face comes dangerously close to yours when he explains things to you as you write, normally with him standing behind you and hunching over you with his face next to yours

His furrowed brows and keen eyes scanning your work to criticise your mistakes were quite the sight to behold - his side profile is vv pretty

And rest assured, you will understand whatever he teaches you, however much it takes

If he has to repeat and paraphrase himself, so be it, as long as your attention was on him and you kept looking at him like he was a godsend

Honestly, he just enjoys the attention and fawning, it feeds his ego sm

"I suppose I can't expect you to understand things as quickly as I do. Ah well, no matter, consider yourself fortunate you have someone as brilliant as I to help you."

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Obligatory @cxlrosii

[qqueenofhades]

The Green Knight and Medieval Metatextuality: An Essay

Right, so. Finally watched it last night, and I’ve been thinking about it literally ever since, except for the part where I was asleep. As I said to fellow medievalist and admirer of Dev Patel @oldshrewsburyian, it’s possibly the most fascinating piece of medieval-inspired media that I’ve seen in ages, and how refreshing to have something in this genre that actually rewards critical thought and deep analysis, rather than me just fulminating fruitlessly about how popular media thinks that slapping blood, filth, and misogyny onto some swords and castles is “historically accurate.” I read a review of TGK somewhere that described it as the anti-Game of Thrones, and I’m inclined to think that’s accurate. I didn’t agree with all of the film’s tonal, thematic, or interpretative choices, but I found them consistently stylish, compelling, and subversive in ways both small and large, and I’m gonna have to write about it or I’ll go crazy. So. Brace yourselves.

(Note: My PhD is in medieval history, not medieval literature, and I haven’t worked on SGGK specifically, but I am familiar with it, its general cultural context, and the historical influences, images, and debates that both the poem and the film referenced and drew upon, so that’s where this meta is coming from.)

First, obviously, while the film is not a straight-up text-to-screen version of the poem (though it is by and large relatively faithful), it is a multi-layered meta-text that comments on the original Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the archetypes of chivalric literature as a whole, modern expectations for medieval films, the hero’s journey, the requirements of being an “honorable knight,” and the nature of death, fate, magic, and religion, just to name a few. Given that the Arthurian legendarium, otherwise known as the Matter of Britain, was written and rewritten over several centuries by countless authors, drawing on and changing and hybridizing interpretations that sometimes challenged or outright contradicted earlier versions, it makes sense for the film to chart its own path and make its own adaptational decisions as part of this multivalent, multivocal literary canon. Sir Gawain himself is a canonically and textually inconsistent figure; in the movie, the characters merrily pronounce his name in several different ways, most notably as Sean Harris/King Arthur’s somewhat inexplicable “Garr-win.” He might be a man without a consistent identity, but that’s pointed out within the film itself. What has he done to define himself, aside from being the king’s nephew? Is his quixotic quest for the Green Knight actually going to resolve the question of his identity and his honor – and if so, is it even going to matter, given that successful completion of the “game” seemingly equates with death?

Likewise, as the anti-Game of Thrones, the film is deliberately and sometimes maddeningly non-commercial. For an adaptation coming from a studio known primarily for horror, it almost completely eschews the cliché that gory bloodshed equals authentic medievalism; the only graphic scene is the Green Knight’s original beheading. The violence is only hinted at, subtextual, suspenseful; it is kept out of sight, around the corner, never entirely played out or resolved. In other words, if anyone came in thinking that they were going to watch Dev Patel luridly swashbuckle his way through some CGI monsters like bad Beowulf adaptations of yore, they were swiftly disappointed. In fact, he seems to spend most of his time being wet, sad, and failing to meet the moment at hand (with a few important exceptions).

The film unhurriedly evokes a medieval setting that is both surreal and defiantly non-historical. We travel (in roughly chronological order) from Anglo-Saxon huts to Romanesque halls to high-Gothic cathedrals to Tudor villages and half-timbered houses, culminating in the eerie neo-Renaissance splendor of the Lord and Lady’s hall, before returning to the ancient trees of the Green Chapel and its immortal occupant: everything that has come before has now returned to dust. We have been removed even from imagined time and place and into a moment where it ceases to function altogether. We move forward, backward, and sideways, as Gawain experiences past, present, and future in unison. He is dislocated from his own sense of himself, just as we, the viewers, are dislocated from our sense of what is the “true” reality or filmic narrative; what we think is real turns out not to be the case at all. If, of course, such a thing even exists at all.

This visual evocation of the entire medieval era also creates a setting that, unlike GOT, takes pride in rejecting absolutely all political context or Machiavellian maneuvering. The film acknowledges its own cultural ubiquity and the question of whether we really need yet another King Arthur adaptation: none of the characters aside from Gawain himself are credited by name. We all know it’s Arthur, but he’s listed only as “king.” We know the spooky druid-like old man with the white beard is Merlin, but it’s never required to spell it out. The film gestures at our pre-existing understanding; it relies on us to fill in the gaps, cuing us to collaboratively produce the story with it, positioning us as listeners as if we were gathered to hear the original poem. Just like fanfiction, it knows that it doesn’t need to waste time introducing every single character or filling in ultimately unnecessary background knowledge, when the audience can be relied upon to bring their own.

As for that, the film explicitly frames itself as a “filmed adaptation of the chivalric romance” in its opening credits, and continues to play with textual referents and cues throughout: telling us where we are, what’s happening, or what’s coming next, rather like the rubrics or headings within a medieval manuscript. As noted, its historical/architectural references span the entire medieval European world, as does its costume design. I was particularly struck by the fact that Arthur and Guinevere’s crowns resemble those from illuminated monastic manuscripts or Eastern Orthodox iconography: they are both crown and halo, they confer an air of both secular kingship and religious sanctity. The question in the film’s imagined epilogue thus becomes one familiar to Shakespeare’s Henry V: heavy is the head that wears the crown. Does Gawain want to earn his uncle’s crown, take over his place as king, bear the fate of Camelot, become a great ruler, a husband and father in ways that even Arthur never did, only to see it all brought to dust by his cowardice, his reliance on unscrupulous sorcery, and his unfulfilled promise to the Green Knight? Is it better to have that entire life and then lose it, or to make the right choice now, even if it means death?

Likewise, Arthur’s kingly mantle is Byzantine in inspiration, as is the icon of the Virgin Mary-as-Theotokos painted on Gawain’s shield (which we see broken apart during the attack by the scavengers). The film only glances at its religious themes rather than harping on them explicitly; we do have the cliché scene of the male churchmen praying for Gawain’s safety, opposite Gawain’s mother and her female attendants working witchcraft to protect him. (When oh when will I get my film that treats medieval magic and medieval religion as the complementary and co-existing epistemological systems that they were, rather than portraying them as diametrically binary and disparagingly gendered opposites?) But despite the interim setbacks borne from the failure of Christian icons, the overall resolution of the film could serve as the culmination of a medieval Christian morality tale: Gawain can buy himself a great future in the short term if he relies on the protection of the enchanted green belt to avoid the Green Knight’s killing stroke, but then he will have to watch it all crumble until he is sitting alone in his own hall, his children dead and his kingdom destroyed, as a headless corpse who only now has been brave enough to accept his proper fate. By removing the belt from his person in the film’s Inception-like final scene, he relinquishes the taint of black magic and regains his religious honor, even at the likely cost of death. That, the medieval Christian morality tale would agree, is the correct course of action.

Gawain’s encounter with St. Winifred likewise presents a more subtle vision of medieval Christianity. Winifred was an eighth-century Welsh saint known for being beheaded, after which (by the power of another saint) her head was miraculously restored to her body and she went on to live a long and holy life. It doesn’t quite work that way in TGK. (St Winifred’s Well is mentioned in the original SGGK, but as far as I recall, Gawain doesn’t meet the saint in person.) In the film, Gawain encounters Winifred’s lifelike apparition, who begs him to dive into the mere and retrieve her head (despite appearances, she warns him, it is not attached to her body). This fits into the pattern of medieval ghost stories, where the dead often return to entreat the living to help them finish their business; they must be heeded, but when they are encountered in places they shouldn’t be, they must be put back into their proper physical space and reminded of their real fate. Gawain doesn’t follow William of Newburgh’s practical recommendation to just fetch some brawny young men with shovels to beat the wandering corpse back into its grave. Instead, in one of his few moments of unqualified heroism, he dives into the dark water and retrieves Winifred’s skull from the bottom of the lake. Then when he returns to the house, he finds the rest of her skeleton lying in the bed where he was earlier sleeping, and carefully reunites the skull with its body, finally allowing it to rest in peace.

However, Gawain’s involvement with Winifred doesn’t end there. The fox that he sees on the bank after emerging with her skull, who then accompanies him for the rest of the film, is strongly implied to be her spirit, or at least a companion that she has sent for him. Gawain has handled a saint’s holy bones; her relics, which were well known to grant protection in the medieval world. He has done the saint a service, and in return, she extends her favor to him. At the end of the film, the fox finally speaks in a human voice, warning him not to proceed to the fateful final encounter with the Green Knight; it will mean his death. The symbolism of having a beheaded saint serve as Gawain’s guide and protector is obvious, since it is the fate that may or may not lie in store for him. As I said, the ending is Inception-like in that it steadfastly refuses to tell you if the hero is alive (or will live) or dead (or will die). In the original SGGK, of course, the Green Knight and the Lord turn out to be the same person, Gawain survives, it was all just a test of chivalric will and honor, and a trap put together by Morgan Le Fay in an attempt to frighten Guinevere. It’s essentially able to be laughed off: a game, an adventure, not real. TGK takes this paradigm and flips it (to speak…) on its head.

