#solely by being herself

[anakirui]

hot take ??

the only reason people say that "mafuyu and tsukasa have nothing in common" when presented with mafukasa parallels is because they equate mafuyu and tsukasa being similar to "tsukasa has depression" because the fandom equates mafuyu's personality to being depressed and nothing else.

it doesn't help that people (primarily younger people in the fandom) who DO believe in mafukasa parallels end up making the mistake of portraying tsukasa as depressed because as of right now he is not (although it's possible he was in past because of his Very Unclear Middle School Backstory but that's irrelevant)

anyways, mafuyu and tsukasa are narrative foils because their core personalities are built off of the concept of wanting to make the people around them— especially their families— happy.

they both developed personalities at a young age based on someone they looked up to. for tsukasa, it was seiichi amami's performance that inspired him to be a star— a hero that could cheer anyone up. for mafuyu, it was her mother taking care of her that inspired her to be a nurse— and you can see the similarities from there.

for mafuyu, her identity would first come into conflict when her mother expressed her want for mafuyu to be a doctor— suddenly, "everyone's" happiness didn't match what she wanted to do, leaving her in a state of disorder and eventual depression.

for tsukasa, his identity was something he nearly forgot in its entirety at the start of the main story— becoming arrogant and fully absorbed in a hero persona, forgetting the kind person he truly is. furthermore, his current character arc seems to be foreshadowing that what "being a star" to him is going to be called into question— maybe it is something more than just being the main character that saves everyone.

their insecurities are incredibly similar.

in mafuyu's first mixed, mafuyu feels insecure towards ichika because unlike ichika, she feels as if her lyrics have no genuine meaning to be expressed to other people— despite them being her very real feelings. this is brought up again in her second mixed as well.

in tsukasa's third focus event, something similar happens. when watching seiichi's performance, he thinks that his acting is "real" and feels inferior towards him, which is ironic because tsukasa has been method acting this whole time. when tsukasa is acting out rio or bartlett or really anyone at this point in the story, it's not just those characters— it's a reflection of his traumas.

just like mafuyu, tsukasa undermines his passions he's poured his feelings into because someone else's work is more genuine in his eyes.

now, then, foils have many similarities and parallels (and i could honestly list a lot more), but how i define them is that they usually have some kind of major branching difference that MAKES them foils.

for mafuyu and tsukasa it's pretty straightforward.

mafuyu's people pleasing behavior comes from external expectations and pressures— her mother's demands.

tsukasa's people pleasing behavior comes internally, from himself— if he can't meet his own standards, if he can't be the perfect big brother or the perfect star, then he is nothing.

and even then, there's some overlap.

tsukasa's behavior was indirectly encouraged by his mother praising him for being a "good big brother" over the phone instead of asking him if he was okay while home alone.

mafuyu's terrified to be herself around other people because she doesn't want to worry or bother them— she doesn't want to be a burden— and projects her mother's expectations onto them, not realizing that they would prefer the real mafuyu if they knew the truth.

and the concept of mafukasa being foils is most perfectly and blatantly portrayed in these two cards.

mafuyu, the marionette, sitting limp on the floor— puppeteered by her mother's demands and donning a mask to hide her true self.

tsukasa, the jester, standing above everything else— puppeteering silenced plushies— his feelings. he's not being completely honest with himself, and he doesn't even realize it.

mafuyu has cut her strings and ripped her mask in half. she has acknowledged her true feelings and expressed them to her mother, even if she had to run away in the end.

tsukasa has not yet cut his.

[lollytea]

I need to watch Sharpay's Fabulous Adventure to reach my final conclusion on if she's even attracted to men

[crazysnor1ax]

Thinking about queerplatonic Calf1sh….

