#tri negativity

[shihalyfie]

It's a loaded topic that I generally try not to bring up much because of the various controversies surrounding it, and a few years ago, I was hesitant to mention this in public because there was no way to frame it in a way that didn't sound like a hate post. (That, and admittedly, I probably was not in the right mental frame to handle it well back then; a lot of things have changed in the last few years.) But now this has been on record and even alluded to via official sources, and I don't see a point in being touchy about it anymore, so here's something I really wish more people would understand when they talk about tri., Kizuna, and 02TB:

Between tri. and Kizuna/02TB, almost the entire production system was overhauled, and there are almost no key staff members in common.

I know it's tempting to treat "Toei" like it's some kind of monolith, but it's very important to remember that any stylistic differences in approach or concept between tri. and Kizuna/02TB aren't just because of answering critical reception, but also because almost the entire production system was scooped out and redone from scratch. The one key member they have in common is Kizuna/02TB producer Kinoshita, who was brought onto tri. as late as part 5 and has explicitly stated that he wasn't involved on its story.

The reason this overhaul happened also wasn't just because of something like "people didn't like tri. (in terms of story content)". For one, tri. was subject to a lot of troubled production behind the scenes -- and I'm not making this up, it's on record that they ran out of budget halfway through and had to rewrite the rest of the plot. But another important thing that may not be as clear to people who only learned about it after the fact is that tri. was a downright PR disaster at the time it was going on, such as:

The infamous "nade-nade" incident (ask anyone who was present during the tri. announcement and they'll probably be able to tell you the details)

The director openly saying things like the fact he deliberately does not look at the source material when making adaptations because he sees it as too limiting, accompanied by a number of other inflammatory statements in magazines, etc. suggesting that he probably had never seen the original Adventure to begin with and saw it as a series he needed to make as more "mature", even to the point of rejecting character-accurate scripts for it (that said, it is very important to remember that a series is far more than just one staff member, and there are other staff members who did say they watched it and clearly did their research, so the point I'm making is that the director's attitude naturally made a lot of people in the audience very angry and is a big reason he started currying a bad industry reputation during and even after tri.'s run)

Magazine interviews with staff members and other Q&As generally being so vague and unwilling to answer questions clearly that it got people upset (for example, when a social media campaign soliciting questions for a Q&A session was held for a screening of part 6, it was said to be "suspiciously" too dark to actually answer the questions)

So when you see discussion about tri. being controversial because of "contradictions in the setting" or whatnot, it's not people getting petty about characterization, it's because the production system for tri. managed to make a ton of public relations decisions that unilaterally pissed a ton of people off, so having contradictions in the lore and characterization came off as being due to carelessness and negligence more than anything.

Right now, the series has been over for more than five years, so I'm not bringing all of this up because I want to start an angry mob against the series or anything (I myself have a lot of favorite things that had clearly troubled production issues and controversial statements from staff members, so I'm not saying this alone should be grounds to evaluate a series). The point I'm making is that I see way too many people talking like tri. and Kizuna/02TB were made under the same mentality by a vaguely-defined concept of "Toei" and that any differences in approach are from some bizarre hypocrisy where they keep contradicting themselves. What happened here was that they saw the public relations fallout, realized it wasn't a good idea to continue getting people mad, and completely overhauled everything with entirely different people and an entirely different approach -- and the fact they did not do a similar complete overhaul between Kizuna and 02TB is conversely why they share more in common.

[digitalgate02]

[sighs]

I'll have to be honest with people and with my own feelings.

When I say I can’t really make ▽ work with my stuff and with the original lore, I really mean it.

I know people might get angry at me for saying this, but it’s pretty much sure that you have either to commit to one or another and CANNOT USE BOTH TOGETHER. What I mean? Well…

I know all of the Adv/02’s lore is still unknown to us, and we got a good chunk of those details from interviews with Kakudou and SekiP, but when it comes to the original Digital World lore… Well, it sounds completely… impossible to use it with ▽ as it was presented to us. I mean mostly what Shiha talked about in this post here, about “canon” and “Non-canon” and such.

Well, I want people to not get me wrong – I’m not forcing you to agree with me, I’m just explaining why it’s so hard for me to work with it, to the point I’m still trying to, even by reusing bits of it except… I’m always walking into a thick wall and unable to proceed with my own plans/chain of thoughts.

Well… The thing is: Since the lore is basically violated to the point I have no other option than put extra thought on how to work with this, I’ll have to talk about a SERIOUS digi-ecosystem problem this series brought.