Gawain’s rescue of Winifred’s head also rewards him in more immediate terms: his/the Green Knight’s axe, stolen by the scavengers, is miraculously restored to him in her cottage, immediately and concretely demonstrating the virtue of his actions. This is one of the points where the film most stubbornly resists modern storytelling conventions: it simply refuses to add in any kind of “rational” or “empirical” explanation of how else it got there, aside from the grace and intercession of the saint. This is indeed how it works in medieval hagiography: things simply reappear, are returned, reattached, repaired, made whole again, and Gawain’s lost weapon is thus restored, symbolizing that he has passed the test and is worthy to continue with the quest. The film’s narrative is not modernizing its underlying medieval logic here, and it doesn’t particularly care if a modern audience finds it “convincing” or not. As noted, the film never makes any attempt to temporalize or localize itself; it exists in a determinedly surrealist and ahistorical landscape, where naked female giants who look suspiciously like Tilda Swinton roam across the wild with no necessary explanation. While this might be frustrating for some people, I actually found it a huge relief that a clearly fantastic and fictional literary adaptation was not acting like it was qualified to teach “real history” to its audience. Nobody would come out of TGK thinking that they had seen the “actual” medieval world, and since we have enough of a problem with that sort of thing thanks to GOT, I for one welcome the creation of a medieval imaginative space that embraces its eccentric and unrealistic elements, rather than trying to fit them into the Real Life box.

This plays into the fact that the film, like a reused medieval manuscript containing more than one text, is a palimpsest: for one, it audaciously rewrites the entire Arthurian canon in the wordless vision of Gawain’s life after escaping the Green Knight (I could write another meta on that dream-epilogue alone). It moves fluidly through time and creates alternate universes in at least two major points: one, the scene where Gawain is tied up and abandoned by the scavengers and that long circling shot reveals his skeletal corpse rotting on the sward, only to return to our original universe as Gawain decides that he doesn’t want that fate, and two, Gawain as King. In this alternate ending, Arthur doesn’t die in battle with Mordred, but peaceably in bed, having anointed his worthy nephew as his heir. Gawain becomes king, has children, gets married, governs Camelot, becomes a ruler surpassing even Arthur, but then watches his son get killed in battle, his subjects turn on him, and his family vanish into the dust of his broken hall before he himself, in despair, pulls the enchanted scarf out of his clothing and succumbs to his fate.

In this version, Gawain takes on the responsibility for the fall of Camelot, not Arthur. This is the hero’s burden, but he’s obtained it dishonorably, by cheating. It is a vivid but mimetic future which Gawain (to all appearances) ultimately rejects, returning the film to the realm of traditional Arthurian canon – but not quite. After all, if Gawain does get beheaded after that final fade to black, it would represent a significant alteration from the poem and the character’s usual arc. Are we back in traditional canon or aren’t we? Did Gawain reject that future or didn’t he? Do all these alterities still exist within the visual medium of the meta-text, and have any of them been definitely foreclosed?

Furthermore, the film interrogates itself and its own tropes in explicit and overt ways. In Gawain’s conversation with the Lord, the Lord poses the question that many members of the audience might have: is Gawain going to carry out this potentially pointless and suicidal quest and then be an honorable hero, just like that? What is he actually getting by staggering through assorted Irish bogs and seeming to reject, rather than embrace, the paradigms of a proper quest and that of an honorable knight? He lies about being a knight to the scavengers, clearly out of fear, and ends up cravenly bound and robbed rather than fighting back. He denies knowing anything about love to the Lady (played by Alicia Vikander, who also plays his lover at the start of the film with a decidedly ropey Yorkshire accent, sorry to say). He seems to shrink from the responsibility thrust on him, rather than rise to meet it (his only honorable act, retrieving Winifred’s head, is discussed above) and yet here he still is, plugging away. Why is he doing this? What does he really stand to gain, other than accepting a choice and its consequences (somewhat?) The film raises these questions, but it has no plans to answer them. It’s going to leave you to think about them for yourself, and it isn’t going to spoon-feed you any ultimate moral or neat resolution. In this interchange, it’s easy to see both the echoes of a formal dialogue between two speakers (a favored medieval didactic tactic) and the broader purpose of chivalric literature: to interrogate what it actually means to be a knight, how personal honor is generated, acquired, and increased, and whether engaging in these pointless and bloody “war games” is actually any kind of real path to lasting glory.

The film’s treatment of race, gender, and queerness obviously also merits comment. By casting Dev Patel, an Indian-born actor, as an Arthurian hero, the film is… actually being quite accurate to the original legends, doubtless much to the disappointment of assorted internet racists. The thirteenth-century Arthurian romance Parzival (Percival) by the German poet Wolfram von Eschenbach notably features the character of Percival’s mixed-race half-brother, Feirefiz, son of their father by his first marriage to a Muslim princess. Feirefiz is just as heroic as Percival (Gawaine, for the record, also plays a major role in the story) and assists in the quest for the Holy Grail, though it takes his conversion to Christianity for him to properly behold it.

By introducing Patel (and Sarita Chowdhury as Morgause) to the visual representation of Arthuriana, the film quietly does away with the “white Middle Ages” cliché that I have complained about ad nauseam; we see background Asian and black members of Camelot, who just exist there without having to conjure up some complicated rationale to explain their presence. The Lady also uses a camera obscura to make Gawain’s portrait. Contrary to those who might howl about anachronism, this technique was known in China as early as the fourth century BCE and the tenth/eleventh century Islamic scholar Ibn al-Haytham was probably the best-known medieval authority to write on it extensively; Latin translations of his work inspired European scientists from Roger Bacon to Leonardo da Vinci. Aside from the symbolism of an upside-down Gawain (and when he sees the portrait again during the ‘fall of Camelot’, it is right-side-up, representing that Gawain himself is in an upside-down world), this presents a subtle challenge to the prevailing Eurocentric imagination of the medieval world, and draws on other global influences.

As for gender, we have briefly touched on it above; in the original SGGK, Gawain’s entire journey is revealed to be just a cruel trick of Morgan Le Fay, simply trying to destabilize Arthur’s court and upset his queen. (Morgan is the old blindfolded woman who appears in the Lord and Lady’s castle and briefly approaches Gawain, but her identity is never explicitly spelled out.) This is, obviously, an implicitly misogynistic setup: an evil woman plays a trick on honorable men for the purpose of upsetting another woman, the honorable men overcome it, the hero survives, and everyone presumably lives happily ever after (at least until Mordred arrives).

Instead, by plunging the outcome into doubt and the hero into a much darker and more fallible moral universe, TGK shifts the blame for Gawain’s adventure and ultimate fate from Morgan to Gawain himself. Likewise, Guinevere is not the passive recipient of an evil deception but in a way, the catalyst for the whole thing. She breaks the seal on the Green Knight’s message with a weighty snap; she becomes the oracle who reads it out, she is alarming rather than alarmed, she disrupts the complacency of the court and silently shows up all the other knights who refuse to step forward and answer the Green Knight’s challenge. Gawain is not given the ontological reassurance that it’s just a practical joke and he’s going to be fine (and thanks to the unresolved ending, neither are we). The film instead takes the concept at face value in order to push the envelope and ask the simple question: if a man was going to be actually-for-real beheaded in a year, why would he set out on a suicidal quest? Would you, in Gawain’s place, make the same decision to cast aside the enchanted belt and accept your fate? Has he made his name, will he be remembered well? What is his legacy?

Indeed, if there is any hint of feminine connivance and manipulation, it arrives in the form of the implication that Gawain’s mother has deliberately summoned the Green Knight to test her son, prove his worth, and position him as his childless uncle’s heir; she gives him the protective belt to make sure he won’t actually die, and her intention all along was for the future shown in the epilogue to truly play out (minus the collapse of Camelot). Only Gawain loses the belt thanks to his cowardice in the encounter with the scavengers, regains it in a somewhat underhanded and morally questionable way when the Lady is attempting to seduce him, and by ultimately rejecting it altogether and submitting to his uncertain fate, totally mucks up his mother’s painstaking dynastic plans for his future. In this reading, Gawain could be king, and his mother’s efforts are meant to achieve that goal, rather than thwart it. He is thus required to shoulder his own responsibility for this outcome, rather than conveniently pawning it off on an “evil woman,” and by extension, the film asks the question: What would the world be like if men, especially those who make war on others as a way of life, were actually forced to face the consequences of their reckless and violent actions? Is it actually a “game” in any sense of the word, especially when chivalric literature is constantly preoccupied with the question of how much glorious violence is too much glorious violence? If you structure social prestige for the king and the noble male elite entirely around winning battles and existing in a state of perpetual war, when does that begin to backfire and devour the knightly class – and the rest of society – instead?

