#to be fair!! everyone learns differently! there are many comments saying that this other video made sense and helped them | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

denminn · 2 years ago

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Graceful Conversations

As someone who has worked with social media for nonprofits and churches, I've had a fleeting curiosity about TikTok. The controversy of privacy and the role of the Chinese Communist Party aside, I've been fascinated by its rise and how many Christians are using it. After watching a video about churches and Tik Tok, I decided to use the suggested hashtag, #progressiveclergy.

I shouldn't have been surprised with what I saw, but I was this plethora of videos all screaming how progressive they were. There were videos about LGBTQ issues, especially about being trans. Others were about being pro-choice. All of them were kind of in-your-face and telling you how it's okay to be progressive and how they weren't like those conservative Christians.

There is a conservative version of this as well, though I see it more on Twitter. There is a group of male pastors (usually called "theobros") that don't have a problem saying the most misogynistic comments out there, all the while trying to show this is what it means to be a god-fearing Christian. I feel for the wives of these men.

Social media Christianity tends to be a place where people shout their positions, but frankly there isn't a whole lot of thinking going on.

This isn’t just happening in religious circles. As someone that’s been active in Never Trump conservative circles, I’ve been surprised to see so many estranged and former Republicans just give up any hope of swinging the party away from the dangerous machinations of former President Donald Trump. Too often the talk I hear is that the base beyond redemption and it’s a waste of time trying to persuade them. So there is no effort within the party to provide a counter voice, instead hoping that the Democrats can simply defeat MAGA Republicans at the ballot box.

What’s interesting in both experiences is how progressive clergy and theobros alike don’t really engage the other side. Yes they respond to the other side, but there’s more talking about people instead of to other people. It’s less about sharing viewpoints and more about creating “safe spaces” not in order to protect people from violence, but to not have to hear the other side at all. As Christian philosopher James K. A. Smith notes, “What’s important is that we preach loud enough to be sure everyone in our choir hears us.”

It’s common these days to blame social media for, well, everything, but the rise of social media has meant that we can create experiences where we really don’t have to encounter the other side. People will blame the algorithms for this, but in many cases those algorithms are simply learning from us. If we seek out articles that says that Republicans are fascists, well we are going to get a ton of stuff on Republican fascists.

Why are we so focused on talking to the other side and not reaching out and trying to persuade? Let’s put the accusastion that tech is the culprit aside for now. I think there are three reasons: the first is a lack of charity. The second is a lack of curiosity. Finally there is a lack of humility.

Let’s start off with charity. That word can mean love, but in Hebrew it also meant fairness or justice. In the editorial by James KA Smith he talks about persuasion as convicted charity, which means meeting them where they are while also hoping to change their mind. If you take the Hebrew understanding seriously then it means looking at the Other and having a sense of treating them fairly even though you want them to change their minds. Most of our discussion today is with one another and not with someone who is different from us. If we think of the other, more often than not it is not with a sense of fairness or justice but with contempt. We might be convicted, but it is the conviction of a zealot that thinks there is the true view and all other views are not simply wrong, but possibly evil.

Next is curiosity. Psychologist Adam Grant tweeted about curiosity as an underutilized tool of persuasion. “A natural response to disagreement is to attack what people think,” Grant wrote. “A more inviting alternative is to be genuinely fascinated by how they think.”

A few months back I interviewed an Episcopal priest that is a “side B Christian.” Side B Christians are people who consider themselves attracted to someone of the same sex, but believe sexual relations are evil. Do I agree with his approach? No, but I also want to know why he thinks the way he thinks. I am curious as to why someone might think the way he does.

Shortly after I posted the interview, I got a response from a fellow LGBTQ person that was laced with hatred towards my Side B guest and anger that I would even give him a listen. It angered me because I wasn’t trying to hurt the LGBTQ community, and my podcast isn’t about supporting just a viewpoint; it was about being curious about someone who has a different view on something. Curiosity, that sense of wanting to understand someone leads to understanding that you don't know everything, it leads to humility.

Humility is often defined as having a modest view of one’s ability. One could also say that humility is about not taking yourself so seriously. You can laugh at yourself knowing that you don’t have all the answers. You aren’t more enlightened or endowed with special abilities, but you are just as human as the other person and you are open that you night be wrong.

I’ve noticed as of late every time someone talks about having some humility and even civility towards the other side someone has to bring up slavery or Jim Crow. This “concern” is always a tell, in that it shows that the person bringing up this concern is afraid of the other side. They have already surmised that they are akin to an appeaser for slavery or Jim Crow. Of course, there were people who offered peans to civility that did support unjust structures like slavery. But for the most part, the political differences we have today are not equivalent to a century ago. There are differences, but I don't think they are irreconcilable. If the difference we face are truly irreconcilable, then our nation is in worst shape than we think.

Humility says that I don't have all the answers. I'm not the gatekeeper of all wisdom and knowledge. It also says that I need other people in order to really be complete. This is the opposite of what we see so often on social media where we become guardians of whatever position we hold. When I think back on all the videos I've seen on TikTok there is a lot of shouting of positions and we might think we are welcoming people, but I do wonder: is it really about people? Do we care about people, not just the ones that agree with us, but those people who don't agree with us? Do we see them as someone created by God even if they hold opinions and beliefs that I oppose? I don't think this is the fault of social media, but I do think that what social media makes it easy for us is to flatten our experiences. We can have fulfilling social media experiences, but if we want something that is more flat, then social media makes it easy. And far too many of us want flat experiences, where anything that is different from us is not seen in its complexity, but in a flat and one-dimensional way.

In many cases our ideology, be it liberal or conservative is what grounds us these days, not theology. We might talk about God, but whether its progressive clergy on TikTok or thebros on Twitter, what matters is our ideology. People don't matter, except in being in service to a larger ideology.

But in doing that, I wonder if we lose sight of humanity in all of its quirkiness and brokenness. When we lose sight of messy humans that don't fit neatly into the boxes we've created to sort people into this place or that place I wonder if we also lose sight of grace as well.

I will soon release another interview that is sure to upset some people. Paul VanderKlay is a Christian Reformed minister that has some intriguing insights on LGBTQ issues. While I'm pretty sure we disagree on some key points concerning LGBTQ roles in the church, he also seems to have a spirit about him that is ready and willing to enter into dialogue with people he might not agree with. His charity, curiosity and humility make him someone I want to be in conversation. But I also know there are those who will dismiss him because he is not considered affirming and some will say he isn't "safe." And maybe not everyone should seek to be in conversation with people they don't see eye to eye on issues.

But I think our culture and our faith is the poorer if we don't at least try to engage. As a happily married gay man, I'm not changing my viewpoint, but I do want to understand and I do want to be graceful to others.

Our world is in need of God's grace. I can only hope to be a witness to that grace that so many of us desire.

#essay #essays #mainline church #progressive christianity #evangelical #grace

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instantartific · 1 year ago

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I love all of this so much because Yinu actively makes me go NUTS. Her battle in and of itself, with the very clear things that occur, and the more subtle implications of it too just.

Apologies for how all over the place this is and if this doesn't make any sense but there are so many good points here and I want to add as many as I can.

(And I do get to the hanahaki, but at the end.)

Right off the bat, Yinu has absolutely nothing to do with the whole EDM thing. She's a child that got targeted from association, likely without understanding why. All she's probably getting is that these guys are trying to ruin everyone's concerts (if she even knows about the other charters as Mama probably kept it from her so she wouldn't be stressed while playing.)

May starts to actively insult and tease this kid and wreck stuff before Mama even needs to say anything. So when Mama does say something, it makes all that much more sense to a kid, and makes the kid all that less likely to question anything: "yes, these are bad guys, huh! they already proved it!"

Mama actively putting Yinu in danger by dangling her above the stage from that high up, but it's okay, because Mama's got you and she won't let you fall.

But THEN she gets so consumed in her own wrath that she allows that exact thing to happen and stops listening to her daughter entirely. Maybe she wasn't listening at all.

Something that I cannot handle is the fact that Yinu gets a different skin that's all dirtied and messed up like the other three do. Implying she got messed up and bruised. Implying she actually hit the ground when Mama dropped her and no one checked. Implying this kid got hurt and no one around her seemed to care and all she was being told was to just keep playing.

MAYDAY BREAKS THIS CHILD'S PIANO WHILE SHE IS SITTING IN THE SEAT. AND TO HER? AND TO YINU? YINU IS THE ONLY ONE WHO SEEMS TO CARE ABOUT THIS. YINU IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CARES THAT SHE'S HURT. SHE'S THE ONLY ONE WHO CARES THAT HER FATHER'S PIANO IS BROKEN. BEFORE SHE FINALLY GETS HER MOTHER'S ATTENTION, IN HER EYES, SHE'S THE ONLY ONE.

And more things I'm not even considering at the moment.

But on a psychological standpoint?

Yinu is incredibly intelligent by multiple standards and I go into it under the cut.

Her mastery in her music, to be able to learn everything she has in at most six, MAYBE seven years.

- Playing with little if at all mistakes under growing pressure and stress AND TALK WHILE SHE'S DOING SO.

- THIS VIDEO. THIS EXAMPLE OF HER PROWESS. The second comment explains Zuke's reaction to her being able to perform this piece as well as she is as young as she is and feeling the need to translate to May that she's turning up the heat as fast as he can.

- That being said, if she's been doing this for six, at most seven years, then she's been going all of this her entire life. And she's watching it quite literally crumbling beneath her. And even when she's performing her very best, it still isn't enough to stop them and it still isn't enough for her mother. That—and while this may be reaching—that she may not be good enough for her father.

- And she's only nine.

Emotionally speaking?

- Someone gave her the tools to understand how to control her emotions and during the battle it sounds like Mama, and she's watching her mother disregard the same things she was taught and go too far.

- That being said, she only is reminded to calm herself down so she can play better.

- Given her stage of psychological development, she is right under the age in which you begin to understand that your parents have flaws. That they're not perfect. That the world isn't always going to be fair to you.

- And she might begin to realize that her mother isn't perfect during the end of the battle because I think that "I hate you" was to her mother, too.

And how all of this ties into hanahaki?

She has not grown past her music. She has never been anything more than her music if she's been practicing for that long.

The fact that she's so small. The fact that she doesn't continue to grow. If a plant is not given the room to grow, it will find a way to continue regardless, even if it means going through itself. As you said, "nothing changes, she doesn't grow or develop, she remains the same and that's exactly why it goes unnoticed."

What if the hanahaki, when it does begin to develop, maybe from her trying as hard as she can to be "the golden maestro" for as long as she can, to give people power for as long as she can, to fund the organization that could've helped her father (correct me if I'm wrong) as long as she can, it takes the form of her music. It manifests in a way, from all of those complicated and hurting feelings, that maybe makes her playing better at first.

Or, at least, people think it's better. She's playing things much more complicated. She's practicing for even longer. But when people start to get used to that, used to her trying even harder and still asking for more, it does the opposite.

What if it starts to make her hands stiff?

What if, when that precious little flower begins to wilt under all of that pressure, the rot tries to take away her ability to play?

What if it forces her to be more than her music?

What if that's when Mama starts to notice?

What if it makes her take on more from her mother than either of them thought, actually.

What if it makes her take on her mother's anger, her mother's need for perfection, her mother's unrelenting expectations of her. What if Yinu takes them in and the rot itself becomes a neverending cycle, only taking more and more of her the more she becomes her mother?

I don't know how to tie all of this together but something else that was bothering me is.

Mama is, quite literally, the roots beneath Yinu; yes, Yinu is the bright and beautiful flower, but Mama? She's the thing that holds her little flower, and everything else, together. And it's hard to tell how deep she really goes until you dig through things you're not supposed to see.

Yinu has the title of Charter. The image. The people's expectations and adoration.

Mama has the control from right there beneath her.

on the subject of hanahaki disease x NSR, I'm specifically thinking about how it applies to Yinu and her mom since they're. plant beings to an extent?

putting this under a cut because it got a bit too long and it turned into mostly an analysis lmfao

like, for example, Mama's most prominent trait is the fact that her hair changes into branch-like tendrils when angry, so I assume hanahaki would be harder to recognize because. they're already plants. changing radically, coughing up petals, growing flowers and stems or whatever wouldn't be too alarming for them in GENERAL? since those things already happen with their different moods and emotions, perhaps even health, so how does extreme repression look like? growth of invasive plants that they certainly shouldn't have maybe? symbolic flowers for the type of things they're repressing? a slow process of decay? something else?

LIKE. HEAR ME OUT. OK. I HAVE A THOUGHT PROCESS IN HERE SOMEWHERE. BEAR WITH ME

Mama as a character is so very interesting, because she's clearly an attentive, loving and protective mother - but at the same time, she and Yinu represent the concept of young prodigies forced on the spotlight by parents who live vicariously through their kids

maybe Mama is aware of hanahaki disease, but hasn't experienced it herself because she already has an outlet for all of her feelings - her own daughter. whether she does it on purpose or not is up to you and how you like to characterize Mama, but personally I like to think is something she does unconsciously specifically because Yinu takes so much after her father. IF YOU LOOK AT THEM SIDE TO SIDE? the only things that Yinu and her mother have in common are the forehead markings and the possibility that Yinu's hair might be actual flowers, like Mama's branch-like hair.

"But the rose motif-" PAPA. TAKEN FROM PAPA. THE GOLDEN ROSE IS ATTRIBUTED TO HIM AND THEN INHERITED BY YINU. I don't think they outright say this anywhere, but the implication that the piano Yinu plays used to belong to her father explains her attachment to it and why their entire fight ends when it's broken (you could even argue that the roses on Mama's outfit were influenced by Papa, since she goes from a white dress with yellow roses to a black dress with red roses after his death, yknow. mourning widow and all)

(the last picture is taken from this official tweet, drawn by one of the concept artists of the game!)

but back on track, the point I was trying to make here is that I think Mama unconsciously projects all of her feelings about losing her husband through Yinu. instead of the usual "I want to be famous, so I will make my child famous", it's more of a "I'm keeping the memory of Papa alive through our daughter" vibe? if that makes sense?? and that's why Mama presents as this very collected woman who can, and will lose control if angry - because she's not used to repressing.

which then takes me to how that affects Yinu, my favorite subject ever.

they both bond through music because it's the legacy that Papa left them, but taking into account Mama's overbearing and overprotective nature towards Yinu, using her as an outlet and whatnot, that definitely. has consequences.

