#some of you really should unpack why you hate female characters so bad for 'getting in the way' of your ship. asap

[mourn-and-watch]

it's kinda wild that in the year 2025 i see more and more normalized misogyny of the extent previously witnessed only in cw teen drama fandoms like 10 years ago

[yggdraseed]

Women in Jujutsu Kaisen

Let’s get this out of the way first: if you’re reading this because you enjoy reading posts by people who hate Jujutsu Kaisen, you’re going to be disappointed. I actually like Jujutsu Kaisen a lot, I have a lot of positive things to say about it, and I’m going to be explaining my reasoning here. You should probably move on if you want trash talk. But if you have a negative view point that you’re nevertheless willing to reevaluate or recontextualize by looking at things from a new perspective, please read on.

A lot has been said about how women are written in Jujutsu Kaisen. A lot of good, and a lot of bad. I think a lot of the bad comes from how Jujutsu Kaisen was praised so early on for how it’s women were written, only for people to either not see it or have their expectations not be met due to events in Shibuya and the Culling Games. However, while I try to respect diversity of opinion, I feel like a lot of people aren’t really grasping why the way GeGe Akutami writes women was lauded. I think a people have lots of different ideas of what makes for a well-written female character, and don’t find what they’re looking for in Jujutsu Kaisen, thus they get angry and they post online about how GeGe Akutamisogyny isn’t going to beat “the allegations.”

I’ve never liked the justifications put forth for that argument. There’s a lot of subtext to how the female cast of Jujutsu Kaisen are written that can’t fit neatly into the simple world of page and panel counts or win-loss ratios. And, fortunately, there are tools for feminist literary analysis that I am going to employ in what will hopefully be a short trilogy of posts, starting here.

When I see people criticizing how women are written in Jujutsu Kaisen, I usually only see them using one point of interest: the outcome of a fight. If a female character doesn’t win a fight, then some people in the audience take that to mean that GeGe Akutami hates that character, hates women, and doesn’t want them to succeed — or some variation of that, perhaps less extreme.

This is a product of Jujutsu Kaisen being a Shonen, and thus being on the radar of Shonen fans who — let’s be honest — are not known widely for consuming anime or manga outside of the Shonen demographic. Shonen is heavily focused on conflict and competition as storytelling, it’s why the term “battle shonen” is used so prevalently. And Jujutsu Kaisen doesn’t try to deny its own Shonen heritage: it uses fights for storytelling all the time, sometimes even more than other Shonen seem to do.

I think this might also be a cultural thing. Anime and manga are written very differently from Western movies or comic books, with very different cultural background and different artistic sensibilities. However, that’s a topic that I’ll unpack another time, maybe not even in Part 2 or 3 of this post.

Point is, we need to step back and get some perspective. People who use the losses or deaths among the female cast as evidence that GeGe hates women, or sees women as inferior, or has some sort of passive, culturally-inherited sexism in their worldview are suffering from tunnel vision. You need to look at the story as a whole sometimes, not just the one subject in question.

Go back to the Goodwill Event, and the fight between Nobara and Momo. Their whole conversation is a huge part of why Jujutsu Kaisen was praised early on for how Akutami writes women, and I think the subtext of it really went over some people’s heads. It did mine, the first time around: to me, it just felt like a competent, if tired “girl power” moment for Nobara. But as I invested more time and thought into reading the series, and as I learned more since first viewing that scene, I started to realize what I wasn’t seeing in that scene.

Momo shares something in common with all of the Kyoto Students, Todo and Miwa being the exception. In addition to seemingly coming from a more-or-less established sorcerer pedigree, Momo shares the general pessimism that hangs over the Kyoto Students like a dark cloud. There’s this very morosely Japanese sense of “woe is me, but there’s nothing to be done” about Momo, Mai, Noritoshi, and Mechamaru, in one sense or another. These four are people who will complain about a problem, then just sit while it washes over them and batters them like a wave. They just accept the unfair hand they’re dealt in life, and while they don’t like it, they treat it as something no one can overcome. Furthermore, on some level, I think these four don’t necessarily want to overcome the misfortunes and injustices they face.

See, Momo pours her heart out at length about how hard it is being a woman and being a sorcerer. And the way she talks about it is a very different critique of society than you’d see in a lot of Shonen. She talks about how women are expected to be perfect: beautiful, graceful, exquisite, the model of femininity, while also keeping up with the macho “might makes right” sensibilities that dominate sorcery. In her words, “men have to be strong, women have to be perfect.”

This isn’t something that’s just being plucked out of thin air, this is a criticism of the girlboss culture that arose through the 2000s and 2010s up to now. Women are expected to battle sexism alone, in their own lives, by being exceptional: rather than reforming cultural structures that put women at a disadvantage to men, girlboss culture says women just need to always wear perfect makeup, always be fashionable, always work 2.5 times harder than men, and find time to raise children and have a side-hustle at the same time. Instead of fixing the problem, it’s telling women, “Just work harder. Just be better.” As if women haven’t been having to work harder for nothing in return for the past 50 years, holding down jobs that they have to go above and beyond to prove themselves in as compared to male coworkers for whom the job might as well be a guarantee by comparison, having a ceiling put on their promotion while men who didn’t put in as much work get to move up the company ladder, and frequently having to juggle having a child and taking care of housework in addition to the expectations of jobs that often don’t afford maternity leave. And then, on top of all of that, the expectation is then foisted on to have the time and energy to perfectly craft your hair, makeup, and outfit for the day, and if you miss a single step of the whole stupid dance, you’re seen as an underachiever. That’s girlboss culture, and that’s what Momo is indirectly criticizing when she laments the contradictory and unfair expectations women in the sorcery world have to uphold. They need to fight just as hard as the men, while wearing skirts and not getting a single scar on that pretty face.

(Just as an aside, I love the way this conversation comes about. Momo and Mai are pretty close to each other, to the point that it sometimes feels like nobody else in the Kyoto school likes or respects Mai like Momo does. And Momo targets Nobara with this whole speech because of the friction between Mai and Nobara, and because she wants to stand up for Mai. I like that element of both solidarity and conflict between women, about being a woman, and I’ve always gotten sapphic vibes from Momo and Mai, so I’m glad that she’s the one giving this whole speech and why she’s doing it. But I digress.)

And the thing is, she’s not wrong. Neither Nobara nor the story as an overall entity refutes anything she says. However, Nobara points out something else about Momo that she shares in common with the other Kyoto Students who were raised to be sorcerers: the way she treats her whole life like a job. Momo has internalized the culture she despises, and instead of trying to rebel, she just accepts all of it as “the way the world works.” She soldiers on, just as Noritoshi soldiers on with his family’s expectations, Mai soldiers on with her pain and feeling of being abanoned, and Mechamaru soldiers on with the isolation, unfairness, and general misery that comes with his Heavenly Pact. Soldiering on, as if soldiering on has inherent value when it leads nowhere and accomplishes nothing. Never addressing the problem, or trying to find a way around it; simply rolling that boulder up the hill, grumbling all the way. She and the other Kyoto Students have this sense of treating their own misfortune as a badge of honor. To them, they’re justified and validated because they have experienced more than their fair share of suffering. They’re always eager to flaunt the crosses they have to bear.

Momo treats being a woman as a curse. Funny how that ties into the rest of the narrative, huh?

For Nobara, being a woman is not some great burden she has to live with. Being a woman in general and being Nobara Kugisaki in particular is something she revels in, and it’s just the fault of everyone else if they think otherwise.

Let’s talk about Nobara, and let’s not reduce her to her death scene. When we meet Nobara, she’s immersing herself in the Tokyo way of life after moving from the countryside to the big city. She encounters a sleazy talent agency recruiter who’s pestering women on the street with his hand-rubbing, obviously nefarious ways… only for Nobara to stop him, turn him around, and say, “What about me?” He gets intimidated, tries to run, and she drags him back. From her perspective, he should be happy to have her, and the fact he isn’t means he’s ignorant of her beauty and wit and needs to be corrected. If he won’t convert to Kugisakism, then her charms are wasted on him, and he’s doomed to the dim world that is Nobaralessness. When she meets Yuji and Megumi, she introduces herself with a line that’s translated into English as, “I’m the only woman in your group.” But from what I’ve been able to gather, her line in Japanese is, “I’m the red mark.” The phrase “red mark” can mean “the one who’s different from the others” — like the one girl in a group of boys — or it can mean “the one who stands out.” So you can also read it as her saying, “I’m the stand-out of the group.” Nobara Kugisaki, everybody.

If you want to talk about how literary circles analyze how women are writing, let’s leave the topics of fight outcomes and feats to one side. One thing you immediately look for is motivation. What’s motivating a character? This is important for how female characters are written, and especially in Shonen, which revolves so much around characters with some goal or belief that the story pursues through fights and other forms of adversity.

Now poorly-written women will tend to be motivated by men. They’ll be attracted to a man, or trying to support or protect a man, or trying to find a man. This by itself isn’t a death sentence for a woman’s characterization, but it is a red flag. It’s also not as if women have to never interact with or think about men to be well-written. It’s not an on-off switch, a bad writing-good writing switch. It’s a meter, like Mahoraga steadily adapting to a technique. Just a little bit is fine, and can be even turned into good writing in capable hands. But if it becomes too prevalent and is never examined, then you get a situation where a story’s women are not permitted lives outside of being in a male character’s orbit.

How do we gauge this? Well, there are lots of ways, but one of the more well-known and simple techniques is the Bechdel test. The name is derived from Alison Bechdel, feminist author who penned such classics as Dykes to Watch Out For. Bechdel proposed a simple litmus test for how to tell an author’s seriousness about writing women, and it goes like this: 1.) Look for scenes where women talk to each other. 2.) In those scenes, check for how often they’re talking about things besides male characters.

This isn’t the only way to tell if women are written well or not, and some will say it isn’t even the best way, but it’s a good foot in the door to get us thinking about what divides well-written female characters from poorly-written female characters. I’m not going to go back and scan through the whole manga just yet, but let’s look at some examples.

— The aforementioned conversation between Nobara and Momo, where the two pit their different view of what it means to be a woman and a sorcerer against one another. — Maki and Nobara talking to each other after the encounter with Mai and Todo. Curious by meeting Maki’s sister, Nobara talks to Maki a bit about their upbringing. Having gained more insights into Maki’s past and personality, Nobara leans on her and tells her how much she respects her. — Miwa and Mai discussing the upcoming Goodwill Event in a flashback. Mai tells Miwa that Maki is weak, which leaves Miwa unprepared for their fight. — Maki and Mai arguing and coming to terms with what drove them apart. Mai just wanted a peaceful life with Maki, but Maki couldn’t be happy and authentic with herself if she just left things the way they were. She was forced to choose between herself and Mai, and Maki chose herself, knowing that Mai would suffer and that she’d shoulder some of the guilt for that.

This indicates that GeGe found it important to divorce the identities of the female characters from male characters. And this holds true in what drives and motivates the female cast.

Nobara is motivated by her own goals. She hates the countryside, and she loves the city; becoming a sorcerer is a way she can make a lot of money, live in the city, and pursue the kind of lifestyle she values. She wants to be a true blue Tokyoite, wearing trendy clothes and eating crepes and taking selfies by the statue of Hachiko outside Shibuya Station. She’s not doing this to avenge her dead brother, she’s not doing this to find her father, she’s not searching for a strong man to sire strong children — yuck. Nobara has aesthetic values and strongly held beliefs, and becoming a sorcerer lets her pursue those values and beliefs.

And if you really want to analyze the action side of Jujutsu Kaisen as an indicator for how GeGe feels about female characters, consider how Nobara takes to sorcery like a fish to water. Both Megumi and Yuji have their own internal dilemmas with being a sorcerer, but not Nobara. In a series where mindset is so important, Nobara has the mindset. Uro describes the model sorcerer as having “no concern for others and an overwhelming sense of self.” There is no one with a more overwhelming sense of self than Nobara. She’s loud, opinionated, loves to argue, flaunts herself, and demands other people give her more than what they think she’s due. She’s narcissistic, but that faith in herself makes her mentally strong.

She lacks experience, but even then, she learns and grows rapidly through the series. Due to running out of nails to fend off cursed spirits during the first stretch of Fearsome Womb chapters, she invents Hairpin as a way to reuse nails she’s already launched and embedded in a surface. She manages to land a Black Flash during the tag team fight with Yuji, and it’s her oppressive use of Resonance on Eso and Kechizu that turns the tides — a tactic which required her to hammer nails into her own arm. She takes it on the chin and gets her brain rattled around in her skull during the fight with Haruta, but even while borderline unconscious and suffering from a concussion, she forces herself to keep him talking in hopes Nitta can escape and manages to get to her feet and keep fighting despite the total disorientation and inability to summon her strength. While she didn’t win the fight, she showed more fighting spirit than half of the male cast tends to, and I find it kind of gross that people will ignore all of that and mock someone who kept fighting against the odds. That’s like laughing at Mumen Rider when he’s hopelessly trying to fight Sea King even as his body is breaking. I don’t exactly see what about either case is so funny or worthy of ridicule.

Even in the showdown with Mahito, people always fixate on how she dies, but never consider what led to it. She crosses paths with Mahito, and even knowing from Yuji what he’s capable of, she goes in — partially because he hurt Yuji, her friend, and she wants to make him suffer for it. And her technique turns out to be a worst case scenario for Mahito. She’s hammering his clone with Resonance and sending the blowback to the original while he’s fighting Yuji, dividing his attention and weakening him. Her only mistake was chasing him down, and even then, this isn’t the story punishing her. It’s the story being consistent with who Nobara is. She’s got a dangerous enemy on the ropes, her pride is bruised after the fight with Haruta, and she has a chance to get vengeance on someone who’s hurt her friend while helping said friend in the process. If she hadn’t followed Mahito into the subway, then she wouldn’t be Nobara Kugisaki.

And in her final moments, Nobara achieves something that’s considered to be out of reach of most sorcerers. She dies content, with a smile on her face. Nobara may not have realized her potential to be a great sorcerer, but she got what she, personally, wanted. Sorcery was a means to an end, and she got to live the Tokyo life and meet interesting people that she considers her friends. She got to fill out that finite number of seats in her life, and even meet a few people who pulled up a chair when she didn’t expect it. In her words, “It wasn’t so bad.” Nobody else but Toji and Gojo have gotten to die this satisfied — Toji because Megumi had grown up free of the Zen’in curse, Gojo because he was authentic to himself right to the end and left it all on the field. Nobara was authentic to herself right to the end, and that’s worthy of high praise. If she is definitely dead and not coming back, then she managed to accomplish what it was she wanted before dying. Not many get that luxury in Jujutsu Kaisen. It hurts because I liked her and admired her and appreciate the way she was written, and her dying doesn’t make the value of her character disappear from the story entirely. It’s the character’s death, it’s everything that led to that death and what that death means to them and to those who are left behind. And if it’s manga that explore death, nobody does it better than GeGe Akutami.

Lots of people will point to an interview where GeGe said that Nobara was not originally considered part of the cast, and they’ll use that as evidence that secretly, GeGe’s a big stupid misogynist who hates women and likes killing them in stories and blah blah blah blah blah. You know, first of all, I doubt that the editor held a gun to GeGe’s head and said “Put in a female main character or die.” Secondly, if GeGe really didn’t care, Nobara would just be a two-dimensional copy of Sakura who dies in the first arc or two. GeGe would not have put in the effort to set her apart from other female leads, or given her so many stand-out moments, or given her such an interesting motivation and world view. In short, if GeGe didn’t want to write a female character, they’d do what Kishimoto did: write Sakura. But that comparison is a can of worms I’ll need to pry open another time.

To sum up for the time being, no, GeGe Akutami does not hate women. Losing a fight does not make a female character worthless, and does not indicate a disdain for them on the part of the author. I don’t know about you, but I don’t read Shonen just to see who punches harder. I want to see characters be challenged, sometimes fail, learn, grow, and overcome adversity — and it wouldn’t be adversity if all the characters I like win and survive easily. I love Kashimo and will continue to love Kashimo, and Kashimo being super ultra dead doesn’t change that.

Look out for Part 2, in which I’m going to unpack some really contentious stuff when it comes to challenges and female characters in Jujutsu Kaisen. We’re gonna talk about the concept of screen time, we’re gonna talk about subtext, we’re gonna talk about great expectations and the great unexpected in Jujutsu Kaisen, and we’re gonna talk more in-depth about the narrative outside the narrative of Jujutsu Kaisen in a vacuum. If your sense for danger is giving you a bad feeling about this, then it should be: we’re talking about that. Switch on your Anti-Gravity System, it’s going to get messy.

[numberonenarinderhater]

If narilamb was a male/female ship, do you think it would be just as popular as it is now? I feel like if it was m/f, more people would dislike it for being ‘toxic.’ Female characters tend to get infantilized more often for some weird reason.

This is kinda sticky bc as of right now I see alot of people treating Lamb as if they are feminine/a woman already. I’m not gonna accuse an entire fandom of being transphobic but I at least see alot of art of lamb with really exaggerated feminine features like big hips, a kind of Disney-animal-character “chest”, pronounced eyelashes, etc.

That wouldn’t be a problem in and of itself but it’s (seemingly) a frequent occurrence. I never seen them depicted in an overtly masculine way in this same manner either so it really raises alarms in my head about how nonbinary people in general are treated as “women-lite” due to the way we seem to demonize expressions of masculinity and especially trans-masculinity around here.

Again, I don’t think anyone intends to be transphobic or transandrophic when they do this- I just want to ask why this particular depiction is as common as it is. How many masculine lambs have you seen? I bet it’s not nearly as many.

And while I wouldn’t say the Lamb is “infantilized” or anything people definitely depict them as entirely forgiving, innocent or faux-innocent, naive, and constantly bemused by everything.

The relationship dynamics in narilamb content also portrays Narinder as a stoical, pragmatic, sometimes aggressive force where Lamb is sweet, charming, a bit ignorant or youthful, and willing to put in the work to “redeem” or “change” Narinder. Sometimes lamb is even depicted as “maternal” (barf) or maybe just clannish and familial, while Narinder is aloof- except of course when it’s time to be absurdly and violently jealous.

I hate to have an awkward conversation here because this stuff gets conspiratorial real fast but these are historically m/f relationship beats in romance fiction. We’d all be kidding ourselves if we didn’t recognize that. I mean it’s practically a textbook case of heterosexual romance gender dynamics.

Depicting or rewriting canonically non-binary characters to be cisgendered women is already a huge issue and I’m not surprised that people think they can just… change a characters identity as they like and see no issue there doesn’t shock me (see frisk, chara, or kris from undertale). It makes us all look bad though and we should start seriously unpacking our impulse to do it again and again.