This leads into the central theme of Gawain’s relationships with the Lord and Lady, and how they’re treated in the film. The poem has been repeatedly studied in terms of its latent (and sometimes… less than latent) queer subtext: when the Lord asks Gawain to pay back to him whatever he should receive from his wife, does he already know what this involves; i.e. a physical and romantic encounter? When the Lady gives kisses to Gawain, which he is then obliged to return to the Lord as a condition of the agreement, is this all part of a dastardly plot to seduce him into a kinky green-themed threesome with a probably-not-human married couple looking to spice up their sex life? Why do we read the Lady’s kisses to Gawain as romantic but Gawain’s kisses to the Lord as filial, fraternal, or the standard “kiss of peace” exchanged between a liege lord and his vassal? Is Gawain simply being a dutiful guest by honoring the bargain with his host, actually just kissing the Lady again via the proxy of her husband, or somewhat more into this whole thing with the Lord than he (or the poet) would like to admit? Is the homosocial turning homoerotic, and how is Gawain going to navigate this tension and temptation?

If the question is never resolved: well, welcome to one of the central medieval anxieties about chivalry, knighthood, and male bonds! As I have written about before, medieval society needed to simultaneously exalt this as the most honored and noble form of love, and make sure it didn’t accidentally turn sexual (once again: how much male love is too much male love?). Does the poem raise the possibility of serious disruption to the dominant heteronormative paradigm, only to solve the problem by interpreting the Gawain/Lady male/female kisses as romantic and sexual and the Gawain/Lord male/male kisses as chaste and formal? In other words, acknowledging the underlying anxiety of possible homoeroticism but ultimately reasserting the heterosexual norm? The answer: Probably?!?! Maybe?!?! Hell if we know??! To say the least, this has been argued over to no end, and if you locked a lot of medieval history/literature scholars into a room and told them that they couldn’t come out until they decided on one clear answer, they would be in there for a very long time. The poem seemingly invokes the possibility of a queer reading only to reject it – but once again, as in the question of which canon we end up in at the film’s end, does it?

In some lights, the film’s treatment of this potential queer reading comes off like a cop-out: there is only one kiss between Gawain and the Lord, and it is something that the Lord has to initiate after Gawain has already fled the hall. Gawain himself appears to reject it; he tells the Lord to let go of him and runs off into the wilderness, rather than deal with or accept whatever has been suggested to him. However, this fits with film!Gawain’s pattern of rejecting that which fundamentally makes him who he is; like Peter in the Bible, he has now denied the truth three times. With the scavengers he denies being a knight; with the Lady he denies knowing about courtly love; with the Lord he denies the central bond of brotherhood with his fellows, whether homosocial or homoerotic in nature. I would go so far as to argue that if Gawain does die at the end of the film, it is this rejected kiss which truly seals his fate. In the poem, the Lord and the Green Knight are revealed to be the same person; in the film, it’s not clear if that’s the case, or they are separate characters, even if thematically interrelated. If we assume, however, that the Lord is in fact still the human form of the Green Knight, then Gawain has rejected both his kiss of peace (the standard gesture of protection offered from lord to vassal) and any deeper emotional bond that it can be read to signify. The Green Knight could decide to spare Gawain in recognition of the courage he has shown in relinquishing the enchanted belt – or he could just as easily decide to kill him, which he is legally free to do since Gawain has symbolically rejected the offer of brotherhood, vassalage, or knight-bonding by his unwise denial of the Lord’s freely given kiss. Once again, the film raises the overall thematic and moral question and then doesn’t give one straight (ahem) answer. As with the medieval anxieties and chivalric texts that it is based on, it invokes the specter of queerness and then doesn’t neatly resolve it. As a modern audience, we find this unsatisfying, but once again, the film is refusing to conform to our expectations.

As has been said before, there is so much kissing between men in medieval contexts, both ceremonial and otherwise, that we’re left to wonder: “is it gay or is it feudalism?” Is there an overtly erotic element in Gawain and the Green Knight’s mutual “beheading” of each other (especially since in the original version, this frees the Lord from his curse, functioning like a true love’s kiss in a fairytale). While it is certainly possible to argue that the film has “straightwashed” its subject material by removing the entire sequence of kisses between Gawain and the Lord and the unresolved motives for their existence, it is a fairly accurate, if condensed, representation of the anxieties around medieval knightly bonds and whether, as Carolyn Dinshaw put it, a (male/male) “kiss is just a kiss.” After all, the kiss between Gawain and the Lady is uncomplicatedly read as sexual/romantic, and that context doesn’t go away when Gawain is kissing the Lord instead. Just as with its multiple futurities, the film leaves the question open-ended. Is it that third and final denial that seals Gawain’s fate, and if so, is it asking us to reflect on why, specifically, he does so?

The film could play with both this question and its overall tone quite a bit more: it sometimes comes off as a grim, wooden, over-directed Shakespearean tragedy, rather than incorporating the lively and irreverent tone that the poem often takes. It’s almost totally devoid of humor, which is unfortunate, and the Grim Middle Ages aesthetic is in definite evidence. Nonetheless, because of the comprehensive de-historicizing and the obvious lack of effort to claim the film as any sort of authentic representation of the medieval past, it works. We are not meant to understand this as a historical document, and so we have to treat it on its terms, by its own logic, and by its own frames of reference. In some ways, its consistent opacity and its refusal to abide by modern rules and common narrative conventions is deliberately meant to challenge us: as before, when we recognize Arthur, Merlin, the Round Table, and the other stock characters because we know them already and not because the film tells us so, we have to fill in the gaps ourselves. We are watching the film not because it tells us a simple adventure story – there is, as noted, shockingly little action overall – but because we have to piece together the metatext independently and ponder the philosophical questions that it leaves us with. What conclusion do we reach? What canon do we settle in? What future or resolution is ultimately made real? That, the film says, it can’t decide for us. As ever, it is up to future generations to carry on the story, and decide how, if at all, it is going to survive.

(And to close, I desperately want them to make my much-coveted Bisclavret adaptation now in more or less the same style, albeit with some tweaks. Please.)

Further Reading

Ailes, Marianne J. ‘The Medieval Male Couple and the Language of Homosociality’, in Masculinity in Medieval Europe, ed. by Dawn M. Hadley (Harlow: Longman, 1999), pp. 214–37.

Ashton, Gail. ‘The Perverse Dynamics of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 15 (2005), 51–74.

Boyd, David L. ‘Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Arthuriana 8 (1998), 77–113.

Busse, Peter. ‘The Poet as Spouse of his Patron: Homoerotic Love in Medieval Welsh and Irish Poetry?’, Studi Celtici 2 (2003), 175–92.

Dinshaw, Carolyn. ‘A Kiss Is Just a Kiss: Heterosexuality and Its Consolations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Diacritics 24 (1994), 205–226.

Kocher, Suzanne. ‘Gay Knights in Medieval French Fiction: Constructs of Queerness and Non-Transgression’, Mediaevalia 29 (2008), 51–66.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. ‘Knighthood, Compulsory Heterosexuality, and Sodomy’ in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 273–86.

Kuefler, Matthew. ‘Male Friendship and the Suspicion of Sodomy in Twelfth-Century France’, in The Boswell Thesis: Essays on Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality, ed. Matthew Kuefler (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 179–214.

McVitty, E. Amanda, ‘False Knights and True Men: Contesting Chivalric Masculinity in English Treason Trials, 1388–1415,’ Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014), 458–77.

Mieszkowski, Gretchen. ‘The Prose Lancelot's Galehot, Malory's Lavain, and the Queering of Late Medieval Literature’, Arthuriana 5 (1995), 21–51.

Moss, Rachel E. ‘ “And much more I am soryat for my good knyghts’ ”: Fainting, Homosociality, and Elite Male Culture in Middle English Romance’, Historical Reflections / Réflexions historiques 42 (2016), 101–13.

Zeikowitz, Richard E. ‘Befriending the Medieval Queer: A Pedagogy for Literature Classes’, College English 65 (2002), 67–80.

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Edvard's Supernatural Guide: 2x01 In My Time of Dying - Addendum

(This is an addendum to my analysis of 2x01 In My Time of Dying, which can be found here.)

Due to my eagerness to get my analysis of 2x01 done and published by my 31st birthday, I neglected to discuss some smaller aspects of the episode. Contributing to this was also the fact that the analysis as published is just over 6,500 words (almost a Bachelor’s dissertation in length) and I did not want to bog it down any more, not to mention the 7,500 word essay on the abuse Dean suffered published the week before. However, as I am taking short break from writing and posting analyses whilst teaching an intensive Finnish course at the Bank of Finland, I have the time to write a shorter postscript to my analysis.

The first thing I wanted to discuss was Dean’s belief that his choices dictate his future. Tessa was a representation of divine will and predestination, or even resignation to the inevitable, and Dean was at odds with her. He believed that if he fought hard enough and refused to give up, he could find a way to return to his body. This is a trait of Dean’s which remains fairly consistent throughout the whole show, a few moments of hopelessness notwithstanding (moments of hopelessness Bobby, Cas, and Sam et al wasted no time chastising him for, but that is a story for another time).

He wanted control of himself and his own life, which is one of the reasons the revelation that God had been dictating his whole life affected him so deeply at the end of series 14. His struggles had been in vain because God had decided for Dean at every possible juncture. The natural end to this narrative arc in 15x19-15x20 should have been God’s defeat and Dean taking the reins of his own life, rather than the insulting mess we actually got. As I have said on many occasions, Dean is suicidal and believes nothing awaits him but a bloody death at a young age. Having him die by indirect suicide (the back wound was treatable) undermined years of Dean fighting for a better future for himself and undermined his own belief that one should always keep going, no matter what.