I vaguely remember the devs at some point saying that Natura, the lungs of Vinyl City, has a lot of crystal domes around because they represent Mama's desire to keep Yinu safe since Yinu is represented as a flower? but take that with a grain of salt since I can't find the source rn </3 (still, I love thinking about each charter's relationship to their own district and all so I'm eating that up anyway) and it's obvious that the puppet themes allude to the fact that Yinu has no control over her career and/or life.

there's also the thing about Yinu being. INCREDIBLY SMALL. LIKE. LOOK AT HER. SHE COULD STRAIGHT UP FIT INSIDE DJ SUB'S SHOE OR SOMETHING. yeah, she's 9 years old and it makes sense for her being small, but I wonder. what if this is how hanahaki manifests for Yinu?

she's visibly small and lacks any sort of presence when compared to everyone else because she's, essentially, carrying her mother's emotional baggage. she's actively being smothered and kept from properly growing because of it. and Yinu is much too young to properly recognize her mother's actions as harmful - this is her mother, she might be scary when angry, but she loves her all the same. someone her age probably does as told with one thing in mind: to make her loved ones happy.

hanahaki affects her because Yinu is confident, in her skills and in the way things are supposed to be. she plays and the entire district, NSR and Mama are happy - so I imagine she would struggle with the idea of being unhappy when nothing is physically hurting her. with the idea that her loved ones are putting her in situations that make her uncomfortable and all. like. come on. shes literally a child.

and maybe that's why it's so hard to notice the signs of hanahaki within Yinu, because she's stagnant. nothing changes, she doesn't grow or develop, she remains the same and that's exactly why it goes unnoticed, nothing is visibly affecting her. that's why Mama doesn't realize anything is wrong for a long time. until the stress of hanahaki starts to actually take a toll on Yinu, with the accumulated stress and repression affecting her body - maybe her petals start to fall or and no one understands Why. maybe her plant abilities start growing inwards instead, taking root in her organs and such. something something, plants will always find a way to adapt and grow under harsh conditions

#yinu........... yinu Yinu yinu.#also hello i have hijacked your post again.#i think i went horribly off track then bounced on track again and ????? i dont know. sorry if im not making sense.#ও musings

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infinitecrime · 3 years ago

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Just a quick statement in case anyone was wondering where I have been/will be. I've been taking, and will continue to take, a short Tumblr break until the SCU (Sebastian Cancellation Universe) wears itself out and goes on hiatus. I deleted Tumblr off my phone a few days ago and realised immediately that all this vicious, misinformed discourse pretty much solely exists on here and twitter, and if I want to avoid it, I can simply remove myself from the space.

I'm certainly not going to be gone forever - the head Canceller has made it quite clear that her sole intention was to "bully Sebastian off the internet", and presumably his fans too, while using POC and social issues as pawns/collateral damage. To quit the fandom feels like letting them win, but taking a break feels necessary at this point.

I like to listen to others who have different perspectives and value their opinions - but at the end of the day, I form my own and do my own research. And so far, I have seen absolutely nothing to change my opinion that Sebastian is a kind and well meaning man who sometimes doesn't think through every conceivable perspective before his does something - in other words, a flawed human. I'm not going to call for the end of a man's career and/or life, or withdraw my support of him, because 4 years ago he (accidentally, for all we know) liked a video of a man being called out for rapping the N-word and being told to censor himself, or because he smiled weird next to a statue while playing a Buddhist character. We can criticise him for his own actions, but these are willfully disingenuous interpretations specifically designed to harm not just him, but also POC fans who look up to him. I won't let myself be lied to, gaslighted, or dragged into a herd mentality. A disturbing number of people are not actually angry at him, but are simply scared of being harassed if they dare to question what they're being told or form their own opinions, so join the herd. The pursuit of the moral highground is addictive but futile, and you lose it as soon as you stoop to bullying, abuse, harassment, stalking and running dedicated, deranged hate accounts.

I'm not going to cancel him for a handful of bad jokes or mistakes made years ago that have been profusely apologised for and learnt from, either, and I'm not going to cancel him because of the years old actions of people he is associated with that he had nothing to do with. This isn't fair, proportional or helpful, at all. It's not activism, and it's not social justice - in fact, the constant malicious attempts to cancel him are only making it harder for him to see legitimate criticism or respond without setting a precedent that death threats will get his attention and a grovelling apology for things he didn't say and views he doesn't hold.

If your whole life was on tape and available to comb through with the worst intentions, and you weren't hiding behind anonymous accounts, I could construct equally terrible narratives from every bad joke, misspoken word, ill thought out comment, accidental like, dubious friend, mistake, genuinely hurtful moment or show of ignorance that you have ever made, but apologised for, grew from and forgot about instantly. You have that right: but you don't grant it to him, because he isn't truly a human being to you. So many of the blatantly and demonstrably false accusations I have been seeing would have been dispelled through the most basic level of fact checking and critical thinking, but through herd mentality and what I can only describe as moral bloodlust, they've gained serious, dangerous traction.

For someone who was raised in a deeply insular, conservative, traditional, orthodox environment, he has done a genuinely excellent job of freeing himself from that cycle of ignorance and using his platform in a positive way, as well as responding when he genuinely has misstepped. He will likely never be on the same level of educated/woke as a ~25 year old American who was literally raised knee deep in social justice twitter discourse, because he didn't have that privilege, but we are all on a journey and progress is not linear or with a clearly defined end.

The ironic thing is: the current state of the fandom is a direct result of how nice and willing to listen and learn Seb has been! The level to which he used to engage with fans and respond to criticism and feedback has created an expectation that he will ask how high whenever he is told to jump, and if he doesn't respond to every little thing, this means he doesn't care or hates us. His willingness to own up to mistakes, apologise and grow publically has created the strange idea that if he's not doing something publically, it's not happening, as if he only exists while we can see him, like social media peekaboo. His openness and willingness to act on criticism of those in his social and professional circles has led to the belief that we can demand he cut anyone we dislike out of his life immediately instead of helping and supporting them in making amends and learning, if only we can dig up some old dirt on them. It's entitled, parasocial nonsense. This is a total stranger who owes us nothing, is not actually accountable to us, does not have to ever respond to us or meet our demands, and has a complex and private inner life that we ultimately know nothing about.

I feel immensely sorry for the fans, especially POC, who have been wrongly led to believe that Seb hates or is discriminatory towards them on the basis of lies, hyperbole and some serious reaching. I feel deeply sorry for Seb's friends and family, who have been subject to an enormous amount of abuse and harassment (much of which has been racist, sexist, bodyshaming, xenophobic and cruel in nature - all in the name of social justice?) merely for being friends with him, and who recently had to see #RIPSebastianStan trending. Mostly, I feel immensely sorry for Sebastian, who has not been allowed the same basic rights everyone else in the world gets: the right to learn and grow, the right to forgiveness and freedom from harassment, and the right to be judged on things that *you* actually *did* rather than fictional narratives.

I cannot imagine the mental toll thousands of people calling for your death must take. I cannot imagine how it feels to have hate accounts dedicated to abusing you and critiquing your every move, and that of everyone you love. I cannot imagine the impact of obsessive doxxing, stalking and harassment. I cannot imagine all of this happening when you have been quite open about your mental health issues and serious struggles. There are truly only so many messages telling you to kill yourself that you can take, and I just hope he has people in his corner to remind him who he truly is and what he truly stands for.

#sebastian stan

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twices-pup · 4 years ago

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Tattoos Together

title : tattoos together ( son chaeyoung x gn reader )

word count : 1,682 words

genre : fluff

warnings : mentions of needles

synopsis : [ requested ] you face a fear to remind your girlfriend, chaeyoung, that you love her for all that she is, including her tattoos.

side note : my first request finally done! i really hope the anon who requested and anyone else who reads this likes it! the request was a little vague so i had trouble making this fic long enough, and had to rewrite it a few times but since today is chaeyoung's birthday i was determined to finally get this out! happy strawberry princess day, everyone!! also, the title is definitely inspired by the song tattoos together by lauv because i suck at coming up with titles.

You were never one to be fond of the idea of getting a tattoo. It most probably stemmed from the fear of needles that you've had since you were a child and never quite grew out of. The mere thought of your skin being pierced and inked was enough to send a chill down your spine, which was why you vowed to yourself to never so much as step foot into a tattoo parlor.

Your girlfriend, on the other hand, loved getting tattoos. Her skin was like a canvas, and the tattoos she had gotten over the past couple of years were the works of art. You weren't surprised, Chaeyoung herself was nothing short of an artist, after all—if you handed her a pen and a piece of paper, she'd be able to conjure up a masterpiece out of thin air. Although you were still very much against getting a tattoo yourself, you've learned to love each and every one of the tattoos adorning her skin just as much as you loved the person herself.

Chaeyoung told you her intentions to get a couple more new tattoos shortly before TWICE began filming for the music video of their then newest title track, More & More, for the mini album of the same name. She was over at your place for a visit and the two of you were lazing on your couch together, television turned on and your eyes on the screen but neither of you really focusing on the program playing. You had an arm around her shoulders while she rested her head in the crook of your neck, the room pretty dark save for the light flashing from the TV screen and some sunlight that filtered in through your drawn-in curtains. "I've already looked up some designs I like," she had said. "I'll only pick one or two to get tattooed."

You didn't think much of it at first, the only thing that crossed your mind was "Ah, my girlfriend is getting another tattoo, cool." However, that was until you made an off-handed comment, with your eyes still glued on the TV. "You really like getting tattoos, huh? You have so many already, but you still want to get more."

Upon hearing your words, Chaeyoung suddenly became aware that you were subconsciously rubbing her upper arm gently, your fingers brushing right over the cherry tomatoes tattoo she had there. She didn't say anything at first, your living room back to being quiet other than the voices of the actors coming from the TV speaker. "Yeah, I really do," she suddenly answered you after you thought that the topic had been dropped. "I hope you don't have a problem with that."

Although she had muttered the last part under her breath, you were able to hear it clearly. You turned away from the TV to look at her, with a tiny crease between your eyebrows that were furrowed in confusion. "What do you mean? Why would I have a problem with it?" you asked her softly.

Chaeyoung met your eyes and sighed. "Not everyone is a fan of girls with tattoos, you know?" she said, her gaze dropping from you to her lap. "So as the person I'm dating, I hope you're not one of those people. Those people who hold prejudice against tattoos or something like that."

Throughout the duration you had known Chaeyoung, you had always viewed her as someone who's free-spirited and jaunty, who doesn't let what other, insignificant people think of her get to her head, as long as she's able to do what she wants to do and be who she wants to be. So seeing her suddenly be so self-conscious about her tattoos, about something she'd usually feel so natural about, caught you by surprise. You realized that, perhaps, as her significant other, your opinion of her meant more to her than that of others did, and you immediately regretted letting your guard down and making such a careless remark.

"Hey," you called out softly, reaching for one of her hands to hold it in yours. "I do not and will never have any kind of problems with your tattoos. I know you love them, and that's completely okay," you assured her, offering her a gentle smile when she looked up at you. Her eyes searched your face for a moment, before she started chuckling.

"Thank you, y/n. Wow, that conversation got so serious all of a sudden. I feel a little embarrassed now, let's talk about something else."

You obliged with a nod, letting Chaeyoung shift the conversation to a different topic as you didn't want her to feel awkward or uncomfortable. Though you did make a mental note to remind her more frequently that you loved her, every single part of her.

On the day of her appointment at her regular tattoo parlor, you gave her a call. "Hey, y/n," she greeted you when she answered her phone. "What's up? I was just about to head to the tattoo place."

"Yeah, that's what I called you for," you said on your end of the call, feeling a little nervous but refusing to turn back on your decision. "Would it be okay if I tagged along with you?"

Your question was met with a moment of silence as Chaeyoung fully took in what you were asking her. "You want to come with me...to a tattoo parlor?" she asked for confirmation, and you nodded, although you were well aware that she wasn't able to see you. "Yes," you verbally answered. "I wanna accompany you as you get your new tattoos."

Knowing you, Chaeyoung surely hadn't expected you to willingly want to watch her get tattooed, in fact it came as a pretty big surprise to her, but if that was what you truly wanted then she had no reason to refuse. She texted you the address of the tattoo parlor and you met up with her there roughly half an hour later, swallowing down your nerves and telling yourself that you were doing it for you girlfriend all throughout your journey.

As the two of you entered the establishment, Chaeyoung noticed your shifty eyes looking all around the tattoo studio, and saw that you seemed more unsure of your decision to come by the passing second. "If you're having any regrets, you can leave at any time," she told you.

Despite the slight uneasiness you were feeling, you quickly shook your head. "It's okay, Chaengie. Like I said, I'm gonna be here for you."

"But why? y/n, you and I both know you're scared of needles, including tattoo needles."

"Because I know how much you love your tattoos. And I love you, so I wanna give you my support."

Your response was enough to put a wide smile on Chaeyoung's face, and seeing her smile was enough to make you smile too, in spite of your jitters. Chaeyoung's hand found yours and held it tightly as she led you deeper into the tattoo parlor. "Thank you," you heard her whisper. "I love you too."

The tattoo parlor was brighter than you had imagined it to be, but frankly that was because you had pictured the place to resemble a dark, soul-sucking torture chamber. Although the sufficient lighting managed to calm your nerves down a bit, the many scary-looking tattoo designs—skulls, snakes, demonic faces—hung up on the walls as decorations weren't helping. As you sat next to Chaeyoung at one of the tattooing stations, you did your best to not look at anything that, to you, were frightening, especially the tattoo machines.

You stayed quiet and only watched as Chaeyoung showed the tattoo artist the designs that she had chosen and told him where she wanted the tattoos to be. Your body tensed up and your breath hitched in your throat when the man took out a tattoo machine and started preparing to tattoo your girlfriend. Chaeyoung, noticing that you were as stiff as a board, gave you a reassuring smile. As much as you appreciated the gesture, you weren't able to smile back.

When the man finally started, you immediately diverted your eyes from your girlfriend to stare down at the floor. However, that did little to nothing to block out the whirring sound of the machine as it did its job. You gripped Chaeyoung's hand, the side that wasn't being tattooed, claiming that you were comforting her, though she had a feeling that it was the other way around instead.

"You're acting like you're the one getting a tattoo," she couldn't help but tease you.

When he was done with her tattoos after what felt like an eternity to you, you let out a heavy sigh of relief. You were finally able to turn back to Chaeyoung as she showed you her two new tattoos, one of a plant on her upper right arm and another of a butterfly by her right wrist.

"Woah, they look great," you complimented, genuinely impressed by the artist's handiwork. "I can't believe I made it through that, I guess watching people get tattooed isn't so bad after all."

Chaeyoung raised an eyebrow at you, amusement evident in her smile. "It isn't, but saying you watched me get tattooed is a bit of a stretch," she opined, and you pouted. "I was still here nonetheless," you argued.

"Alright, alright. Fair enough." Your girlfriend chuckled. "Then maybe next time you can take it a step further and get a tattoo yourself."

You playfully scrunched up your nose at her words and were about to oppose, until she continued. "Maybe we can even get matching ones!" she proposed, her eyes bright with excitement over the idea. Your expression softened in an instant, a wide smile making its way onto your face. Whenever she looked at you like that, with such innocent joy, it was near impossible for you to ever say no.

"Well, maybe one day," you told her, as you helped her up from her seat.

"Maybe one day, we can get tattoos together."

. . .

please do not repost my work, whether on tumblr or on any other site.