If you didn’t know, an old stream with Kakudou in it (not sure for which material it was, PSP Adv game or another thing, if someone remember of it, please help me here) had a Q&A section where people sent him questions to be answered there, and one of them was regarding… “what happens to the digimon if a human partner dies” or something like that. Well, Kakudou’s answer was following the logic of “digimon are the manifestation of the human soul” which is… basically something implied in post-series material & interviews. His answer? If a human partner dies, their digimon partner dies too.

Just by saying this you might understand… What my point here is.

Yes, I mean… Nishijima Daigo’s death is a big big PROBLEM to the lore.

Unless there’s some special rule involving the Holy Beasts like, “the HB can undo their ties with their human partners”, the fact Daigo is killed off in the pt6 brings a terrible disaster to the ecosystem. The Holy Beasts are also responsible for the protection of the Digital World, just as Homeo (which is not a “God-like” entity at all, even in Adv & the novels, Homeostasis claims to not be a “God of the Digimon”, it’s just a security system or something like) – And when Qinglongmon explained stuff in 02, he mentioned that the Dark Masters had sealed the HB in the past, but then the Chosen Children broke the seal.

Ok, so you might be aware the Holy Beasts were former Chosen digimon, the mysterious “five kids” (yes, the ones using a few from the Adv cast to illustrate them) – we don’t know when they got to face Apocalymon, but they were said to be the previous group from Taichi & co. and I assumed it meant 1995 before because I wasn’t aware of the math count before… The math count is important and this is why those details should’ve been stated beforehand and not through interviews and Q&A stuff… But okay, I don’t blame anyone for not knowing those details… I’m only upset that ▽ staff didn’t go to get details directly from the original Adv/02 staff. Sigh, let’s go straight to the point:

Killing Daigo was the biggest lore violation this series had committed, because it would’ve caused terrible issues to the ecosystem. You KILLED a human whose digimon partner had become a HOLY BEAST!!

But Why am I so desperate trying to find a solution to this? Well, I don’t want to let go of Daigo and Maki – I love them, and I also love my NishiHime OC Yume. She has a big plot that I’m trying to make it work – but as you can see, this is the thick wall I’m facing right now.

Yes, I know I could simply ignore it, but I wanted her to have a parallel with Daichi and show the difference between them. If I keep Daigo dead this would cause a big big crisis because one HB down. So my only choice is to kill Maki off, right? Except I had plans for Maki too… So this is where I’m sitting here and thinking again and again on how to keep the original plan (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

[negativespacewalk]

Went down to the riverside to take pictures of the river. Did not take any pics of the river. Ended up taking pictures of the lichen on the trail bridges instead.

[zqnl]

heavily inspired by a dormont illustration, nothing like 1950s spousal resentment to invoke enjoltaire energy

think i’ve finally figured out a workflow that works for me 🤩🤩

[takemetodragonstone]

*if your gender and sexuality brought on different feelings, vote for whichever you want. (whichever feeling was stronger, or first, or however you want to decide).

If you’re comfortable with it, put your sexuality and/or gender identity in the tags along with the feeling you experienced upon discovering it so we can see if any trends appear with correlations between certain identities and feelings!

[bigfatbreak]

Damn Marinette is a Changeling magnet, all the Changelings are attracted to her

ITS A HARD-KNOCK-LIFE, FOR US,

[goryhorroor]

if you’re conservative or a trump supporter: get off my blog. horror was and is never meant for you. thank you

[tubbytarchia]

@mcyt-yuri-week Day 5, Rose/Thorns I never stop thinking about SL episode 8 never ever

[bikananjarrus]

live action star wars is never going to give us the heartfelt emotional scene of ezra seeing lothal again for the first time, at least not in the way that we deserve. seeing him land on the planet and walking wistfully through the tall grasses, loth cats trailing in his wake; walking through the city with a bit of a heavy heart because these streets and buildings are so familiar, and yet so different at the same time, because the city has grown and thrived in the empire's absence. we're never going to see him crying quiet, joyful tears because he's finally home.

[shihalyfie]

This is potentially a very loaded question so feel free to not answer if you don't feel like it, but how do you as a woman feel about the handling of female characters in Digimon (anime of course, but also games, manga and even the Digimon themselves)? I've seen takes of all kinds from women over the years so I'm curious how you feel. But again, no pressure to answer if you feel uncomfortable with the subject or too daunted by all the material on the table.