Dean’s philosophy is absolutely correct: everything we do is a choice, and we have to accept that if we want to be active agents in the world. Buffy Summers summed this up in 2x07 Lie to Me with her statement: You might not have a good choice, but you have a choice to a man forced to choose between dying of brain cancer or becoming a vampire. He was not ‘forced’ by anybody to chose becoming a vampire over death, but rather that was one choice out of several possible choices which he made for himself. I do not want to retype Mark Field’s analysis of this episode of Buffy, so instead I will link this video which discusses this very episode:

Whilst Dean's predicament is not as dire as Ford's was, he chooses not to give in to 'fate', nor to see himself as an object or helpless victim. He chooses to make an impact on his own life and those around him by continuing to fight for as long as he can. Dean is an agent and thereby changes the world around him, simply by accepting and acknowledging his own power as as a human capable of making choices.

Further to the subject of Dean’s beliefs, this episode also presented us with Dean’s false belief that his self-worth is to be found in doing exactly what other people expect and demand of him. Part of this belief is that if other people do not value him, he is not fulfilling their expectations and demands, urging him to therefore strive ever harder to be what other people want him to be.

This belief is evident in Dean shouting at John while Sam visits Bobby. “I have done everything you ever asked, and you’re just going to sit there and watch me die? What the Hell kind of father are you?” Clearly Dean believed (or hoped without belief) that doing what John asked and told him would make John value him and make Dean feel he was worthy of other people.

This is a vicious circle perpetuated by the fact that one’s self-worth is not to be found in ablating oneself and sacrificing one’s own autonomy and self-determination to become a tool in somebody’s toolbox. This false belief is a huge character flaw in Dean, though that is not a criticism of his character. It is entirely understandable and relatable that a son should seek to be worth his father’s pride and admiration, and strive to embody said father’s idea of what a worthy son should be.

John’s death was a huge loss for Dean, as well as a moment of fundamental change. Dean was ever humourless around John, an automaton, but his loss allowed Dean to slowly (very slowly) become more like himself and less like the man John made him be. This is not to say early-years Dean is fake at all, but over the year he allowed himself to enjoy things his father would have disapproved of, and to become more of the person he wanted to be. He gradually learnt (whether consciously or not) that self-worth is not to be found in being what others want, but in being himself around people who accepted him. Sam never accepted Dean for who he was, nor appeared to even understand that his brother was much more than the 2D image Sam had in his mind. Cas, however, did, as did Charlie, Donna, Jody, and even Garth. Dean had worth to them not because he was who they wanted him to be, but because they cared about the people they each were.

Something else I thought worthy of discussion (or contemplation, rather) is how exactly Ghost!Dean interacted with the world. We see him as he was in life, but it is never made clear to the viewer whether this is an accurate representation of being a ghost. It could very well be that ghosts in the Superverse are invisible, disembodied entities walking on the same ground as the living and ultimately experiencing the world in almost the same way as the living. If they have no body, however, then they have no eyes and no way of taking in light to perceive their surroundings. One could argue ‘a wizard did it’, but I am not as content with lazy storytelling as Supernatural is (I hope that does not come back to bite me in the behind when I publish my novel…).

It is possible that a ‘ghost’ is not a disembodied figure or spirit, but rather thoughts, memories, emotions, and experiences on a different plane of existence. If this is the case, then they would not have eyes, ears, or a mouth, and would not interact with the world the same way we do. However, it is possible that such an entity would be able to perceive the brainwaves, heartbeats, and general goings-on of our plane of existence in a way which essentially approximated our senses of sight, sound, touch, smell, and touch.

The fact that Sam as a psychic is able to sense Dean’s presence supports an interpretation like this: as a tiny number of people are able to see infra-red and ultra-violet, Sam can just about detect activity on the spirit plane. Dean’s brainwaves (for want of a better word) in their own plane of existence are able to detect Sam’s, as well as those of everybody around him as well as the location, and he converts it into a form of information he is able to digest and understand. Sam is sensitive to other planes of existence, and so he is able to tap into this and talk to Dean.

It has no bearing on the storytelling, but colours do not exist outside our brain (or eye-sockets), but rather our brains assign colours to different wave-lengths entering our eyes- It is possible that bats’ brains assign different colours to different sounds. If this is true, then bats may hear in colour, meaning that they ‘see’ their surroundings in a way very similar to creatures with eyes, such as us. Ghosts in the Superverse might function similarly, though occasionally they slip through into our plane of existence as psychics such as Sam have some form of access to their plane.

Given this, though the viewer sees Dean in this episode as himself but without a body, this might just be a way of presenting him in a way we can understand, as bats might process sounds with colours. It is also likely that Ghost!Dean interpreted the information he received on the spirit plane in such a way as to envision himself standing in the hospital when in actuality he was pretty much a celestial wavelength of intent.

It is probably best I leave speculation like that here, as I expect the majority of my readership has had enough of it. There were, however, a few other things I wanted to mention before finishing.

Sam showed a side of himself in this episode which really needed to be visible and prominent far more often: that is humility and care for his brother. Despite the fact that his claim that ‘We were just beginning to be brothers again’ is utterly hilarious (they really were not, unless their model for brotherly behaviour was Noel and Liam Gallagher), it was nice to see Sam caring about Dean.

Also rib-tickling was John’s claim that ‘I’ve made some mistakes, but I’ve always done the best I could’, because he most certainly did not do his best. He was on a suicide mission, but he took his children along with him and almost got them killed multiple times. I would have sympathy for John if it were not for the second half of that sentence.

Azazel, however, appears not to know John very well at all, in spite of his overtures at omniscience. “I figured you for many things, but suicidally reckless wasn’t one of them.” If you had only paid attention, Azazel. But as I have said elsewhere, Azazel is a little dumb, as well as hubristic and prideful. He met Dean in 1973 (see episode 4x03 In The Beginning…) and must surely have recognised him in 1x22 Devil’s Trap. He is utterly stupid for making the deal to revive Dean, but as I have said elsewhere, demons in Supernatural are stupid. John said to Azazel “You care a Hell of a lot more about this gun that you do about Dean”, but Azazel knew that Dean would be the one to kill him with the colt. This is why time travel episodes are a bad idea.

One last thing I forgot to mention was that Supernatural is not the first time Jensen and Jim Beaver (Bobby) have been on screen together. Their first time sharing the screen was on 31st October 1997 on an episode of Days of our Lives.Jensen’s character Eric attended the last-minute wedding of his dying father Roman to his ex-wife Marlena before Roman died of AIDS (try convincing me it was not AIDS, I dare you). Jim Beaver played the priest officiating the wedding, which was – predictably – interrupted at the last minute by John et al with the cure for Roman’s AIDS. (It is strange to think that this was very probably the same Hallowe’en I dressed up in a red t-shirt and red tights to be the devil at a Hallowe’en party at my sisters’ Guides’ group. My youngest sister was also three weeks old at the time.)

Thus concludeth this addendum and my analysis of 2x01 In My Time of Dying. I expect my next analysis of 2x02 Everybody Loves a Clown to be ready in two weeks’ time, and I will not be kind to Sam.

[shirophantomvox]

Analyzing Kars' Character

Hello everyone! FYI I am not ignoring your requests. I have tried for a week to get them finished and I keep losing motivation. Then I had the brilliant idea of writing something else about an interesting topic and then I’ll be able to finish a few requests! Today’s post is another character analysis. This is still a multi-fandom blog; you will see content related to other shows besides Voltron. Today’s character analysis is on Kars, the 10,000-year-old vampire. That’s funny. He, Allura, and Coran are the same age!

Overview

I watched JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures about a month ago when I became frustrated that there were only 4 seasons of Hunter x Hunter on Netflix. Remember the scene in the election arc when the citizens were casting their votes for chairperson and Hisoka walked up with his arms forming an “S”? Many people were posing the question of it being a “JoJo’s” reference and for the life of me, I never understood what they were talking about. Finally, I watched the show for the first time and by season 2 I could understand what they were saying.

I have to admit that by the second episode I was bored because the nature of season one took place in the 1800s England and nothing exciting happened. Though I worked my way through a few more episodes. I noticed a creepy stone mask on the way and how it never fell unless blood was splattered on it. I concluded the mask was going to play the role of an antagonist or help the antagonist succeed. Although this post is about Kars, I would like to take a moment and say that Jonathan’s death was very heart wrenching and it made me angry. Jonathan was unnecessarily nice to Dio and living in a privileged bubble lead to his demise. Jonathan was stronger than Dio and he should have kicked his ass once and for all. Have you noticed that after Joseph’s father, all JoJo’s (at least until season 5) could beat the antagonist in the show?

Anyway, the mask is a key tool in the bizarre adventures that each protagonist experiences.

Kars is a 10,000-year-old vampire that designed the Stone Mask and is essentially responsible for the horrific events that have happened throughout history. Dio being turned into a merciless vampire and his minions resulted from the Stone Mask. After discovering that he and his people could not be out in the sun, he concluded he needed the Red Stone of Aja to complete his transformation. Lisa-Lisa, a 50-year-old human woman, has possession of the stone given by her foster father Straizo. Kars, along with the 3 remaining Pilar Men (Wamuu, Esidsi, and Santana, can only survive in the sun if they two wear the mask with the Red Stone of Aja. After awakening, it is quite clear that Kars is on a mission to retrieve the stone and will destroy anything in his way. He was the only one wanting to live a life outside of the darkness. This was the driving force of creating so many Stone Masks and later discovering the need for the Red Stone of Aja. Kars understood the mask would only work on him partially because of his larger skull size, aka body manipulation. This created an increase in hunger. The Pillar Men did not like this at all and sought to eliminate him so he could not ruin the flow of nature. Kars retaliated; he murdered 99% of his people only leaving his friend Esidsi, and two children known as Santana and Wamuu.