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yami-writes · 4 years ago

Note

if your asks are open & my request isn't too much. could you write a secret relationship one shot with mina & a skater fem! reader? so like the bakusquad wants to have a movie night, but like mina declines since girly had a date with her cute skatergirl planned on that day already & like she snitches out to the date & like both of them snitch into minas room later & cuddle & kiss, reader on her lap clinging like a fucking koala on her & how her classmates would find out, react. please my bisexual ass needs more girlxgirl content here, espacially with the mha girls 😔✊

(✨) paring(s) — Ashido x fem!skater!reader (��️) warning(s) — none! (🔖) word count — 2.3k (💌) yami's note — yuhh fr tho 🤧 we need more mha girls but dw i gotchu 😌✨

“What? Why?” Kirishima questioned, poking his head out from behind Bakugo, “We’ve been planning this for weeks! You can't just flunk on us like this!!” Kaminari exclaimed, causing Mina to rethink the amount of time that went into tonight's now somewhat ruined plans “Aha~ yeah... sorry about that guys. Maybe another time.” she scratched the back of her head.

Mina was about to leave before being stopped by a hard grip on her wrist “Oi, raccoon eyes. You better have a good excuse for this.” Bakugo glared, his crimson eyes almost seemed as if they could pierce holes in her soul. ‘Why does Bakugo of all people care!?’ She fumbled on her words, trying to find a reasonable excuse that would reward her the get-out-of-jail-free card without spilling the beans on anything private. “Uh- well- I uhm…”

“Bakugo, leave her alone. Forcing yourself into her business isn’t very manly of you.” Kirishima chimed, ‘Right before I was about to get blown to bits! Thanks, Kirishima!’ Mina sighed in her head, before checking the time. 2:54pm. She promised to meet her date at 3pm.

Before anyone knew it, Mina was dashing down to the common room and out the door, almost appearing as a pink blur to everyone around her.

“Wha-what was that??” “I think that was Mina~” “Where is she going that fast!?” “I don't know,,” “Mina’s fast but I didn't think she would be able to pull off those kinds of speeds.” the class-A girls conversed, wondering in concern what's got Mina in such a rush.

“Shit! I'm gonna be late! This isn't even the first time!!” Mina panicked, still racing over to the park the two of you had planned to meet at.

Mina recalled the time she came almost 20 minutes late to a date because she didn't know what to wear, digging through her closet to find something she thought you would like. Dresses, skirts, sweaters, shorts, jeans, you name it, she probably tried it.

To say the least, Mina was nervous.

───✱*.｡:｡✱*.:｡✧*.｡✰*.:｡✧*.｡:｡*.｡✱ ───

Mina continued to race towards the park she had agreed to meet at. Her pace began to slow as her stamina got closer to reaching its limit. “Hey, Mina!!” she heard a familiar voice call out. “Y/n!! Hi!” huffed out as she came to a stop. Mina took a moment to gather her breath, her hands on her knees as she pants. “Did you seriously run all the way here from your dorm?” y/n questioned after a minute of silence.

“Of course I did! I didn’t want to be late,,, again.”

“You’re a riot.”

“Thanks!”

───✱*.｡:｡✱*.:｡✧*.｡✰*.:｡✧*.｡:｡*.｡✱ ───

The weather outside was nice and the view the park offered was wonderful. Flowers of all sorts bloomed on the flowerbeds. Mina could see daffodils, tulips, alliums, sunflowers, all of different colours. The clouds created gorgeous patterns in the sky, larger ones blocking out the sun and giving the area a slightly darker atmosphere, nobody seemed to mind though. Trees shaded parts of the park, most of the adults seemed to linger around there, watching the children play together.

Mina and y/n took a seat at one of the benches that was shaded by a tall and broad tree, the smell of nature flowing around it, their hands intertwined. Mina wasn’t the best in some compartments, but one thing she is good at is conversation. It's hard to find a dull moment with her, maybe that’s why people like being around her so much. y/n definitely wasn’t at her level when it came to social skills but the conversations between them flowed so effortlessly, the two of them just seemed to click in the best way possible. Two puzzle pieces that were meant to be together, created to be together.

“Hey! Mina, look!!” y/n pointed to an ice cream parlor across the park, a small line of children with their parent’s 5 dollar bills in their hands “Let’s get popsicles!”

“Sure! Last one there has to pay!!” Mina ran off towards the parler.

“Hey-! No fair!!” y/n ran after her, taking an extra moment to pick up her skateboard, the thought of riding it to pass Mina not crossing her mind. Mina was a fast runner, most of the men in her class not able to compete without their quirks, same thing goes for y/n. It was possible her skateboard wouldn’t even be able to put up a rewarding fight.

Mina waited by the parler, almost mockingly stretching her arms as she waited for her date to catch up. “Took you long enough~!” Mina giggled

“Yeah yeah, whatever,” y/n got out a $15 bill from her pocket before immediately having it taken from her hands. “I was joking! Let me pay instead!” Mina pleaded “I wanna make it up to you for coming late,”

“Babes, you were a minute late..”

“I made you wait an extra minute!! And what about all those other times I-” Mina was cut off by the Parler man clearing his throat to get their attention. She shoved her money onto the counter before ordering y/n’s favourite flavor and a strawberry popsicle for herself. The Parler man took the money before opening his parler and handing them the requested flavoured popsicles.

“Thanks, sir!” Mina chirps before taking y/n’s hand, bringing her back to the bench the two of them were sitting at before. The two of them unwrapped their cold treats, enjoying and sharing them with each other.

Conversation continued to flow between the two, time quickly passing by. Parents began taking their children home, young adults began walking home from their jobs, the city seemed alive.

Wind blew on the three branches of the park, a chill starting to coat the air.

“It’s probably gonna get cold soon, maybe we should get inside.” y/n proposed

“Yeah... Hey! You should come to the dorms!” Mina was quick to suggest, she’s always wanted to bring y/n to her room. The idea of having y/n close to her body, sharing snacks and watching funny videos on instagram always brought warmth to her heart. The idea of getting caught never really crossed her mind.

“Are you sure? Your classmates are definitely gonna find out.”

“No they won’t, I promise!”

“Mina, they’re heroes-in-training…”

───✱*.｡:｡✱*.:｡✧*.｡✰*.:｡✧*.｡:｡*.｡✱ ───

When mina was set on a decision, it was hard to get her to settle for something else, that’s something y/n’s learned many times. Mina dragged her partner to the UA dorm buildings, planning out loud what they could do together. Face masks, tiktoks, nails, and dancing are only a few of the activities that came into question.

“I like the sound of face masks, I've been needing one for a while, my acne’s been acting up.” y/n groaned. “Dancing also sounds pretty fun, do you have any new playlists?”

“I always have new playlists! Plus, Jirou recommended me some new songs the other day, her music taste actually isn’t that bad,” Mina giggled, “For a goth, that is.” y/n laughed at her comment.

Mina talked about her classmates often, sometimes even gossiping about them. She never said anything hurtful, though, it was usually just a few mentions after finding something that reminded her of them. She once found a icyhot packet in the store and went on about this hot and talented guy in her class, a frog jumping around near a pond caused her to ramble on about her friend Tsu, and the taste of a tea served to her at a cafe reminded her of the tea her friend Momo would serve at the tutor sessions she hosted.

Soon enough, the couple was standing in front of Heights Alliance, preparing a plan to get inside without being noticed. “Everyone’s usually elsewhere at this time, probably in their rooms or off training or something~” Mina opens the door to the building, “We should be good.”

Mina peeps her head inside, making sure no one was in the common room before she proceeded. She motioned for y/n to come inside, before walking further inside the building. “C’mon, my room is this way!” Mina took y/n’s hand, passing by the common room and to the elevator. y/n couldn’t help but look around, she had never been in the Dormitories until this point, it was much nicer, and bigger, than she expected. The elevator ride was quiet, the fear of having classmates hear them while they continued their loud conversation through the halls on their minds.

The elevator stopped at the selected floor, Mina took y/n’s hand again before leading her to their destination just around the corner. “Here is it! Come on in!” Mina smiled before unlocking and opening her room door.

“Oh wow, so… pink.” y/n gasped “Yeah!! Do you like it?”

“Of course I do! Your whole room just reminds me of you, I love it!” y/n wrapped her hands around her date “And I love you too!”

“I love you more!!” Mina giggled, returning the hug. Her embrace was warm, warmer than one might expect, that might be the result of such a pure heart.

“Whatcha wanna do? I have a bunch of stuff here,” Mina pulls out a box from under her bed and begins to dig through it, “I have face masks and beauty supplies here, snacks and candy hidden around my room, we could also watch some movies or find a show to binge!”

“Face masks are a good idea, and I’m down to watch a movie while we wait for them to dry.” y/n gets down beside her on the ground, watching her sift through her box of stuff.

“Awesome! What movie should we watch? I have a bunch of DVD’s on my shelf but we could always find something on Netflix. Oh and pick your favourite face mask!” Mina presented about 12 different face masks for y/n to choose from.

“Oh~ I like that one! It’s my favourite colour, and it has a nice scent.” y/n picked up the f/c bottle, reading the labels on the back and admiring the smell emitting from it. “Nice choice! I’ll go with this one!” Mina holds up a pink, sparkly bottle with grapefruits and strawberries on the front. “This one’s my favourite, I use it all the time!”

“I can see why,” y/n laughs, Mina joining in.

───✱*.｡:｡✱*.:｡✧*.｡✰*.:｡✧*.｡:｡*.｡✱ ───

The two of them sat comfortably on Mina’s bed, y/n on her lap and arms wrapped around her. A movie the couple had agreed on plays in front of them on Mina’s laptop as they wait for their face masks to dry, sharing candy she had hid around her room. Mina occasionally placed soft kisses on y/n’s cheeks, jaw and neck, it was her favourite thing to do in this position. While Mina enjoyed receiving affection, she seemed to love giving affection even more.

Soon enough, the movie ended and credits began to roll, giving y/n and Mina a moment to stretch after sitting in one position for over an hour. “That was a good movie.” y/n said between stretches. “Yeah, I’m gonna recommend it to Hagakure, she’s been looking for good movies to watch lately.” Mina got out her phone to check the time, “We still have a few hours, wanna watch another one while we wait for our nails to dry?”

“We’re gonna do nails too?”

“Yeah!”

“Sure.”

Uhm i’m not sure how to continue and end this so i’ll do HCs for this part LMAOO

I gotta get better at writing smh

Anyways, after Mina took you to her dorm for the first time you started coming over more often

The two of you always have a shitton of fun when you do

Not like you ever not have fun with Mina

Although this one time was different~

Your skateboard had dirt and mud on it from riding after a storm, so you had left it by the door to avoid tracking any of it in Mina’s room

But it so happened Denki was walking by and found it in the hallway floor

And seeing it was outside Mina’s door he decided to not knock and ask if it was hers

He caught yall cuddling while binging your favourite anime

“Yo, Mina, is this skateboard you-”

He went 👁️👄👁️

After an eternity a few seconds of pure silence Denki’s like BHJNBHJVHJ WHO’S THAT???? AND WHY ARE YOU SO CLOSE TO THEM-??/?????

Mina sighs and explains the whole thing about how yall have been dating in secret and going on dates and stuff

The look on the boy’s face was literally surprised pikachu

Mina asked him to keep a secret but c'mon now we all know Mr. Kaminari cannot keep a secret for the life of him👩🏾‍🦯 big mouth headass

He told everyone.

the look on Mina’s face when Sero brought up her secret girlfriend the next day was priceless

“H-hOW YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT!?”

“Denki told me.”

Denki: *choke*

He knows he’s ‘bouta get his ass beat.

As for reactions, they’re mainly looking pretty positive ✨

Denki, kirishima, bakugou and sero are the first people to find out, and probably one of the only people Mina talks about you to besides the other class a girls

They’re happy for her (although bakuhoe wouldn’t admit it- he pretends he don’t care but c'mon we know better than that), and definitely wanna meet you sometime soon

All the class A girls and basically screaming

Cuz like- wHAT

How could Mina keep such a big secret grrrrr >:((

She ends up bringing you and the rest of the girls to her room to meet you

Expect expect like 30 questions from each of them about various different topics that may or may not matter

Remember the boys who didn't care about seeing the girl’s rooms in that one episode? Yea this squad is still on their shit🧘🏾‍♀️

Okay well they do care, just not as much dnjskbjdkn

Sato would bake you a yummy cupcake!

You ain’t neva eating something that delicious ever again just sayin~

Everyone else would silently wish to meet you one day

Tenya is probably the only person you should look out for

if you don’t have Aizawa’s permission to be on campus he probably won’t let you inside🖐🏾

aizawa don’t care tho so getting permission isn’t a problem

Overall, 1-A’s reaction to Mina’s girlfriend is pretty positive! 😗✌🏾

masterlist

#mina x reader #ashido x reader #mina ashido x reader #mina #ashido #mina ashido #mina imagines #bnha x reader #mha x reader #bnha imagines #mha imagines #x reader #mina x y/n #ashido x y/n #mina ashido x y/n #mina headcanons #bnha headcanons #mha headcanons

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golbrocklovely · 3 years ago

Text

again, the tweet gremlin asked so kindly for more, so i had to fill that request lol

here is a continuation of colby's tweets from 2017.

i don’t have proof that these are his tweets, but believe me, they are his.

if it’s bold and italicized, it’s someone's tweet to him (or... tweets for context to what he was responding to).