Tl;dr: I hate to be harsh but part of me considers Narilamb to already be m/f as long as the trends of portraying Lamb as “the girl” and Narinder as “the guy” continue

[spopsalt]

I found all of these on Pinterest TODAY. And I’m only gonna be able to unpack SOME of them.

“Better than the rest of the female population”? Jfc, did whoever make that one hate women or something? Because Catra is the lowest bar for a person. Not even a bar, that chick is the fucking floor.

I don’t even understand what the Jesus one is trying to say. But I don’t think I want to. Im pretty sure whoever made that is susceptible to falling into a cult. Which is fair, since this fandom essentially is one.

“We wants S4 Catra.” First off, I feel like they’re specifically saying S4 bc thats the season most people agree she’s legal. Second, that’s literally Catra ar her worse. Look, I understand liking villains. Im a simp for villain characters. But something tells me the type of person who made that meme doesn’t understand liking a villain and acknowledging they’re a villain. They probably think S4 is the best because she’s ‘Mommy’ or whatever, and would probably defend everything she did in that season and pretend she wasn’t a villain, without realizing S4 Catra (Every Catra really) would literally let someone die for being an inconvenience, try to murder suicide someone to prove a point, send someone to a death prison for saying no, and would essentially rip out someone’s pacemaker for a laugh. Yes, the perfect partner. 😒

“Why can’t Catra be real?” Well… Catra specifically doesn’t. But people like her do. Most of them are war criminals, dictators, politicians, mass murderers, abusers, ableists, rapists, people in positions of power, in jail, the type of person to hit someone for talking back, single for a reason, you get the idea. So, in short whoever is out here simping for Catra hopefully realizes the difference between reality and fiction when having a crush. And if they don’t, they need help. I’m not even getting into the fact about half of these are her as a minor (if not all of them.)

Btw, I’m not saying anyone who relates to Catra is a bad person like what I listed. You can relate to her and not actually be like her. But I think most if the toxic stans who ‘want someone like Catra’ are in it for the wrong reasons. I. E. ‘Mommy-dom Cat-girl UWU Catra’ which is literally just an abuser who has probably murdered a lot of people.

Exactly thank you! There's a disturbing amount of Catra simps and as a pansexual I can confirm I never simped for Catra (Or any fictional character if I'm honest) I mean I guess I could see why someone would due to some people simping for villain characters (For example I know a LARGE amount of the Rick and Morty Fandom want to smash Rick, there's literally an account dedicated to it) but I still don't get it. Whatever.

Also they should be happy that Catra isn't real because Catra would be in prison. Also who wants to be the Catra to my Adora...you mean who wants to be the abuser to my victim? I'm so incredibly distributed by Catra fans

[epickiya722]

Thinking about how some of the fandom actually bashed on Burnin during the Final War Arc without even thinking on her side of things here.

(Just another example really of the fandom not wanting to deep dive on the side of a female character's perspective.)

For one, when she spoke about Endeavor's work as a hero, she didn't deny that he was an abuser. In fact, she insulted him.

Oh, what happened to "you can acknowledge someone is talented and that they're a bad person"? That couldn't be applied here?

It's not like Burnin is the only one who thinks Endeavor's work as a hero is great. Oh, was it forgotten that Endeavor did have fans despite being an asshole? Was it forgotten that the man was the second best hero after All Might before taking the number one spot after the latter retired?

Or did that all just fly out the window?

Did that all not matter the moment a female character spoke up because I didn't see any hate for that pink haired fan boy? Mind you, he liked that Endeavor was a jerk. Hell, some of you even give Dabi an excuse to being an ass sometimes.

So Burnin going "Endeavor is cringe, but his hero work is good and he trust me to have your back so I'll do that" is terrible?

Yes, Endeavor is an abuser. And guess what?

No one denied that.

Burnin didn't deny that, I say again. All she did was acknowledge his work as a hero, that's it.

The Todoroki Family situation is a can of worms, there is a lot to unpack... when you're on the outside. Burnin is an outsider. She didn't witness the abuse. She is aware though that he is an asshole.

Keep in mind, she didn't sit down and have a conversation with anyone in the family about their turmoil. Not because she didn't want to. Because it just didn't happen. Especially, when the abuse came public just before everything went to shit. While Endeavor was recovering in the hospital right after Dabi came public with the abuse and being his son, Burnin as well as other sidekicks and heroes was out trying to stop villains and keep the peace.

Question: why no one bashed Bakugou for telling Fuyumi and the others to not talk about sensitive topics (their whole family issue) in front of guests despite them being in their own home? Why no one said "but they should talk about it because people have to help them" or anything like that, huh? That was the one time I didn't see people hate on Bakugou for something.

Just like with Bakugou, Burnin's words came from a sense of the timing and the current situation at hand. Burnin jumped from one war and into the next.

Ooh, wow, how shocked I am.

Let's also take in account that Burnin is an employee of Endeavor's. She never was a fan of his, but chose his agency because one, quirk compatability and two, big opportunities for her line of work.

Not only she is an employee working for a someone who writes her paycheck, but she is also a FEMALE employee.

I know it's not explicitly clear in the story, but the female heroes (in fact, female characters in general) don't get as much leverage as the male heroes do. Note that there's not a lot of female sidekicks shown in Endeavor's agency. Note that there isn't a lot of female heroes and sidekicks in general. Most are grouped with other female heroes and sidekicks. Burnin? She's in a male dominated place.

She doesn't have a lot of room to actually be a voice here.

Like, honestly, when it comes to certain characters it's like some of you don't care to actually think as to why they say or do things. Even worse when it's a female character because countless times I have seen excuses for the male characters or they don't get as much slack but the moment a female character even moves, just have to come for her neck.

Let's be real though, Burnin definitely said a couple of things behind Endeavor's back and you cannot convince me she didn't take over the agency after the story.

[longsufferingcritic]

Mufasa: Initial Thoughts/Impressions

Overall: 5/10. I probably got more out of it than most people because I went in specifically looking for things to critique as a fan of both the original Lion King and of being a hater. I laughed (complimentary) at two scenes and rolled my eyes (derogatory) at five. I'm in no hurry to watch it again, but it wasn't an actively unpleasant experience and I did find it interesting to unpack if nothing else.

(Also note I'm evaluating this as a standalone film, not considering how it affects in-universe continuity/the franchise as a whole since I don't really care. But if any Kopa truthers are still out there hmu because it would be funny.)

By far the biggest problem with this film was the pacing. Everything moved way too fast with barely any moments to breathe. Too many plot elements were brought up with not enough time to properly explore them. Even the dialogue often felt rushed, and very unsubtle/on-the-nose as well. As a result, the themes were shallow and the characters underdeveloped despite some compelling concepts.

The animation... was okay? I still think photorealism is an inherently bad idea for this sort of story, but the characters actually emoted pretty well and the uncanny valley was not as bad as it appeared in the trailers. I know the bar is on the ground but after enduring Jon Favreau's "artistic vision" in the 2019 remake, it was genuinely refreshing to have the visuals actually try to be creative and ambitious and interesting beyond "doesn't it look REAL?!"

That said, the lioness character designs (Afia, Eshe, and Sarabi) needed more thought put in to differentiate them at a glance.

I really wanted to see more of the evil white lionesses, but they were egregiously undeveloped and underutilized beyond being the evil king's hench(wo)men. Rafiki says something about the white lions having been exiled from their birth prides for "being different" but of course that's never explored in their characters. I didn't even catch their names. Boooo.

This film certainly attempted a take on gender. Taka's father Obasi is openly sexist and sees "females" (why not use the word "lioness" when it already exists? hm) as inferior, but Mufasa learns useful skills from Eshe and respects her deeply. Sarabi is given a clever heroic moment and has some personality. So I guess it's an improvement from the original but that's a low bar and I'm neither offended nor impressed.

In addition to being sexist, Obasi wanted to kill and eat a cub for the crime of being a lost orphan. Okay! Remind me why I should feel anything but relief when this asshole is killed? I get that infanticide is something lions do in real life but whyyyy include it here?

When cub Mufasa is first brought to the pride, Obasi (on top of threatening to eat him) says something like "Mufasa means king, and you're not a king, you're just a stray!" But... Taka means garbage or filth. Scar's original name was established in a 90s picture book so this double standard (one son named King, the other named Trash) has been a running joke online for years. Why not pick a different name for this film if his father (who cares about him in a "you're the true heir so you need to make me proud" sort of way) is going to actually talk about Swahili meanings??

I would describe the songs as unremarkable. Not nearly as good as the original Lion King or even the direct-to-video sequel, of course, but not maddeningly awful like Wish or other recent Disney movies I could mention. Mostly just passable and forgettable.

EXCEPT the villain song. I had already rolled my eyes at an extremely forced quip along the lines of "there will be only one lion king!" moments before and then I actively cringed as he broke into the worst song of the movie. I mean, at least it's not "Scuttlebutt" level want-to-pour-bleach-in-my-ears, but easily as bad as "The Morning Report" which was previously the most hated song in TLK canon.

The score was also unremarkable, but nonetheless extremely overbearing in a few scenes to the point I could barely hear the dialogue. If you're going to do that, at least bring back Hans Zimmer, dammit.

The main villain himself is extremely generic and uninteresting. He wants to take over "everything the light touches" (STOP IT) but also wants to kill Mufasa in particular as revenge for Mufasa killing his son. He has no real personality beyond "evil" and I don't even remember his name. Yawn.

Speaking of which, the fact that young-adult Mufasa fucking killed a man is never properly addressed beyond the revenge motive. It was in self-defense, yes (two of the white lions just randomly attacked Mufasa and Eshe while they were on their own territory minding their own business) but taking a life should still leave an emotional impact on the hero even if it was necessary or the victim deserved it. Mufasa slams this white lion against a rock, the camera cuts away, it's later discussed by the white lion pride that the leader's son is dead... and yet Mufasa never feels any guilt or anxiety or anything afterwards. What the hell?

I was sort of excited to hear this movie has multiple deaths, but none of them had any emotional impact so it was disappointing in comparison to the original. If I remember right they were all off-screen, too. I guess Taka was upset that his father died but I sure wasn't. Fuck that guy.

Mufasa and other characters discuss "the circle of life" repeatedly but it feels like it comes out of nowhere. It's not as if the adult lions specifically taught Mufasa about it the way Mufasa taught Simba, so it comes off as just yet another forced reference to the original.

I do like that Mufasa actively makes an effort to cooperate with other animal species. It was a bit startling when a giraffe spoke for the first time, and this brings up Weird Implications when you remember the lions kill and eat most prey animals, but I still liked it.

That said, I noticed spotted hyenas appeared in crowds several times but they were never specifically mentioned. So what did they do to deserve later being exiled under your rule, Mufasa? How and why did you become a speciesist, Mufasa? :/

Rafiki's backstory is shown and tries to answer the age-old question of whether he is a baboon or a mandrill (spoiler: he is a mandrill who was adopted into a baboon tribe and subsequently outcast). Sighhh. Not the worst thing in the world but completely unnecessary, and would have been better if there was more time to explore and reflect on it, but there isn't, because the film moves at a breakneck pace and has no time to explore or reflect on anything.

I did love Rafiki's characterization when he met the main gang, though. One of two genuine laughs the movie got out of me (the other being Taka's attempt to flirt with Sarabi). Still should have been a woman like the Broadway version tho.

Timon and Pumbaa were fine. Kiara was fine. I have neither complaints nor praise for their characterization, other than the fact Disney should have taken the opportunity to canonize Timon and Pumbaa as a gay couple, if only they weren't evangelical-pandering marketability-obsessed cowards.

The film seemed to be setting the stage for a CG remake of The Lion King 2: Simba's Pride (1998 direct-to-video cartoon) but given Mufasa's current financial performance that seems unlikely to come to fruition. Kind of a shame because that's one of the very few animated films I think could actually benefit from a remake, even if photorealism is still the wrong way to go. Oh well, I'll be surprised if it ever happens at this rate anyway.

[mrs-tsunderemeitantei]

Recently, the author Gosho Aoyama has claimed that the ending of Haibara will be " Surprising" for everyone ?? What does that mean ?? It is not clear if it is a bad or good ending !!! Do you think that Haibara will never come back to her adult form as Miyano Shiho and stay as a kid.. and make a relationship with Mitsu ?? And if Haibara take the permanent antidote.. do you think that she will be punished and jailed since she was a member of BO?? or she dies in the end ??

Oh good God there is a lot to unpack here but thank you for your questions and I'm soo glad you brought them up! I’ll try to answer them as best as I can 😄

So yes, Gosho did say Haibara’s ending will surprise everyone but I also remember him saying Detective Conan’s ending will be happy. Not to mention Haibara is a veryyy popular character (if not the most popular female character on the show), so I find it hard to believe that she’ll just end up being killed off. I don’t think Gosho would do that to us.

Now when it comes to her remaining as a kid, I kind of talked about how I feel about it here . In short I believe she deserves to regain control of her life as Shiho and not remain as Haibara. Also this fan comic about Shiho explaining to Shinichi why she didn’t want to remain as Haibara is beautiful in every way and I think you should take a look at it. 

But to add to that, I refuse to believe she’s willing to remain as Haibara. Whenever people say she’ll get a chance to relive a proper childhood it irritates me 😂 I mean she’s still mentally an adult. I cannot imagine having to always act like a child, go to school and relive high school (diabolical if you ask me) when I’m mentally grown up. 

Personal opinions aside, there is one moment where it was hinted she’d be willing to stay as Haibara.  In the movie Captured in her Eyes she basically said she'd love to stay as Haibara IF she lost her memory. This is not canon and she did say after that she was joking but she tends to "joke" when she actually means what she says.

But since then, Haibara’s character has grown significantly. And these developments ⬇️ have me believing she's most likely going to take the antidote.

Jodie interpreted why Haibara refused the witness protection program was because she found a family in her friends. So with that logic, shouldn't that make sense for her to stay as Haibara? Ummm not really. She didn't just stay for the friendships, in fact she was so moved by Ayumi's words that she realised she has to face her fate and keep fighting. If she doesn't take the antidote, she's basically accepting what she was forced to become because of the organisation without facing her struggles and embracing her past. She'll technically be running away from her true self and erasing any link she has to her family whom she loves so much.

And tbh if Gosho decided she should lose her memory and remain a kid, I’ll be extremely disappointed. That would be a very poor and rushed ending and all her character developments would have been for nothing. Also I don't understand why some people equate her returning as Miyano Shiho to her cutting off the detective boys from her life. If anything, she'll probably continue living with the professor who she now looks up to as a father figure, while still remaining close and looking after the detective boys.

Now for the relationship with Mitsuhiko, I just can’t see how that can happen. He is a child for God’s sake! No matter how smart or responsible he is, he is still a CHILD. And whenever people say she should be with Mitsuhiko it makes me wonder, do they expect it to happen right now when she is still Haibara or are they saying when they eventually grow up? The first one is no way because she’s mentally an adult and he is a child and that is a crime waiting to happen. The second option means she’ll stay a child and I already expressed how I feel about that. Also I hate to break it to the AixMitsuhiko fans but Haibara loves all the detective boys like her younger siblings. She is the older sister / senpai of the group and she’s never displayed any romantic feelings for Mitsuhiko, nor do I think she’d develop them in the future simply because she views him as nothing but a baby brother.

Now on to the juiciest question that you asked, “Will she be jailed because she was an ex BO member?” I have a lot to say on this so please bear with me😁 

We now know that Rei was planning on handing her back to the BO in the Bell Tree Train arc (see here). Thankfully, that didn’t happen thanks to Conan’s big brain thinking making Rei believe that Shiho died. Now, he is yet to meet Haibara and discover the truth about her (I cannot wait for this to happen!) but when he does, this is how I imagine things will go down: 

He’ll despise her because he’ll think of her as a criminal who worked for the BO and developed a deadly drug. However, he won’t be able to hand her back to the BO since he was the one who confirmed her death. Handing her back would only have the BO question his credibility / loyalty and possibly jeopardise his future there. Therefore, he’s left with one option; take her into PSB custody and interrogate her. But, there’s no way Conan, the Kudo family and even quite possibly Akai would just stand aside and not intervene. At the same time, I doubt Rei will simply believe her if she said “she was forced to make a poison” (even Conan didn’t believe her when they first met). So how will he back off? These are my theories: 

I feel the tapes Elena recorded packed way more than just the drug’s true purpose. She may have also recorded what the organisation forced her and Atsushi to go through. And with the fact that Vermouth seemed to blame her animosity for Shiho on her parents, it is quite possibly Elena mentioned Vermouth on the tapes. If Haibara brings up those tapes and Rei heard them, first of all he’ll get closure (because he loved Elena as his own mother) and finding out about Vermouth’s link to the Miyanos, he can investigate them more. I don’t think it’ll be difficult for him to uncover the truth about her family especially since he knows Vermouth’s secret and that couldn’t have been easy.

If Haibara doesn’t bring up the tapes, I think Akai will step in by asking Rei to hand over Vermouth (since she’s an American citizen) if he wants to take Haibara. Rei would never agree to that because Vermouth provides him with invaluable help and support in the organisation, so he’ll be forced to let Haibara go.

And for my final theory, just like how the Kudo family struck a deal with Rei to work with Akai (I reeaallly want Gosho to reveal what their talk was about), they’ll probably do the same thing to protect Haibara and in time, Rei will learn the truth about her past. 

So basically in the end, I don’t think she’ll be arrested. I’d like to think once Rei learns the truth about her and her family’s past, he’ll be relieved to have received closure (because he loved Elena so much) and subsequently decide to protect Haibara. Also Gosho hinted Rei and Haibara will eventually get along so the probability of her being arrested is low.

Haibara’s ending is something I’m really looking forward to and I’ll be crushed if she isn’t given the ending she deserved (there is plenty of room for her ending to be ruined so fingers crossed that doesn’t happen). I picture her returning as Shiho, staying with the Professor, slowly warming up to Mary and Sera (I can’t begin to imagine how she’ll feel when she finds out they’re related) and maybe even go on to be a narcotics agent. Why narcotics agent? (All explained here ). When it comes to her love life, God knows what will happen, but the Mitsuhiko pair is highly unlikely to happen. Also, I don’t see why she has to end up with someone. Her happy ending doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll be with someone. In fact...

Having a family and friends she cares about. 

Being free to live her life without constantly looking over her shoulder

Confronting Gin for killing her sister and whatever history they shared (I’m so mad GinxSherry has fizzled out without being answered. I need to know the truth about their past!!)

Finding peace and accepting her past

....are all enough reasons to give her the happy ending she deserves to have.