Kars’ character is very interesting. A dog was about to have its life ended because of drunk drivers. I don’t know if this struck a nerve in his soul, but Kars nearly cut off the driver’s head, causing them to crash their car and the puppy was saved. After being defeated by Joseph the first time, he landed at the end of a snowy cliff, making sure he did not land on a few daisies. Given these unique interactions with nature and secondary species, Kars has some vendetta against humans. What did they do to him or his people for him to care only about flowers and animals but want to wipe out Harmon users? He insists that Lisa-Lisa drink poison instead of fighting her. Fighting women is something he and Wamuu don’t take pleasure in doing. When I heard this for the first time, I didn’t know if that was something to be proud of or if he was being misogynistic (you know the stereotypical view society has about women). Even if he genuinely did not want to lay a finger on Lisa-Lisa or any woman, his intentions are very questionable. He mimics politeness. If Kars offered to pay for dinner or a drink, run. Just run because if you don’t, you’ll probably be turned into a vampire or be eaten alive.

This is off topic but I wanted to pose this scenario. After watching Battle Tendency for the 10th time, I always like to bring out the “soft” side in villains. Being a sucker for Fluff isn’t helpful. I know that’s defeating the purpose of villains and antagonists, but I can’t help and wonder how it would show in Kars. As I’ve previously stated, Kars seems to care for animals and plants more than humans...so there’s a soft spot somewhere in there. I had a rather amusing and odd thought involving Kars and Lisa-Lisa. Since Lisa-Lisa is the leader over Caesar and Joseph and Kars is the leader over the remain few Pillar Men, I can’t help but wonder how they’d react to each other. When Lisa-Lisa is ordered by Kars to stay at their hideout while Joseph retrieved the Stone, I know she didn’t stand there like a statue for nearly 12 hours. I imagine Kars offering a drink, water, or juice just to get her talking. I mean, she has to warm up to him or it’s going to be a horrible 12 hours. Then he’ll try to engage in conversation and will only try to flirt with her to see how she responds. He may make a comment about how clear her skin is, how perfect her makeup stays intact, or how her legs look better than his (well, duh, you’re 9,950 years older than her!). This way, he can exploit anything he deems as a weakness, but she is a smart woman. She would reveal nothing about her that could be used against her. As OOC as this seems, it could be something he’d do. Remember, he mimics politeness; he has a trick up his sleeve. Although that may be true, at the back of his mind, he really admires how young and enchanting she looks.

Although Esidsi, Wamuu, and Santana are Pillar Men, they are ancient humanoid superhuman beings who lived on the American continent. They have supernatural abilities that leave them invincible while the sun is down. They look similar to humans, but they are much bigger and muscular. Among the 3 remaining Pillar Men, I seem to gravitate to Kars than the others. Before you judge me, I’ll explain. Kars, like many male characters in this anime and others, has a unique character design. Contrary to popular belief, I like Kars better in his head wrap or while he is wearing his hat and cape. That outfit reminds me of a ghost/monster from the remastered Scooby-Doo series in the 70s. The one thing in particular that stood out to me was his eye shadow and mascara. The earrings didn’t surprise me as every time I draw my male characters, they automatically get a pair of earrings. While being physically fit, he can make ANYTHING look excellent!

Just like any villain, Kars and Joseph are equally arrogant and can exploit their opponent’s weaknesses against them. Making jokes about Lisa-Lisa while she is unconscious nearly sets him over the edge and while Kars thinks he has defeated Joseph, he is launched into space.

Last but not least, I noticed how the first two protagonists form an unusual bond with their enemies. As many of you have seen, Dio calls Jonathan JoJo but does not acknowledge Joseph or Jotaro in the same way. He does twice towards Jotaro but not after that. Kars refers to Joseph as JoJo and I have to believe that even if he knew his real name, he’d still refer to him as JoJo. Wamuu stated that fighting Jospeh was worth his time as he did not waste it and fight fairly. Throughout their battles, they somehow remind me of childish games with the name-calling and all. I wish Kars was not a “onetime” villain. I wish he could roll over to the next season. This is a preference, as I hate seasonal villains, like Chrollo Lucilfer or anyone similar.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for reading!

[makingspiritualityreal]

Numerology Life Path 7 - Your Birth Card and its Ruling Planet

Numerology Life Path Numbers and their assigned Tarot Card Meaning Series This is a post in my new astrology/numerology/tarot series, that only concerns you, if you are a Life Path 7. Posts on consecutive Life Path Numbers will follow. Originally, I wanted to do them all in one post, but my writing turned out to be so long, I decided to split the post and seperate the Life Path Numbers. The introduction part of the post will be the same for all Life Path Numbers, in case you only read a post about your own Life Path Number, and nothing else. Introduction The concept of a Birth Card links Tarot and Numerology together, in order to deepen our understanding of a vibration of a Life Path Number we are born with. The Birth Card, or rather Birth Cards, are Major Arcana Tarot Cards with assigned numbers, which correlate with Life Path Numbers. Understanding the meaning of tarot cards, mixed with the knowledge of Numerology Vibrations, helps create a more unique vision of your life experience. A person with any given Life Path Number, having several Major Arcana energies present in their lives, usually struggles with one of the energies more than the other. As a result, life will probably force them to focus on mastering one of these energies. In general, however, any Life Path describes both your biggest downfall and ultimate triumph - just like with an Astrology Chart, the highlighted numbers/astrology houses point to your biggest strengths and weaknesses. For a better understanding of this concept, visit my article “Natal Chart - A map of your issues?” Remember, that everyone, besides their Life Path Number and Birth Card also has a unique astrology chart. Thus, for some people embracing the higher expression of their energy is easier, for others it’s harder and it takes more time to master, and some energies become easier to deal with than others. Most human beings are somewhere in between, working on their path and having some achievements while struggling with difficulties at the same time. In the spiritual community, there are differences in opinion on linking Astrological Planets and positions to specific numerology numbers energies. My take is a result of my own personal experience, conversations with other people in my field and research, in order to give you the widest possible spectrum of ideas and increase the understanding of every Life Path Number. If you are a Master Number 11, 22 or 33, there will be a seperate post on how the Birth Cards apply to you as well. Even If you have only a basic understanding of Astrology, Tarot or Numerology, this post will still be helpful to you, because it describes the unique vibrational mix that comes from the expression of both these spiritual sciences mixed together. To calculate which Tarot Cards and what Life Path correspond to your birthday, click here.

Life Path 7 - The Chariot and The Tower

The energies of a Life Path 7 are ruled by the ephemeral, compassionate, wise vibrations of Ketu and Neptune. This can make it one of the most challenging Life Paths to navigate, as it requires a higher level of spiritual mastery and an ability to constantly assume a bigger picture perspective. That is a difficult thing to do in a world so highly revolving around materialistic concepts. Yet, if you are born with this Life Path Number, a certain free-spirited attitude and refusal to be sucked down into too many mundane details is something you need to develop within yourself.

Such a highly spiritual soul purpose associated with a Life Path 7 is due to Ketu being one of the primary rulers of this Life Path Number. Ketu, ruling detachment from the material realm, forces this life path to focus more on the energetic manifestation of their physicality instead of trying to navigate it through practical means. Ketu is also highly analytical, making this people excel at tasks, that require solitude, contemplation of abstract concepts and individual work. These people can make excellent writers or inspired researchers.

The other planet associated with a Life Path 7 is Neptune, the agent of universal, humanitarian compassion. That gives this Life Path a very loving, yet impersonal nature, where they express caring and kindness towards humanity and people in general, but may remain confused in one-on-one relationships. In this way, a Life Path 7 is a flip side of a Life Path 2, who thrives in intimate situations, but should open up more to group activities. A Life Path 7 naturally seeks out crowds, where they can occasionally show up and recharge on their need for a collective exchange of compassionate energy. Yet, in private situations, they can struggle to focus on their partner, open up or truly connect with another, as they are always absorbed in their own little world.

Because of Neptune being such a high vibrational planet and Ketu giving the ultimate higher-dimensional mastery, the spiritual consequences of wrongdoing for this life path are more severe than for others. These people need a moral compass, spiritually, the most of all life paths. In extreme cases, I have seen Life Path 7s fall prey to accidents and disease, if they succumbed to the temptation of their lower instincts.

Because of Neptune's influence on this Life Path there can be a significant difficulty in finding their way out in this material world, which can lead to poverty or other practical problems. If one neglects consulting their higher, intuitive nature and stays within the confines of the material, there may be an illusion of desire for a get rich quick scheme due to an innate lack of practical sense or ability to build without external help. These people, if they overfocus on the material realm, may get frustrated due to lack of dividends or practical rewards, or they may simply waste their resources away due to an internal feeling of emptiness and dissatisfaction. If they get overwhelmed with this conflicting energy and forget to search within, they may forget their true purpose altogether. Yet, because of the foggy energy surrounding this Life Path, they don't have the capacity to intellectually or physically fully power through their problems like other life paths do, and they shouldn't even try. The only solution is going with the flow of their natural spiritual direction. That is imperative, as breaking out of this flow causes poverty, debt, sickness, forced isolation and all sorts of trouble in the physical world. Material prosperity will only appear in this person's life proportionate to their level of spiritual prosperity.