if it’s in (), that’s just me commenting lol

~~~~~~~~~~~

April 3 - My mind is so foggy today

Everyone needs time at least once a week to relieve stress and figure out their lives.

April 4 - TIP OF LIFE: if you find yourself overthinking while you're alone, put away ALL electronics and just breathe. Slowly. Focus on that only.

Why must I need to be so paranoid sometimes

April 6 - The amount of drama that happens because of social media .. it's crazy. Hahahah

Doing things for me and the ones I care about.

April 8 - DRAMA RIDES ON MY BACK wherever I go

April 9 - Don't hurt the ones who care about you most

Yo my friends are so weird I LOVE IT

April 11 - @/BrennenTaylor how many RTs for you to go to prom with me ?

April 13 - You guys make my life feel like a dream ... Thank you for that

April 14 - One of my biggest pet peeves is when people steal my ideas. It's the worst

April 16 - Seeing you always makes my day just a little brighter

April 17 - So many embarrassing videos of me on the internet it's not even funny. I still laugh though

April 19 - Crazy adventure tonight. gunna try to talk to a troubled spirit. Here we go

April 21 - @/katstuartmusic : I'm so sick

@/samgolbach : Now I think I'm sick too :/

You guys must have been holding hands too much gross

April 22 - The trick to succeeding in life is not caring about what others think and doing what you love

April 25 - After all this time, and you're still on my mind

I see eltons ghost when I close my eyes at night

April 28 - How sick would it be if you could fly ..

I'm going to makeshift wings out of geese feathers and super glue. Watch me

May 1 - Got up early this morning .. but moved 5 feet to my couch and fell back asleep

May 6 - You ever feel like you're slowly driving yourself crazy..?

May 7 - It's crazy how people can change completely with time.

Someone you know now can be a different person in just a couple years.. WEIRD

Been a while since I've gotten to leave LA .. feels so nice

May 8 - Get to see my dogs and family tomorrow

May 10 - Let's just forget

May 11 - Always happier with my puggle by my side

May 13 - I think one of the most important things I've learned in life is that you should ALWAYS be yourself. Dress, talk, act, like YOU

You don't have to listen to anyone who doesn't agree or has a negative opinion of your life choices, just do what makes you happy:)

Confidence is key. If we were all meant to act "cool" our entire lives then there wouldn't be that many unique personalities out there

May 14 - Proud to see my brother graduate college with a bachelors degree in journalism! What an accomplishment

Glad I have the best mom in the entire world. Really the only person I can always connect with emotionally, someone who's always there

May 15 - Sorry Ed Sheeran fans. But if I hear shape of you play one more time on the radio I might have to hurl myself in front of a cargo train.

(that's.... a very specific thing to throw yourself in front of lol)

May 17 - Funny how every time I go back to Kansas and see all my old friends, I'm reminded of how much I've really changed since high school

May 18 - My room looks like a rainbow and it makes my soul really happy

Back in Kansas, exploring abandoned places and breaking into petting zoos was just a normal night for the crew, Sam and I before social media

I'm excited to say that when we went back to Kansas, a lot of the old stuff we used to do off camera was filmed this time ...

Gotta start wearing more colors

You can find me at target buying a new male romper

May 19 - Headed to a fair tonight, look at me being all social wow

May 20 - Can't trust anyone with ideas in social media. Everyone will take your stuff if they see success in it

(someone was really trying to copy him in 2017... strange.)

May 22 - I want this summer to be the best one of my life:) screw being sad about anything, I'm just livin lifeee

May 24 - If you're not happy, it's not worth it

May 29 - Where do people find the motivation and energy to wake up in the morning ? That's what I struggle with most

Just trying to be the happiest person I can be!

June 3 - Are there ever places that pop up in your mind where you have NO CLUE what they could possibly even look like?

LOOKS LIKE ILL JUST HAVE TO TRAVEL THE ENTIRE WORLD HAHAHAHAHAH

If you're loyal, God bless your little heart

June 8 - Make time for the things in your life that are important to you

I wanna be able to enjoy the simpler things in life, instead of worrying about everything else

My mind is constantly in different places, but still I have nothing to say

June 10 - Crazy how you can go from talking to someone everyday of your life for so long, to not speaking at all. Feels like something's missing.

Just because things changed, didn't mean I wanted them to

"I wish I was like you.... easily amused"

June 16 - If you judge someone based on appearance/popularity on social media, what are you thinking? There's so much more that the eye can't see

As soon as someone appears on camera, people forget reality. Forget that everyone is the same as everyone else

June 18 - The amount of "Happy Father's Day" I've gotten is absolutely ridiculous

June 22 - You'll always be my favorite memory .

A fan comes up to me and says "wow! You look so much skinnier in person!" Uhhhhm EXCUSE ME !?

June 25 - For a minute there, I lost myself. Glad to be back to my roots

@/Aaron_Doh I'm surprised you're up Aaron. I can't sleep. I love you.

(aww this is really sweet lol)

June 30 - Rather waste some time with you

#colby brock #cb tweets #text #personal

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shihalyfie · 4 years ago

Text

Adventure and 02′s production philosophy and its impact on the storywriting (or: “a series made with love is best understood with love”)

It’s hard to really judge a series too much by its production details, but Adventure and 02′s staff has been very open about discussing background and production to the point we’re able to involve it in discussions. In fact, to a certain degree, we’ve gotten rather reliant on said production notes to explain too many things that weren’t clearly depicted or stated in the series -- I’ve spent a fair share of time complaining about how frustratingly subtle this series is -- and you see a lot of strange conspiracy theories or myths about production that circulate in all sorts of different directions. Undeniably, it’s a series that spoke to a ton of people, but there are still so many things that have perplexed people over the last two decades, and when you ask someone “what’s good about this series?”, people struggle to say it in clear words, often only able to resort to a rather oversimplified explanation like “the character development is good” (but what is character development, anyway?). A lot of times, some small things that initially don’t seem to track have led to some pretty wild, far-reaching fanbase-endorsed theories, when in fact the actual reality of the situation is much more mundane.

I think, in general, the best way to “understand” Adventure and 02 is simply to have an open mind about everything in regards to it. This is something I can only say because we currently have more than enough evidence, given production testimony, that this is the kind of series that was made with that kind of philosophy -- I will not shy away from the fact that there are things in this world that are made maliciously, meant to “one-up” the audience or using half-baked explanations as a way to cover up the fact that it wasn’t well thought-through. But in the case of Adventure and 02 specifically, almost everything we have heard about it is to the contrary, and, in practice, I find one can get much more out of the series by adjusting one’s mindset to think about what they’re looking out for and not, because once you have, the beauty of the series opens itself up even in places you’re not looking for it.

Let’s talk a little about the production philosophy behind Adventure and 02 and how it shaped a series that left such an impact on so many kids, and what we can learn from it!

“Something important that we wanted to tell the kids who were watching”

The two most important figures to know when it comes to Adventure and 02 production are its producer, Seki Hiromi (who would eventually go on to produce Tamers and Frontier as well, along with being supervising consultant on Kizuna), and its director, Kakudou Hiroyuki. I would say that both of these figures are probably the most influential people in shaping the series as we know it, but in different ways -- Kakudou was the one most responsible for building the world of Adventure and 02 and setting up the standard for having all sorts of background worldbuilding details that weren’t shown in the series, whereas Seki was the one who pushed for them to include family backgrounds and things that ought to be relatable to the average kid, so that they could empathize with the problems shown on screen.

Both of them had different ways of going at it, which is all for the better because it allowed the story to be enriched from both sides, but the common thread between the two was that they wanted to use this opportunity to “show the kids important things”:

Kakudou is the kind of person I would say is very “media literate” -- he was very well-read in books and well-versed in cinema, not just Japanese but also internationally, and also very in-tune with the Internet by the standards of a director in 1999. (Part of the reason we know so much about Digimon production now is that he still keeps up with everything on social media and throws in a few comments here and there.) His comments on the final episode of Adventure include a list of all of the things he credited for inspiring him during this series, and he later stated that he had a goal of conveying all of those “interesting things” to the kids watching, so that they could also find it interesting. So in other words, Adventure and 02 were basically his love letter to everything in media that he’d come to appreciate.

Seki was the one who pushed for humans to be involved in the series so that the audience could empathize with them, and for all of the “real world worldbuilding” like the kids’ family backgrounds. She’s also functionally responsible for the base premise of 02 at all, having been thoroughly alarmed by the story of a young boy skipping grades into university (to the point this plotline resurfaced a whole 20 years later in Kizuna). It can be said that the heavy “human drama” elements and family background emphasis continuing into Tamers and Frontier are probably her doing, and in terms of Kizuna, she also was responsible for personally vetting the dialogue to keep the kids in character, and it was said that it came off like she loved the characters as if they were her own children.

The result is that, firstly, Adventure and 02 is a series that is very well-thought through. Ridiculously well thought-through, in both background lore and character backgrounds and mentality. So many surface-level criticisms of Adventure and 02 come with an accusation that the writers were “lazy” or “did a writing cop-out”, but we actually have more evidence that the Adventure and 02 staff thought out so many details in the background that they kept forgetting that they hadn’t actually told the audience about it yet. (No, seriously, there’s a thread of official staff repeatedly forgetting that they may not have actually outright mentioned one of the background details they’d planned out in advance.) Even despite all of the extra information we’ve gotten since in the drama CDs and Animation Chronicle and such, it seems there’s still way more information that was planned out that we still haven’t learned about, and it’s presumably why there are so many little things that are too consistent to be coincidental and yet were still never actually stated. It may have been awful at communicating those details well, but those details were most definitely there, and both series have a shocking amount of consistency in adhering to them.

The second is that not only did the producer and director want to convey those important things, they also encouraged the rest of the staff to do it too:

One of the concepts behind the prior series was for us to pack in as many interesting things that we’d seen, heard about, or read about as we could into it, so for 02, we thought, what else could we put in beyond even that?, and so we looked over what we needed to have, and put in all the things we could so that they wouldn’t be left out, and the story became a multi-layered one, overlapping and accelerating. It was to the point that, after we’d gone through 02‘s story, the scriptwriters told me that they’d worn everything they had out to the ground.

So in other words, Adventure and 02 were basically a sort of potluck where they encouraged everyone on staff to come up with interesting things that they wanted to show the kids, and throw it all in -- and it’s presumably why the second half of 02 is so “crowded” (more on this later), because you had everything from all of the writers on staff adding another thing into the potluck, until everyone could get it out of their system. Yoshimura Genki, one of 02′s head writers, said outright that she used the famous 02 episode 23 to convey her concerns about some very real and horrible things happening to kids at the time, and it’s easy to imagine that all of the other writers and staff members were given similar encouragement to do so. Even the (in)famous 02 episode 13 was something originally created from Kakudou seeing Dagomon, thinking he was really cool and wanting to make an episode about him, and remembering that Konaka was good at Lovecraft and basically going “he’s gonna love this, we should get him to do an episode.” In fact, it’s said many times that a huge attitude behind production was to “not be ashamed of anything” and try whatever they wanted.

Which means that the result is a series that isn’t actually all that well-organized in plot or structure -- 02′s plot writing is of course an infamous pile of knots, but even those who are willing to be a bit more critical of Adventure often point out that its plot is simply more linear, being basically a video game-esque boss rush of “evil enemy, followed by even more evil enemy”. Most people do not watch Adventure or 02 for the actual plot writing. What they do watch it for is all of this stuff mentioned above -- that all of these different people on staff were given the question “what do you want to say to this audience of kids?” and took the opportunity to say something fun or meaningful. And, hence, why it’s best to understand Adventure and 02 not necessarily by the minutiae of its plot, but rather, “what was this series trying to say?”

Writing the series as it went along, under massive constraints

In general, Japanese anime is produced as it goes along -- even the character writing is subject to change depending on the voice actors’ performance (this was cited for Adventure specifically, but it’s well-known common practice for non-adaptation anime in general). That said, Adventure didn’t even have a guarantee of how long it was going to be at first -- it was generally expected that it’d be a one-year series (like most Toei series), but they weren’t even sure about it. This resulted in a very “loose mindset”, in which they decided to basically wing it, and the only thing determined for sure was that the epilogue (that we now know as the 02 epilogue) was going to be at the end of it.

As I mentioned above, scrutinizing the plot of Adventure too closely reveals that it’s not actually that coherent of a narrative, just more linear -- and, even by official admission, Hikari wasn’t planned to be the eighth child at first nor was the Tokyo arc of episodes planned to be that long, and yet this entire section is one of the most famous parts of Adventure. A lot of the best parts of Adventure and 02 seem to be the result of sheer accident...

...Or was it accident? Can you say that “going in with a positive mindset and a desire to do something meaningful” is accident? Even if you didn’t plan things out from the beginning, if you go into everything with an attitude of wanting to make the best out of something and make the best out of opportunities you see and hear about, is that really an accident? Couldn’t you perhaps say that this kind of thing is why Adventure and 02 hit so well with people to begin with?

By the time we get to 02, 02 started off as a very different series from the get-go, and it’s always struck me as very odd that people act like 02 was tacked on and didn’t have nearly the exact same staff. It was Kakudou himself who petitioned for 02 to start off with a light atmosphere, and the series itself was fundamentally meant to be addressing the new concepts of “relationships” instead of Adventure’s “self-assertion”, and explore concepts that hadn’t been covered in Adventure. The reason 02 is so different from Adventure is exactly because the staff didn’t want to rehash things for another year, and instead wanted to take the opportunity to cover stuff Adventure didn’t. And the fact that 02 is lighter than Adventure at first, but quickly gets darker, is also by design:

The story had gotten rather heavy by the time of Digimon Adventure, so we decided to make it come off as brighter. And then, it actually ended up getting even heavier somewhere down the line, but there was no way we could just avoid depicting important life problems.

Which is also a similar sentiment reflected by Seki herself, when thinking about how her suggested plotline ended up making the story darker:

An overly intelligent child, prone to falling into loneliness, cut off from his friends and family, and with a Digimon slowly coming and staying close to him…I remember that kind of image forming. We were supposed to have been aiming to have them going to the Digital World with the mood of a picnic, but the fact it didn’t end up so easy for them may have been my fault…or so I remember thinking as I reflected on it.

02 didn’t get dark for the sheer sake of getting dark, and in fact it’s not like the staff necessarily wanted it to get that way, but there were so many meaningful things that they wanted to tell the audience of kids that they allowed it to. It’s also kind of odd how the fanbase has this idea of there somehow being staff conflicts or people bickering in order to produce 02, but there’s no indication of this at all -- at most, 02 unusually had two head writers instead of one, Yoshimura Genki and Maekawa Atsushi, but it was even said that they had a clear division of roles, with Yoshimura on the “villains” side and Maekawa on the “protagonists” side, and there’s no sign of conflict.

(A lot of people also tend to give more credit to Yoshimura since the villains are some of the most masterfully crafted part of both Adventure or 02, but this is still somewhat reductive; Maekawa is very open about the fact that he was rather inexperienced during 02′s production, and considering the fact that the 02 protagonists aren’t nearly as underdeveloped as the fanbase claims they are, and Maekawa would later go on to write a PreCure entry that basically saved the franchise and a very well-acclaimed Super Sentai entry, both with many parallels to 02, his role should not be discounted, especially since 02 is often liked by its fanbase for the duality between both its lighter and darker sides.)

So we had the staff basically on a roll of throwing in everything important they wanted to say to the kids, both “fun” and “meaningful”, and then, two things impacted the way it ended: firstly, they weren’t allowed to go with their initial proposal for the final enemy because it was too gory, and secondly, the decision was made midway through that they would not be making a third Adventure series, and would have to end more quickly than expected.

I think, whenever you hear stories of “we were originally going to do this but couldn’t,” people generally tend to assume that they should have done the original plan (especially if the original plan was particularly gory or brutal, because everyone loves to think that edgy is better), but, perhaps fittingly for a series that’s about not drowning in past regrets of “what should have been” and learning to move on, the staff has never really shown any indications of really, thoroughly regretting any of the decisions they made for 02, even if the second half came out messy. If you look at that original proposal they had for 02′s final enemy, in which it would be an enemy “reduced to an idea”, it certainly explains a lot about why BelialVamdemon was defeated by the power of sheer positivity in the final ending -- obviously that would make a lot more sense with a conceptual embodiment of malice, instead of a returning enemy from the prior series -- but at the same time, that loss of that concept led to the creation of Oikawa, Archnemon, and Mummymon, which have consistently been praised as one of the most compelling parts of 02 and its finale, and Yoshimura herself even gushed about the concepts they got. So it’s not “we couldn’t do what we wanted,” it’s more “we couldn’t do what we initially wanted and made something out of it, arguably an even better something in certain ways.”