[starfall-isle]

I’m just a ten cent copy

Of people far more advanced than me

[the-hilda-librarians-wife]

Going buckwild at the way Hilda The Series portrays adulthood and loneliness. Kaisa has no one to go to to ask for help getting the due book back, even though all it would take was someone she could minimally ask to knock on an elderly lady’s door and ask for a favour; she’s in the library after hours, is shown to have no allies aside from the woman who raised her and who she lost contact with. Johanna is only ever seen working or caring for Hilda, and her lack of a life aside from those two activities is pointed out by her own daughter when she thinks that this is going so far as to affect their relationship. The bell keeper lives alone in a small cabin on the edge of town, barely within city limits and away from everyone, a house barely even inhabitable and clearly only a place to sleep and eat. He works a solitary job and he’s the only one in the town still working it, meaning he’s probably overworked and forced to pull inhumanly long shifts. Victoria hyperfocused so hard on her projects that whatever friends she had before - and she must have had some from college time at least - lost contact with her, and she never made any other connections in Trolberg, anything that would tie her to the city and it’s inhabitants and make it so it wasn’t worth it to live by herself at the top of a hill. Even when that was over, she still chose to isolate herself somewhere abandoned and keep what was essentially another machine she’d built as her source of company, something she could understand and control instead of an unpredictable human being. Gerda works a job she likes but is shown to be disregarded by the person she works the most around, her abilities and intellect thrown aside for the good of someone she has to bear because of a hierarchy she was forced to accept in order to keep working. She’s appreciated by the town, but other than the main characters, we don’t see anyone paying her any mind when they don’t need something from her.

Meanwhile no kid has ever been alone in Trolberg. The mean kids are a group, the good kids are a group, even the gloomy teenage girls are a group. One of nightmare inducing entities, but a group nonetheless. All children in that world seem to operate on a ‘no man left behind’ code, looking out for each other even if they aren’t exactly fans of one another, helping even grown ups without asking why and working together. And this logic seems to extend to the adults who work around children too; especially the Raven Leader, who we see that through the children works as a vital part of the community and a way through which it comes together.

This isn’t very articulate but do you see the point? Do you see how clever that is? That a show about growing up has these themes? You can be magical, kind, strong, intelligent, competent, but none of that will make you truly happy if you don’t keep the most important thing from childhood? If you don’t keep your friendships, your bonds, something to tie you down to your reality and your community? The adults in the show all made their choices, and it’s okay to want to be alone, we all need it and some more than others (this is coming from someone who needs it a lot), but isolating yourself completely is the one thing that will make growing pains truly painful. I’m just so emotional over it. It’s so subtle and so clever considering the whole Mountain King plot that Hilda is willing to change species because she feels detached from her main relationships and surroundings. I love this show so much.

[morzowo]

so one character got to learn how to live again, how to reenter society after traumatizing event that will forever impact his life, got to heal and rebuild his relationship with his family even estranged father, reconnected with his old friends and was able to create reliable support system of people that also grew throughout this healing process and now can understand him more and be there for him, got to graduate and start his own business and now can even give inspirational speeches to help others

and the other one had to leave two closest people to him that were his only support after his family death bc 'friends' he had before weren't type of people worth reconnecting with, move out of his country abandoning everything he knew his whole life just to * checks notes * start a job he didn't really want and the main reason he needed higher pay was to establish financial stability for one of two people who he had to leave and that no longer wanted to be with him

okay yea okay sure both cases are about personal 'growth'

[perfectharmonyloveschaos]

Something I am grasping onto to explain the 'Masters and Apprentice' trailer without Sabine being retconned to be force-sensitive for no reason is the title.

Masters and Apprentices.

Not Padawans.

Being an Apprentice doesn't mean Ahsoka is teaching her the force. Instead, it may mean that Ahsoka is picking up where Kanan left off and, in a way, finishing Sabine's "training" because he couldn't and Sabine needs it to find Ezra. She isn't a Jedi, but she is learning the Jedi way.

[apollos-boyfriend]

NO LITERALLY I actually thought the mario move was like pretty alright, nothing too special but it was sweet and it was fun to see all the references, but peach felt so little like princess peach that it hurt. she doesn’t even sound like herself!!!

all the references are super fun and the soundtrack FUCKS but i can’t get over peach man 😭 you could replace peach in this movie with wyldstyle and it would NOT feel out of place in the slightest. it would probably even make MORE sense. and i mean this in no offense to wyldstyle bc i love her and think she’s a great character, but she is NOTHING like peach. you should NOT be able to alternate the two like that!!! but you can in this movie because that’s not princess peach!!!!!