I hope this long speech helped answer your questions 😂. I honestly enjoyed writing it so, thank you so much for letting me do this 🖤😁

[wellimaginethat]

Nothing to Worry About

Pairing: Kelly Severide x (female) Reader

Requested?: Yes

Word Count: 2311

Author’s Note: I’m pretty sure I’ve said it before, but I love getting requests for Kelly.

Trigger Warning(s): Implied sex, implied consumption of alcohol, nervousness, long distance relationship, implied hooking up/casual relationship

Disclaimer: I don’t owe nor am I affiliated with any of the Chicago shows, I just like to play with the characters

Summary: Kelly has been dating a doctor from out of town for a while now, well when she gets a job at Gaffney, Kelly finally introduces her to everyone.

Y/N = Your Name

Y/LN = Your Last Name

You met Kelly when you were in Chicago for some doctor’s convention thing that you hadn’t been too keen on going to in the first place, so you ditched and went exploring.

At first you weren’t going to give him the time of day. His entire persona screamed player and you weren’t the kind of woman to fall for the game.

But then you decided why not have a little fun while you were in Chicago, so you let the cute firefighter take you home.

You didn’t know what it was, but for some reason the two of you were just drawn to each other after that night. Before you left he had asked for your number, and that began a somewhat casual relationship.

However, casual did not last long because before you knew it, you were starting to really fall for him. And he was starting to fall for you just as hard.

It all came to a boil one night. He paid you a surprise visit at your apartment, having driven hours to get there, only for you to not be home.

You came walking down the hallway an hour later and saw him sitting there, outside your door, waiting for you.

“Kelly?” You asked quietly, confused. “What are you doing here?

He looked up at you, blue eyes locking onto yours. You could tell he was confused and hurt by the conclusions he was drawing. You were dressed nicely and had your hair and makeup done up nicely as well, you looked like you were coming back from a date.

He stood up and went to move past you. “This was a bad idea.”

You stopped him by grabbing onto his arm. “Kelly wait.”

He only partially turned to look at you and shook his head. “Nah, I get it. I’m just a fun time whenever you happen to be in Chicago, a guy you keep on the hook just so you don’t have to be lonely.”

His words cut you deeply, but you knew he was only saying them because of how the situation looked. You shook your head. “It’s not like that.”

“Oh? Then what is it like?” Kelly asked you, and just the tone of his voice showed you how much he was hurting.

“Well it’s not what you think.” You told him. “Can you just come inside so we don’t have to have this conversation in the hallway?”

“No, I think I should just go.” He replied, pulling his arm out of your grasp. Even with how hurt he was, he was still gentle when pulling away from you, he never wanted to hurt you.

“Kelly please.” You begged softly. “I just got done dealing with my family being all dramatic.”

He stopped dead in his tracks and looked at you. “You were…”

“With my family, yeah.” You nodded. “I decided to take them out to dinner and they all decided to be dramatic and make the night horrible.”

Kelly’s face fell into an expression of instant regret and embarrassment. “I...I thought…”

“That I was on a date?” You asked and shook your head.

“And now I feel like an idiot.” Kelly ran a hand over his face and looked down. “I’m sorry.”

You smiled softly and shook your head, taking his hand in yours. “It’s fine, but can we please go inside now? I have extremely nosy neighbors.”

Kelly nodded and let you lead him into your apartment after you unlocked the door.

“I don’t think I can do this anymore.” The words came out of his mouth before he realized how they sounded, it only dawning on him when he saw the look on your face. “I mean how casual it is between us.”

You immediately relaxed and nodded slowly, a soft smile finding its way onto your lips.

He walked over to you. “I know it’s long distance, but I think we could make it work. I mean, we’re already making time for each other as is.”

“Kelly.” You started softly, eyes meeting his. “What are you saying exactly?”

“I want you to be my girlfriend.” Kelly told you, placing his hands on your hips gently. “I’m not interested in seeing any other girls besides you, and I hate the idea that there could be other guys in your life.”

“There aren’t.” You assure him softly. “It’s only you and has been for a long time.”

“So does that mean we’re exclusive?” He asked with a small smile.

You nodded, smiling a bit more. “Most definitely. And yeah, I’ll be your girlfriend.”

After that, you two were completely exclusive and made the whole long distance thing work. You’d either go to see him, or he’d come see you, or you’d meet in the middle somewhere. You made it work.

And then you got offered the position at Gaffney. You immediately called him up.

“Y/N? Everything okay?” Kelly asked, worried because you seldom called him in the middle of the day like this.

“Everything’s fine.” You breathed out, trying to contain your excitement. “I was just offered a position at Gaffney.”

“Here in Chicago?” Kelly asked, surprised.

“Yeah.” You breathed out, then it dawned on you that maybe he wouldn’t want you to move to Chicago, as well as a bunch of other insecurities.

“Are you going to take it?” Kelly asked you.

“I don’t know...do you think I should?” You asked timidly.

Kelly paused. “Do you want to?”

“Do you want me to?”

“This isn’t up to me, Y/N.” Kelly told you, getting a bit frustrated.

“Would you be okay with me living in Chicago?” You asked after a moment.

There was another pause on his end and that sent a pang of fear through you. “Do I want my girl to be living in the same city as me? Of course I do. But I also want you to make sure this is what you want, I don’t want you unhappy.”

Relief flooded you and you smiled wide even though he couldn’t see it. “Then I’m going to take it.”

You could practically hear the smile in his voice when he spoke next. “That’s great. I can’t wait until you’re here.”

And within the next few weeks you were moving. Kelly was excited to introduce you to his friends, but gave you time to settle in. He helped you pack up your previous apartment, and unpack at your new place in Chicago.

You smiled and admired your new place after you had gotten everything situated so that it was just so.

Kelly wrapped his arms around your from behind and placed a few chaste kisses to the crook of your neck and shoulder, causing you to giggle softly.

He smiled at you. “So what do you think of your new place?” He asked you softly, his arms still wound around your midsection.

You turned slightly in his embrace to get a good look at him. “I love it.”

“And Chicago?”

“So far? I love it too.” You smiled at him.

Kelly smiled and looked down briefly, not meeting your eyes as he asked his next question. “Anything else you love?”

“You.” You whispered your response, causing him to look up and finally meet your eyes.

There was a small silence between you and it almost made you panic, but you somehow remained cool on the outside, waiting for him to say something.

“You serious?” He asked softly, his breath catching.

You nodded. “Yeah, I’m serious.” You whispered out again. “I love you Kelly.”

He smiled softly. “I love you too.” He breathed out, a look of relief on his face.

It was about two weeks later that you were finally settled in enough to meet his friends, and you were nervous as hell.

You were still getting ready when Kelly showed up at your place and knocked on the door.

You hurried to pull the door open and greet him. “Hey.” You kissed his cheek. “Just give me a few more minutes and I’ll be ready, promise.”

He could immediately tell you were nervous just by the way you were acting, and grabbed your hand as you went to scurry away. “Hey, babe.” He said softly, pulling you back to him and causing you to look at him.

“Kelly, I gotta get ready.” You told him.

Kelly looked you up and down and raised a brow. “This isn’t ready?”

“I haven’t even started on my makeup.” You protested.

“I don’t really think you need it.” Kelly told you, but let it go. “I just want you to take a breath, okay? They’ll love you.”

You took a deep breath and nodded. “I hope you’re right.”

“I am, trust me.” Kelly told you, kissing your forehead. “Now you can go finish getting ready.”

You smiled and scurried off to the bathroom to do your makeup.

You fidgeted in the car the entire ride to the bar, causing Kelly to place a hand on your leg in an attempt to calm you.

When you finally got to the bar, Kelly led you in with an arm wrapped around your shoulders.

You were met with a few questioning looks from people you’d only heard stories about and you immediately felt awkward, your stomach was in knots. You were well aware that the people you were about to meet were more than coworkers, more than just friends, they were Kelly’s family and that meant you had to make a good impression. You were beyond worried that they wouldn’t like you.

You realized that the questioning looks weren’t directed at you, but at Kelly, causing you to look at him.

He walked over to the group, his arm still around your shoulders. “Everyone, this is Dr. Y/N Y/LN.” He introduced you, and the looks didn’t change. “My girlfriend.”

The questioning looks then turned to a mix of surprise and confusion. A blonde man stepped up. “Girlfriend?”

Kelly nodded to him and you were left confused, had he not told them about you?

“So that’s why you haven’t exactly been friendly with the ladies lately.” Someone commented from behind, you didn’t see who.

“It’s been long distance for a while now and she just moved to Chicago.” Kelly told them.

“Why’s this the first we’re hearing about her?” A man from behind the bar asked.

“I wanted to keep her to myself.” Kelly answered him sarcastically. “I didn’t wanna jinx it, but I don’t think that’s gonna happen.” He looked down at you with a small smile.

“So this is where you’ve been disappearing to?” The blonde man asked.

Kelly nodded to him.

Instead of commenting, he turned to you and offered his hand out to you. “Matt Casey.”

“Ah, the best friend.” You commented, shaking his hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Introductions went off without a hitch and you seemed to fit in pretty well with them, and your nervousness from earlier melted away over the course of the night.

You currently sat across from Sylvie Brett, talking to her about different things when the conversation got turned around to you and Kelly.

“So how long have the two of you been together?” She asked you before taking a sip of her drink.

“Well we started out as causal.” You told her. “And that was about a year ago, but a few months in he asked me to be his girlfriend, and we became exclusive. So we’ve officially been dating for nearly eight months.”

“Wow, I didn’t think he had it in him.” Sylvie commented.

You chuckled a bit and played with your drink nervously. “Yeah, I know he’s got a thing with the ladies.”

Sylvie noticed your unease and was quick to try to remedy it. “Hey, he seems pretty serious about you.” She spoke softly.

You looked up. “Then why didn’t he tell anyone about me?”

“You heard him, he said he didn’t wanna jinx it.” She answered, still in the same soft voice.

Your eyes went over to Kelly, he was across the bar talking to Matt and Herrmann about something, and when he noticed you looking at him, he smiled at you. You returned the smile before turning back to Sylvie. “I really hope that’s why.”

She nodded and smiled at you. “It is. He loves you, I can tell by the way he looks at you.”

Your cheeks turned pink as you smiled softly and nodded.

When you got back to your apartment, you sat on the couch and waited for Kelly to sit next to you.

“Alright, go ahead, ask me.” Kelly told you as you leaned into his side.

You raised a brow. “Ask you what?”

“Why I didn’t tell them about you.” Kelly answered, looking down at you.

“Well, why didn’t you?” You asked softly, you didn’t sound upset or hurt, because you wanted to believe what he had said, and what Slyvie had said.

“Because if I had, then they would have wanted to meet you sooner.” Kelly answered you honestly, letting out a small sigh. “And I wasn’t ready.”

You nodded slowly. “But you could’ve told them before we walked into the bar. You could’ve told them when I moved here.”

“I know.” Kelly sighed again, nodding, he knew you had a point.

You looked down at your hands. “Just tell me that the reason you didn’t tell them wasn’t because you aren’t serious about me.” You said quietly.

Kelly turned to get a better look at you. “That’s not why.” He said softly, getting you to look at him by lifting your chin gently with his fingers. “Hey, I love you.”

You smiled softly and nodded. “I love you too, I was just worried.”

He pulled you into his side again and kissed the side of your head. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.” He assured you.

[trombonesinspace]

Typhoid Mary: feminist femme fatale?

“Season 4 was going to be Typhoid Mary, Alice Eve [who played the role in Iron Fist], we were doing a kind of...I had a much different version of her than what Raven [Metzner] had done in Iron Fist. I was kind of rebooting what she was going to be like, and we were going to do a, you know, kind of a warped love story/murder mystery kind of femme fatale, but kind of a modern-day, feminist version of it, as opposed to kind of the older, sexist kind of femme fatale archetype.”

-Erik Oleson, in conversation with Steven DeKnight, SaveDaredevilCon 

As I said yesterday, I have some thoughts about this! If you want some opinions nobody asked for, about a storyline that may never come to pass, you’ve come to the right place! Let’s dive in.

A femme fatale is a character type with quite a history, that can take various forms. She is always an attractive woman who brings ruin to the man who gets involved with her. But sometimes she is deliberately manipulative, while sometimes she is more a victim of circumstances. She may be evil, or she may be sympathetic/tragic. But whatever her moral alignment, she has two defining traits: sexual allure, and some form of negative consequences for the hero as a result of his involvement with her.

A woman who schemes against the hero, and succeeds in harming him, but without using feminine wiles? Not a femme fatale. The Marvel TV universe has featured several examples on different shows: Madame Gao, Mariah Dillard, Alexandra. And, ironically, the version of Typhoid Mary who appeared in Iron Fist. (We’ll get there.)

A sexy woman who tries to manipulate/damage the hero, but fails? Also not a femme fatale. I wish I could give some examples, but sadly I can’t think of any, in dramas at least. Our current media culture loves a sexy manipulator, no writer ever seems to introduce one into a dramatic story without making her succeed in her schemes, to some extent at least.

Which is unfortunate, from my perspective, because I loathe sexy manipulators. It’s a character type I really dislike, whenever I encounter her. As soon as she shows up, I know the hero is going to fall for her bullshit like a chump, and I’m going to end up respecting him less as a result. I could try to unpack my feelings about this a bit more, but that would probably make a post all on its own, so for now I’ll leave it at that.

This doesn’t mean I hate all femmes fatales—it really depends on her motivation and her behavior. If she isn’t trying to harm the hero, and it happens due to circumstances, then I might like the character, but the story becomes a tragedy. Which is not necessarily bad. Just, you know. Tragic.

Anyway! Let’s talk about Typhoid Mary.

Mary Walker is a woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities), and high-level combat skills. In the comics, she is also a mutant with mental powers. She appeared in the Daredevil comics starting in 1988.

In this original version, her personality fragmented due to childhood abuse, leading her to vow as an adult that no man would ever hurt her again. Her personalities are: Mary, who is timid and gentle; Typhoid, who is adventurous, lusty, and violent; and Bloody Mary, who is even more violent, sadistic, and hates all men.

Mary becomes romantically involved with Matt Murdock, who is cheating on his girlfriend, Karen Page, to be with her. At the same time, Typhoid is trying to ruin him, having been hired to do so by the Kingpin. Matt can’t tell they’re the same woman, because when she switches personalities all her bio signs change (voice, scent, heartbeat, etc) so much that he can’t recognize her. (Uh, sure.) She may also be using some of her mutant powers to confuse his senses. I haven’t read the comics, I’m relying here on what I could learn from the internet.

Eventually Typhoid drops him off a bridge, but then Mary finds him and gets him to a hospital, saving him. Karen is with him when he wakes up, but he breaks her heart by calling out for Mary.

This storyline...does not thrill me. As I said, I haven’t read it, but comics writing about mental illness is generally neither nuanced nor accurate, and comics writing about women circa 1988 is also not great, by today’s standards. And comics Matt’s disastrous love life is legendary—cheating on your girlfriend is bad, Matt! Don’t do it! 

I have, however, watched season 2 of Iron Fist, where we get a different version. This Mary Walker is a US army veteran, special ops, who was captured by the Sokovian military. Her personality fragmented due to the brutal abuse she received from her captors for nearly two years, until she finally escaped. She got a medical discharge from the army after being diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Her personalities are: Mary, who is innocent and naive; and Walker, who is a ruthless, coolly efficient mercenary-for-hire. The existence of a third, ultraviolent personality, previously unknown to either Mary or Walker, is revealed near the end of the season. 

Mary meets and befriends Danny Rand, while Walker is hired by his enemies to stalk him, and eventually capture him so they can steal his Iron Fist powers from him. She later changes sides, getting hired to bring down Davos, the season’s main villain, by Joy Meachum, his former ally.

There are clear parallels to the Daredevil comics storyline, albeit in less extreme form—Mary befriends the hero, but isn’t romantically involved with him; her more violent personality works against him and fights him, but doesn’t try to destroy him. 

I enjoyed this version of the character more than I expected to, for a couple of reasons. For one, she is never the out of control, “crazy” stereotype of a person with mental illness. Both Mary and Walker are more-or-less functional adults, managing to live a strange hybrid life, aware of each other’s existence even though they don’t share memories.

But what I especially like is that she isn’t sexualized, at all. It’s incredibly rare, in my experience, to see a young, female antagonist opposing a male hero, and not have her be sexy. Older women are exempt from this obligation (see my list of examples above), but the young ones always vamp it up, and I am so tired of it. I am not opposed to sexy women, but I am very opposed to the requirement that all women must be sexy. (Unless they’re old.) Male antagonists aren’t required to be alluring, so why should women be? (Yes, I know why. I just don’t like it.)

There’s also a lot of potential YIKES in sexualizing a woman with a severe mental illness, which was caused by (among other things) repeated sexual violence. Could it be done in a way that isn’t super problematic? It’s possible, sure. Am I assuming that most television writers would give the subject the respect it deserves? NOPE! 

I’m really glad they chose to just not go there. Walker is extremely good at what she does, takes no shit from anyone, and (almost) never gets riled up. After everything she’s been through, nothing in her present life has the power to faze her, and none of the men around her have the power to intimidate her. It’s pretty great!

She isn’t the least bit coy or seductive, and, equally refreshing, none of the men try to sexualize her or hit on her. Everyone Walker talks to knows she is a highly skilled professional, and they treat her accordingly. Or, when someone does disrespect her, it’s never gendered as far as I can remember, and it stops as soon as she calmly states what she’s going to do to him if it doesn’t.

As for Mary, although she has a more feminine appearance than Walker (hair down and loose, makeup), she is also not sexualized. Her friendship with Danny, who is in an established relationship with Colleen Wing, is platonic, and no one else tries to hit on her that I remember.

So this is the version of Typhoid Mary that Erik Oleson was going to reboot, into a femme fatale. Only, you know. A feminist one. 

I...have some questions. What does that even mean? What does feminism mean to Erik Oleson? Let’s be real, the idea of a woman becoming an ultraviolent, sadistic man-hater as a result of sexual trauma would have been seen as feminist in some circles, back in 1988 when that version was written. So what, exactly, did he have in mind?

As I said before, sexual allure is a necessary component of a femme fatale. So she was definitely gonna be sexy. And you know now how I feel about sexy female antagonists. As for the “warped love story” part...Matt wouldn’t be cheating on Karen, since they aren’t together (please, for the love of mercy, don’t have them get together right before he meets Mary, we did that once and I do NOT want to see it again), but I am still not a fan of Matt/Mary as a couple.