And as for the lack of the third Adventure series, all indications point to the fact that this was something by personal choice of the staff, not by higher-up mandate -- not that I enjoy speculating about other people I don’t know, but if you actually follow what Kakudou has said about his work on Adventure and 02, and the fact that he considers his later work on X-Evolution to functionally be getting everything else out of his system (even saying that he liked Bandai doing a lot of the work for him), Kakudou doesn’t seem to want to be the main leader of his projects for the most part, mostly seeing Adventure and 02 as the one time he got to dump all of his one-time ideas that he personally wanted to accomplish, and otherwise being satisfied doing episode direction work for others -- testimony as to the handoff between 02 and Tamers consistently depicts him as expressing sentiments similar to “please let me have a break.” (As of this writing, he still does work for Toei, but has never been lead director on a full series since.) Kakudou didn’t like having to deal with a bunch of increasingly canon-contradictory works because, as an infamously detail-oriented and consistent person, dealing with that kind of thing didn’t really seem to agree with him, and moreover it’s understandable that he (and the other staff) would feel that it was better to end it there instead of overstaying its welcome and stretching things out.

Certainly, when you look at the second half of 02, its plot is “crowded” in nearly every direction (not as incomprehensible as people like to claim it is, but definitely going in a lot of places at once). The infamous 02 epilogue is probably the biggest example of the disparity between staff thought and how it came off; remember that it was one of the first things decided about the series at all, meaning that the staff was deliberating over it and under the impression they were building up to it for a whole two years, but when it finally dropped everyone was blindsided and even often made accusations of the staff coming up with it at the last minute while drunk or something (not helped by the staff clearly being so fixated on their own production that they even included details that were completely incomprehensible to anyone not aware of the potential third series plotline). Yet, ever since then, many people who have sat down with it have figured out that it’s not that incomprehensible and that many of the aspects of it make sense on a theoretical level or are foreshadowed in the series -- it’s just that they tacked it onto the end of an excessively crowded finale with no warning and didn’t sufficiently communicate their reasoning for it, requiring people to spend the next 20 years puzzling it out and Kizuna to come around to drop even more clues, and also failed to realize that one of humanity’s most die-on-a-hill issues about media (shipping) would make people a lot more offended than they likely intended. (PreCure has successfully pulled off “adult timeskip” epilogues in recent years, and they’ve all been received well, but the difference is that they actually pad out the episode with a proper lead-up instead of just chucking it in your face right after Oikawa dies.)

And, ultimately, the staff has never shown any signs of having regret over this. Kakudou takes the stance that they were able to close out 02 in a good way, despite all of the circumstances. The rest of the staff, including Seki herself, and overall Toei as a whole, has doubled down further on the latter half of 02′s plot events and the epilogue’s place in canon despite the infamous controversy around it, and I have to say that I do at least understand why they’re like this when you consider the circumstances and their likely feelings on it -- regardless of everything, they’re proud of the work they did on it, and even if not everything went according to original plan, they loved taking the opportunity to use the sandbox to express things they may not have been able to in their other projects, and the epilogue was their baby that they’d been raising for two years. It’s the ultimate question of “satisfying the creators vs. satisfying the audience” -- not to say that I completely agree with the call to be this unaware of how people were going to read this, because it’s not good to blindside your audience or hurt their feelings, but at the same time, it’s said that you will never be able to satisfy an audience at all if you’re not satisfying yourself first. And in the end, despite everything, that something in Adventure and 02, built out of that earnest desire to say something, came across in some ways and touched the hearts of kids all over the world.

So the result was that the Adventure and 02 staff did everything they wanted, got it out of their system, and handed an imperfect but carefully-crafted baton to Seki, who decided that it was a good opportunity to do something completely new, and deliberately picked Tamers’s director Kaizawa on the grounds that he’d had no experience with the series before. Remembering that Seki was on Adventure and 02 and was clearly happy with it, her decision to do something new with Tamers was just that -- to do something new -- and it’s honestly kind of saddening that the series’ respective fanbases treat each other with significantly less respect than their actual creators do, since both series still shared a lot of staff, Kakudou went on to be an episode director for Tamers (and even calls it a “masterpiece”), and Konaka clearly has a lot of respect for his predecessor series as well, with Tamers being its own product made with conscientiousness and a desire to make things meaningful for kids (Kaizawa himself has expressed a lot of strong opinions on this topic). A lot of anti-02 folks have often spread a conspiracy theory that Tamers came out of a “writer revolt” because they hated being “restricted” by 02 and wanted “more freedom” -- but that is completely contrary to the above evidence where 02′s production process arguably gave the writers too much freedom, and Tamers head staff was picked deliberately due to their lack of connection to the prior series so that they could do something conversely new and fresh...

One thing that’s interesting about Kizuna is that its director, Taguchi Tomohisa, has spoken very often about his love for the original series, right down to respecting its ability to cover very serious topics. His recruitment philosophy for the movie also seemed to have “being a fan of the series” as a big plus factor, and he moreover shows a lot of respect for the staff members involved in production, both the people he recruited and the long-timers like Seki. “Being a fan of the series” doesn’t necessarily constitute skill by itself, but there’s a lot of similar sentiments in “let’s make something that shows respect and does something interesting and important” and “let’s make sure the staff gets to do something without regrets” also seem to be pretty huge factors in consideration here, rather similar to the original series...

What this means in terms of understanding the series

I do not think that, just because a creator clearly had good reasoning for putting in what they did, the audience necessarily has to accept that. It may have had good intentions, but "intentions” don’t justify things coming off the way they do, or at least, the 20/20 hindsight can make us all get together and think “if that was your intention, there were probably a million better ways to execute that.” And, as someone writing this blog, there are times I really think “if you could have please just thought a little harder about making those ideas clearer so we wouldn’t have to have these arguments...”

However, I do think there is something illuminating about the idea of “adjusting one’s mindset” in response to the above revelations, and going in with an open mind when trying to get something out of the series for one’s own sake. I mean this truly in the sense of encouraging others to find something interesting and new -- this is not a blog I write expecting people to see things the same way I do, as much as I like encouraging people to look out for things they might have not noticed beforehand.

I started writing for this blog regularly last year (I hadn’t even planned to start regularly doing it) after a rewatch of Adventure and 02 with some friends and some honest discussion about the series after it, and one thing we all agreed to do when we did that rewatch was “we are not going to go in with the intent to criticize it.” That is to say, we decided to throw out all of those sentiments that you have to “admit” everything wrong with any series when even bringing up its name -- which is not to say that we’re glossing over potential criticisms or their validity, just “we’re doing this rewatch to have fun and to enjoy and appreciate things, and that will be our priority going in.” After making that agreement, something really magical happened, and it was that we started catching things without even looking for it, things that had clearly been planned but hidden in the background, or things that were caught by one person in the group watch chat and pointed out to the others, and it turned out that a huge chunk of the “criticisms” we might have originally gone in with actually did have answers, we just hadn’t realized it because we were too brainwashed into the mindset of dismissing things as “well, that part’s just bad writing.”

Of course, we’ve seen bad writing -- it’s not like we were going out of our way to absolve everyone for every mistake -- but that base mindset allowed us to better appreciate things we might have missed earlier that weren’t immediately apparent. I’ve said many times that I don’t think the things I write on here are that huge speculation -- in fact, in writing meta, I often throw out a lot of stuff because I think “yeah that’s too absurd, let’s just stick with the simplest explanation” -- as much as I just thread things that are in the series but are frustratingly subtle, because I’m taking things that seem like throwaway details and going “hm, well, instead of just dropping it the first time like ‘probably bad writing’, let’s maybe look at this one more time and see if there was a reason?” And those reasons present themselves surprisingly easily without even that much effort, and after a while you come to realize: this is a really consistent series!

It’s actually very rare that things outright contradict themselves, because it really does not take long to piece together a rational explanation (because those things are in the series, just buried)! This was a detail-oriented series that had a ridiculous amount of attention paid to it, even if it didn’t communicate that! Whenever I post meta, I often get comments from people who say outright that they’d had the same impressions, they just didn’t know how to put it in words! There’s been multiple cases of people independently coming up with readings of the series that the fanbase historically dismissed as a reach, only for official to come out and confirm they were absolutely correct, and a common thread between all of these is that they were referenced in the series, it’s just that people kept wanting to dismiss them because “there’s no way they’d be that detailed”! A truly contradictory series falls apart when you subject it to higher scrutiny (even when you’re being optimistic about it), but there’s a strange thing about Adventure and 02 in that they actually fit together even more when you look closely -- and, again, things start coming in when you don’t even expect it, just because of your mindset.

I suppose the take-home here with all of this is that a series like this is best understood when you have an open mind and a desire to listen to what it has to say. As I said before: Adventure and 02 (and especially 02) are not series that most people watch for the plot, and, to be honest, it’s clear that plot wasn’t even a priority for all of the staff in the first place as much as it was about conveying important ideas and sentiments. And I’m not going to say whether not prioritizing plot or not is a “good” or “bad” thing -- for some people, that kind of thing is understandably very important, and a series like 02 can be very frustrating to deal with as a result! -- as much as, for those who have a genuine interest in sitting down and understanding these series, I cannot recommend scrutinizing the plot too much simply because it will not get you very far, and, to be honest, whenever I see a lot of analyses of Adventure and 02, I really do often wonder if they actually understand the core of the series and the sentiment and emotion behind it, or whether they’re just doing it on a technical surface level so they can say they did (which is usually partially as a bid to passive-aggressively dunk on later series to prove Adventure is superior). The entire concept of objectivity is a lie in itself, but this is not a series that you can get much out of if you try to evaluate it with that kind of detachment; it’s a series that spoke to you through theme and passion first and foremost, and to receive that message and “enjoy” the series is most effectively done when you detach all of those doubts and approach the series without malice.

(By the way, this is not me claiming I’m inherently a “better” analyst just because I also prefer to use this mentality when approaching it; it’s just that I’m a bit frustrated that this kind of approach is so hard to find, despite Adventure’s popularity, because losing out on the heart causes so much rich potential to get lost. This is also the reason I recommend @analyzingadventure‘s work so much -- I’m so sorry about tagging you for the third time here! -- because they’re as positive about Adventure as I am about 02, and their insight and thought into the series coming from the angle of “appreciating” it with genuine positivity is something I believe is truly valuable in a climate where this is very hard to find.)

And this is what I mean, “to approach it without malice”. I don’t mean that you should go in prepared to never have criticisms of it ever again, nor that you should just absolve everything and assume that everything is fine, but rather that going in with a mindset of “we’re going to look for things to love” instead of “we’re going to ‘look past’ the bad” alone has the magical effect of shifting your entire view of the series, way more than I would say with any other. And, again, that’s only something that can happen when the base product was made with this much sentiment and honesty to begin with, and moreover fighting against the mindset to criticize is tough when we’re dealing with a fanbase that’s acted like being “fair” requires “acknowledging” the faults of everything in the same breath you praise it until the horse is beaten for two decades and everyone’s exhausted. (And then yells at you if you dare criticize anything that’s put on the fanbase’s pedestal.) It’s kind of the question of: should this really be about media criticism and whether it’s “objectively” good or bad, especially since this has been brought up so often for two decades now, or might it be better to think about how to have a more positive experience with something that you may not have had before?

Once you get rid of that mindset of “critical by default”, you start to realize things that the series did knock out of the park, or were exceptional, that got too obscured by the distractions of fixating on its plot -- 02 is a plot mess for sure, but I have never seen any series that is so sincere and earnest about its actual themes and things it wanted to say, and it’s something I love it even more for. And buried under that criticism of everyone not getting “equal attention” from an evolutionary forms perspective is the fact that, from a story perspective, they deliberately went out of their way to make sure everyone gets mostly equal focus, which is something that sticks out especially when you start watching other long-running series that aren’t as good about this, and although it’s not completely perfect by any means, they do a damn good job keeping everyone in the 8- and 6-person groups relevant to the very end, which is pretty impressive! And, in the end, you end up having a much healthier relationship with the series -- again, it’s not glossing over everything to pretend nothing is wrong per se, but rather, you’re able to appreciate it and love it for what it is, instead of constantly feeling like you’re making up for its “mistakes”.

#digimon #digimon adventure #digimon adventure 02 #digimon adventure last evolution kizuna #shihameta

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kingk8art · 4 years ago

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hetalia rant

pls ignore how I won't use any proper punctuation or capitalization because my arms and fingers all hurt from volleyball :( Edit: My arm’s are better now so I’m actually using proper capitalization and punctuation (special thanks to my friends for proofreading and also Google autocorrect.) Special thanks to my friend for helping me out with writing this.

so i'm one of those people who joined the hetalia fandom like REALLY late, having first watched the anime in like 2017 or 18. Nevertheless, when I heard about how the anime was coming back in 2021 I was really excited!! I’ve been reading world stars lately but there’s just something in the hetalia anime that made me love it so much. the voice acting and how it’s animated and everything, it really brings the characters to life! out of curiosity I searched up hetalia on twitter. keep in mind that i’m pretty new to the fandom so i never really got to see the shipping wars, or really any toxic part of the fandom, since i wasn’t there when hetalia was at its peak.

What i saw was really different from what i expected to see. I kinda expected twitter threads hyping up the new season, or things like that but most of ones I found in the top section were hate comments about hetalia, and things about why it shouldn’t come back. I was reading these and I was like, wait why? Some of them actually made sense, and the others had flawed logic. Here are my rants on why hetalia ISN’T anti-Semitic or problematic (as of now).

Misconceptions About Hetalia

1. Hetalia is About Nazi Germany or the Holocaust

If you’ve actually watched the show/read the manga, it’s quite obvious that although some of the events take place during WW2, it never mentions Hitler, Nazis, the Holocaust, or anything like that. and there’s a good reason for it. In the first place, hetalia isn’t meant to be a serious comic. The manga only focuses on subjects like funny things that happened to historical figures/occurrences during a war, weird inventions; generally those kinds of things. It focuses on the cultural differences between countries, or wholesome moments in history (such as when two enemies stopped fighting on Christmas day to play soccer.) Hetalia itself is antiwar. Consider the main character himself: he absolutely hates fighting. I don’t see how hetalia can be anti-Semitic or pro-war at all. But what I will say is fucked up are those certain cosplayers that did the Nazi salute, posed in front of a Holocaust memorial, etc. But I can still guarantee that the MAJORITY of the fandom is not like this. Every single fandom has its bad apples, some more than others. It’s not right to generalize the entire fandom as anti-Semitic, racist, disrespectful shits.

Do people realize that Germany’s character in Hetalia isn’t Nazi Germany? In the first place the Holocaust wouldn’t be Germany’s responsibility — the depictions of these characters are meant to portray the people as a whole, not their systems of law or government. It’s stated in the series that nations MUST obey orders from their “boss” (which probably refers to the country’s ruler, president, prime minister, or other leaders at the time. Nations can’t choose what their superiors do, or what those under that control do. Saying Germany is humanized Nazi Germany is like putting that label on all German people without considering factors like time period or representation. Hetalia characters are a mere representation of each country’s people, nothing else.

How does mentioning WW2 in a comedy make it offensive? There are PLENTY of movies, novels, and other kinds of media that take place in WW2 and yet are in the comedy genre. Ever watched Jojo Rabbit? If you thought Hetalia was offensive, have you ever watched South Park or looked at CountryHumans? I do get why some people dislike Hetalia, but why does it receive so much hate for something that was never in the series (or generally speaking, for the wrong reasons)? It may have flaws, but there’s a strong definition to what those flaws actually are. It doesn’t revolve around antisemitism or Nazism.