[chaos-has-theories]

Thinking abt ur tags on that still,,, sarah hugs marcia and its like. All she can think abt forever. Marcia keeps jumping whenever sarah gets too close bc she's anticipating another hug and sarah takes this as a sign that she Does Not Want One and that she crossed a line the first time. Septimus ends up being the one to go and tell sarah she's wrong actually. And THEN sarah's like OH. U were THAT touch starved???? And never lets it get that bad again. But yeah marcia gets hugged by someone who is not septimus for the first time in like 14 years and literally wants nothing more than Another Hug but alas. She will never say that out loud ever. Sarah has to play 5d chess to figure out whether or not marcia Actually wants to be touched today. Forever. Well maybe not forever but for a very long time. Anyway I'm obsessed w marcia and sarah being friends can u tell. I think it would be nice

yeagh

[seafoam-taide]

my freak wife

[cathodic-clairvoyant]

You are actually the only person I have seen say anything that makes sense regarding HDWR recently, thank you for your good takes. I love this manga, but it really feels like I’m not reading the same story as most people sometimes

I for the record think that there is a lot (in fact i'd say majority) of interesting discussion about hdwr, even now, (just the other day in the main tag i saw a post that i liked talking about tamaki as a character & her and miwa's relationship and despite the subreddit having a lot of silly posts lately i think a couple months ago around ch. 113's release there were a lot of good comments about MiwaSae and both of their development throughout the story and I think even now there's good discussion about ch. 119 and miwa and tamaki burried in the silly stuff) and in some sense like i feel like the current wave with ch. 119 was always going to happen, it's a very emotionally charged topic that we're seeing how much it hurt a character people tend to like so like i understand being upset by it and having strong opinions about it.

That all being said, the kind of discussion that tends to surround the story of "sae was unfair/toxic to miwa" "tamaki has always been manipulative" "yuria is unfair to sae" are baffling to me because I feel like to get anything out of this story- to not instantly just be frustrated with it- you have to interact with it a little bit on its terms and I think part of that is acknowledging that these characters are more complex than the simple one word "abusive/toxic/manipulative/innocent" labelling and have complex emotions and imperfect reasoning that cause them to make mistakes, be cruel to each other, and do the wrong things. This doesn't excuse the characters' actions but that's not what the story is interested in doing anyway.

And like, I don't think the story is for everyone, I don't think everyone has to want to interact with the story on those terms; which is why while i personally don't agree with the kind of people who say "i had to stop reading when miwa and sae broke up bc it was too sad/too frustrating" and the like, I can at least understand it as just the story has goals that reader doesn't want to engage with, which is completely understandable. Where it confuses me is getting so far through the story and still not choosing to interact with the story on its terms. What are you getting out of this story then??? Does viewing sae as toxic enhance the story for you? Is it a useful way in looking at the narrative?

Especially since I feel like tamifull has attempted to make these characters realistic almost to invite us the reader to examine both ourselves and our relationships as we read. Is How Do We Relationship a useful tool to to analyze yourself or your own relationships with if you flatten the characters into good and bad? Is that a lens you'd want to view your own relationships with? I don't think so. I feel like the only things it could lead to is "i wouldn't make that mistake because I'm not toxic." "i wouldn't find myself in this situation because me and my partner aren't like them." So like. What benefit does viewing these characters in this way give you? You clearly seem to agree with/like the goals of the story if you're still here 100+ chapters later so like. What are you getting out of this?

I dunno. Like i said, I do think there's still a lot of good discussion about hdwr. That's why I still lurk the subreddit and read posts in the main tag. It's just this specific genre of discussion i can't understand especially when it happens with like more recent chapters

[high-guardian-herbs]

“ if burning yourself up, your flesh, your blood, and your bones, saves the people you care about, would you do it?”

On an unrelated note did you know that the smoke of a burning rosemary is believed to purify and cleanse the place of negative energies?