Oh man, I don't mind talking about the subject in itself, but what makes it hard for me is just that the Digimon franchise just has so many things at once with so many different writers and different writing philosophies that I can't really treat the entire thing like a monolith. Especially when you have things running the spectrum from Cyber Sleuth (where female characters arguably drive the narrative far more than the male characters) to Next (which has gotten me angrily ranting about the absolutely awful way it treats its girls, a rant which I would prefer to not subject my followers to).

So before I go ahead, I do want to make sure anyone reading this understands that I'm just talking about my own personal experience and feelings regarding the situation, and I'm very sure that other people will feel differently. I definitely don't feel qualified to comment on what's the ideal way to write female charaters in media or whatever (as if there's even one right answer to that!); I can only truly comment on myself and my own stances on it. (And of course, the OP graciously asked specifically about that, but I just want to make sure nobody reading this post misunderstands!)

Well, I will say that if there's one thing that does seem to be consistent (and I say consistent, because Next absolutely violates this one and Frontier does kind of dangerously toe the line), it's that I haven't really seen Digimon fall victim to the problem of what I call making its female characters the Designated Girl Characters™. Explaining what that is is kind of tricky, but a lot of shounen series will have this very strong "consciousness" of its female characters like they're there to fill a quota, and thus treat them in a way that's kind of alienating. Or in other words, "they section off this character very weirdly in a way they would never do for the male characters." (Note that while Ruki's character arc is made with strong consciousness of her being a girl, the whole point is about condemning the idea she should be treated like some novelty just because she's a girl, so I don't count it as this.)

It was really refreshing to see a 1999 anime portray the girls as mingling with the boys like it was no big deal, and I do wonder if Adventure setting this precedent is a big reason later series have followed in this regard. Adventure through Frontier were made with heavy female creator influence, something that the fandom really tends to downplay (especially because a lot of people suspiciously avoid acknowledging their importance, like how everyone will talk about Hosoda but nobody will talk about the fact Yoshida Reiko wrote the scripts for everything he did, or how people virtually ignored Seki's existence compared to Kakudou until very recently). I think a lot of that shows in its writing; of course, that's not to say there aren't things that really could have used improvement (I think Izumi's treatment in Frontier is the one pretty much everyone universally agrees really left much to be desired, and Tomita even outright admitted he's not very good at writing girls, although that frankly kind of surprises me given how much of his other work has involved writing girls really well), but at the very least it does show a bit more conscientiousness about its female characters than you would see in other shows where female creators were either nonexistent or clearly had no influence in the staff room.

On the flip side, there's also things that were more tasteful in execution than may have even been intended; Sora's character arc isn't that much about her femininity in practice, and Juri does come off as better than your average damsel in distress character, but that doesn't change the fact that the nuance is still there (and that in the latter case a certain writer has outright indulged in that), so all I can do is just be grateful that it didn't get worse.

I guess in the end, my stance is "give or take". I like a lot of other kids' shows (including shounen) that have been better or worse than Digimon's average level, and Digimon itself is so varied that I think it just kind of mingles in there. There are things I like, things I don't like, but at the very least there haven't been too many things that crossed my personal boundary of "absolutely not" (there are, there just aren't many). I think Adventure and 02 in particular are often accused of being more malicious towards its female characters and "screwing them over" than they were intended to be, since a lot of it seems to be a combination of wanting to portray its characters a little too realistically and simply just accidental bad circumstances of how it presented (the fact Hikari's two most famous episodes are by two non-regulars on the series who seemed to be huge fans of portraying her with a brother complex really did not help here), and things like "the same things that feel personally relatable to me are also things that read badly to others, so I understand why people don't like it but I also feel kind of weird when they imply that this kind of concept is inherently Bad" (a lot of things related to Sora and Miyako fall into this category for me). And I mean, part of the reason Miyako became my central character back when I wrote fanfic more often was that I just found her to be an incredibly complex character for the kind you'd usually see in shounen works; I honestly don't know of many other things that would portray someone like her sympathetically instead of cramming her into a "hysterical woman" trope box.