2. Hetalia is Racist and Stereotypes People

Now this is a pretty controversial topic. Being a comedy about personified countries, stereotypes are really something that HAS to be used at some point to make the characters funny. But does that automatically make it racist? No. I saw this on a YouTube video comment section somewhere, but stereotyping (generalizing) that all stereotypes are ‘bad’ (or have negative connotations/associations) is literally stereotyping. Not all of the stereotypes are bad. Like the way Britain acts like a gentleman or likes drinking tea, which in a way, is a British stereotype. That’s not a bad thing, just funny to see in the show — played for comedy purposes, and not necessarily offensive.

Although Hetalia characters are sometimes influenced by stereotypes that revolve around the actual countries and represent the people in general, they DO NOT always represent what those country’s people are actually like. Also, I’m pretty sure the point of comedy about personified countries is to use some of those generalizations. Specifically, stereotypes that the Japanese have about foreigners. France is portrayed as a flirty man because in Japan France is known for being a “romantic country.” But that doesn’t mean that they think all French people are like that — it’s just a lighthearted joke. And now, Hetalia characters have grown to be more of their own character rather than simply a humanized country at its base. Despite being a personification, they’re like their own person, not just used to depict stereotypes. Just because a character has a certain personality trait doesn’t mean Hima believes that everyone from that country has the same trait. It’s not meant to be racist, and isn’t.

What I Think Was/Is Problematic

As much as I love this show, there were DEFINITELY some problematic things that people tend to ignore.

1. Korea Controversy

As a Korean American, I have to say that I was quite disappointed when I learned about how Hima portrayed Korea in the manga. I won’t go that deep into this one since it’s not that relevant to what I'm talking about now, but it was definitely a HUGE problem and I’m glad that he was removed from the series.

2. Iron Cross on Germany

The iron cross that Germany wears in Hetalia (in every time period) is a military decoration that was used since the King of Prussia until the time period of Nazi Germany in WW2. Today, it’s considered a hate symbol, similar to and alongside the swastika. To be fair, it wasn’t just a decoration used purely for the Nazis, unlike several other examples of Nazi symbols and memorabilia, so I suppose it could be up to each person to judge whether it should pass or not, despite the surrounding circumstances — it isn’t up to me as part of the fanbase. But personally, I think it should have been removed/not used in the first place. I mean, it wasn’t that necessary, seeing all of the military uniforms drawn in Hetalia were simplified anyways. Perhaps it would be much less problematic if Hima didn’t draw the iron cross, and the same goes for the other presented issues.

3. Japanese Imperialism

The way Hima portrays Japanese Imperialism was pretty offensive in my opinion. An instance is the presentation of the Japanese invasion of Korea. It wasn’t just like how the colonies were under Great Britain’s rule. It limited much more of Koreans’ rights and was much more gruesome. I don’t know about anyone else and can’t speak for each individual, but as a Korean, portraying all of this as Japan merely patting Korea on the head is fucked up. This ties to the controversy of Korea’s character. From what I’ve seen, Hetalia is pretty close to a rightist (in Japan, not the US) series. I won’t dive too deep into that, but rightist — or in Korean, 우익 — animes are animes that glorify their country’s past/country, or use content to make fun of or criticize other nations. Actually, it’s probably much more complicated than that, but as of now I don’t know much about it. It mostly ties to the tension between Koreans and the Japanese, so if you’re not either, there’s not really much to worry about. But (maybe because I’m Korean) I found it weird that the manga seems to give every single character a bad/negative characteristic except Japan. I guess it’s only natural, since the creator is Japanese. But then again, France was basically drawn as a rapist/pedophile, but I have never seen a French person complain about it. Or maybe they just completely avoid Hetalia? If anyone knows about it, I would be glad to listen. Perhaps it’s just a bias that I have as a Korean. It could also be a cultural difference too, since we tend to be very patriotic.

4. The Title: Axis Powers

Although the main character is Italy, and the story revolved (emphasis on the past tense) around the 3 countries that were part of the Axis, Hima should have been more considerate with the title of the show, thinking about what the Axis Powers actually did during WW2. Just “Hetalia” would have been fine. But it also should be considered that when Hima started drawing the manga, he did not expect it to become a long-term thing or for it to blow up so much. Thankfully, only the first two seasons of the anime were titled as Hetalia: Axis Powers, and later seasons were titled more acceptable things, like World Stars (manga) or The Beautiful World.

5. Seychelles

Personally I don’t find a problem with there not being that many African/South American countries in the show. Africa’s country borders (and all of that related material) were very different from what they are today, and it would be really fucking hard for Hima to keep track of all of those while still writing good characters. And unlike Europe, Africa’s history was not transcribed much, and is a lot less-known. The problem with Seychelles was her skin color, which wasn’t accurate. But that’s since been fixed.

Is Hetalia Really Problematic?

My most straightforward answer for this question would be no, it is not problematic as of now. Something I realized while listing all of the aspects of Hetalia that I personally thought were wrong to put in was that most of them don’t exist anymore. Besides Germany’s iron cross, all of them were removed from the show. Korea was banned from the anime, and he no longer appears in any of the manga strips. The manga strays further and further away from topics like Japanese Imperialism or WW2. Most of the time in the manga, countries do not wear their military uniforms anymore, but stick to more casual clothes. The characters stray further away from stereotypes that Hima used to use as a comedic effect when he first started drawing. My point is: Hima learned his mistakes. Which only makes sense, considering all of the criticism he probably received when the series first started. I think that’s a good thing. Now back to what I was ranting about earlier. I don’t get why people are saying Hetalia shouldn’t come back! The new season is most likely going to be based off the most recent Hetalia manga series, which is Hetalia World Stars. If you’ve ACTUALLY READ THE MANGA AND DIDN’T JUDGE THE ENTIRETY OF HETALIA BASED ON ITS FIRST FEW SEASONS, you would know what World Stars is about. It’s about all sorts of things. My personal favorite strips are the ones about ancient Rome! It’s not just drawn to give readers a laugh but it actually teaches you some history. Other than Rome, the manga is also about the trends of clothes in certain countries/time periods, industrial revolutions, or just the interactions between the characters in general. I really don’t see how animating these would be harmful at all. The subjects don’t revolve around what a lot of opposers say/negatively connotate the series with. If you think bringing Hetalia back is a terrible thing to do because the fandom would return and start doing toxic/weird things, I really don’t know how to respond to that. The fandom already died out around the time the last season was released. Now newer fans will come around, and the former fans would return (hopefully) matured up. It's already been 5 years since the last Hetalia season aired, after all. And like I said earlier, toxic fans never represent the entire fandom. If you really hate the fandom that much, I recommend not getting involved at all.

#hetalia #rant #hetalia 2021

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dinosaurtsukki · 4 years ago

Text

BSD x university au hc’s | pt. 1

hi i am an absolute slut for university au’s in case you couldn’t tell so i just had to write some for my first BSD post. also this is going to be slightly ooc because i am a crackhead

check out pt. 2 here

***********************************************

Atsushi Nakajima:

he’s definitely the kind of guy who still had no idea what he’d take up in university even after he was accepted

either wants to not major in anything at all or just major in everything because he’s also scared that he’ll eventually not like what he’s majoring in

so for his first two years you’d probably find him jumping around different classes

also he still calls the professors ‘teacher ____’ like a high school student and everyone laughs but thinks its cute

eventually, because of his *cough cough* traumatic childhood he decided he wanted to help children by becoming a guidance counselor

he ends up taking Child Psychology and bOY does he love it so much

well he actually just loves all of his classes because Learning is Fun

although because of his *cough cough* traumatic childhood he’s the one in class that people are all like 👀👀

atsushi: *talking about children’s responses to fear and emotional abuse by talking about his own emotional abuse*

the professor, under their breath: wait, do you need help??

i can definitely see atsushi as a Roommate of the Year kind of guy. he’s just so polite and tidy with his room. also he’d definitely be the type to take care of plants inside the dorm room and put them on the windowsill

in terms of extracurricular activities, he’s definitely a sporty type of person so i can see him joining a varsity (something like Frisbee because he likes things that go whoooosh) but he’d probably join a student org that does stuff like community outreach

because of all this, he is a Very Busy Boy but his friends do manage to drag him out to parties once in a while

although atsushi would probably sit in a corner and drink only one beer for the entire night

he’s notorious for helping drunk people though. most of the time he’ll be putting blankets on people and making them drink water

if he knew how to drive he’d definitely be the designated driver

Akiko Yosano:

omg i’m so excited for this i love yosano so much

she’s the friend who’s just effortlessly awesome all around and a fricking MED STUDENT to top it all off

she gets a bit too excited when it’s dissection time but it’s alright she has good intentions

probably the only one in your class who doesn’t go and throw up whenever a cadaver is being used (actually do they still use cadavers i have absolutely no idea)

she also interns at the local hospital as part of her degree program but OMG yosano will not stop telling disgusting stories about the patients she’s had

everyone: *eating lunch peacefully in the dining hall*

yosano: so i pulled a guy’s toe out of a meat grinder this morning

everyone: sHUT UP

for some reason she still has a social life despite being a med student and it’s one of the mysteries of life i guess

yosano LOVES going out clubbing on friday nights. if you have the fortune of being her roommate, be prepared for make-overs and being dragged with her out to the city

she’s such a social butterfly like at every bar you go to, the bartender knows her name and her regular order. she’d probably end the night befriending a couple more people

also she’s amazing at karaoke i kid you not

as for extracurricular life, i don’t think yosano’s the type to join an org that’s related to her major cause like ‘what’s the point?’

instead, she’d probably go wherever her friends are because to her, she’ll enjoy any activity as long as she’s with people she loves

but when it comes to her own interests, i can definitely see yosano as someone who loves the outdoors, especially hiking after having to be cooped up inside clinics

it just makes her love and appreciate the value of life more

Kunikida Doppo:

ok, i KNOW he was a math teacher before he joined the ADA bUT i can’t help but think of him as a political science major ??

i can definitely imagine kunikida as someone who’d want to become a lawyer someday and would take political science as a pre-law

he does like the idea of following in the footsteps of great men but omg kunikida would absolutely hate the exclusivity of white, male political theorists

he is such a good student except for when his professor has some sketchy values then kunikida will !! fight him !! every !! chance !! he gets !!

raises his hand constantly to contradict his professor if they even tRY to defend thomas hobbes and authoritarianism

but other than that he’s probably the most diligent student out there. kunikida genuinely enjoys doing the readings for class and writing essays

also has such a balanced schedule that he can make time for anything and everything

except for when his friends dazai drag him out to parties and get a social life

despite how rigid he is, kunikida has absolutely no problem helping out others with learning. he often holds study sessions in his dorm room or in the library before exams

he also likes to volunteer in tutorial centers because he’s just like that

OH OH some of his ‘students’ suggested that he make crash-course type videos for political science and it took some convincing but eventually kunikida decided to go for it

he’s not the most tech savvy or photogenic person so it took some time for him to get used to things but after seeing all the comments from people who benefited from it, he decided to continue with his crash course videos

whether or not he’s the best or worst roommate is completely up to you. if you like someone who’ll basically micromanage your life from your daily schedule to your study habits, you’ll absolutely love him

he doesn’t like to go out for parties that much but he will if his friends convince him enough (kunikida’s an utter lightweight when it comes to drinking though)

Osamu Dazai:

i genuinely have a hard time thinking about what this guy’s major would be and tbh even his friends have been wondering what dazai’s major was for TWO YEARS

that’s because he keeps taking the most random ass classes like Basic Pottery or Intro to Molecular Biology in the same semester

idk how he even plans to graduate at this point

although to be honest, i can definitely see him as a philosophy major despite the fact that i LOATHE every male classmate i’ve had who’s a philosophy major (idk they’re always so condescending)

i feel like dazai’s just taking that because it’s somewhat challenging for him but to him, university life is just more of crazy experiences rather than learning

and oh my god has he gotten up to the weirdest shit

the number of times he had to climb gates or sleep on benches at three a.m. is too many to count

dazai also loves volunteering for random things like people’s thesis projects (once, he offered to be a snake venom tester to a bio student and they told him that was illegal) or even being the school’s mascot in games

also he and kunikida probably met each other in freshman year at an intro to philosophy class and oh my god did dazai get on his nerves

what’s worse was that they had to work on a group project together and dazai was MIA most of the time and it drove kunikida crazy

that is until dazai showed up last minute to pull an all-nighter with him for their paper and kunikida just couldn’t help but be impressed by dazai’s ~~intellect~~

they don’t exactly get along but they do have some mutual respect for each other enough to work on projects well

omg if dazai ends up being your roommate I WISH YOU LUCK

the first time you walked into your room dazai was microwaving a metal bowl and you had to run to stop it in time

also he has a tendency to wear his headphones and sing his favorite double suicide song out loud

kunikida please come pick him up

Edogawa Ranpo:

i love this one man so much i swear to god

ranpo is definitely the kind of person who just didn’t like school so when college applications came around he was just like ‘why bother though ???’

his friends did convince him by saying that he wouldn’t have to do subjects he wouldn’t like and just focus on his major (this is a lie btw)

is it a surprise that ranpo would choose forensic science ?? NO

he thinks its cool that he can learn about something he’s already super good at and it just gets him really pumped up to show off how good he is

LOVES getting praised by his classmates and professors

ranpo probably thinks lectures are boring as hell so sometimes he just,,, doesn’t,,, come,,, to class

if attendance IS required you can bet he’s bringing snacks and game consoles with him and sitting WAAAAY in the back of the room

Mukbang at a Lecture Hall with Edogawa Ranpo

his classmates think its cute that he puts on glasses before doing exams or answering his prof’s questions as a way to hype himself up

everyone calls him ‘The Greatest Detective’ and ranpo LOVES IT

despite that, he’s not too overly social he just likes being with his close group of friends UwU

he’s also someone you can drag around to places like the fair or an aquarium, but he’s not into clubbing or drinking for that matter

he DOES enjoy seeing his friends get drunk and mess with them though

ranpo isn’t into joining student organizations BUT he gets scouted a lot by detective agencies and he likes interning for them

i’m saying detective agencies because police are gross

ranpo did end up joining a baking club with the assumption that he would just be EATING the cake and not BAKING the cake

yeah he was just there for less than half a semester

***********************************************

taglist (check out my post for details on being part of my taglist): @waitforitillwritemywayout @tpwkatsumu @laure-chan

#bungou stray dogs #bsd #atsushi nakajima #akiko yosano #kunikida doppo #osamu dazai #edogawa ranpo #bsd headcanons #bungou stray dogs headcanons #bsd writing #bungou stray dogs writing #bsd university au #bungou stray dogs university au #bsd imagines #bungou stray dogs imagines #bsd scenarios #bungou stray dogs scenarios

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c-is-for-circinate · 3 years ago

Note

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts about why P5R didn't quite land for you. I had the same reaction to it, but I've never quite been able to properly articulate why the last section fell so flat.

God okay so I've tried several times to answer this, and it seems like the answer is 'I still have way too many feelings, personally, to say this in anything less than thirty pages and fifteen hours of work', because Persona 5 the original is a game I loved a lot and care about a great deal. And most of the reasons I disliked Royal feel, in my head, like a list of ways it broke some of the things I liked best about P5--which means explaining them feels like I need to explain everything I loved about the original game, which is a book in itself, complete with referents to P3, P4, Jungian psychology, the Joseph Campbell mytharc, and fuck all even knows what. And that is too much.

But today I realized that I could instead describe it from an angle of, Persona 5 Strikers succeeds really well at doing the thing I think Royal was trying to do but failed at. And that I think I can talk about in a reasonable amount of wordspace, hopefully, behind this cut because I have at least one friend who hasn't played Royal yet.

Note for reblogs/comments: I HAVE NOT FINISHED STRIKERS YET. I got through the jail that pretended to be the final jail and have not yet gone into the obviously inevitable 'ohshit wait, you mean there's something more than simple human machinations behind all of this?' dungeon. (I got stuck on a really frustrating side quest, put the game down, and then dived into Hades to avoid throwing the Switch across the room for a while--and anyone around this blog lately knows how THAT'S been going.) Please no spoilers past Okinawa!

So, one of the many, many things I really appreciated about Persona 5 was its straightforward and unashamed attitude towards abusers and their acts of violence. Because, while yes P5 is a story about the use of power and control to make others suffer, it fundamentally isn't about those abusers themselves. It's about their victims, those that survive their crimes. And this shows up repeatedly over the course of the game.