Her Dissociative Identity Disorder raises some serious issues around consent, and even if the show chose to ignore that, there’s still the issue of past sexual trauma. Unless Oleson’s reworking of the character was going to include a completely different back story, a Matt/Mary relationship would mean Matt unknowingly having sex with a woman who has suffered brutal sexual abuse in her past. Not to mention, having sex with her that only one part of her personality actually wants.

Is it possible for someone with Mary’s past trauma and present mental illness to have a positive sexual relationship? In reality, of course! In the hands of writers with only a layman’s knowledge of psychology, on a show that loves to torment its hero, I wouldn’t bet on it. How do you suppose our poster boy for Catholic guilt would react when he inevitably finds out the truth?

Plus, aside from any issues around Mary herself, Matt starting a relationship with anyone other than the handful of people who already know his secret identity, means a whole new round of Matt lying to someone he cares about. Does anyone really want to see that? I know I don’t. Sure, maybe he’d tell her eventually, but how long would they have to date before he decided to trust her with the truth?

I’m not opposed to the Mary Walker from Iron Fist appearing in Daredevil, if the writers could come up with a new story for her (i.e, don’t just have her repeat all the same plot beats with Matt that she already did with Danny). But bringing her in as a femme fatale really doesn’t sit well with me. We’ve already seen Matt in an ultimately destructive relationship with a sexy, violent, morally grey woman. I really don’t want to watch Round 2: now with multiple personalities!

Of course, maybe we never will. The quote at the beginning of this post is from just a couple of weeks ago (July 25 2020), so Erik Oleson still seems to think it’s a fine idea. But obviously we don’t know yet if there will ever be a season 4, or who the show runner will be if there is. He may never get to make the story he was planning.

So yes, I realize I’m merely speculating about a completely theoretical story that may never happen. But I wanted to write this anyway. I had a strong “ugh, no” reaction to the idea of a feminist femme fatale Typhoid Mary, and I wanted to go deeper and pick apart my reasons for not liking the idea.

To the three of you who have read this all the way through to the end (this post is nearly 2000 words, yikes), thank you for indulging me! These are, as always, my own opinions, and YMMV. 

[murasaki-murasame]

Thoughts on Fruits Basket 2019 2nd Season Ep25 [”I’m Different Now”]:

For the season finale [but not series finale, because they’ve already announced a third and final season for next year], we get a huge plot twist that completely changes our perspective on one of the characters, and their various relationships, in a way that has major implications about the future of the story and how things will progress.

Aside from all that, we also get the world’s worst gender reveal party.

Thoughts under the cut.

Just to start off, this episode adapted chapters 96 and 97 like I figured it would, to wrap up this season with a big cliffhanger to hype people up for the final season. And for better or worse, this was a pretty much 1:1 adaptation of these chapters, so there’s not really any differences to talk about that I noticed.

Anyway, I may as well just cut right to the chase and talk about the whole Shocking Gender Reveal Plot Twist[tm], now that that’s out in the open and everyone can stop tiptoeing around it.

It’s not like I’ve really tried to hide it or how I feel about it as a plot point before this, but I really do dislike it on basically every level. There’s a whole lot to unpack about it, but really at the end of the day it’s just one of those old-fashioned plot devices where we’re meant to think that someone being a different gender to what you thought they were is inherently something scandalous and shocking. They could have at least immediately started talking about the idea of her being raised as a man against her will, since that’d at least give it some actual meaning and value, but they don’t, which really says a lot about how that’s actually kinda just a foot-note that the story doesn’t dwell on much, and in practice we’re just meant to be surprised that she’s a girl.

It doesn’t really help that the season just ends right there, when in the manga this whole sequence keeps going in the next chapter, and I think they start touching upon that part of Akito’s backstory then, but the anime won’t get into that until next year at this point, so I think it’s fair to take it as it’s presented right now.

The idea of Akito being a girl is surprising in basically the exact same way that it’d be surprising if we found out that Haru was a Sanrio fan, or something. That is to say, it’d be vaguely surprising, but then we’d all just go on with our lives.

Even at this point you can definitely guess that there’s probably something going on with her being forced to present as a man, but it hasn’t really been explained or touched upon yet, so it’s all pretty nebulous, at least from the perspective of someone like Tohru who barely knows Akitto at all and doesn’t know all the stuff about her past that Kureno does.

In general I’ve never been a fan of this entire trope to begin with, but I think it’s made a lot worse by the fact that, as you get further into the rest of the story, it becomes clear that it’s not even that important, and the majority of what’s going on with Akito’s character has much more to do with the curse situation and how it impacts her relationship with the zodiac members. The whole deal with her character is how being the god of the zodiac from birth forced her to be pretty much raised in seclusion, with her only frame of reference for human relationships being abusive cult behavior. She’s miserable and twisted because she isn’t allowed to live a normal life due to her status, and her possessiveness gets enabled by the people that she clings onto, putting her into a loop of arrested development and mental instability.

And literally none of that has anything to do with her gender, lol. None of it would be different if she was a cis man, or if she had been raised as a woman. Because that whole deal isn’t actually all that relevant to why she is the way she is, why she has the attitude and world-view that she does, and why her relationships are so fucked up. Even if you decided to write out her romantic/sexual relationships with people like Kureno and Shigure by having her be a man, that’d barely change anything about the story as a whole, because even if it was entirely for platonic reasons Kureno would have still decided to stay with Akito and ultimately enable her actions, and Shigure would most likely still more or less do all the same things he’s already done. And obviously to begin with, if Akito was actually a dude that wouldn’t even necessarily mean you couldn’t still have some of these relationships play out this way, so you can’t even really act like the story required her to be a girl for that reason, lol.

And for better or worse, if Akito was written as a gay dude, it could still totally have lead to all the same stuff with her possessiveness over the male zodiac members, and her irrational hatred of the female zodiac members. It’d just be a different, more homophobic sort of trope than what actually happens, in a way that plays out in basically the exact same way. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve gotten a villain who’s a gay dude that irrationally hates women for Reasons [tm], and who has ominous and sinful relationships with men.

Which is also the reason why I don’t exactly think the story would be ‘better’ if she had been written as a gay dude, or as a trans woman, or anything like that. With her whole role in the story to begin with, it’d play out in an obnoxious way no matter what. Mostly I just kinda wish they had completely avoided this sort of outdated, schlocky storytelling to begin with, and just focused entirely on the more interesting stuff about her character.

And in terms of outdated tropes, we haven’t even gotten properly introduced to Ren yet, lol.

I’m also assuming that they’re not exactly planning to change anything about this in the anime, so I’m just going with my existing thoughts about how the manga handled it, since that should still carry over to the anime.

I know that this is all just beating a dead horse with a stick because of how long the series has been out for, but I still just can’t help but be irritated by this whole mess.

I don’t want to spoil it too much, but I think a good comparison to make is the recent Banana Fish adaptation, and how from what I gathered, most people’s reactions to that series’ ending was ‘I know it’s just a product of it’s time, but this is just kinda unironically shitty’.

Ultimately, I think a big part of why this annoys me so much is because I actually really like Akito’s whole character and what the story does with her after this point. I just dislike how it’s shackled to this unnecessary plot twist that ends up dominating the conversation surrounding her even though it’s barely relevant to anything after this in the story.

The stuff with her being the god of the zodiac and how much it fucks up her entire life and all of her relationships is genuinely really compelling, and represents an integral part of the story’s overall message about the nature of abusive families and cults, and the various ways they end up hurting everyone inside them. Her whole arc is about learning how to embrace a life that’s not based around being a god surrounded by their followers, and I think that aspect of it works really well, especially with how it ties into all the stuff with Tohru later on.

I also think that all the stuff with Kureno that gets revealed in this episode is genuinely really interesting, and is ACTUALLY a plot twist that meaningfully shakes things up, and people actually have a reason to be surprised by it. Especially Tohru, since her whole goal at this point is to break the curse, and now she’s literally found someone who’s already had their curse get broken. It’s basically the first major lead she’s found in her whole search for answers, but in the end it kinda just, y’know, gets overshadowed by the gender reveal and her being shocked about that instead.

It’s also still really interesting to me how the Kureno situation is basically the only time where the story seriously talks about the implications of the animal transformation part of the curse, and how someone in the zodiac might internalize that part of themselves. Most of the time, the animal transformation part of the curse is kinda irrelevant, and the series could work in 99% the same way without it. I think Takaya’s literally said before that she didn’t even plan to include that whole aspect of the story until her editor suggested it fairly late into the process, and I think that shows with how it’s kinda just there for some wacky hijinks early on, and then it just gets benched in favor of the actual stuff Takaya wanted to write about.

But with Kureno we actually get a look into what it meant for him to be able to literally turn into a bird, and how losing that ability affected his sense of identity and how he engaged with the world. It’s still ultimately just metaphorical in it’s own way, but it still feels like more of an acknowledgement of the fact that they literally turn into animals than basically any other part of the story, lol. And in general I just think it’s at least compelling on paper that he ends up shackling himself of his own free will, because that sense of freedom and disconnect made him feel obligated to stay with Akito to ‘make up for it’.

I just wish that Kureno as a whole was interesting enough for me to actually care that much about all of this, lol. In the end he’s just kinda intentionally boring, and it’s more interesting to write about his role in the story than it is to actually, like, watch him do stuff as a character. Which I guess is all just part of how much it bugs me that all of the interesting stuff in this episode, and this whole part of the story, feels like it gets overshadowed and drowned out by a dumb shock value plot twist.

There’s also all the thematic stuff with how he’s basically Tohru if she was taken advantage of and had all of her own bad habits enabled until she ended up barely being a functioning adult. He even has his whole personal conflict about feeling like moving on with his life and developing new relationships is an act of betrayal towards someone that he really needs to let go of at this point. But then you just get into the whole Uo thing and how their whole relationship is about as compelling as the whole Cinderella plot that it’s clearly a reference to, and aaaaaaah why is this series so frustrating, lol.

Really, the fact that I can gripe so much about stuff like this just goes to show how much I like the series in general, since I can’t muster up any strong feelings about stuff like this if I just straight up dislike it as a whole. At least for me, stuff like this is much more frustrating when it’s one part of a larger story that I really love. Thankfully there’s more good than bad when it comes to this series, so I can still hold onto it as a personal fave that I just happen to have complaints about.

I’m genuinely really excited for the final season, in spite of all this, since there’s a whole lot I love about the final third of the manga, and in a funny way, the fact that Akito being a girl isn’t actually that big of a deal in the long run, and what actually happens with her as a character after this is more about her status as the god of the zodiac, actually means that I’ll [mostly] enjoy a lot of it. It’s mostly just this specific part where we get the Big Reveal [tm] itself, and the immediate lead-up to it, that bugs me.

Anyway, as a whole, I still think this is a good episode that serves as a fitting cliffhanger for the season. The actual plot twist that most of the episode focuses on is really good, and serves a really meaningful role in progressing the story, and it gives a pretty clear picture of how we’re entering the final act of the story.

Hopefully the final season will start in April next year like the first two seasons did, but it’s entirely possible it might get delayed because of the whole pandemic situation. But I could live with them holding off on starting the final season until it’s ready to come out.

Also, before I forget, they haven’t said anything about it, I’m pretty sure the final season will also be around 25 episodes long. With how many chapters they have left, if they stick to the same two chapters per episode pace that the anime’s had on average thus far, they could easily cover the rest of the story in 22 episodes, which would be a lot easier to expand by an extra two or three episodes, than it’d be to condense it all the way down to 13 or so episodes.

[marta-bee]

Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

Sherlockians, I want to talk about Mary. Or not about Mary the character, because enough words have been spent on that topic and I’m nowhere near brave enough to wade into that one on a snowy Sunday afternoon, but rather on the way we as readers can (perhaps should) relate to her. At some level what follows is about this Tumblr post, where an anonymous commenter asked for “any fics where Mary’s not the bad guy” and noticed that a lot of the evil-Mary fanworks “gets a bit misogynistic in my opinion”; but I’m also using that as something of a springboard, and don’t mean this as a direct reply to that post. (Which is why I’m not replying in a reblog; please everyone go check out that post and comment on it as well.)

Anyway, let me start with two basic points that I hope are pretty noncontroversial.

Mary is an antagonist, at least some of the time.

Mary has at least some aspects of her character that are bad-making (more on what I mean by “bad-making” in a moment), or at least would be if she were a real person.

The devil’s in the details here, as it is with most things worth talking about, so let’s unpack that a bit.

(Long post is long, and so continued under the cut.)

When I say someone’s an antagonist, I’m not really making a value-judgment. I’m purposefully avoiding that word, “villain,” which calls to mind “villainous” as a description of their personality and character. An antagonist is just someone who plot-wise stands in opposition to the character. They’re wrapped up in the conflict our hero has to overcome.

Let’s take a pretty straightforward (and unrelated to our fandom, so hopefully less emotionally charged for a lot of us) example: the first “Hunger Games” book. Katniss is thrown into a gladiatorial fight to the death with twenty-three other teenagers. With the exception of Rue and (later in the games) Peeta, everyone else is an antagonist in relation to Katniss. She has to hope for their death and be prepared to kill them because their continued existence stands in the way of her surviving the games. Most are reduced to numbers with s knowing precious little about them – certainly not enough to think they deserve death. But they’re still antagonists because they’re obstacles the hero has to work past if she hopes to succeed.

Or take Draco Malfoy, in the early Harry Potter books. He’s a thoroughly unpleasant boy, spoiled and sniveling certainly, but I’d be hard-pressed to call him bad. His biggest defining characteristic is he stands up and tries to fight Harry; but often as not this comes down to inter-house squabbling and the only reason he and Harry are on opposite sides is how they were sorted. As we learn, given the way he was raised and the political situation he was raised in, it’s actually pretty admirable how on the periphery of the Death Eaters he stays. But he’s still the antagonist, he’s the one Harry has to outsmart or outperform or otherwise get around.

It's only natural we cheer when the antagonists fail. We’re primed to identify with the protagonist, after all, and their failure means the protagonist gets to win. Even if objectively know the antagonist doesn’t actually deserve to fail, well. That’s just kind of how stories work.

Getting back to Sherlock, I said it’s pretty noncontroversial that Mary’s an antagonist. So when I say that I don’t mean she’s evil, or even that she’s only an antagonist. But the woman shoots our star character in the chest. It’s her secrets and her very presence that drive Sherlock into exile (and drive Sherlock and John apart) for a second time, undoing whatever victory  Sherlock achieved when he defeated Moriarty’s web. She’s certainly a problem to be addressed and worked past in HLV. In terms of canon and parallels with the Doyle stories, there’s quite a lot about her actions (particular in Leinster Gardens) that all but screams “Sebastian Moran.” Ergo: antagonist.

There’s also a quieter, more ordinary sense that I suspect will be more controversial but is worth talking about anyway. Like a lot of Sherlockians and Johnlockers, I’m a big fan of making space for John/Mary/Sherlock in happy OT3 land. I think Sherlock and John at least want some version of that in canon; maybe not romantically, but they like to imagine their being room in their lives for these different relationships to not be in conflict. But in BBC-canon that hope’s not really borne out. This deserves a full meta on its own, but briefly: when Mary observes that neither she nor Sherlock were “the first” (talking about Sholto), she situates them in competition for the same position in John’s life, rather than in distinct, complementary ones (which an OT3 seems to require); and when Sherlock notes at the end of TSOT episode that “we can’t all three dance,” he seems to come to a similar conclusion. I do love me some good Johnlockary fic, but I don’t think this is where the show was heading

At a more basic level, I’d actually argue it almost has to be this way with these three- at least if we’re to hold on to John and Sherlock being “the two of us against the world.” In the 1800s men and women had such different roles in society, a man would do very different things and relate in very different ways to his close (male) friends than he would to his (female) wife. So Watson could run off with Holmes and have adventure, then return home to Mary for the peaceful, even loving family life, without one really being in tension with the other. But by the twenty-first century those spheres aren’t nearly so different. Even if you don’t imagine them as lovers, it’s hard not to imagine a self-respecting woman today saying as Mary did in TAB, “I don’t mind you going; I mind you leaving me behind.” One of the biggest challenges for a modern Holmes adaptation (or indeed, for a modern consumer of the original Doyle stories) is how to balance Holmes’ and Watson’s private “intimate partnership” – however we understand that term – against (John) Watson’s marriage to Mary with all we moderns expect of that relationship in terms of emotional fidelity, equal partnership, shared future, etc.

Put more simply: Mary should throw a monkey-wrench in the mix; she should be something that must be accounted for and whose presence should affect how Holmes and Watson can interact. Not to mean her presence is incompatible with Holmes and Watson’s close and exclusive relationship, but at a minimum she’s a factor in need of an explanation. She can’t help but be antagonistic, at least to some interpretations of Holmes’s and (John) Watson’s relationship.

As I said, with antagonists, it’s only natural to cheer for the protagonists, which almost inevitably means rooting for the protagonists’ failure. At least we root for them being de-antagonized, converted into some other relationship to the main character. But if you’ve spent any time on AO3, you’ve probably come across fanfic focusing on the antagonists (*cough* Loki *cough**cough* Drary *hacks up a longue* Silm-fandom-this-one’s-for-you *cough*’s). We can be a thirsty bunch when it comes to our antagonists, for characters we by all rights should be primed to hate. And even at the level of primary-canon, one of the biggest ways the primary creator shows their emotional growth is by realizing their antagonists aren’t truly their enemy. Like most readers I had a tear in my eye as Cato suffered through the night, begging for death; and certainly I would have been outraged if Harry hadn’t saved Draco from the Room of Requirements in “Deathly Hallows.” Gollum’s treachery is explained and he is given his own completion; Darth Vader is spared by Luke and allowed to look on his son with his own eyes; and the Klingons, Cardassians, and Borg are given their own sort of redemption in Worf, Garak, and Seven of Nine.

All of which is to say: it’s understandable, even natural, why people would have a hard time rooting for the antagonist, but there’s a long history of fandom peoples steering into the curve on this one. So it’s also understandable, even natural, that people want to hear stories with them at the center, both new stories about them and also versions of the original canon narrative that don’t need them to wear the black hat all the time. Some folks want Mary, Sherlock, and John to all go crime-solving together. I personally think there’s sometimes a danger of turning an antagonist – especially one who is at least morally gray (and I promise we’re getting there) like Mary is – into a protagonist without wrestling with what turned them into an antagonist in the first place; so if you want to bring Mary back to the side of John and Sherlock you need to grapple with what pushed them into opposing roles in the first place, or else risk your plot feeling “cheap” and unearned. (In fairness, this warning could as easily be directed to Mofftiss as anyone in fandom!)

But at an absolute minimum, I think it’s pretty obvious that lots of fans want to imagine the antagonists as at the heart of their own stories, and lots of fan-creators have done a really good job of providing those stories. Just as a lot of fans will almost instinctively be drawn to hate them, well, if you want to go a different path you’re in good company.