Associated Tarot Cards point the way for a Life Path 7 towards assuming a successful direction in this incarnation.

The Tower - This card is the testing moment, when we lose everything that we are used to having around us. But the purpose of this loss is always in our highest good. This is why things fall away at a critical point in our lives, when the foundation is so corrupted it can no longer support itself. The Tower is actually a tool of keeping things in check spiritually, meaning then when things go too far down the wrong direction, the Universe balances it with a Tower moment in order to prevent an imbalanced energy from growing further. The Tower points to this Life Path's ability to discard the excessive burden of material illusions and continuously purge in order to make sure one remains "pure", spiritually, free of self-deception and in tune with one's inner guideline.

The Chariot - The Chariot is linked to Ketu's thoughtless manifestation, that this Life Path possesses. A Life Path 7, regardless of their spiritual inclination, needs a firm direction not to drown in their negativity. Even for this Life Path, their spiritual nature needs to have anchor in the physical world, that keeps them on track with their journey. That anchor is balance, that the Chariot card represents, the balance between their inner shadow and light. A mature Life Path 7 knows how to preserve that balance, and drive that carriage effortlessly.

A Life Path 7 should never choose an easy way out, as it will backfire for them more than for anyone else. Not only will it cause misery internally, but also externally people will mirror it to them and they will be disapproved of for their wrongdoings more than any other Life Path number. It is as if others subconsciously sense their higher nature and place expectations on them to act accordingly with it, so where other Life Paths might get a pass, this Life Path number will not. In reality, it is the Universe's tool to assure that these natives stay on their correct, spiritual path, and it is Life Path 7s themselves that have a high level of subconscious, spiritual analysis and self-judgment. As a result, any negativity that comes their way from the outside is a projection resulting from their own deeply rooted high spiritual expectations, and an internal disappointment, if they are not met.

The best advice a Life Path 7 can hear is that it will always pay off for them practically to be kind and preserve their spiritual integrity. It is essential for this Life Path to realise, that any lower energies they invite for short-term gain will immediately backfire, and deep down they are unhappy with themselves for making any wrong choices in the first place. Ketu has a perfectionist nature to it, and a Life Path 7, whether they realise it or not, has a deep level of internalised spiritual perfectionism. An unaware Life Path 7 can become judgmental, trying to hold others to this high standard that they carry internally, while refusing to face their own actions. This process is simply a mirrored expression of a desire, to reach that point of excellence by themselves.

If you are a Life Path 7, solitude is something essential to your well-being. Make sure your lifestyle allows you to make time for yourself. It is in isolation, away from the external noise that may unnecessarily cause you to project your spiritual desires on others, that you can work on yourself, find truth and connection to your ultimate power of deep, analytical understanding of this existence.

[life-rewritten]

WE BEST LOVE (Fighting Mr Second) Deyi And The Role of Family, Duty/Obligation and Responsibility.

Let’s get to it, oh my, We Best Love just keeps on getting better and better the more I break it down. Seriously I am so surprised by how much I can write about this show especially when it comes to these two, they’re so incredibly written in my perspective just because they hit all the right things I want from writing; they are 3 dimensional, they’re flawed and realistic, they are relatable (the more we get to understand why they do what they do) and their romance is both sweet and entertaining but also deep and serious. There’s nothing else I can say when it comes to praising this show especially season 2 which is very polarising to the audience because they feel whiplashed by the sudden seriousness and change of tone with the goals the show is trying to achieve. My thing is if you don’t understand the show properly, and how the characters have been planned and written from the start, you end up in season 2 just being sad and frustrated by how many mistakes the characters make, how stupid and illogical their actions seem when they do something or they respond to something. For example in episode 3 Shide is seen as an idiot, a noble idiot, his actions by pulling away and refusing to communicate and be open with Shuyi is seen as stupid and annoying because it caused a lot of pain, suffering, anguish for them that could be avoided. And yes it was uncontrollable situation to him that he tried to deal with but because there are other ways he could have dealt with this more maturely, smarter and better, there is this struggle to try and forgive and understand his perspective for why he decided to stay away from Shuyi for 5 years. It’s very sad and upsetting to know the reason is again a basic trope used in BLs and romance stories. But again I keep saying We Best Love isn’t trying to do something different it’s using the same tropes in this genre but writing it better. And I know it doesn’t seem like the choices made so far in the show is smart but there is understanding when you finally break down what the writers are trying to say with this story, why the writers are choosing this path. So again I come with another essay (my second one this week) focusing on Deyi and why it’s more complicated than just what we saw in episode 3 about the truth of Shide’s reason for why he chose to give into Shuyi’s father. Let’s break it down shall we?

The Theme of Family in WBL

The first thing about this essay is going to be focusing on the role of family, duty, obligation and responsibility in We Best Love. Family is something that has always been important in the show since we started of our couples first reason for talking to each other being that they both have lost a family member. The effects of Family in the show is very prominent and shown in season 2 of WBL. But also it’s always been hidden and hinted at how the environment that Shuyi and Shide grew up in (Nature vs Nurture) had made them become who they are in both seasons. So the reason why Shide is  seen as responsible, always in control and strong is because of him having to replace his father’s role when he was younger to want to be the one to protect and take care of his family. For Shide Family means everything to him it’s what makes him who he is, his focus is his duty and obligation to them to make sure they are living peacefully and safe. This started of just as his mother and him but later on as we see in season 1 he also then takes the responsibility (In America) over his stepfamily as well, we don’t know exactly why he’s the one who has to deal with a lot of struggles to protect the family again, but everything he does is to keep them safe. The reason why we see him in season 2 in his company is again to do with Family. And Shuyi is not different, Shuyi is also shadowed by the influence, control and hold of Family, he has a legacy he has to protect, but also someone he has to impress and become like his father who he was left with. Whilst Shide takes on the role of protecting the family’s safety and happiness by ensuring they’re taken care of and at ease, Shuyi also takes on this role to protect his position, his heritage and his father’s riches and company by being competitive and determined to be on top. So this has always been there since season 1, it explains a lot about how these two think and how they act. They’re both feeling pressured by the responsibility, duty and obligation they have to the role they play in their family to succeed.  And what season 2 does is it brings that to light, it shows the struggles that they have been going through but also it makes us see the sacrifices and choices they have to make because of this influence of Family and pressure of Duty.  The idea of having to both hold a weight of responsibility which clouds people from them, their wants and needs, and leads them to make constant sacrifices.

The Introduction to Shuyi’s Father

 So that’s important to notice because episode 3 brings in a revelation that Shuyi’s father is very important to the break down of our couple’s relationship and the reason for why they’ve both entered a state of misunderstanding and miscommunication.  It’s because he pressured and made Shide separate from Shuyi for 5 years that we are in this well of pain and anguish and toxicity. Shuyi’s father is not introduced to us immediately in season 1 but his shadow is there. The mentions of how Shuyi has an easy life, his wealth, having people keep an eye on him, having a very privileged easy life is hinted throughout the whole season until finally it’s after Shuyi and Shide fall for each other, the father shows up from the dark. He’s been keeping an eye on Shuyi and looking out for any hints or clues for obstacles to his goals, but also when we first see him he’s shrouded in dark lit room, he’s cold, has a powerful aura and demands to know more about the situation. We can already see from how he reacts that he’s angered by the situation. So we know he is going to be our villain in season 2, it’s not a surprise to realise that he’s always been the reason for why our couple is separated, it’s not a surprise to see that he’s an obstacle to them. But the thing about him is that as much as he is at first just a typical one dimensional homophobic BL parent, he’s more than that, in fact at the end of this analysis you will see he’s not even the villain the writers want us to focus on because he’s not a villain, he’s actually so more than that. Let me explain more.

A Lovers Game or A Long Lasting Commitment?

The first time we see him as an obstacle is when he calls Shide,  after Shide returned back to America to find Shuyi and know what’s going on. Shuyi had misunderstood and thought Shide was married with a kid and had left him. So Shuyi was not speaking to Shide and Shide after dealing with his own family issues, finally returned to Taiwan and came to face to face with the father instead of Shuyi. The father is determined immediately to stop their relationship, the first reason he gives is because he thinks it’s not long lasting, it’s fickle. He calls it a game. Of course our mindsets and Shide’s start to think he says this because he’s phobic, he’s belittling what they have, he’s refusing to take it seriously and he thinks it’s doomed to end. He doesn’t think the relationship is strong or right enough to help Shuyi, he sees it as a waste of time and an obstacle that needs to be stopped. He’s determined. This is quite contrary to what Shide and Shuyi believed about what they had, they believed especially Shide that they would have forever, because that’s how devoted he was to Shuyi which is what he tries to say.

Shide tells the father that he’s serious about what they have but also that Shuyi can leave him but  he won’t give up on Shuyi. Again this is a huge hint to one of the reasons for why Shide is lacking, or what was his first mistake, his doubt in Shuyi. In that sentence it’s him that is chasing, he believes it’s his strength and determination to make their relationship succeed because that’s how he’s always been since they were  together and  that’s what always got Shuyi’s attention. He doesn’t trust fully Shuyi’s commitment to him because he always believed for so long that it was one sided. In a way Shide views Shuyi’s feelings for him as weaker than his, it can change at anytime, it’s not as strong as his, hence the consequences of his actions is that he hurts Shuyi’s pride and feelings by  holding back the truth from him because he wasn’t confident in what they had.