We do not give a shit why Kamoshida wanted to beat and rape his students. We really don't. Kamoshida does not deserve our attention one moment longer than it takes to make him stop. Because, ultimately, that's the goal of P5, start to end. We don't know for sure if what we're doing is fair, if it's justice, if it's questionable. What we know is that people are being hurt, badly, actively, right now this second. What we know is that victims are suffering. What we know is that we, personally, us-the-protag and us the Phantom Thieves at large, are in danger. And in those circumstances, we don't care about the abuser's side any more. We don't. We don't have the space or time or capacity to care, because that is not the point.

The point is to help the weak. To save the people who need saving, right here and now. To give others the courage to stand up on their own behalf. We're not even out to change society, not really--that's a byproduct. We are reactions. We are triage. We are important.

There's something so empowering and validating about that as a theme, y'know? In a media landscape so full of "sympathetic villains", the idea that, you know, maybe sometimes you don't have to break yourself to show compassion that might possibly heal the bad guy--that sometimes you can just make the bad guy stop hurting people--feels both refreshing and satisfying. I really appreciate it as a message! I liked it a lot!

And yes, there's nuance to that theme, and the game is not without compassion. We save Futaba, because 'make the bad guy stop hurting people', in that case, means 'make this person stop hurting herself'. We give Sae a path forwards, help her fix her own heart. Yet it's worth pointing out that in both of those cases, while we were very glad to do those things, to save those people, we also went into both of those palaces for extremely practical reasons to begin with. We needed Futaba's help. We needed Sae's help. The fact that we chose to talk Sae into a change of heart rather than simply stealing her treasure, while ultimately a very good thing for her, was absolutely a practical choice predicated on the need for her palace to still exist to save our life. And yes, we wanted to save her, for Makoto's sake--yes, we wanted desperately to save Futaba. But Sae and Futaba let themselves be helped, too, and that doesn't change the overarching themes of the story itself.

Akechi (and to some extent Okumura) would not let himself be helped. Akechi's another interesting nuance to this theme, because of all our villains, we do learn the most about what drove him to the cruelties and crimes he's committed. He's at that intersection of victim and villain, and we want to help him, as a victim--but we also know that stopping him as a villain is more important. We'd like to save him from himself if we could, because we save people from their sources of trauma, it's what we do. We regret being unable to do so. But in the end, what matters to the story is not that Akechi refused to be saved--it's that Shido and Yaldabaoth need to be stopped, for the sakes of everyone else they're hurting now and may continue to hurt in the future.

The thing is, there's space and maybe even a need for a corollary discussion of those places where victim and villain intersect. It's an interesting, pertinent, and related topic. Strikers made an entire video game about it, a really good video game. It's centered in the idea that, yes, these people need to be stopped, and we will make stopping them our priority--but they're not going after us, and that gives us some space to sympathize. Even for Konoe, who specifically targets the Phantom Thieves--compare him to Shido, who actively destroyed the lives of both Joker and Futaba, who ordered Haru's father's death, who's the entire reason the team is still dealing with the trauma of Akechi's everything. Of course the game can be sympathetic to Konoe where it can't with Shido. There's enough distance to do that.

But right--Strikers is a separate game. It's a separate conversation. It's, "last time, we talked about that, so now let's take it one step further." And that's good writing. (It's something Persona has done before, too, also really well! Persona 3 is about terrible, occasionally-suicidal depression and grief. P4 is about how you can still be hurting and need some help and therapy even if things seem ok. Related ideas, but separate conversations that need to be separate in order to be respectful and do justice to either one. P5, as a follow-up to P4, is a conversation about how, ok, changing yourself is great and all, but sometimes the problem is other people so how do you deal with that? Again, still related! Still pertinent! Still alluded to in P4, with Adachi's whole thing--but it wasn't the time or place to base a quarter of the game around it.)

So one of Royal's biggest issues, to me, is that it tries to tack on this whole new angle for discussion onto a game that was originally about something else.

Adding Maruki's palace--adding it at the end, which by narrative laws suggests that it's the true point that everything else should be building up to--suddenly adds in about a hundred new dimensions at once. It wants us to engage with "what in this abuser/manipulator's life led him to act this way?" for basically the first time all game (we'll get to Akechi later). It wants us to engage with, "if the manipulator has a really good reason or good intentions, does that mean we should forgive them?" It requires us to reflect on, "what is the difference between control and cruelty?" It asks, "okay, but if people could be controlled into being happy, would that be okay?" (Which, based on the game so far, is actually a wild out-there hypothetical! Literally not a single thing we've seen in the game suggests that could ever happen. Even the people who think being controlled is safer and easier are miserable under it. Control that's able to lead to actual happiness is completely out of left field in the context of everything we've encountered all game so far.)

That's too much! We don't have time to unpack all that! We only have an eighth of the game left! Not to mention we are also being asked to bring back questions we put to bed much earlier in the game about the morality of our own actions, in a wholely unsatisfying way. Maruki attempts to justify his mass brainwashing because "it's the same as what you're doing", and we know it isn't, but the game didn't need Maruki calling it out in order for us to get that. We already faced that question when we started changing hearts, and again several times throughout the game, and again when we found our targets in Yaldabaoth's cells. The fact that we change hearts does not mean we think "changing hearts is fine and kind and should be done to everyone, actually." Changing hearts has been firmly established in this game as an act of violence, acceptable only because it prevents further systemic violence against innocents that we must prevent. The moral question has never once been about whether it's ok to change the hearts of the innocent, only about how far it's ethical to go against individuals who are actively hurting other people. Saying "you punched that guy to keep him from shooting a child, so punching people is good and I will save the world by punching everyone!" is confusing! and weird! and not actually at all helpful to the question of, how much violence is it acceptable to use to protect others! So presenting the question that way just falls really flat.

(And right, I love Strikers, because Strikers has time to unpack all that. Strikers can give us a main bad guy who wants to control the whole world for everybody's own good, because Strikers has earned that thematic climax. It has given us sympathetic bad guys who started out wanting to control the world to protect themselves and ended up going too far. It's given us Mariko Hyodo, who wanted to control the world to protect other people and went too far. It's given us a long-running thread about police, the desire to serve, and the abuse of power that can lead to. And since we are actively trying to care for the people whose hearts we're changing in Strikers, we can open the door to questions about using changes-of-heart and that level of control to make other people happy. We can even get a satisfying conclusion out of that discussion, because we have space to characterize the difference--Konoe thinks that changing peoples' hearts means confining them, but the Phantom Thieves think it means setting them free. We have seen enough sympathetic villains that we as an audience have had the space to figure out how we feel about that, and to understand the game's perspective of "stop them AND save them, if we can possibly do both." And that message STILL rests firmly on Persona 5's message of "it is Good to do what you have to do to stop an abuser so long as you don't catch innocent people in your crossfire.")

It's worth noting that the general problem of 'asking way too many new questions and then not answering them' also applies to how Royal treats its characters, too. P5 did have unanswered questions left at the end! The biggest one, and we all knew this, was Akechi, and what actually happened to him, and how we should feel about him, and how he felt about us. That was ripe for exploring in our bonus semester, and to Royal's credit they did in fact try to bring it up, but by god did they fuck up doing it.

Akechi's probable death in the boiler room was absolutely the biggest dangling mystery of the game. It was an off-screen apparent death of a key antagonist, so all of the narrative rules we know suggested that he might still be alive and would probably come back if the story went on for long enough. So when Royal brings him back on Christmas Eve, hey, great! Question answered. Except that the situation is immediately too good to be true, and immediately leads to another mystery, which leads to a flat suspicion that something must be wrong. We spend several hours of gameplay getting sly hints that, oooh, maybe he's not really alive after all, before it's finally confirmed by Maruki: yup, he really died, if we end the illusion we'll kill him too. Okay, at least we know now. Akechi is alive right now and he's going to be dead if we do this, and that doesn't make a ton of sense because every other undead person disappeared when the person who wished for them realized they were fake but at this point we'll take it. So we take down Maruki, and okay, Akechi really is dead! Probably! We're fairly sure! Aside from our lingering doubts!

And then we catch a glimpse of maybe-probably-could be him through the train window, and I just want to throw something, because come on.

Look, it is just a fact of storytelling: the more times you make an audience ask 'wait, is this character dead or aren't they?', the less they will care, until three or four reversals later you will be hard pressed to find anybody who gives a shit. Royal does this like four different times, and every iteration comes with even less certainty than the last. By the end, we somehow know even less than we did when we started! Did Akechi survive the boiler room to begin with and Maruki just didn't know? Or was Maruki lying to try and manipulate us further? Or was he actually dead and then his strength of will when Maruki's reality dissolved was enough to let him survive after all? Is that even actually him out the train window?

Where is he going! What is he doing! How did any of this happen! What is going on! We all had these questions about Akechi at the end of the original P5, and the kicker is that Royal pretends like it's going to answer them only to go LOL JK NO. It's frustrating and it's dissatisfying and it annoys me.

The one Akechi question that Royal doesn't even bother to ask, though, let alone leave ambiguous, is how does the protagonist feel about him? The entire emotional weight of the third semester rests on the protagonist caring about Akechi, Sumire, and Maruki. Maruki's the person we're supposed to sympathize with even as we try to stop him. Sumire's the person we're trying to save from herself. And Akechi is our bait--is, we are told, the one thing our protagonist wished for enough to actualize it in this world himself. Akechi's the final lure to accept Maruki's deal. Akechi's survival is meant to be tempting.

For firm Akechi fans, this probably worked out fine--the game wanted to insist that the protagonist cared for Akechi the same way the player did. For those of us who're a little more ambivalent, though (or for the many and valid people who hated him), this is a super sour note. Look, one of the Persona series' strengths is the way it lets players choose to put their time and emotional investment into an array of different characters, so the main story still has weight even if there's a couple you don't care about that much. It has always done this. The one exception, from P3 all the way through P4 to here and now, is Nanako Dojima, and by god she earned that distinction. I have never met a person who played Persona 4 who didn't love Nanako. Nanako is a neglected six-year-old child who is brave and strong enough to take care of herself and all of the housework but who still tries not to cry when her dad abandons her again and lights up like the sun when we spare her even the tiniest bit of time and attention. It is impossible not to care for Nanako. Goro Akechi is not Nanako.

And yet third semester Royal doesn't make sense if your protagonist doesn't feel linked to Akechi. The one question, out of all the brand new questions Royal throws out there, that it decides to answer all by itself--and it's how you as a player and your protagonist ought to feel about an extremely complex and controversial character. What the fuck, Royal. What the fuck.

In conclusion, I'll leave you with this. I played the original Persona 5 in March and April of 2017, as an American, a few months after the 2016 election and into the term of our then president. It felt painfully timely. A quick calendar google early on indicated that the game's 20XX was almost certainly 2016, and the closer our plot got to the in-game November leadup to an election destined to be dominated by a foul and charming man full of corruption and buoyed up by his own cult of personality, the more I wanted to laugh/cry. It felt timely. It felt important. It felt right.

I went through Royal (in LP form on youtube, not having a platform to play it on) in summer of 2020, with a hook full of face masks by my front door and protests about racial tension and local policing that occasionally turned into not-quite-riots close enough to hear at night if I opened the windows of my apartment. The parts of the game that I remembered felt as prescient and meaningful as ever, if not even more so. The new parts felt baffling. Every single evil in the game felt utterly, painfully real, from the opening moments of police brutality to the idea of a country led by a guy who probably would use his secret illegitimate teenage son as a magical assassin if the opportunity presented itself and he thought he could get away with it. Yaldabaoth as the cumulative despair of an entire population who just wanted somebody to take over and make things be okay--yes, yes, god, in summer of 2020? With streets full of people refusing to wear masks and streets full of people desperate for change? Of course. Of course that holy grail of safety should be enticing. Of course it should be terrifying.

And then Maruki. Maruki, who was just so far outside the scope of anything I could relate to the rest of the game or my own life. Because every single other villain in the rest of Persona is real. From the petty pandering principal to the human-trafficking mob boss. The corrupt politicians and the manmade god of cultural desire for stability. And this game was trying to tell me that the very biggest threat of all of them, the thing that was worse than the collective force of all society agreeing to let this happen because succumbing was easier than fighting back--that the very biggest threat of all was that the world could be taken over by some random nobody's misguided attempts to help?

No. Fuck no. I don't buy it. Because god, yes, I have seen the pain and damage done on a tiny and personal and very real level by the tight-fisted control of someone trying to help, it never looked like this. Not some ascended god of a bad therapist. All the threats to the world, and that's the one I'm supposed to take seriously? This one man is more of a threat than the fundamental human willingness to be controlled?

Sorry, but no. Not for me. Not in this game. Not in this real-life cyberpunk dystopian apocalypse.

#c plays persona #driveby meta attack #p5 royal spoilers #p5 strikers spoilers #holy crap I did it #I actually wrote a semicoherent essay of a length I'm willing to put on Tumblr #about my problems with this game #I have been trying on and off for MONTHS #I wanted to like Royal SO BADLY #it makes me SO UPSET #anyway #now back to your regularly scheduled Hades blogging #asked and answered #Anonymous

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withcolebrock · 4 years ago

Text

I’m Not Jealous

Summary: After seeing a video of someone flirting with Y/N, Colby gets Jealous

Warnings: implied smut and stuff, swearing,

Word Count: 1,449

Author’s Note: hiii so this was just something I threw together really fast, and it isn’t my best work I’ve done. But I thought it was alright enough to post. It’s just Colby being jealous. Also to my people who love the Dolan Twins , they get a mention ;) I hope you guys like it!! This is my Gif!!

It had only been an hour since she had uploaded her collab with the Dolan Twins, when all of the shipping comments started. The video was simple. It was just three of them learning TikTok dances and performing them. But every other comment was talking about how Grayson was flirting with Y/N the entire time. Or the way she looked towards him. She didn’t really understand what they were talking about and frankly neither did Grayson.

Almost immediately after the video was posted, Grayson had texted her, Hey, I don’t know what they are thinking but I wasn’t flirting with you, I wouldn’t do that to you or Colby. She responded telling him she understood and that the fans loved shipping her with anybody and everybody.

She put her phone down beside her on the bed while pulling her MacBook onto her lap. She continued to scroll through the comments, rolling her eyes at half of them. Colby, her boyfriend of over a year, entered the room rubbing a towel in his hair roughly. Y/N glanced towards him quickly before turning her attention towards the comments.

“Hey Baby,” he whispered as he rested his hand onto the bed and leaned his body closer to hers. She turned her head to face him, a small smile to her features.

“Hi,” she whispers while she turns her attention towards the computer. He frowns slightly as he watches her shift her attention back to the screen. He climbs over her body and falls down beside her in the bed. He lays directly on his back as he holds his phone up scrolling through twitter.

They laid together in silence for a while as they both continued their scrolling. She stopped reading the comments and took herself to twitter. “Why is my feed filled with tweets about you and Grayson Dolan?” he questioned as he laid his phone down onto his pillow behind him. She sighed, shaking her head.

“Remember the collab I filmed with them a few weeks back?” she asked. He nodded allowing her to continue, “Everyone is doing what they always do,” she paused, “They think Grayson was flirting with me and I was looking at him differently or something. I don’t know it’s stupid.” Colby’s eyebrows furrowed together as his eyes studied her expression.

Her eyes widened as she saw how concerned he looked, “He wasn’t flirting with me I promise. Look, he texted me,” she sighed pulling up the text handing it to Colby. He read the short conversation they had together and nodded slowly. He handed her back the phone.

“It’s all good, Babe, I trust you,” he smiled weakly as he adjusted the pillow under his head. She closed her laptop and placed it onto the side table alongside her phone. She pulled the blanket covering her body closer to her face, as she turned and faced Colby with a pout to her lips. His eyes flickered down to her pouting lips and back up to her eyes. “What?” he let out a breathy laugh.

She turned her head away dramatically and huffed, “You forgot something when you walked in here,” she shut her eyes looking away from him.

“I did?” he questioned as he sat up lightly. She opened her eyes and continued to pout her lips more dramatically this time. He rolled his eyes as realization dawned on him, “Oh, my bad,” he whispered as he leaned down taking a hold of her chin and kissing her briefly.

As he pulled away she whined, “No, come back,” he giggled as she reached her hand around his neck and pulled him towards her again. He pressed his lips against hers hard. He slowly went on top of her, holding one hand tightly along her hip while the other was placed beside her head. His hand slowly went under her hoodie as he glided his hands along her soft skin.