Enough about protagonist/antagonist, which as I said is more about the role the character fills in the story than about their morality or character. This, for me at least, is where it really gets interesting.

Before we get started, though, I know a lot of people struggle against this idea of morality when it applies to fictional characters and fictional stories. They’ll point out (rightly) that just because they enjoy a non-con PWP doesn’t mean they approve of rape in real life; that their reading preferences come from a different place entirely than their moral judgments. But at the same time, a lot of people (equally rightly) struggle to enjoy stories that glorify things we don’t consider worth glorifying. It’s one thing to enjoy a story about Draco rejecting the Death Eaters, returning to mainstream wizarding society and joining the Aurors; quite another to imagine him dating Harry while he’s still walking around calling Hermione a mudblood.

Or getting back to the Sherlock fandom, a lot of people are most comfortable with stories with Mary’s the antagonist because she’s got a character history and just personality traits where, if we met someone like her in real-life, we’d consider her morally bad. Or on the flip slide, those fans who want a not-evil!Mary in their stories often like to imagine her as the kind of person we’d describe as good or redeemed or some such thing, if she were an actual person. Mary’s morality, at least the morality of a similar person operating in the real world (because --speaking as a former philosophy Ph.D. student who taught philosophical ethics for years-- let me tell you: talking about the morality of fictional constructs gets very messy, very quickly), seems to matter to a great number of fans. So let’s talk about that.

I said above I thought most people would agree, Mary had parts o her character that were bad-making. What I mean is there are aspects about her that tend to make a person bad, unless they’re explained by some other factor. I’ve got in mind something vaguely similar to W.D. Ross’s theories of prima facie duties (if any of you studied this in your Ethics 101 courses- you would have in mine). Basically, the idea is we have all these duties that apply to us, but they can seem to conflict, and we may decide (rightly) in any given situation that one or the other is the more important one for us to follow. The classic example is the duty to keep our promises and prevent suffering when we can. You can imagine situations where you can’t do both- for instance, if I promised to meet you for lunch and on my way to the restaurant came across a man who fell into a ditch and twisted his ankle along a deserted road, where it’s unlikely someone else would come upon him. If I stop to help him I’ll miss our lunch date and break my promise; and while I still have a duty to keep that promise, I think most people would agree it’s more important to stop and help the person. We’d all be hard-pressed to say if I helped the stranger, I’d failed at my duty to keep a promise; at least not in the same way as if I could have kept that promise and just chose not to. That’s Ross’s idea of prima facie duties: that we have all these general obligations on us, but which actually should govern our choices in any particular instance comes down to the details of that situation.

I think there’s something similar going on with Mary’s character. This is actually a good way to evaluate most of us morally, in my opinion, but it’s doubly useful when it comes to Mary because she’s simultaneously got so many troubling aspects about her that just demand some sort of justification, but at the same time, because Mofftiss really screwed the pooch here, we don’t really have the information we need to give a definitive answer. So it’s useful to say: here’s something about Mary that needs accounting for, even if we don’t have enough information to evaluate her definitively.

Let’s take Magnussen’s biggest accusation against her: “All those wet jobs.” Mary killed people on her own prerogative, and she left behind a lot of grieving relatives who would love their revenge – both a testament to the suffering she caused, and a real risk for John, the baby that will become Rosie, and everyone else in their orbit. But if that’s all there is to it, it’s not wholly dissimilar to John’s decision to shoot the cabbie. It may have been different, but we don’t have the information to know that; it feels different, but most because John was saving Sherlock (who we know), whereas if Mary was saving anyone, it’s not someone we the viewer have an emotional connection to. Still, to borrow a phrase from Ricky Ricardo, Mary, you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.

Or to take an even more serious charge, Mary shot Sherlock, was prepared to make John watch him die all over again and force him to go through that grief that so nearly destroyed him the first time around. Unforgiveable, yeah? The best shot at justification here is that Mary had somehow got herself cornered, so that shooting Sherlock was somehow an attempt to escape an even worse sitation. This really demands a full meta to dive in to, but very briefly, I think Mary never intended to kill Magnussen and was instead trying to intimidate him; meaning she couldn’t let Sherlock undercut her power, but equally she couldn’t leave Magnussen with the impression that John and Sherlock were somehow her partners; so shooting Sherlock was the best way to keep him from becoming a full target of Magnussen’s. If that’s the case, the whole showdown in Magnussen’s office becomes markedly similar to Sherlock’s decision to “kill” himself on the roof of St. Bart’s. Mary is willing to cause a lot of pain to avoid even greater destruction, but at the same time, the whole situation that compels this choice was fed by her limiting her options when she decided to intimidate Magnussen. Similar to how Sherlock, once he’s on the roof of St. Bart’s, has no better option than to fake his own death and leave John to grieve; but how he does have some degree of culpability for engaging Moriarty in the first place and egging on Moriarty’s destructive obsession with Sherlock.

My point isn’t that any of these parallels really hold up to scrutiny. Sherlock risked his own life in TRF (and John’s pain) while Mary was prepared to kill another. John was ready to kill “a bad man” to save our hero while whatever murders Mary committed were against unnamed people in undetermined circumstances, and narratively certainly don’t pull at or heart strings in the same way John’s heroic killing of Jefferson Hope does. But the point is, with Mary, so much of what a lot of fans object to involve these vaguely-told stories where whatever factors would excuse her actions just are left untold. What we can say definitively is “all those wet jobs” require justification. Mary’s willingness to shoot Sherlock require justification. These things are prima facie wrong (or bad-making, the kind of things that tend to make something bad in the absence of other explanations) and demand an accounting for.

I’m focusing on Mary’s violence more than what a lot of fans have identified as her abuse toward John. Partly, this is personal: I have my own experience with abusive relationships and don’t entirely trust my ability to parse similar dynamics in fiction; certainly I don’t want to tie that part of my past to public debate, and I’ve not worked out how to talk about Mary and John without over-personalizing it. But I will say, there’s a lot to be considered on that front as well, and people interested in thinking through Mary’s im/morality shouldn’t ignore it. As a starting point, inevity-johnlocked pointed to several of her old posts making the case that Mary was an emotional abuser. silentauroriamthereal’s fic “Rebuilding Rome” looks at a lot of these issues in a really powerful way if you’re looking for an exploration in fic form. I’ll just add, even if I thought Mary was justified and so “good” in some sense (and my internal compass is so screwed up, I’m not really qualified to tell at this point), the way she chose or had to lie about her past to John seems a particularly bad match for a man like him with his trust issues. So even if you think Mary is good, there’s a lot of justification for saying she’s still not good for him.

So what does this mean for reading fics involving a kinder, gentler Mary? First, I’d emphasize there’s no shame or judgment in reading what you want. Much as writers may choose to write about all kinds of things they’d disapprove of in real life, readers have that same freedom to scratch whatever readerly itch they like, with no need to defend that to anyone else. Kinktomato and all that. On the other hand, I know I personally enjoy stories more when I can lose myself in them, and – again, for me personally – it helps me do that if my values are at least compatible with what’s presented as praiseworthy. I don’t have to guard myself as I enter the story. So it’s definitely worth thinking about how comfortable you are with fiction that vilifies Mary or pardons her or something in between, because it may make it easier or harder to really immerse yourself in a fic.

Then again, maybe that’s just me. I am a rather persnickety chickadee with things like this.

I do know that many fandoms have an unfortunate history of coming down hard on the female competition to a popular slash ship. While I’m reluctant to apply “should”s to our consumption of fiction, I think there are genuine feminist concerns here. Not with thinking Mary’s bad/evil or even hating her, but hating her for the wrong. For me, it helps to imagine another character doing something similar, and think about why I would react differently if it was someone other than Mary doing the deed. Also to be aware of the details canon doesn’t answer decisively or answers different ways in different episodes.

(More than most characters, Mary does suffer from a really inconsistent characterization. I’ve often wondered if everything since HLV was Sherlock or whomever trying on different frameworks for her personality/psychology/what-have-you, to see which could account for what she did to him. First she’s a badass villain, then a Mycroftian operative, then a martyr, then a worldclass manipulator, and finally a sanctifier whose own personality was irrelevant, giving her imprimatur from beyond the grave. And that’s without throwing veteran/maths genius and happy homemaker into the bunch. Maybe the showrunners simply weren’t sure what they wanted to do with her. Whatever the situation, I do think we need to be careful about taking any one canon detail at face-value, especially with her.)

I’m also a little discomfited by this trend I’ve seen among Johnlockers, to write Mary as a monster as a way to lessen John’s pain at her… betrayal, I guess? Or just the loss at her death? I remember when a lot of fanfic authors back between S3 & S4 wrote about the baby being fake; or even after S4, as part of John’s “alibi” rather than a true detail. Or even just deciding the baby was David’s or some such. By itself, that could have been really interesting, but what I saw so often happening was people used that as a way to remove the complication of the baby. Or to let John skip the grief he’d feel if the baby wasn’t born healthy- for instance, if it didn’t exist, or died, or if Mary was killed or ran while she was still pregnant. The basic theme was if Mary didn’t deserve John’s pain, John didn’t have to hurt for so long or as deeply.

Complicated grief is a thing, though, and for a lot of people, grieving the loss of someone who hurt them and aren’t “worth” their pain seem to suffer worse and for longer, particularly if they also have to grieve the lost opportunity to make their peace with the person while they were alive. This doesn’t mean fanfic writers or readers have to give us some kind of sanitized Mary; certainly she has the potential to be a true east wind of a character. But I do think there’s a tendency to prefer a more evil Mary because this lets the story move past her or spares John some suffering often won’t feel true. It also runs the risk of disrespecting the suffering of people impacted by these kinds of losses. So while I think this kind of characterization can be really interesting and compelling, it also takes a lot of skill and thoughtfulness to do it well. Here be dragons.

For me, though, the point isn’t to be proscriptive, to say Sherlock fic writers and readers need to limit themselves to a particular read of Mary. Her character has such potential to give birth to such a wide range of fic. As a viewer of the show I wish the writers and other creators had given us more of a sense of who she was because I think it really contributes to my frustration with not understanding the story they were trying to tell. But as a (kinda-sorta-someday-once-again) fic writer, it’s a true embarrassment of riches. The trick, for those of us concerned about Mary’s ethics were she a real person, is to be aware of the dangers of reading her character certain ways and to be cautious around them if we want to play with those interpretations.

[sugarandspice-games]

I guess this is becoming a trend... I’m popping in before the actual intro to clarify-- if the text is in italic, it is me (Sugar) talking and regular is Spice. Alright? Cool. And so--

So, one night I’m going through youtube and I come upon this one shitposty video about some random anime that I’ve never even heard of. After doing some research, I discover that it’s actually based on a dating sim that I’ve also never heard of. As a joke I was like “Hey Sugar wanna watch this as a joke, it might be funny” and so we did. And uhm. Well.

Today we’re gonna be reviewing Brothers Conflict, aka Sweet Home Alabama 2: Electric Anime Boogaloo aka the anime that ruined our lives. [Again, disclaimer: neither Sugar nor I condone incest and/or pedophilia, two themes which are uh, very rampant in this anime which is why I cannot recommend it in good faith. It’s not good, don’t get me wrong. I can’t really say that I liked it even if watching it and ragging on it was kind of enjoyable, and I did get attached to some of the characters because that’s the kind of idiot I am. Also, we’re not shirking our duties to write I swear please don’t kill me--] Anyway, an obligatory SPOILER WARNING though this probably isn’t going in the main tag bc I do not want the fans to publicly stone me. Why are we reviewing this? Bc we need to talk about it somewhere. Though I say review lightly bc this... is really more of a critique.

ALSO we only watched the anime, idk if things are different in the game. There is no full english translation for the games and most of the LP channels have been copyright striked, so please don’t come at us for not knowing anything. I also know that otome games and dating sims don’t tend to translate well to anime, and I will be addressing this later.

So, dear god, where do I begin.

Where do we begin indeed? How about the fact that her name is Ema and I had to google to remember the heroine’s name? Also, she is seventeen.

Our plot, or well... what you COULD call a plot, I guess, if you REALLY wanted to give this anime that much credit, focuses on the aforementioned seventeen year old Hinata Ema, who has an absent father who apparently FOUND THE TIME TO FALL IN LOVE AND GET MARRIED BUT NEVER HAS A SECOND TO SPARE FOR HIS ONLY CHILD, RINTARO I SWEAR TO GOD I AM TAKING CUSTODY OF YOUR CHILD. HAND HER OVER-- Anyway. He’s getting married to a woman who has 13 sons (jesus christ ma’am have you ever heard of a condom?) and he decides to move her in with them because... I guess he has less braincells than I have balls, which is to say, zero. Hi, I’m trans.

So, Ema moves in with them... along with her talking grey squirrel, Juli. Juli is... interesting and by interesting, I mean-- ABSOLUTELY PUZZLING. He, apparently, has seen the majority of Ema’s life from babyhood to teenagerhood and can talk but is only understood by Ema (who he calls Chii) and Louis, the eighth son in the Asahina family. It is never explained why, or how Chii came across him or how in an episode, a single episode, he becomes human because why the hell not, I guess??? (Also, he is pretty. YES. I said it. Fight me.) [Quick Spice intervention, this squirrel can talk to people, transform into a human, enter dreams, and live way longer than a squirrel should since the average lifespan of a squirrel is like 6 years in the wild. Juli is apparently a god as none of this is EVER explained.]

And when she meets the Asahina family, it’s pretty much immediately chaos because these heterosexual (I guess? They look like a bunch of twinks to me but there goes anime trying to convince me that straight people are real and not a lie made up by Trump) men have NEVER and I mean NEVER known a woman in their entire lives, since they seem to want to bang their stepsister immediately. And most of them are GROWN ASS ADULTS. Only three of them are actually minors (though Iori is 18 and only one year older so I guess??? It’s okay??? But still weird) and one of them is a 13 year old who looks and acts like he’s 8.

Oh, and did I mention that out of these boys, only the adult triplets and the abusive asshole 16 year old get any kind of characterization AND character development? I mean, Subaru gets an “arc” if you can call it that, but really, they don’t give him much... personality. You could replace him with a cardboard cutout and it’d be the same. I feel bad for him (but not really because dude you are 20 and she is your sister, what the fuck--)

But if there’s anything good about this anime, it is the characters themselves. Several of the boys have redeeming qualities and interesting personalities and quirks, as well as interesting relationships and dynamics with each other. Yes, some of them are lacking in the plotline department while others may have decent plotlines and lack personality, and then some of them are just given absolutely nothing (COUGH Masaomi COUGH Ukyo COUGHCOUGHCOUGH Iori, and by the way, what the fuck is that game plotline bc I read the wiki since I wanted to know more about him. We don’t have time to unpack the mento illness luv. But you’re telling me they had all this meat to work with and they threw it in the trash and gave him nothing? What the hell?) And if anything, I feel as if the characters themselves are crippled by the plotline. If given a different story, perhaps, they may have room to shine, because a lot of them are compelling if not lovable (though some may not be... lovable. COUGHFuuto, at least not for me.) If you want to see our review on the characters, we’ll put out another post.

Iori... Iori has a hell of a plot in the game, according to the Wiki but I can’t blame the writers for not exploring all of it because whoa. It is dark and not in a good way. But back to the subject at hand... I agree with Spice. I do/did like quite a lot of the characters... provided the entire romantic plot is taken away but we will go into more of why the plot is problematic below. All I can really add is: There is a baby in this dumpster and canon has been taken out back to be shot like a lame horse.

This brings me to a point in which I would like to pause the character discussion and bring up a glaring flaw with this anime in general (aside from the... plot. Look, I’m not a huge fan of weird stepsibling stuff but I think that if you want to do something like that, there are ways to do it and ways not to do it. This was the way not to do it, which I’m getting to). The biggest thing that made this anime so uncomfortable was the imbalance of power dynamics. Why is the protagonist 17 when most of the love interests are 18 and older, and I mean much, much older? And she’s not any 17 year old... she’s a lonely, neglected girl who is starved for the love of a family. This makes her easily manipulated by the brothers, who clearly desire her for less than wholesome reasons, and that makes it skeevy. I’m not sure why there’s such a fetishization of nonconsent in media, as if it’s fine for as many men to lust after female protagonists as the writer desires BUT the woman can’t want a single one of them in return. It’s creepy, and quite frankly, I am very much over it. I also get that the age thing is probably a product of the protagonist of a teenager oriented dating sim not translating well to an anime (because really, all otome game MCs are meant to be a neat little pair of shoes for the player to imagine themselves in), but why are we fetishizing a teenager being groomed by adults anyway? Especially adults who have this much power over her to begin with? The power dynamics bring this plot from “Oh, this might be kinda trashy but it could be entertaining” to “This is extremely creepy and rapey and kind of a dumpster fire.”

This is also true. If we were to take age into consideration, Fuuto, Yusuke, and Iori would be the three candidates left for Chii. This is taking out the youngest as well, who is... thirteen, I think? But anyway, (I know I am probably going to get some hate for this but go for it), I am into stories that explore the stepsibling thing and it can make a good narrative-- but before everyone gets uppity: There is a line between FICTION and REALITY and I do not condone real life incest but a story is a story and there are ways to frame it that make it clear that it is not a romantic thing, or acceptable. This anime does not do that in it’s dynamics because some of the brothers do start off in that very firm caregiving, family role and it is a sharp turn into romance that makes you go, “?” or in Fuuto case, a blending that does lean into fetishization.

All in all I think the plot maybe could have been okay? I’m not saying it isn’t problematic, because we all know it is, who are we kidding? But I don’t think it’s wrong per se to explore family dynamics with romance and to understand where the line should be drawn, and maybe exploring the definition of family itself. I have seen fanfictions with similar tropes ask those questions and explore the concept beautifully without romanticizing or fetishizing incest and unhealthy power dynamics. It could have been good, and I get that perhaps I’m barking up the wrong tree by expecting mature themes in an anime based on an otome game, but it also could have been a lot less... creepy (I have used that word so much that it looks wrong now) even if it wasn’t the greatest thing ever. But again, what was I expecting? I watched this whole thing as a joke and ended up attached to the characters like a fool... That tends to be a trend here, and this is why we are so salty all the time. So anyway, stay tuned for our review of the characters! We may not cover all of them since some of them don’t really get anything, but we’ll cover what we found interesting.

[unfortunatelyilikebnha]

I say the sports festival arc is my favorite but in reality we all know that just means “‘it’s your quirk not his!’/‘it’s your power Todoroki!’ lives in my head rent free” I don’t even necessarily like the other parts that much.