A Volatile Fight For Survival and Peace 

But this is not just what the father uses as his reasons for why they shouldn’t be together. Again connected to phobic beliefs he focuses on Shuyi’s future in the company. Remember this is what Shuyi’s character outline is connected to, his duty and obligation to protect his position as the heir of his father’s company. So we find out that the father believes that the environment is harsh and inhospitable for Shuyi if he’s found out by the shareholders of the company that he’s with Shide. The father views Shide as an obstacle to Shuyi’s peace and comfort in the future. Shuyi has been told this before and also Shuyi knows he’s being watched by the shareholder, he’s under pressure by them and he mentions how much he is in this season.

Shuyi’s initial reaction is also always focused on control and protection of the position he has, because he was constantly told he had to be more stronger and better to be in a great position where he was safe, his father made him active, agile and more but that only always broke his spirits, broke his trust in others and broke his heart because he also constantly felt like he was never enough because he was           always losing. It’s actually his father’s constant push that makes Shuyi determined to always become first because he was always told he had to be ahead to get to where his father was. His father’s shadow always covered him and led him to always distrusting and misunderstanding people’s actions, he always felt babied, and without freedom to actually do what he wants until he fell for Shide. This is why he states to Shide I didn’t want to fall for a guy after he confesses to him. Not because he didn’t know what he was or he was in denial but because of the exact reasons that his father gave to Shide, because of the pressure of taking over and being watched by people and the shareholders, of being used as a weapon to take him down in the homophobic society he was in. Shuyi saw competition even in season 1, it was always his focus because his life has always been about that, Shide saw wanting attention and notice to ensure that he was never seen in his protector role as weak or vulnerable  to get what he wanted, to make a name for himself, and to be something more.

. It’s the reason for why Shuyi has to fire half of the company because it makes the Shareholders trust that he’s in control and isn’t weak. The father also mentions how it’s family that are also enemies to them, because they’re also looking for reasons to see Shuyi’s downfall. (hence why Shuyi is so distrustful of people because his own family also wants to see him fail).  This is when we start to see the intentions of the father’s actions, yes he has a phobic mindset but the focus is on Shuyi’s protection, the focus is on making sure Shuyi is safe. The father believes that the shareholders all are phobic hence showing the environment that he was raised in but also his mindset that has been framed by ignorance, tradition and society. The father doesn’t want Shuyi to struggle with the company because he won’t be able to manage the shareholders’ power if they do have something to say since they also affect the stocks and how the company runs. In a way his business is also in jeopardy in his head, he wants to have an heir to his company to secure the safety of it but Shide might be an obstacle to that because of how society and the environment they are in is.

What’s ironic is that Shide is remarkably similar to the father when he mentions his past in terms of struggling and trying to make it to be something. The father talks about how he started from scratch to make this company hence he knows the struggles, the chaos, the vicious environment surrounding them, which is why he constantly wanted Shuyi to be strong, to be seen as successful, to be seen as in control, because he knows what Shuyi will have to go through  with that role. He doesn’t want  Shuyi to struggle with the same stuff, it’s ironic because Shide is actually in the father’s position when he was younger, where he is struggling with responsibility, and work and making a company stay safe and being someone in society. That’s why it’s sad but also funny that both Shide and the father in their acts of always wanting to protect and keep Shuyi safe they actually just hurt him and they make him feel insecure and less than because of what they do to him. But again it’s understandable why they are so determined to protect what they love because its what they love, Shuyi is precious to them both, and they don’t mean to make him feel the way they do, to hurt him, or to push him away. The father is not meant to be seen as the villain of the show; it’s society that is the villain of WBL, how society acts, how they pressure people to think, how they control our ways we view ourselves and our freedom, that’s why the father is shown slowly to be just jokey, funny and  sweet in his own way to Shuyi, he’s not cold he’s warm despite being such a suffocating shadow over Shuyi. So that’s a very important thing to notice about the show with what they want to show with the father. It’s society that’s making him act the way he’s acting.

The Distance Of Two Different Worlds Apart

The father also mentions another reason for why he thinks Shide and Shuyi are unfit. He claims they are from different worlds. This is so eye opening because again Shide has the same ideas in his head about the struggles that they face (it causes his insecurity of why Shuyi’s feelings may be weaker). Being from different worlds is why Shide is determined to be number one. When Shuyi’s father mentions that they are from different worlds it puts a perspective again on understanding why Shide feels insecure about what he is to Shuyi but also why he’s so determined to by himself make sure that what they have is safe and okay. It’s why he’s so focused on protection. Because there is a slight insecurity about what he lacks in terms of economic status, reputation in general, and position. He’s always been trying so hard to make it and that’s another thing he focuses on for the 5 years they are separated; to keep trying to make it to become someone in Shuyi’s world. In order to be with Shuyi he has to ensure that he can be in a place of protection, safety, security and ease which he feels he can’t provide by just being himself.  It’s so important because it’s this insecurity plus other things that will be mentioned later that makes him give into the father, seek the father’s approval, and proceed to sacrifice what he wants, for Shuyi’s happiness. He always hoped that even after 5 years even if there has been a distance he’d be able to be stronger to get back to Shuyi. Because he was never going to give up.

The Problem With Insecurity, Doubt, and Fear

1. Insecure about their relationship;

As mentioned Shide is insecure about what he is to Shuyi, he has been in an 8 year unrequited love for Shuyi and he still struggled to believe and trust that what they had was strong enough to withstand anything.

This is sorted in his head because he always believes that his determination will win over Shuyi. As long as he can fight for Shuyi and as long as he doesn’t fail chasing after Shuyi he will be successful in ensuring he makes Shuyi want him. This is why he automatically thinks in season 2 the reason why Shuyi is angered is because he disappeared for 5 years, he failed at his determination to make sure Shuyi’s attention was always on him, because he thought it could be stolen if he was weak. The father tells Shide that if Shuyi has a girlfriend after 5 years then he needs to give up. As long as he doesn’t have someone by that 5 years then there’s hope. But also if he does have someone and is happy then Shide who is self-sacrificial will be willing to sacrifice his own happiness for Shuyi’s happiness. Even in season 1, he’s always been self-sacrificial because he didn’t even want to win over Shuyi whenever he had a chance to, he was only trying to get a friend, instead of doing what he wants and trying to elevate their relationship. He always chose whatever Shuyi wanted over himself as we saw in season 1 when the truth came out in the hospital and Shuyi said he didn’t want to fall for a guy. Even the reason for why he chooses to give into the father’s demands even though he knows it’s a trap and has no chance of escaping, is because of Shuyi. He says it’s to protect how Shuyi views his father, and their relationship (and that hurts because he understands the value of the relationship between father and sons because he lost his father, so he wouldn’t want to put Shuyi in that position when he knows how it affected him)

2. Insecure about himself

Shide although he tries to have a mask of being in control and being strong all the time. Although his goal is to always ensure he’s number one to everyone and Shuyi, there are parts of him that does not see that in himself. It is because he does not think he can be loved/helpful by just being himself, being vulnerable or being weak that he takes on everything and works hard constantly to make sure he is ahead always. Especially for Shuyi in Season 1, the reason why he thought Shuyi wanted him was because he was number one and he got his attention by always defeating him.

This is treated in his head by becoming something or someone just the like the father requested so they end up in  the same status. Because he’s determined to be someone to his family and protect them he takes on the responsibility of taking care of the company but he also does so because the father gave him an ultimatum to get a career and be someone to be with Shuyi.

3. Insecure about society and how they are treated

Shuyi being the heir of his father’s company also makes Shide become insecure about what to do to protect them. Again Shide wants to be viewed as a helpful addition not a burden, someone who protects not destroys, he didn’t want to be the reason why Shuyi ends up losing the relationship with his father, and his position as the heir.

 This in his head is removed by staying away for 5 years to ensure that Shuyi  has enough time to focus and get the company, become CEO and defeat the shareholders. Once Shuyi passes the test of the shareholders and takes over, they wouldn’t be as big of a threat. This is what both Shide and the father believe.

Society: Mindsets, Environments, and Prejudice

The father’s focus on wanting children is also stated when he later goes to the bar with Shide. Again him being phobic is problematic but it makes sense that he is, he’s ignorant and again warped by the ideas in the environment he’s in. His phobia isn’t from nature it’s caused by nurture, it’s caused by what he’s been shown, told, since he was young. His automatic mindset for success and stability is for the typical path that society wants ‘men’ to follow in his time to become; to be masculine and strong, ( hence why he forced Shuyi to do a lot of athletic activities which ended up breaking and hurting him in different ways),  to make a legacy happen, to have a wife and kids, it’s all old-fashioned ideas because he is old-fashioned because he wasn’t taught better. Again he’s not the actual villain of the show. Society is.