~~~

The sound of her own voice woke her up. She turned her body over, rubbing the tiredness from her eyes, “What are you doing?” she rasped. Colby paused the video as he turned his head towards her. He shrugged.

“I can’t watch my girlfriend’s videos now?” he questioned as he pressed play. The sound of Ethan and Grayson’s laughter came from the phone. Y/N groaned as she laid onto her back pulling the blanket over her face

“I’m not saying that, but why now?” she continued to rub her eyes as she tried to wake herself up.

“I didn’t get the chance to watch it last night,” he frowned as Y/N laughed at a joke Grayson had said in the video. She sighed dramatically as she pulled herself from the bed. “Where are you going?”

“I need a shower,” she yawned, “And I don’t want to hear my voice first thing in the morning,” she walked towards the bedroom door, leading into the hall towards the bathroom. “It’s annoying,” she continued as she exited the room.

“I think it’s a beautiful voice,” he teased as he continued watching the video.

He watched the video intently as he tried to fight off the idea that Grayson and Y/N were flirting. He knows that Y/N wasn’t trying to flirt, but he can’t stop himself from thinking it. Colby watched as Grayson looked her up and down as she did a dance; maybe he didn’t do it on purpose. His face scrunched together as he watched Grayson turn around and start laughing.

Clenching his jaw, he fought off the urge to throw his phone across the room. Not that it would help with anything, other than easing the anger towards Grayson. The idea of someone like Grayson simply flirting or looking at Y/N suggestively made him feel so angry. It brought the idea that she could leave him for someone better than him easily. He tossed his phone to the other side of the bed as he covered his face with his hands. “Fuck,” he breathed.

After a couple of minutes, he took a hold of his phone and began to scroll through the comments of the video. He knew reading the comments would have made him even more pissed off than he already was, but he didn’t care. Most of the comments were about Grayson obviously flirting with her. There were several of the comments saying that they looked really cute together, among other things like that.

The more he read the comments, the more anger was starting to build in him. He tossed his phone beside him and he stood up from the bed. He pulled open his bedroom door and started heading towards the bathroom. He quickly pushed the door open, feeling the warm steam leaving the shower as soon as he entered the bathroom. “Colby, what the hell?!” she yelled as she heard him come into it.

He pulled down his sweatpants and his boxers and pulled open the shower curtain, “What are you doing?!” she yelled as he entered the shower.

“I get it, okay, those guys are like greek gods. It isn’t fair. I may not have muscles like them or whatever, but I am way better than them in so many different ways. Like last night for example, there’s no way they could’ve-” he started. She stared at him confused but let him continue. “I don’t know where I am going with this but I am just pissed off and I love you-,”

“Are you jealous of them?” she teased while brushing a few pieces of hair away from her face. Colby clenched his jaw as he moved the wet pieces of his hair away from his face. “You’re jealous,”

“I’m not-I just think that you should know I love you and I’m a fucking fantastic guy,” he shrugged his shoulders as his eyes slowly scanned her body. “Woah,” he let out as he continued to admire her frame. She rolled her eyes as she let out a soft laugh. She took a small step towards him and wrapped her arms around his neck. She slowly pressed her lips against his.

“You’re so jealous,” she whispered against his lips as she opened her eyes briefly.

“You really are trying to make me mad aren’t you?” he questioned as he pushed her back against the shower wall. She nodded her head while fighting off a smile. He leaned down and kissed her jaw and lowered his lips to her neck.

“Is it working?” she took in a long breath.

He brought his lips closer to her ear and whispered, “Maybe,” he continued to kiss her neck while pulling her waist closer to him.

“Good,” she mumbled.

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secret-engima · 4 years ago

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*kicks down door* WHO WANTS TO READ ME RAMBLE/RANT ABOUT THE GRALEA LEVEL IN FFXV AND WHY IT ACTUALLY WAS A GOOD LEVEL AND EVERYONE SHOULD PLAY THE NOCTIS ROUTE AT LEAST ONCE RATHER THAN THE GLADIO ROUTE EVEN THOUGH IT’S TERRIFYING AND FRUSTRATING.

No one?

WELL TOO BAD.

(Unless you haven’t played or watched the game yet and don’t want spoilers in which case TURN AWAY NOW).

...Ahem. *deep breath* Okay so I will forever stand by my opinion that chapter 13 of the game (the one that takes place on the train and then in Gralea) is Good™ and does exactly what it's supposed to in the narrative. That is not to say I don't hate it with a passion and didn't cheer when they added the Gladiolus route for those of us (like me) who didn't want to replay the Noctis route again, but I will stubbornly insist to anyone that wants to listen that the chapter's difficulty and wildly different tone and pacing was THE POINT of the darn thing and deserves some respect for it.

See, the game up to that point is, if not always lighthearted (because it's not), has still been something of an Adventure Story™. Yes there's horrible tragic things like Insomnia falling and Regis dying, but for the most part the gameplay is exploration and cool combat mechanics and the relationship between the four brothers. It's ... happy for a good chunk of it. There's this light at the end of the tunnel, this comfy assurance that there can be a happy ending, that this can all be fixed and tied up in a neat little bow somehow.

Then Altissia happens. Luna dies, Ignis is blinded, and the game puts you on literal rails, forcing you to go hurtling toward A Different Tone. Everyone is stressed, everyone is scared or angry. You’d THINK that this is the lowest point of the story and that surely there’s going to be an emotional reconciliation between Noctis and Gladio and then we’ll get back to exploring and saving the world and all that jazz.

Except we don’t.

The train scene with Ardyn and Shiva happens, and the entire heartbreak with Prompto happens, and that’s when things start to seriously crack. You lose all access to your magic while stuck in this narrow train, then you lose the Regalia, your symbol of freedom, your main way to travel through the game (even when you fast travel, the animation of arrival shows you getting out of the Regalia). You are now trapped in Gralea. In dark, hostile territory with one of your party missing, one of them blind, the other angry at you, and still no magic. Then a few minutes later you are forcibly separated from the rest of your party, the characters you’ve spent all game getting attached to, and leaning on, and laughing with. They are your last anchor points to the brother dynamic that has kept the whole game on a lighter note and now they are GONE. You have none of your weapons or skills, you have no idea where the others are (first time playing the game without spoilers anyway), you have NOTHING. No hope. No backup. No distractions from the fact that, oh yeah, this is a story where the Bad. Guys. Win. Are winning, have won, and all Noctis (all you) can do is take out the Ring that slowly killed Regis, that Luna died for, the thing that represents everything going wrong and all NOCTIS must do to fix it even when he is painfully, woefully unprepared ... and finally put it on.

Noctis (and by extension you, the player) MUST shoulder the responsibility of being the king of a lost kingdom, of acknowledging that he IS the king, his dad was MURDERED, and Luna was killed for the thing you are now wearing and everything it means. It’s your only option until you eventually find the dead Ravus and take back Regis’s sword toward the middle/end of the level, which you can’t use recklessly because every swing drains your very life-force, forcing the Ring to still be your “best” option in many cases.

Most of that level is spent running, and hiding, and praying that the MT Units on the floor don’t leap up and try to murder you, or that the daemons don’t notice you, or that the teleporting daemon doesn’t find you, or that Ardyn will just SHUT UP because his taunts are really unhelpful right now.

The only hope you have left in this level is to grit your teeth and get through it with the Ring until you can reunite with your brothers and get magic back and go get the Crystal, the mcguffin of this whole game, and put the game back on the normal track of brotherly dynamics and fun quests. Just get to the Crystal, and everything will somehow start going back to normal.

And then that turns out to be a trap too.

Welcome to the final act of a tragedy, and your character is the one living through it. There will be no restoration of the norm until you’ve seen this to its final conclusion. There will be no light save for the one Noctis dies for.

Even when I first played that level (vanilla, not even a day one patch version btw because I was an idiot like that) and hated it because it was terrifying, I never thought it didn't belong in the story like ... quite a few comments I saw on the internet later insisted it didn’t. This is Noctis's story. This is Noctis's tragedy. THIS is the level that strips every last distraction and security blanket and shelter away from him and makes him put on the Ring and thus shoulder everything it represents. There is- terror here, there is trauma, there is GRIEF. This is practically Noctis's headspace without his brothers, because let's not forget that while we the players are having fun fishing and catching frogs for a silly scientist lady, Noctis is a refugee from an empire that MURDERED HIS FATHER and the FATHER OF HIS SHIELD-BROTHER, destroyed his HOME and then, right before Gralea, murdered Luna, the girl who he's known and talked to and confided in via letter for twelve years. This is a world falling into literal darkness (and if the player hadn’t noticed how the daytime cycle in the game kept getting shorter and shorter before this point YOU CERTAINLY NOTICE NOW) and it's up to Noctis- JUST Noctis, ONLY NOCTIS thanks to a Prophecy made long before he was ever born, to somehow Fix It™.

One person. Just one.

And he has to fix ... all of this.

How?

He doesn’t know. During the Gralea level he DOESN’T KNOW. All he (all we) know is that the Crystal is the key, but since the Crystal only answers to Lucis Caelums, that means Noctis is the key, and Noctis (and you the player) is painfully aware of how Not Ready he is.

And the weight of that is enough to render you helpless in the face of it. The fear of that is a maze. The terror of it is a monster following you down the halls that you cannot escape from and cannot kill while it laughs at your misery.

All of that is GRALEA. The capital city of the people who overthrew his home, killed his father, killed his fiancé, and isolated him from the last safety nets he had.

The entirety of chapter 13 isn’t meant to be enjoyed. It’s meant to make you scared. It’s meant to frustrate you and make you feel helpless. It’s meant to make you feel sick when you learn what the daemons and MTs you’ve been killing really are. It’s meant to make you RAGE against Ardyn, and the Empire, and this entire situation because you’re one person and you’re not prepared for this and it’s NOT FAIR and you just want things to go BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS AND ALL OF THIS SUCKS.

Yeah. It does.

And who else do you think feels like that?

Noctis.

Chapter 13 isn’t meant to be fun. It’s meant to make you feel like Noctis does.

And what emotions would you expect from someone who has just lost everything and is expected to fix everything for everyone else, and now has no distractions or shields between him and his grief?

I remember reading an article about “why this chapter failed” and it was basically to the order of “this game is about a fun road trip with your bros and reuniting with your fiancé and chapter 13 breaks away from that too hard” and I respectfully have to disagree.

This story isn’t about a “fun road trip” and it isn’t just about “reuniting with your fiancé”. From the very first cutscene we are told that it’s not in Regis’s desperate (and soon revealed as last) words to his son about setting forth on a journey and not being able to go back. We are told it’s not in the first hour or so when Insomnia burns and Noctis cries and Cor tells us that “in his last moments together he didn’t want to be your king, he wanted to be your father”. How is that a “fun story about a road trip?”. Yes the road trip IS fun for us, and it IS about the brother relationship, but in a large, LARGE part-

Final Fantasy XV is about a young man setting out into the world and facing the hardships of it. It’s about loss. It’s about regrets. It’s about how no matter how much you want them to, some things can never go back to the way they were yet you must keep going anyway. It’s about how the darkness of the world will just keep taking-taking-taking until someone is willing to pay the price to make it stop, and that sometimes a happy ending for the people you love most means giving up your own personal happy ending on their behalf.

Final Fantasy XV never really hid the fact that it was a tragic, bittersweet story.

But it’s in chapter 13 that the story refuses to let you mistake it for anything else any longer.

Could the chapter have been structured a little better so that the gameplay itself wasn’t so frustrating? Probably. I know almost nothing about game design so that’s not really my call. But does the chapter, for all its frustration and anger-inducing inversion of pacing and tone, brutally get the point across?

Maybe it’s just my opinion, but I’d say yes. Yes it does. Because this video game was the one that fully 100% convinced me, in a way that no other video game had before, that the platform could tell heart wrenching stories, could give me characters I would care for, cry over, rage on the behalf of.

And a big part of that clicked for me at the ending, but it likely wouldn’t have if I hadn’t first struggled my way through chapter 13 and all the emotions it causes and represents just like Noctis did.

...

There. I’m done. Thanks for reading my long-suppressed rant on the most hated chapter of FFXV.

#Secret Engima Rambles #SE rants #ffxv #storytelling things #writer things #I will die on this hill

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