I mean don’t get me wrong the other Midoriya-centric parts? Love those. Him strategizing his way to first place in the first round without ever using his quirk? So fucking cool I’m proud so proud of him. Him in the second round choosing his team, specifically picking some people and having some people come to him and then figuring out the most effective way to use all their skills (and Iida having his moment to shine on Todoroki’s team)?! Incredible thank you. Midoriya inspiring so many characters to do their best to beat him including Iida, Uraraka, and Todoroki?! Amazing 10/10. Him fighting Shinsou and sympathizing with him but being unable to reveal he understood how he felt and the fact that what provoked Midoriya to get brainwashed wasn’t an insult about him but one about his classmate/friend? Super interesting (though how he broke out of Shinsou’s control was weird & kinda unsatisfying & confusing but whatever I wanted him to win sorry Shinsou)!!!

But like,,, if it’s not about Midoriya, chances are I didn’t like that part of the arc (and I swear this isn’t just me being a Midoriya stan, the parts that didn’t involve Midoriya were just generally disappointing to me) like,,, Midnight???? She’s “the R rated heroine”, who decided it was a good idea for her to work at a school for children? She made a comment that a student’s decision “turned her on” like wtf they’re 15 that’s nasty and illegal? Why can’t Horikoshi write female characters right wtf. I don’t have a problem with her being sexual but her being sexual in an environment with kids and especially towards the kids is gross af!! Even if her comments are just part of her hero persona (which is something I’ve seen people argue), that’s not acceptable in an environment where there are children and she needs to be replaced (also not relevant but her costume is ugly af and horikoshi apparently doesn’t know how boobs work).

The fact that class 1B actually had a really good plan and effectively used their teamwork skills was really cool but of course since they decided to go against Bakugou, they had to fail despite their extensive pre planning. Yes I know that Bakugou is really strong and super determined, but Monoma had figured out almost to the exact number how many students would make it to the next round and analyzed 1A’s quirks and specifically chose his team to be the most effective so I think it would be so interesting if they could’ve made it to the next round (and I’m not even saying Bakugou shouldn’t have made it to the next round, there’s four spots available. Could’ve had him run into Shinsou during the cavalry battle which I think would actually be super interesting considering how easily provoked he is, and if he won against Shinsou it would’ve been interesting to see him go against Monoma in the tournament, if he didn’t win against Shinsou he would’ve gotten the learning experience of actually losing and realizing he can’t just assume he’s better than everyone and can automatically beat them).

Also the Bakugou vs. Uraraka fight? She should’ve won. Bakugou had been using his quirk a LOT throughout the sports festival and he SUPPOSEDLY gets backlash on his hands when he uses his quirk too much. Uraraka was smart and had a solid strategy, one that nobody predicted, and she utilized a LOT of rubble, yet Bakugou, after using his quirk numerous times to explode her, was apparently able to summon a giant explosion which he seemingly received no backlash for at the time. It just doesn’t seem right, and I personally think it would’ve been much more interesting for Bakugou “I’m gonna win” Katsuki to suffer an actual loss & start to realize that he can’t just look down on everybody and assume he’s better than them. Also I hate that people use this fight to be like “omg feminist king Bakugou!” as if he didn’t 1) change his entire fighting strategy (mostly staying on the defensive, only exploding when Uraraka got near, letting her rush him vs. his usual charging at other people, explosions blazing) for his fight with Uraraka, something he didn’t do for any of his male opponents, and 2) assume Midoriya gave her her strategy, not that she was smart enough to come up with it herself.

While we’re talking about unsatisfying fights involving girls, the whole last part of the sports festival deserves a mention. Yeah Shiozaki and Ashido easily got through round one, but then they were pretty much immediately picked off after that so what’s the point? Shiozaki beat Kaminari easily, but then was pushed out of the ring by Iida (no hate to Iida, love him & he deserved his third place win, but it just seemed a bit too easy for him to beat an opponent who had almost effortlessly beaten Kaminari the round before). Ashido won against Aoyama, but similar to Shiozaki, Tokoyami beats her easily. Momo, who up to this point had been pretty confident and sure of herself and her abilities, and had been shown to be pretty adept at using her quirk and thinking on the spot, was suddenly overcome with self doubt and was beaten by Tokoyami in the first round in like 8 seconds like wtf. Mei, who it would’ve been interesting to see what she did if she advanced in the tournament, voluntarily stepped down in the first round because she was only interested in showing off her support items. I know the series isn’t focused on the girls but seriously none of them made it past the second round of the tournament (not to mention the fact that way fewer of them qualified for the third round than the boys)?

Since I’m talking about the girls in conjunction with the sports festival, I feel like I’ve got to briefly mention the cheerleading outfit scene, which I obviously hate for multiple reasons (m*neta being gross, kaminari going along with m*neta despite the fact that he’s actually FRIENDS with the girls and in doing so he is betraying their trust - I could write a whole separate post about kaminari and why he interests and frustrates me but in not gonna do that here cause this post is already too fucking long -, some of the girls being uncomfortable in the outfits, especially after realizing they’d been tricked, etc) but I feel like those r obvious problems so I’m not gonna spend time unpacking that cause it’ll just make me angry. Neways.

The Bakugou vs. Tokoyami fight was kinda disappointing in that he had been such a tough opponent for the girls but is easily defeated by Bakugou (and yeah I know it’s cause Bakugou’s quirk was a bad matchup for Tokoyami but how convenient it was that Bakugou’s quirk just HAPPENED to be Tokoyami’s one weakness (and how come Dark Shadow was that strong earlier, it was really bright out and he even fended off Bakugou, explosions and all? But I digress)).

In the Bakugou vs. Todoroki fight I don’t necessarily disagree with Bakugou winning since it made sense for Todoroki to use only half of his power bc you don’t magically get through trauma in a day (although tbh I think if Todoroki was completely on his game and not distracted trying to start processing the fact that his fire is his he could’ve won against Bakugou, fire or no fire, BECAUSE they’ve both been using their quirks all day, BUT while Bakugou’s quirk had a physical drawback that should’ve weakened him, aka the aforementioned joint pain or w/e - and reminder that Bakugou used his quirk a LOT in the first and second tests, as well as a LOT against Uraraka, and a LOT/for a long time against Kirishima and some against Dark Shadow, so even with resting periods in between matches, unless he got healed by recovery girl which I find unlikely both because I think he would’ve seen it as an insult implying he couldn’t win in his current state and because UA and recovery girl both have a concerning attitude towards healing children, his hands should be in a LOT of pain and he should be over his limit - whereas Todoroki, while also having used his quirk a lot, had the advantage that the drawbacks of his quirk cancel each other out, and even if he wasn’t using his fire DURING matches, he obviously used it some in between - for example, to melt sero out - so he doesn’t have lasting drawbacks in the same way that Bakugou does, AND he trained for 10 years with the number 2 hero, which while end//vor is an absolutely awful person he’s obviously good at fighting meanwhile Bakugou’s only “training” that we know of prior to UA was using his quirk to bully people and even if he HAD trained I don’t think his training would match end//vor’s training so yeah that was a really fucking long winded way of saying I think Todoroki would win if he wasn’t distracted) and it made sense for Bakugou to not think of his win as a win because Todoroki wasn’t trying his best (and had brought out his full power against MIDORIYA, who Bakugou hates).

That being said I obviously have problems with how Bakugou treated Todoroki cause like,,, what the fuck he overheard him telling Midoriya about his trauma and then was a complete and absolute dick about it. Granted Midoriya didn’t handle it quite right either, but he was mostly doing it to help Todoroki rather than prove himself by beating him (don’t get me wrong Midoriya absolutely wanted to win, but once he found out Todoroki’s story he deemed helping Todoroki was more important than winning whereas Bakugou’s first priority was obviously still proving himself) so I still don’t really like that fight (and another thing: it’s really hard to watch Bakugou be so aggressive towards Todoroki after he decides not to use his fire like ik he’s mad bc he thinks Todoroki insulted him by not trying his hardest but that’s uhh none of his fucking business he even fucking KNOWS why Todoroki has such hang ups about using his fire and still!! Registers it as an insult!! He’s smart he should be able to see that some of the reason Todoroki used fire against Midoriya is Midoriya fucking SURPRISED HIM. Even if the people in the stands/watching the broadcast couldn’t hear what they were saying - I don’t remember if they could or not - it should’ve been obvious that Midoriya said SOMETHING that impacted Todoroki enough to get him to use his fire. Bakugou’s approach of yelling at him about it obviously wasn’t gonna work like it worked for Midoriya because Todoroki had already been thrown off too much by Midoriya and hadn’t had time to process it, and nothing that Bakugou said to him was a new emotional revelation. Todoroki himself later states the reason he used the fire at all in the Midoriya fight was that he forgot all about end//vor) and anyways I think the final shoudve been Todoroki vs. Uraraka.

Finally, though I’m obviously not a Bakugou stan, the fact that they fucking muzzled and restrained him just so they could force him to accept a medal he didn’t want? That’s fucked up like I know UA does a really bad job of caring for its students but who thought that was a good idea. Who?!?! It’s probably pretty fucking traumatizing to be muzzled like an animal in front of a crowd of LITERALLY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE and have that played off as a joke, not to mention the fact that I seriously doubt being restrained is a good experience for him after the sludge villain. If he doesn’t want the medal he doesn’t want the damn medal, either give the gold to Todoroki and the silver and bronze to Iida and Tokoyami or just don’t hand out the gold medal your ceremony isn’t more important than the well-being of your students!

(Also while I’m talking about the well being of UA students uhh why the fuck did UA think HAVING the sports festival was a good idea in the first place? They hype it up so much that students are willing to seriously injure themselves over a fucking sporting event in the name of “plus ultra”, not to even mention the fact that it SHOWCASES THE QUIRKS AND BY DESIGN DISPLAYS THE WEAKNESSES OF THESE STUDENTS WHO ARE TRAINING TO BE HEROES WHICH IS A HIGHLY DANGEROUS JOB ON LIVE FUCKING TELEVISION SO THAT ANYONE COULD EXPLOIT THEM - something literally every other school takes advantage of at the provisional license exams! Like,, literally Who thought this was a good idea???)

In conclusion, I hate love hate the sports festival arc and the writing really annoys me

[chibimyumi]

Alan’s Crossdressing & Laughing Stock

Dear @aurorashenanigans,

First of all, thank you for your interesting prompt and your permission to use a screenshot of your comment.

Your question is very worthy of discussion in my opinion, because in theatre, even with the exact same script, one could still be watching an entirely different show if an actor has a different interpretation, and manages to express their interpretation.

This ⇊ post is an expansion to this post wherein I discussed the strikingly transphobic script and performance in ‘The Most Beautiful Death in the World’ (MBD).

Note: Please do read the post I referred to beforehand for a better and more complete understanding of this post, though this post will also contain a lot of overlapping information. If you are only interested in the conclusion of this post, please scroll all the way down to the 4th header ‘4. In Conclusion’.

So, let us unpack the differences between the scenes of MBD 2010 and 2013 wherein the characters prepare for the crossdressing-infiltration.

1. Premise of the Plot

The mystery around which the plot of the musical is based has its setting in the Crystal Palace where a masquerade is held which only permits the attendance of adult men - if - one is accompanied by a woman.

With most of the main characters being male, the key to solving this problem became ‘crossdressing’.

Grell in this musical was given the role as ‘a professional at crossdressing’ by making her criticise Ciel’s crossdresssing, which was given some weight (more or less) by making her use jargon such as ‘Clothes Language’. Herewith, the scriptwrights put Grell’s transgender identity on the same level as simple ‘crossdressing’.

2. Comparing Performances - 2010

In the 2010 of MBD, Alan makes his entrance in crossdress, starting with a traditionally feminine performative which is met with a roar of laughter from the audience. Only after having ‘successfully’ induced laughter from the audience, he drops the femininity and assumes a more neutral performative. Alan speaks the following line with a neutral voice:

皆さん、準備は整いましたね　行きましょう！

Mina-san, junbi wa totonoimashita ne, ikimashou!

Everyone, all the preparations are ready right? Let us go!

Grell is absolutely enraged, and challenges Alan as follows:

“なんでアンタまで女装する必要あるのヨ?”

“Nande anta made josou suru hitsuyou aru no yo?”

“Why do even you need to cross-dress as a woman?”

By saying this, Grell sends two messages: 1. that Alan does not acknowledge her femaleness as sufficient to get Alan through the security’s screening, and 2. herewith the script equates Grell’s dress to Alan’s crossdress.

Then, Alan explains why he resorted to crossdressing and speaks the following line with a deeper voice:

“俺  エリックと話さなければ　そのためなら… どんな屈辱でも甘んじてうけてみせる！”

“Ore, Eric to hanasanakereba. Sono tame nara… donna kutsujoku demo amanjite ukete miseru!”

“I need to speak to Eric. For that sake… I will resign myself to any humiliation!”

Instead of just walking down the stairs, Alan jumps down in an incredibly unrefined and masculine manner. However, is is entirely unnecessary to jump because the stairs connect to the ground normally. As such, it is safe to assume that Alan is trying to “compensate” for his crossdress with more pronounced masculinity. This is further confirmed by the line “resign myself to any humiliation”, which makes it explicit that Alan considers wearing a dress something a man should be ashamed of.

3. Comparing Performances - 2013

This script for the same scene in the rerun of BMD remains mostly unchanged. Just like in 2010, Alan enters the scene in crossdress. Unlike the previous however, 2013Alan speaks the line “everyone, all the preparations are ready right? Let us go!” in a high pitched voice. Instead of a slightly raised pitch however, he uses the type of exaggerated high pitch men conventionally use to mock women. Not unlike in 2010, Alan’s feminine performative is welcomed by a wave of laughter from the audience. This performative is so ‘funny’, that even Sebastian - who according to canon doesn’t give a damn about human gender norms - finds it hard to suppress the urge to laugh. Really, Sebastian, really?

After Crossdress!Alan’s introduction, both Grell and Alan are given a new line in the 2013 version before the scene proceeds like before.

Upon seeing Alan’s dress, Grell challenges as follows:

ちょっとアンタ！何を、それ！？

Chotto anta! Nani wo, sore!?

Hey you! What (the hell) is this about!?

“One roar of laughter at men in dresses was not enough, let’s get an encore!” thought however came up with the following line:

Alan:

巻いたほうがよかったかしらっ？

Maita hou ga yokatta kashira?

Should I have curled my hair instead?

Grell: “No! Why do even you need to cross-dress as a woman?” 

Then, instead of jumping down the stairs, Alan walks down normally, but strikes a dominant stance wherein he shows off his triangular MANLY chest and muscular arms. Not unlike 2010!Alan, 2013!Alan also feels the need to ‘compensate’ for the dress as he speaks the line “I will resign myself to any humiliation!”

In both versions of the musical, Grell responds with the following line:

“だからそんな屈辱受ける必要ないわよ!”

“Dakara sonna kutsujoku ukeru hitsuyou nai wa yo!”

“But there is no need for you to endure that humiliation!”

Using Grell’s reply the script reconfirms that what Alan said is right. By making Grell echo Alan’s opinion, the script effectively makes her agree that ‘a man wearing a dress is indeed a humiliation’.

After some petty-fighting, Sebastian decides to put an end to this fight, and says:

Sebastian: “まぁ女性は何人いても良いでしょう。それに　グレルさんよりもお似合いですし。”

“Maa, josei wa nannin ite mo ii deshou. Sore ni, Grell-san yori mo oniai desu shi.”

“Well, it does not matter how many women there are. And moreover, [the crossdressing] suits [Alan] better than Grell-san.”

Here, Sebastian acknowledges how there is no such thing as ‘too many women’. Herewith, he effectively confirms how a man can be turned into a woman using a mere dress. By having Sebastian say: “the crossdressing SUITS Alan better”, Sebastian invalidates Grell’s gender identity by reducing her to ‘a lesser crossdresser’ than Alan.

4. In conclusion

In conclusion, in both versions of BDM, Grell’s dress as well as EVERYONE’s crossdress is a joke and a source of ‘humiliation’, and EVERYONE’s crossdress except maybe Ciel’s is a laughing stock.

Alan‘s crossdress is, as extensively explained above ⇈, the script’s tool to shame ‘men’ in dresses, and delegitimise transgender identity. Alan’s character is normally rather neutral and certainly does not ooze with toxic masculinity. The moment he put on a dress however, he plays his masculinity up, as though to assure both the audience and himself that his ‘precious male identity’ is unharmed, despiiittee wearing a dress that’s not for men!

Likewise, Aberline and Hanks are established comic reliefs in the Kuromyu universe, so it is not hard to see how their crossdressing is also the laughing stock of the show. The moment they are crossdressed, the jokes they make suddenly all surround their failure to ‘pass as women’. Just like Alan, they are “proper men whose masculinity remains unthreatened.”

Only Ciel’s dress does not seem to be something that the writers wrote as a active shaming-tool. Ciel is still a child, and unlike adult men’s masculinity, a boy’s masculinity does not need to be protected at all cost. As boys are ‘lesser men’ or ‘not men yet’ anyway, gender-nonconforming behaviour by them are not considered a threat to society’s gendered order, and do not need to be punished immediately. However, I could still argue the pink dress to be a laughing-stock, albeit a smaller one. While the audience is still supposed to find Ciel in a dress funny, this joke is supposed to appeal to a sense of endearment, and maybe even from a type of pity because Ciel obviously hates wearing the dress.

Finally, we can conclude that even though 2010!Alan is slightly less demeaning towards transgender women and men in dresses, his small-dick-energy/fragile masculinity is still very obvious.

Soooo,

🥇 The gold medal goes to 2013!Alan for being 1. transphobic, 2. demeaning towards women, 3. playing the cross-dress-joke up to 11, and 4, not even having bothered trying to be respectful about it!

🥈 The silver medal goes to 2010!Alan for first making us think that despite being a bit transphobic, you were somewhat respectful towards men in dresses... and only THEN backstabbing us.

🥉 The bronze medal goes to Sebastian for being complacent in reinforcing transphobia and laughing at men in dresses, even though you really should know better after 3000+ years history of laughing at humans and their ridiculous social standards.

🎖️🎖️Aberline and Hanks get honourary mentions for their participation in the Small-Dick-Energy Cup🏆.

5. Epilogue

I am very aware that this musical is very dear to many people. But I beg you. Please do not wilfully unsee the problematic aspects just because you like something. One can like the musical for what it is, namely a show with flaws that some people enjoy.

Liking a problematic thing does not automatically make you look bad, justifying the problematic aspects does!