 The cheating misunderstanding is what causes the catalyst that makes the dad try to break them up. He tried to listen and accept Shuyi’s threats of leaving but then when Shuyi showed back up after America he was furious. Because he already had an idea formed in his head about how fickle their relationship would be  because of phobia, and now it was being shown to him because the way Shide is perceived to cheat is to choose the right path that he wanted for Shuyi. (a wife and kid).  Not only did Shide cheat but Shuyi cried about like being ghosted for 6 months, because Shide wasn’t texting. The most important thing to discover about the father and understand his character outline is that although his flaw is having closeminded ideas based on society and environment, his actual focus is protection of Shuyi’s happiness, the reason he really wanted them to separate, the reason why he formed that trap was because he thought Shide was not serious and that Shide was harmful for Shuyi because of the cheating scandal, because he made Shuyi cry so much, because he hurt Shuyi, because he essentially was mocking Shuyi’s devotion and heart by cheating in America. It’s also about the  pride of Shuyi being protected. Again just like Shide the father’s prime goal is protection of Shuyi.

So now knowing Shide’s mindset and why he did what he did, we can revisit the couch scene in episode 2 and discuss more about how the show shows him dealing with the consequences of his actions.

The Consequences of Actions and Mistakes

Ahh the couch scene, I’ve been thinking about it. I know people want me to break down why it was wrong they had the romantic music playing when they slept together, what message it showed, I know people want me to talk about how uncomfortable we all felt in that scene (you were meant to feel that way), I know people want to talk about the trigger warnings in that scene but there are so many other comments about why non consent/ dubious consent is an issue that should be taken seriously when being shown in BL. You can find them in the tags.

I’m going to focus on the writing of the show and analyse why the scene happened the way it did. This is not me defending non consent, this is just me laying out what the writers wanted to achieve with the scene. You weren’t meant to find it healthy, you weren’t meant to want a relationship like that, you weren’t meant to praise the actions of both characters, because Shide and Shuyi are problematic as of this time because of the situation they are in. So from this show we can finally can say that Shide and Shuyi did sleep together, how do we feel about that, probably not great right? I feel like, I didn’t think they would sleep together because I was holding out for hope that Shuyi would punch Shide. So yeh it was an interesting thing to see not fully discussed or explained in the new episode. However these two’s relationship are in the stage of miscommunication and misunderstandings (which can lead to toxicity and escalations)  mixed with the longing, pining and passionate love they’ve both been trying to hold back for each other for 5 years. The theme for these two has always been about control as from my previous analysis and the couch scene no matter how morally wrong or right it was, was always going to happen because we finally see both of them  break down and lose that control they’ve been trying to have on each other, and of course before that happens it’s done with a fight, with breakdowns, with confusions, with questions.  

The loss of control of the heart

Shuyi loses control over his heart because he can see Shide in his most broken state. Remember this isn’t like Shide.  Shide is normally calm, in control, always trying to salvage the situation, Shide has never cried in front of Shuyi apart from their first confession and even after all that he’s always come out looking better and in control of everything because it’s like him to do so.Shuyi was frightened; one because of trying hard to keep himself from giving into his wants and longing for Shide that he’s been trying so hard to not lose to, he was frightened because Shide was being aggressive and he wasn’t sure if he was messing around with him or not, he was also frightened lastly for Shide. Because Shide was screaming like someone who was drowning on the inside, someone close to just giving up on everything, someone who was so broken and desperate to have something to hold on. Shuyi was frightened for Shide because he realised that there was something more to what happened, he also realised that Shide was not willing to let him know, he saw Shide grapple with confusion and wanting to say it, and he couldn’t understand but he was worried and understood that Shide wasn’t happy, wasn’t a victor in their breakup like he thought. Shuyi also recognised Shide’s pain because it paralleled his at the beginning of the episode when he cried over the broken phone and his heart break. Shide was also heart broken like he was, Shide was also struggling like he was, Shide was also lost like he was. That’s why even though he tried so hard to fight it, his walls fell and he let him self be with Shide that night. That’s the first part of this equation for why Shuyi let himself sleep with Shide although he was drunk, (dubious consent,).

The loss of control of the mind

If Shuyi was fighting losing control over his heart, Shide was losing control of his mind. As much as it pains me to say, Shide wasn’t in the right state of mind, this was a Shide who was being the worst version of himself because he was exploding, he was losing control, he was confused, he was also very angry at the mess he and Shuyi were in, he was lost because all his efforts, (which is pointing to the title of episode 3; Self Righteous Efforts Are Wasted). ��His energy, his work, his heart was wasted because of situations he couldn’t control. Shide was so affected because he realised just like Shuyi also realised seeing him drunk, that what he did to Shuyi was so much more worse than he thought, he was doing everything he could to protect Shuyi, to prove himself to Shuyi’s father, to let them have a happy forever later on, he was doing all he could to stay with the one thing that was his ultimate priority and happiness, he was doing everything he could to protect that and he found it so unfair that he couldn’t even let Shuyi know about that, he probably also hated life its self, because there was so much he had to struggle with those 5 years without Shuyi that he couldn’t control.

He couldn’t control the situation in America in his head (why he didn’t text Shuyi is his own fault but it’s a flaw of Shide to always hold back his truth so he’s suffering consequence of his actions), he couldn’t control in his head Shuyi’s father’s requests because Shuyi’s future was more important, Shuyi’s relationship with his father was more important, Shuyi’s peace and calm was more important (what he failed to see was that he was also Shuyi’s priority, happiness, future, peace and calm so again because he had self-doubt about how important he was to Shuyi he put himself in a situation where again he held back the truth which again is his flaw). Basically Shide was exhausted, and hurt because to him it was so unfair it was like all his efforts for the past 13 years when he finally got hope with Shuyi fell down the drain, because Shuyi no longer saw him as someone even worth being real to. Like Shuyi really was going to go so far in his heartbreak and hurt to also break Shide even more, Shuyi must have hated him so much to want to use him and toss him after. Shuyi’s care for him had ended. And all Shide could do was blame him self, wrap himself up in self-hate, self-doubt, insecurity and anguish as he drank with Shouyi.

Even when drunk he tried to be in control he wanted to go home, that’s what he told Shouyi, he was going to choose to keep up the façade with Shuyi and let Shuyi have his revenge or whatever with him but he couldn’t because he was no longer able to hold back because of the influence of alcohol. That’s what alcohol does, it disinhibited all his inhibitions, It made him explode with everything he was feeling, pain, suffering, longing, anger, tiredness and defeat. He was split into two people. One the Shide that was angry and upset at how Shuyi wanted to treat him, at how much everything he’d done was for nothing, but two, the Shide that had just been biding his time to be with Shuyi since 5 years, the Shide that ever since they reunited had just wanted to hold and go back to how they used to be with Shuyi hence the kissing, hence the skinship, hence the breakdowns and tests and everything that happened. That Shide was not meant to be liked, that Shide was the most vulnerable form of Shide that he was trying to hide so much.

The Problem With Gao Shide

Shide’s actions is not right but it is understandable (I mean he’s dumb and stupid for always reverting to holding back the truth and himself, and emotions from people it’s his downfall, but it’s always been his character, it’s loyal to how his character was written).  He’s always been invasive, always been secretive, always shoulders all the burden on himself so of course he does the noble idiocy trope with Shuyi’s father, of course he doesn’t tell Shuyi when he’s suffering in America, of course he doesn’t; for Shide his problems are his problems and he doesn’t want to be burden to people, he always wants to be seen as number one, now this can be anything, seen as a success to people ( wanted by people), proper and responsible for others (so they feel safe and protected with him) to be seen as strong and happy (so the people he cares about feel happy and loved). Because he lost someone that was like that to him (his father) and so he felt like he had to replace his role since a young age, he had to be that person for his mother, he had to fill up that space and do things right, and make sure he’s not a burden, he’s not weak, he doesn’t fail. Because of this he never wants to show when he’s struggling, to anyone,  even Shuyi.

It’s a flaw that he formed because it was the only way for him to stand up and take the role that kept the people he loved safe in his head. But the thing with character flaws is that they have to go through a development, so Shide has to suffer the consequences of his flaws, hence why season 2 is the way it is because it’s unveiling how he is and what he does to himself constantly, how he hurts himself because of his flaw and how he also hurts others. Again Shide and Shuyi are flawed characters since season 1, but season 2 is when we finally see them mature and have to grow from all of that just like people have to also grow and learn about their flaws and compromise when they get in a relationship. Remember the goal is pure covenant love at the end (they don’t have that yet) which is at the end of it all unconditional love. These two need to be able to learn and work through both flaws and communicate and show each other the truth, it’s only when we finally let ourselves be vulnerable with the one we love, that’s when you get that healthy, relationship, you get that healing, you get that pure love. So give them time; the truth is slowly being unveiled, this couch scene, episode 2, is the worst versions of both Shuyi and Shide. Shuyi because he’s vengeful and cruel and obsessed with wanting control and Shide because he’s Shide and he finally enters a state where he can’t do that no more, alcohol had to be the thing to finally make him stop hiding and doing everything on his own. That’s why the couch scene happened, you can argue they shouldn’t have slept together (I agree with this) we could have had the punch, we could had a different outcome or a discussion shown about why it was wrong, or even add  a trigger warning to the episode. I agree but it’s not going sway me from seeing how good season 2 is with story telling and character development, and character writing. Say what you want to say about the show but this writer hasn’t changed anything about her characters. About her aims of the show, about these twos journey since season 1. She’s always left these clues, she’s always shown what these characters are like, she’s never hid their flaws and it’s not surprising that Shide does all the things he does that are harmful to himself and Shuyi but that’s the part of learning and seeing their relationship finally tackle these issues and get to the healthy place they will end up at. And I still commend the show.