(Warning : rambles in the tags lol)

[iniziare]

Now does that make Guizhong an illuminated beast? Probably not. I think it's more likely that she is actually a Seelie, bearing the imagery of a phoenix due to Celestial association with birds.

I'm listening to Ashikai's video on Guizhong again from 2023's Lantern Rite, which is the first time since I've personally also gone rabid on the intense depth of Guizhong's moon references, the details of the Glaze Lilies and how similar they are to the Nilotpala Lotuses, and most importantly what that means. And listening to this again (and for those who happen to be curious, here's a link to her video which will have the above quote make sense, and I've timestamped it in case people want to skip past the run-through of Guizhong's lore and get to the extra-interesting stuff), so much just... clicks and works. I genuinely do think that Guizhong, at the very least, was a Seelie. But the implications of this, and the implications that I think might go beyond this. /shakes fist immensely, vigorously.

It's so warm-- I can't be coherent. I'm not even the Pepe Sylvia meme, this is the Hoyoverse: Guizhong edition, of Brian David Gilbert trying to explain Kingdom Hearts.

[flavia8]

I've come to the conclusion that I can read and enjoy the most fucked up literature as long as it doesn't feel mean. It's hard to explain but as long as the book/manga/comic/whatever doesn't feel mean spirited I'm totally down.

[tamayokny]

i keep getting dragged into the snow white discourse and it's starting to irritate me. like idc if rachel zegler was scared/didn't like the 1937 adaptation as a child, but she needs to do her homework because the prince was not a stalker--and that's the tip of iceberg. but on the other hand, i don't particularly care that the prince isn't going to be in the remake either, and i get that snow white can "choose both" (i.e., being a leader and being in love), but i feel like everyone forgets other details of disney's snow white.

like, of course, snow white has a wicked stepmother who wants her dead because of the queen's jealousy and vanity against her stepdaughter. and while the huntsman advised her to run away, snow white ultimately made the choice to run into the forest. but then snow white realizes she needs to support herself, and she eventually finds friends and creates her own little community of support (i.e., the forest animals and the seven dwarfs)! and sure, i get where some people have issues with snow white cleaning and cooking for the dwarfs and see it as a gendered role, but cooking and cleaning are important skills for fostering independence. so, after saying all of this, i think a lot of people miss the themes of community, support, and independence. all of these themes, along with themes of vanity and jealousy, are still applicable today.

also lol i'm sorry but the prince discourse, again, is so funny to me. like he's only in the 1937 movie for about five minutes but he does have an established relationship and reciprocated feelings with snow white. and when he appears at the end of the movie, the prince wasn't expecting to wake snow white up with "love's first kiss"--he was there to say goodbye to her. he didn't know that "love's first kiss" was going to awaken snow white--only the audience did, which is dramatic irony, a common literary device. anyway the prince is fine but if andrew burnap's character takes over that role and provides something fresh, i'm willing to watch that.

TLDR: snow white discourse is wild. i think people forget or feign ignorance about the details in disney's original snow white film. and while it's totally fine to want to offer a new twist on the tale, don't completely disrespect the original work or completely dismiss ideas on why the original work is so popular in the first place.

[constantvariations]

Yknow, sometimes I wonder if the anti rwde crowd knows what Doylist Analysis even is

You have so many takes about how Adam was always an abuser because of this scene, or Ironwood was always evil because of that foreshadowing, or etc etc etc, but these people fail to consider what these things mean in the broader scope of narrative and authorial intent

What does Adam being an abusive partner bring to the themes of racism and methods of resistance, if any at all? Does Ironwood’s fall from grace challenge our protagonists in any meaningful way or is it a cheap scapegoat for the writers who still have no idea what to do with Salem?

Once you start dissecting the show, it's very easy to see the methods and ideology behind its creation. That's the beauty of badly written media - its tracks are much easier to follow and trace back to the roots

And the roots of this show just happen to be ill conceived at best and downright malicious at worst. It's not personal towards the writers or characters or whatever to notice these things, it's just... how it is