[harrylovesteas]

Rose Bush

Hey guys, I’ve never really posted my personal fics on Tumblr before. But, I am giving it a shot. I haven't written in so long, so please let me know if you like it or any type of feedback! You can also find this fic on my wattpad, @harrylovesteas on there I will probably edit it more, but you guys will definitely get more previews. Anyways, I hope you all enjoy this. it has kind of taken serval hours from me over the last week.

warnings: swearing, mentioning of homophobia, fluff? I think that’s it!

Life is always a mystery. You never know what you’ll get when it comes to life in reality. If you’re lucky, you’ll know exactly what you want to do with your life before life has the chance to royally fuck you up. However, most aren’t that lucky. Most are the indecisive people who just are going through this roller coaster with blindfolds, with no idea what’s coming next. Yet, a roller coaster isn’t the correct this type of life. In more ways, it feels as though life is just a foggy black and white haze until something adds color.

Perhaps that’s why so many people prefer books and stories of fiction, it’s a way to escape the uncertainty of life itself, a way to pretend that everything is actually indeed ‘fine’. At least that’s how Aurora felt about it at least. Her books and music were her safe haven. With a good book in hand and her music playing, the world would just pause, even if it was for only thirty minutes, it was an escape. Perhaps it was the flow of the words that caused the young adult to feel free. Or perhaps it had to do with the fact that each character had a unique story and lesson to share. No matter the reasoning, the brunette nearly always had a book on her. Of course, she couldn’t always carry a physical book on her person, but who needed to when smartphones could give you everything you could ever need.

Although books provide the girl with a blissful escape, it was also those same books that had made her content with the lack of social life since she had moved to the wet nation known as Britain. Being an American, she had very little knowledge of what to expect. After all, most of her knowledge of the country came from the television show Skins along with the Harry Potter series. But, with her very stubborn and rather particular grandmother’s passing, the young twenty-one-year-old had been gifted not only the full inheritance, but her grandmother’s cottage of sorts however to receive both items the girl would have to move to England. Sure, the older woman had adored her granddaughter, however Aurora suspected the will was just a final lesson, that Catherine could give her children on her death bed, what way could she punish money hungry children besides not giving them more than a final word of advice and a dime for the amount of times that they had tried to reach out in her old age. Compared to her bright-eyed granddaughter who tried to call every other week just to speak of schooling or of a novel she was reading. Although, being a college student was not easy by any means yet it was no one’s fault but her own for changing her major twice. Her mess, her responsibility; how could she expect anyone to clean up her mess? Therefore, she had been balancing working part-time with being a full-time student. Her grandmother’s final gift to the young woman was something that Aurora had never anticipated; a chance to start over. With the home and money all put into her name, her family was not thrilled whatsoever, yet Aurora knew that she couldn’t disappoint the one person who listened about the stories she had been reading. So, the girl moved from the small town she was raised in and essentially moved crossed the world. Fully knowing from that moment her family could potentially outcast her.

Holmes Chapel, the town in which the well known Harry Styles grew up. The town isn’t necessarily smaller or bigger than the small town Aurora grew up in back in America, yet there was something about the British people that made this place feel so much more knitted together. At least in the neighborhood, her grandmother had lived in seemed so close to give the illusion that each person in some way or another were like family to one another. It’s no secret back home that if a young university student had moved into a residential neighborhood, some residents would complain and assume their nice quiet neighborhood would be turned into a loud obnoxious party house lowering their property values; yet here not even an hour after her cab had dropped her off at the royal blue medium sized home with the white wrap around porch that the swing next to the dark wooden door, a few neighbors had greeted her an apologized for her loss. It felt bewildering to the girl, who was always taught that it was best to keep some distance between yourself and neighbors. It simply was the way to resume privacy, but in more ways than one it was a form of isolation and nothing more. It was a way that helped build rumors, cliques, and forms judgment precursors that overtime cause unnecessary tensions over a shrub or a little fence. Looking back at the do’s and don’t of the pompous life that her family had created seemed rather ridiculous now. If one were to hide away in a house with no communication with neighbors, your just another robot living the social media life, everything looks perfect on the outside, while behind closed doors everything is falling to pieces with a blood-curdling scream. Besides, if no one is allowed or good enough to be in your life, what’s the point of human contact? Perhaps, that is why so many people are always so miserable, it would be exhausting to constantly be something you weren’t. Aurora knew that all too well for her young age, but as much as she hated to admit it, she almost did not know not how to ‘fake it until she made it’. After all that was a concept that she had learned from such a young age, girls were to smile and to be what was expected of them. Yet, with a sense of the rest button being hit in her life, the brunette finally could be who she had always wanted, and no one could force her to be anything else different.

By the exterior of the home, the house appeared to be well kept and with perfect order. Some of the plants were overgrown and dead, yet with the winter chill and slight dusting coat of snow, the demise of the plants made sense truly. It still appeared to look perfectly in order. Even when you initially enter the home everything looks as if it has a particular order. The walls are coated in what looks to be fresh grey paint and select a few picture frames to decorate the home as though only a few of the innocent moments in deserved to be relived. A black fireplace captured the living room with one swallow, with no television, and all the soft white fabric sofas angling around the fire provided a feeling of close intimacy to those who had been welcomed into the humble abode. Along the entryway of the home remained to be one of the things Aurora had always wanted in a home, a window seat, or as she called it, ‘the most profit spot to read as it rained outside’. As she stood smiling at the cushioned window, the girl could almost already hear the rain pelting against the glass cooling the world around her down as she melted away into a fantasy. Pulling herself out of her daydream, the women tossed her jean jacket on to the rocking chair closest to the black marble fireplace, while her luggage remained by the front door. Although she had sworn to break her bad habits, Aurora knew all too well she probably wouldn’t unpack right away. But, how could she unpack when she still had to explore the large house?

For what felt like hours the five foot and three inches female wandered the home, first she had discovered the kitchen, arguably the most important room of the whole house. It was brighter than the living room, and somewhat expectedly the room was coated in a ray of soft sunshine yellow and the white marble had such a large contrast to the living room that she truly did not know what to expect. She could remember her grandmother telling her that one should not decorate to please people, but decorated from to please soul because if one did this then you’d always feel at home no matter who is around. As she roamed further into the home she had found the half bath, guest bathroom, and guest room which were all various shades of creams to grey. Each room regardless of the paint of the walls had a bright burst of color which shouted at life and yet had something relaxing laced together with it as well.

Her soft white shocks made no noise as she took slow and gentle steps towards the final door, which the girl presumed to be the master bedroom. Taking in a large intake of hair, the girl with the messy brown hair rested her forehead against the white door. Finding some courage, her hand grasped the doorknob before carefully pushing the door into the room. Her caramel brown eyes grew to the size of saucers at the sight before her. This was nothing that she had expected for the room to look like, after all the last time she had FaceTime with her grandmother, this room had been painted a shade of bright red and covered with lace. Now, however, the walls were white as snow. The fan that used to be over the bed was now replaced with a glass chandler. In the corner next to the walking closet was a black chair swing, the walk-in closet had been replaced by full-length mirrors, a lovely black vanity with royal blue fuzzy rug remained near the window. In the center of it all had been a king size bed, with royal blue and black silk bedding, as if her grandmother had remembered exactly what colors had been her favorites. One of the most eye-catching parts of the room at to be the secret draws within the bed frame perfect for storing her books. Along the side of the bed on both sides remained two nightstands with silver lamps to back the glass table decor. Tip-Toeing to the master bathroom, Aurora held her breath fearing that she’d wake up and this would all be a dream.

The master bathroom seemingly matched perfectly to the bedroom’s aesthetic. The walls remained white with black and silver accents along with each piece of furniture, The royal blue was not forgotten as it was the exact shade of the towels and rugs. There was something about the color scheme that gave the women a sense of elegance laced together with relaxation. The cool ceramic flooring cooled the bottom of her feet through her socks as she took in each aspect of the large bathroom. The home was a true dream, and something gave off a feeling she could not quite describe. If she hadn’t known any better, she would have said the home had been completely decorated to meet her preference. However, if this truly was the case, why had she been lead to believe that her grandmother had passed away in a freak accident? There had been so many unknowns regarding the whole situation, for example, why had her grandmother’s medical file been sealed? What type of family secrets was lingering within the family still?

Starring lazily at the empty black bath, the girl vividly recalled the funeral two weeks prior, and how strange everyone had been acting. From the moment that the family had been alerted of Catherine’s death, so many peculiar behaviors started popping up. It all had started with how her parents demanded that she come home while they had to start planning on how to get her from England back to the United States of America. During a family death, perhaps it was normal to have the whole family come home, however that implied that she had a normal family. But, she didn’t, her family were the type of people who would miss birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries. Nothing was sacred and if there was an opportunity to further the depth of one’s pockets, typically that route would have been taken. There were so many times that she could vividly recall family dinners and parties being canceled, due to someone needing to go prep for another surgery or court case. So, having everyone and the same household until the funeral was beyond strange. Perhaps, thinking that they were all grieving of shorts, the brunette packed her bag and drove the five hours along the interstate to come home to the small town that had the house on the hill.

Upon her arrival home, Aurora noted the large rain clouds threatening to unleash the built up rain. The clean air had been a smell that she had missed dearly, seeing as in the city in which she now lived in smelt of car’s exhaust, but at the family manner, the scent of pine trees and the lake filled the atmosphere. With the impending rain clouds, the air slowly started to have a more of a lake scent than normal, which signaled that the storm would be one what would be one of destruction. The large unwelcoming brown door of the castle-like home remained unchanged from what she had remembered. Building up her courage, the college student chewed on her lip, before grabbing her phone and backpack.

Knots formed heavily within her stomach with each step towards the large unwelcoming door frame. Her long brown curly hair blew back in the stormy wind, sending a chill through her spine. Pulling her black cardigan over her black skinny jeans and Aerosmith faded concert t-shirt, the girl pushed the door open fully knowing that she would fully be ridiculed for her choice in clothing regardless of the lack of people in the home. Entering the threshold once again was exactly what Aurora had expected. The home still was uncannily cold and the overpowering scent of the lilacs that undoubtedly decorated every corner of the manor. The old aged rugs remained over the wooden floors as if they truly prevented the original wood floors from harsh bursts of the seasonal weather. Yet, it is nearly impossible to break the family out of its traditional ways. Perhaps that was why Catherine had disappeared off the face of the earth for a full year only to find out she was living a new life across the pond as if the life surrounded by statuses whom only cared about how many green faces lined their Gucci suits. At least, that was what Aurora suspected, and for that, she couldn’t fault her Grandmother. To spend so many years with the heartlessness and cold atmosphere, one still craving life and hope desperately would want to be freed from that prison.

Right on cue, the sounds of bickering filled the long dreary hall. Exhaling her final piece of peace, the girl dropped her bag down next to the long extravagant staircase. Tucking her hair behind her ears Aurora began her way towards the loud voices whining and complaining down the house. By the sound of the voices, she had been able to pick out her father’s and Uncle Jon’s voice, along with Alana, Jon’s gold-digging wife. Although she could not identify any other voices, Aurora knew all too well that this world war three most likely had a few unsettling viewers. Turning the corner, the small crowd came into focus. Mentally, she had patted herself on the back for correctly identifying her uncle, aunt, and father, yet it was seeing the ‘family disappointment ‘ her father’s sister and her small family did confuse her completely. She could have never expected to see her aunt Scarlett, who was nearly blacklisted from every family event due to her decision of leaving the family practice of lawyers and doctors to open up a little cafe with her secret girlfriend and her eighteen-year-old son. Jon and her father swore that Scarlett’s sexuality had nothing to do with the lack of appearances at family functions, yet Scarlett hadn’t come out until midway through the ten years of Catherine’s leave. Suddenly after, her aunt seemingly was removed from any pictures and no longer attended any type of holiday. For a group of Christians and Catholics who claim to believe in God’s love, they sure did like to criticize different people and place themselves above others… It truly made no sense to Aurora, weren’t they suppose to love everyone?

With a relieved smile, the youngest female approached her favorite aunt, “I’ve really missed you,” she whispered while engulfing her into an enduring hug full of honesty. From her aunt to Susan and Brandon, Scarlett’s now wife and adopted son, welcoming them with a warm hug knowing well that Alana was continuing to scoff and make remarks regarding the will.

“Aurora, why are you wearing such hideous clothes? You have a much suitable wardrobe to wear, especially seeing as your grandmother’s lawyer is on the way, perhaps you should change, “ the nasal sounding woman suggested only gaining an eye roll from Susan.

“Alana, I’m so glad I was able to take a microbiology final, and then drive three hours to not only deal with my grandmother’s death but to be graced with your not wanted opinion. This may surprise you, but some people don’t automatically think about a will when they get a phone call of a family member’s death. Some us need time to digest the information and remember the individual, but apparently, most of this family disagrees and thinks that if we wait a week that all the money will be gone,” Aurora commented rather hastily bitterly due to the situation of events. For a second, the girl regretted her harsh words, yet she acted it down with the rest of her emotions. After all, if you showed weakness around a pack of wolves, you wouldn’t see the light of day ever again. It was the situations like this, it always was best to wear defensive comments like armor. It was something that she had hated most about this place, she hated having to walk around on thin ice waiting for an argument. At least at school, one wouldn’t have to worry about appearances as much or being treated as an object rather than a person. Back on campus, Aurora could recall several times seeing students in pajamas, or even professors only wearing jeans and the university sweatshirt. The university campus was judgment-free and she deeply missed it. But, there was nothing she could do about that now, she was officially in the wolves den full of wolves waiting and hoping to take a large chunk of the estates and money. Little did anyone realize, by rushing this reading of the will everyone’s lives were about to be changed.

It was the faint knocking sound that had pulled Aurora out of her trance-like state. Blinking away all the thoughts and memories haunting her large caramel brown eyes, the woman eyes snapped and looked directly into the mirror above the marble sink. She had to admit, she did look fairly rough considering for the last two weeks she had been wearing full face makeup, but that didn’t necessarily mean she looked terrible considering the situation. Her hair was slightly messy from having the windows down the cab, but she had straightened the curly hair before the flight so she wouldn’t look like a complete mess if she fell asleep on the plane, her eyebrows held their natural shape without the colored filler, her eyes had been bloodshot and sad, her olive skin showed it’s imperfections yet it had a healthy glow from being moisturized daily along with being washed. Her black tank top matched with her comfortable Addis joggers, but that was just it, she didn’t stick out. Yes, she did have nice curves, but she wasn’t necessarily anything more than average. She definitely wasn’t beyond beautiful in her book. She wasn’t taller than 5’3, she didn’t have sapphires for eyes, her teeth weren’t perfectly white, and she wasn’t a blonde. She was only Aurora Elizabeth Wilde, she was average and came from old money, that was how she had been described since puberty, but that hadn’t meant that it couldn’t change now that she had moved so far away. Perhaps here she could be an actual person rather than someone who comes from money. Once again, the knocking filled the house. Realizing that she had temporarily forgotten about the door, the girl spun on her heels and quickly sprinted towards the front door knowing that the weather app had called for rain in the evening.

Being as clumsy as she was it didn’t take long for the brunette to accidentally shoulder check the corner wall closet to the front down. “For fuck sake Rori,” she muttered grumpily as a strong shot of pain radiated from her shoulder and seeing as it was her own fault she couldn’t be mad at anyone but herself. Rubbing circles around her potentially bruised flesh. Not bothering to look through the peephole, the girl swung the door open realizing that she probably shouldn’t just open the door so quickly to strangers, but she felt as though she had been shot, therefore logic was not present at the moment. With furrowed brows, she looked at the people before her. One of the ladies looked maybe in her late forties with the kindest smile and eyes she had ever seen with a nice sundress and her hair pulled up. The other woman had similar bright eyes, dark eyes and had been wearing an old concert t-shirt and jeans. By the looks of it, she had a strong feeling that they were, in fact, mother and daughter, but there was. Something about the duo that caused the woman to sense that she had known them from somewhere.

“Hello, I’m Anne and this is my daughter Gemma. We just wanted to introduce ourselves, I live right across the street,” the first woman explained sensing Aurora’s curiosity, “Gem had noticed the master bedroom’s light on and we wanted to finally see the face of whom Catherine often spoke of.”

Not wanting to be rude, Aurora kept eye contact with the older woman as Anne spoke. “It’s nice to meet you both, I’m Aurora,” she responded shaking their hands politely. “If it’s not a bother, do you mind suggesting some places that have good food around here? Earlier when I was exploring the house I was struggling to find food to cook, it was weird, I fully expected to find an unworldly amount of pasta noodles and sauce to make,” she had commented with a soft laugh while rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly.

“Catherine always did put things in strange places if you’d like me to show you? One of the last times I was over here we helped her cook, and just everything was in strange places,” Gemma offered.

“I would really appreciate that, if you don’t mind, of course,” the American commented as she moved over allowing the women into her new home of sorts. In which the girl around her age entered in the house.

“Silly me, I forgot the spare key and plant I was meaning on bringing over here! I’ll be right back ladies, Gemma message me if you need anything from home.” With the final comment from Anne, the older woman turned rather swiftly and made her way a crossed the street to the house Aurora assumed was hers.

Softly the brunette shut the front door and followed Gemma towards the kitchen. “Did you grow up here,” Aurora questioned attempting to create small talk between the two of them.

“Yeah, my mum, my brother and I just about all grew up here. It’s not the biggest town, but I personally love it here. But, I might be a little bias, London is nice as well. I live there now, but nowhere is like home, you know?”

“I’ve never left the states besides this, so I kind of get it. I’m not going to lie, it’s a lot different here compared to there. But, I'm definitely loving Holmes Chapel’s charm. Everyone I’ve met so far is super kind,” Aurora confessed trying not to flat out say she was glad to be away from her spiteful family for good.

Reaching the colorful kitchen, Aurora kept close to Gemma as if she feared that the ingredients were in plain sight, in which she would already appear to be a proper idiot. Crouching down next to the stove, Gemma’s soft brown eyes met Aurora’s and a small smile crept along with the British’s facial features. Opening the cabinet’s door, her eyes remained on Aurora before she giggled and spoke, “who puts bloody pasta noodles by the stove? There should be some jarred pasta sauce on the other side of the stove.”

Moving to the instructed location Aurora’s eyebrows went up quizzically, but opening it nonetheless opened the cabinet door and took a peak in. Sure enough, there was the pasta sauce and random bottles of wine. With a small shake of the head Aurora muttered in a playful tone, “she must have been madder than I remember.” Standing back up with the sauce and a bottle of wine, she sat the items on the countertop. “If you and your mom don’t have dinner plans, you’d be more than welcomed to join me. I haven’t cooked for only myself in what feels like ages, and maybe you can help me find whatever else that crazy American hid.”

“We’d love to just let me tell my mom to bring over the pie as well,” Gemma had responded while pulling out her phone sending a quick little message to her mom. “Now, where do you reckon she put the pots and wine glasses?”

***

Laughs echoed off of the walls of the living room, where the three women sat drinking their fair share of wine. Although Aurora had genuinely been nervous to really have the company so soon, she was glad she had opened the front door. Dinner had gone so smoothly, that it had seemed as though they had all knew each other for several years, or as if Aurora had been apart of the family for several years.

“I’m just saying Aurora should spend some time in London too, especially if she’s going back to school mum, I didn’t say I was going to kidnap her and never share her with you,” Gemma retorted trying to withhold a laugh.

“You better not even try it, Gemma, she is my new child who just happens to live only a road away. I am not losing all my children to London,” the mother spoke before sending a small wink to both of the girls.

Taking another sip of the white wine, Aurora simply surpassed the smile on her face. “You two are officially my favorite people in the world,” she stated truthfully before speaking again before the others could, “but on a serious note, I think maybe I’ll stay in Holmes Chapel until I’m settled in and comfortable with my surroundings. Then from there I’ll get a flat out in London for school, and come here for breaks and the weekends. I’m not too sure what the plan will be just yet.”

“That does sound like a good plan, love. London is quite big,” Anne had replied softly.

Hearing the supportiveness within Anne’s tone had Aurora feeling slightly envious. Was this the supportiveness she had been missing nearly her whole life? Was this what having a mother figure like? Were all mother’s like this? So many questioned clashed within her head as she processed how genuinely kind these people were.

Out of the corner of her eye, a black shine had caught Aurora’s attention. Slowly climbing off of the plush sofa, the girl sat her wine glass down on the side table before crawling over to what appeared to be a large box next to a record player. “Woah,” she murmured softly as she got close. Sitting in front of the record player the brunette began to pull out the records. “I had no idea my grandmother had all these,” Aurora trailed off feeling the eyes on her back.

“She didn’t,” Gemma had started gaining a small peak over the shoulder from Aurora, who then continued to go through the records in a daze, “they used to be my brother’s. Near the end, Cat knew how bad her medical condition was getting. Since she had known that she had wanted you to have the house, she started getting the house ready for you. She had my brother and I help plan the new color scheme. She wanted you to feel comfortable and happy. Anyways, one day we were talking about music because Cat kept saying that you needed to have a way to listen to music as you read or cooked. I had suggested a wireless speaker, but he went a little deeper with the question, and had asked what type of music you liked,”

“Yeah, I remember her calling me to ask what music I like, she sounded rushed, but I thought she was having a weird grandma moment that she just wanted to know how I was feeling,” Aurora elaborated slightly while looking up from the records.

“By the time I got back with the speaker, Harry had brought over his collection,” Gemma added.

“Tell your brother he has great taste in music, way better than most, but if he wants this all back, my feelings wouldn’t be hurt. I have no idea how he can part from Stevie Nicks, Aerosmith, or the Eagles,” Aurora said referencing some of the albums that she had already pulled out. With a small yawn, the girl slowly removed a vinyl from its case and carefully placed it on to a record player.

“Gem, we should go home, Aurora must be getting tired from her long day, and we are waking her up early tomorrow so we can all go to the bakery in the morning,” Anne commented softly while rising from her spot on the sofa.

Once she had gotten up from her spot, Anne encouragingly helped Gemma off the lazy boy before planting a friendly kiss on American’s forehead, “we’ll see you in the morning, yeah?”

“You’re going to regret saying you wanted to get breakfast when she wakes you up tomorrow, so try to get some rest,” Gemma instructed giving the sitting girl a hug.

By the time that both women had exited the house, Stevie’s legendary voice filled the house. Aurora had managed to force herself off of the floor to the lock the door. It wasn’t until she waved goodnight to her new neighbors that Aurora realized whom she had just spent the evening with. How had it been that she hadn’t made the connection sooner? It hadn’t changed her opinion on the women at all, and yet her younger directioner self was incredibly disappointed that she had met Harry Styles’ family and didn’t realize it. But, in more ways than one, she felt relieved that she hadn’t until their departure if she had then she may have felt the need to act more reserved than normal. At least they had met the real her as she had with them.

Yet, subconsciously she was trying hard to keep her cool, she had Harry Styles’ private vinyl collection. Was this actually real?

[xuijia]

Grenwich Falls

Grenwich Falls- What happens when a an unknown comes into the crossfire of a werewolf pack? No one is familiar with each other and no one trust each other..

GOT7/BTS au: non-idol, college students, werewolves, other wereanimals, and a few unknowns.

Warnings: Future chapters may contain smut, angst, fluff. Trigger warnings will be given when appropriate. 

Main characters from each group will mainly consists of 94 and 97liners. 

Chapter 1: The Meeting

Chpt 2

Word count: 3.2k

You knew what you were and you knew the chance you took coming to this university. People like you remained low and separate from others preferring to stay away from cliques that could never really pinpoint what or who you are. But you were tired of running tired of being a nomad with no claim to any space as your own and sure you could turn back to your parents and live life back in your small town with them and your little brother but what good would it do? They weren’t like you either. So after leaving home at 17 what else were you supposed to do now that you were 20 and truly unestablished. You did what everyone else did that was your age, went to college. For the past two years you had taken online courses at a university so you could roam from place to place exploring the states all the way from the west coast to the east but you missed companionship. After all that was a vital part of human nature to crave the company of other humans no matter the smaller percentage of that which was in you. It was however much greater than those of the other wereanimals.  

So here you were moving into your apartment a week before the fall term was about to start with two werewolves as roommates and oddly a human with a strong were scent. She was marked, you figured that was the only way the other two females would have willingly chose her as a roommate. From what you knew werewolves didn’t associate themselves with non-wolves. This you had learned from your parents as they warned you that of all the were animals; “dogs” as they called them had the highest ego, traveled in the largest packs and thought that they were the superior of the were communities. Heck, there were even fully exclusive werewolf universities but none for your kind but yet here they were.

“Hi, my name is Andrea”, one of the girls extended her hand to you acknowledging your presence and company as a housemate.

She was cute, a description you’d normally never associate with a were but you could tell she was fierce as her hazel eyes lit like fire as you extended your hand to her in return. She was taking in your scent no doubt as you had done the same but like most reactions you’d receive her nose scrunched and she viewed you through slanted eyes with uncertainty. It made the hairs on your neck stand as your instincts immediately wanted you to become defensive. The other were girl took note of the exchange and rushed to Andrea’s side eyeing you warily.

A tiny sniff battle ensued as both girls slightly lifted their noses to the air and looked between each other as if gauging your scent. You knew what they wanted to ask but they dare didn’t because throughout all were animals you never asked what kind of were a person was. It was simply bad manners and left an ill taste in everyone’s mouth. That was the one mutual rule that all communities shared; unless said were voluntarily divulged their breed you’d ought to never ask. Of course most thought this rule didn’t apply to werewolves because they were proud to be wolves, travelling in packs, the stereotypical brute build and biker gang mentality wasn’t exactly overfitting when it came to their kind. And if you couldn’t judge from their aura they had no problem telling you just what they were.

“Ugh I absolutely hate when you guys do that!”, the blonde girl exasperated.

She was short and bubbly typical girl next door look, definitely not the type to be mixed with werewolves. She literally couldn’t be taller than 5’2 and the baby pink skirt she wore with her white and yellow striped crop top practically screamed “Eat Me I’m Cute and Cuddly!” You couldn’t help but wonder why or even how she….

“Seriously why don’t you two just piss on the floor and mark your territory” She huffed interrupting your thoughts. “I mean seriously you knew this school would have other were animals, why are you being so weird?”

“Alicia if you weren’t dating my brother I’d seriously bite you right now”, the other girl barked. She was about your height maybe a little taller. With dark brown hair that almost mirrored black and skin so bronze you’d think she was made of copper. Her eyes were most alarming they were gold like literal molten gold.

“Don’t worry Natty, I can take it. Your brother bites me all the time”, she lowered her voice giving the girl a seductive wink.

Natty you now knew her to be scoffed in disgust and faked a choking sound as she went back to your shared living room dragging her bags of clothes off to what you assumed would be her room. Returning your eyes to Andrea you noticed she was still looking at you skeptically. No doubt ruling out which animal you couldn’t be. “Your scent is different”, she said dropping her stance and bouncing into the kitchen.

You were taken aback this was going to be harder than you thought. At least for the moment they weren’t being aggressive but you could tell you guys wouldn’t be besties anytime soon.

Because you were the last to arrive you were subjected to the smallest room but luckily for you it had a better layout as your room was the only one with a walk-in closet in its bathroom. Loosing yourself into unpacking your stuff and trying to make the space feel as comfortable as possible you decided painting these drab off-white walls were a must. You quickly decided to take the day tomorrow to go to the nearest hardware store you could find and add anything to the walls to make it more lively.

“Hi new roomie!”, Alicia popped in making herself comfortable right on your freshly made bed. “We are going to get some food and hangout at a couple of the pack members house, you down?”

“Liss! You can’t just be inviting people to hang around the pack that aren’t pack this isn’t how it works!” you heard a booming voice from across the hall yell. To which you quickly put together as Natty from her tone earlier.

“Ignore her. It’s just some pizza and beers”, the blonde girls said rolling her eyes and facing you again.

You were about the politely decline before another head popped in your doorway and said “yah join us it’s pretty casual and I doubt you really know anyone here yet”.

Again you were about to decline but your stomach answered for you. A growl ripped from your belly that would have made you embarrassed had it not been for the cheerful claps from Alicia and her beauty pageant grin “I will take that as a yes!”

The two girls scurried from your room with Andrea turning back to take in your appearance. You weren’t dressed to impress per se but you didn’t exactly look homeless. What was expected, after all you knew you’d just be moving boxes all day and organizing your new space. So for that occasion your purposefully bleached high school football team shirt and your rather worn yoga pants sufficed, but not for this occasion apparently.

“err you might want to change”, she said grinning sheepishly at you giving off an obvious shrug that stated ‘first impressions’.

After changing all three girls were waiting for you in the living room seemingly dressed as if they were going to a club. ‘Casual my ass’, you thought to yourself. Each one of them had on some form of a mini skirt and tight shirts. You looked down at your apparel. You didn’t’ own club clothes it just wasn’t a part of your wardrobe. The skinny ripped jeans you wore exposed a great deal of your thighs but it still wasn’t drastic and your long sleeve off the shoulder striped mustard yellow and black top didn’t meet the obvious dress code.

“Should I change again?” you asked incredulously. Honestly you would have just rather stayed in and ordered takeout alone. But however this was the whole point of coming to college to interact with other people.

“Umm it’ll do”, Andrea got up circling you. “Nice ass”, she said grabbing her keys and heading for the door.

“Let your hair down”, Alicia commanded as she walked towards you with a tube of red blush tone nude lipstick.

You did as she said letting your honey curls fall from its messy bun and drape around your shoulders. She applied a light coat of lipstick and ran her fingers through your hair fluffing out the flat part that your scrunchy had caused. That’s when you could smell it. The scent, his scent whoever he was the were had a strong presence and it was all over her. She was marked alright her own smell was almost indistinguishable mixed with his. Most human don’t have strong odor usually they’d smell like whatever they had been around that day. You could tell she liked lavender and you could also tell she hadn’t been lying about the bites. Whoever the werewolf was he had claimed her and bitten her in and out of his wolf form.

“You’re really pretty”, she admired giving you the once over again. A car horn signaled that your little encounter was taking too long.

The drive to the pizza place was rather short and the time it took was spent listening to Natty and Alicia banter between each other. You didn’t know much about either of them but you could tell they were fond of each other and that this relationship wasn’t a newly established one either.

The pizza plaza had a cool vibe and when you guys walked in you could immediately smell the scent of many werewolves, a few werefoxes, a couple of werelynx, and what seemed to be the pungent smell of a werepanther. For some reason you could never find yourself to adjust to their unique odor. But Surely enough just as you could smell them they could smell you. A couple of wolves in the corner all turned their heads to your direction. The cool thing about your nature was you had the ability to tone down your scent and even take on the scent of whatever were was around you if there were multiple ones. Unfortunately, also for you in order to do this you had to calm your nerves and walking into a room of unknowns wasn’t exactly helping and considering it was only days away from a full moon everyone’s scent was magnified so there wasn’t much you could do to mask your own just yet.

Wedging yourself behind the two wolves you tried to block your body and keep your head down as they walked further into the plaza reaching some stairs. The smell of wolves was getting stronger and you could now see this was a pack exclusive room and you were not welcome. Vibrations were running through your body and a slow hum was starting that sensed danger but yet no reaction was coming from the three women ahead of you so you still followed suit.

Entering the room, you saw about fifteen different wolves in the room a mix a male and female though mostly male.  Two pool tables in the center occupied two guys each, both of the brute and rather tall stature.

“Baby!”, Alicia squealed running and jumping into the arms of a guy that scarily resembled Natty. He was rather on the skinny side with long legs and thick lips that made his smirk tilt into a smile as he caught her and immediately enveloped her into a hug and kiss.

A guy much broader but about the same height greeted the new guest but quickly caught your scent and turned his eyes to you. You swore you thought you saw them change color slightly going from brown orbs to a highlighted silver as his shoulders squared towards you. His face remained calm but you could feel his power his instincts immediately alerting him that you were not something he was familiar with.

“Who’s she?” he addressed the other three not taking his eyes off of you. His nostrils flared as he was still detecting and processing you. Much to your dismay you could notice the others doing the same. What you really noticed was that the tone of his question was not asking for your name but what you were.

A slight silence persisted as your eyes never left his stance, you knew better than to make steady eye contact with him but yet your heart rate began to slow so you knew he could sense it and was less alarmed. You had to calm yourself because your nature could be equally as aggressive as werewolves but in this room that would not be a good move for you. You tilted your head finally meeting his gaze again but this time holding it. His eyebrow quirked up a smirk pulling at his lips. Ordinarily from another werewolf this would be a challenge to the alpha but your aura gave him no intonation that that was your intention. Of course it wasn’t it wasn’t in your kind’s nature to challenge another alpha for dominance. One because it wasn’t a desire to be a pack master or leader over anyone. You tried your best to make this aware to him and everyone in the room changing your aura into that of a subordinate human.

“Jinyoung. This is our new roommate”, Alicia spoke up but quickly all four of you looked from each other realizing you never properly introduced yourself.

“Y/N”, was all you said smiling sweetly at him meeting his gaze again. At this point everyone in the room was looking at the two of you. Of course you knew they could smell you and at the moment your instincts hadn’t quite subdued the danger feeling so you were not even attempting to merge your scent with one of theirs as camouflage as it would just alarm them more.

Another couple of seconds went by and finally he smiled back at you relaxing and leaning against the pool table a cue in hand “well welcome y/n”, he said.

The tension in the air visibly relaxed and the activities presumed as before you entered. Usually you would have no problem wandering around on your own. That was the nature of your kind what you felt most comfortable doing but right now you wanted to do anything but. You were thankful for Alicia beckoning you over to her and the guy practically entangled around her body. Even for you this seemed peculiar. Usually wereanimals weren’t that infatuated with humans.

“This is my boyfriend BamBam, he is also Natty’s brother which I’m sure you’ve figured out by now” She was gleaming as she looked up to her boyfriend but his eyes were trained on you. He seemed friendly enough and you could tell he had power though obviously not like Jinyoung and not even as much as natty, but he was still a strong wolf.

He finally nodded towards you cracking a smile, canines on full display “Well Liss, you always find interesting company don’t you?”, he said nuzzling her nose causing a schoolgirl giggle to escape her throat.

The rest of the night went by pretty smoothly Liss as you now realized everyone called Alicia and Andrea who had begun warming up to you slowing took you around the room introducing you to everyone. For the most part they seemed welcoming though cautious of you, which you couldn’t blame them. You ate pizza and laughed with some random guy and girl but made sure to limit yourself to two beers for the sake of controlling your ability to mask your scent which at times was all but present. Still though you could feel eyes on your back the whole time and you had to put an effort into keeping hair from standing up in alarm. Jinyoung was watching you just observing you along with another guy with almost an equally aggressive power as Jinyoung. He caught your attention you couldn’t help but to stare back at him as he looked to you. His loose brown hair was neatly styled and his muscles were apparent beneath his black shirt and black pants he was shorter than the other two mean but that did not hinder his strong aura at all. Frankly you also thought him beautiful though a bit intimidating as you took in his scent not once did his eyes leave yours.

Finally, he caught your gaze his eyes burning into your own and his face set in hard line making you both feel at ease. That much was apparent you could tell he was holding back his power and for some odd reason you could tell he knew you were doing the same.

“You shouldn’t be here”, you heard a voice whisper in your ear. His breath tickled your ear and you turned to meet his smirk. He was halfway joking with you finding your confused face amusing. He handed you a red cup which contained water much to your gratitude. You took a sip cheeks feeling flushed.

“You’re making the pack leaders uneasy”, he grinned even harder. Was he flirting with you? You decided to play along finding the tall handsome guy very attractive and you couldn’t deny his scent was appealing to you.

“What makes you think that?” you batted your eyelashes taking another sip of water and grinning just as widely as him.

“Umm” he mused pretending to think “must be because you’re so attractive”, he said circling you admiring you from all angles and adding “plus you’re… Different.”

“Am I?”, you said flipping your hair. This of course wafted your smell closer to him and you saw his adams apple move down his throat as he swallowed. He was definitely affected by you as much as you were affected by him.

“That you are” he said moving his body closer to you almost touching you. For some reason you couldn’t figure out why your body felt like it was on fire. Was it him or the approaching full moon whatever the reason that and the beer was making your scent even stronger.

“I’m Jungkook by the way” he said finally closing the distance and putting his hand on the small of your back on the exposed skin. He felt the shock, causing his pupils to dilate and you realized what was happening. He was coming to his heat and for some reason you were magnifying it.

You heard a cough from beside you and immediately Jungkook dropped his hands from you and took a step back. “We need to get going”, Jinnyoung said commanding the wolf to follow. The other guys followed and slowly everyone started to disperse from the scene as the night had now approached 2 am. You couldn’t help but notice the guy from earlier staring at you again but this time when your eyes met his he looked away and followed his pack master and Jungkook out of the room.

Alicia noticed the little exchange and scoffed at his behavior “That was weird, he’s never done that before”.

You looked down at her and lowered your voice “Who is he? Why does he feel so strong?”.

Andrea was now at your side staring at the space he had disappeared from “That’s Jackson, and he is strong, very powerful. He was almost our pack master”.