There's also the fact that there's a lot more adult-oriented Digimon media coming up nowadays, so there's that awkward situation where "female character representation" starts having a blurred boundary with "waifu character". Which is not to say that I mind the idea of male fans also liking the female characters I like, but more so that when you get into this territory, I start getting conscious about whether the female characters are more obviously being written in a way to "please the male fans and make them into fanservice material" than it respects them as characters. And I mean, I say it's a blurred boundary for good reason; the aforementioned Cyber Sleuth characters do kind of have that (especially in their character designs), but they are actually written as good characters with agency, whereas you have things like the Adventure girls in tri. who are ostensibly written to follow up on their Adventure character arcs but came off to me as being uncomfortably shoved into the Waifu Character Fanservice troping boxes, especially Mimi and Hikari. (Hooters outfit Mimi and brother complex Hikari are among the few things that I would say have crossed a serious line with me.) So again...give or take.

I will say that the American English dub had a somewhat more misogynistic nuance in the way it treated Mimi, Miyako, and Hikari (it had a lot more condescending tone in the way it portrayed Mimi's airheadedness/materialism and Yolei's penchant for fangirling while also expecting Kari to just put up with Davis harassing her, and it exacerbated the already-kind-of-uncomfortable feelings I had about the unsympathetic way Sora is portrayed in Our War Game!), but it's not to the extent I felt it derailed the entire narrative.

As for the Digimon themselves, the feminine Digimon design sexualization didn't bother me much when I was younger (I remember I really wasn't bothered by Angewomon's design at all), but it does bother me a little more now, especially since you have more designs like Venusmon these days (really? really?). But then there are also really good designs like LovelyAngemon and Mastemon that are just plain cool! And then even designs aside, there's a difference in the way each work portrays them; for instance, you can tell certain anime had more fun with the chest jiggles on the same Digimon that other series were not weird about at all. Maybe the fact Adventure and 02 weren't really weird about Angewomon's design was exactly why I didn't notice it very much back then?

Well, that got long and very rambling, but I hope that answered your question to some extent!

[digitalgate02]

kinda ▽ salt but...

Hikari barely had done something within 6 movies, she's basically just a cryptic vessel instead of the cool yet terrifying girl she was in Adv'99 & 02.

No wonder DP post omitted that OVA series -- BECAUSE Hikari had so little scenes and action in it that it was better to just not talk about it at all.

I'd expect Takeru having at least a brief reference (if any) because he had more role and a whole OVA focused on him.

[kkpaaw]

Can't wait to watch Nya be completely pathetic in trying to get Jay to fall in love with her again in s3pt2 and onward

Omg it's gonna be so embarrassing SHE CAN'T FLIRT SOMEONE STOP HER SHE'S GONNA BE CRINGE

Imagine she tries to flirt and Jay takes it as her insulting him omg ultimate negative rizz on her part (she's just like her brother, oh they r both failures)

I've said this before on another post, so i wont go on too long about it, but safe to say i can't wait to see her have to actually try and woo Jay this time and fail

[buckyscap]

this part always gets me giggling kicking my feet twirling my hair. when wade kept asking about logan's suit saying he just wanted to bond, logan said "well then talk about something else"

he's practically showing us he's not against talking to wade at all, unlike how he wants us to believe by being so grumpy and telling him to stfu all the time.... that scene really got me going "aw he wants to bond? 🥺" in the theatre

[byersandhighers]

Fairly certain Mike did see Will crying, he just didn't say anything. Like I don't think he realized it was because of Will feeling sad over him specifically but I thought it was obvious he did see Will crying but didn't draw attention to it. I also think it is very important for both of their characters and their relationship, as well as very telling of how deeply Mike cares for Will to not say anything when he is crying, to just act normal and move on without addressing it.

Every time in the show that Mike notices Will's emotions and behaviors, especially his negative emotions, Mike never brings it up until after (unless he thinks Will actively needs help like when Will looks scared). This is the same Mike Wheeler who noticed every eyeroll and time Will was moping at Rink-o-Mania when he was literally there hanging out with his girlfriend, but he didn't bring it up until later when the two of them were fighting. The same Mike who, in season 2, said he knew something was off with Will because ‘he was quiet today’ when his friends just wrote it off because he’s always quiet. Mike always notices Will acting up but doesn't usually say anything in the moment unless he thinks Will is in trouble, he just lets him feel things and if it’s relevant later he'll bring it up.

It’s implied he’s very perceptive when it comes to Will's emotions and behaviors and he is always watching, especially when Will doesn’t seem like he is doing well, so it would be so bizarre if he didn’t notice Will crying beside him. It's likely he just didn’t see a reason to bring it up, so he didn't. For all Mike knows, it may have just been that talking about El makes Will think about his sister who is currently missing and in potential danger, which is a justified reason for someone to cry. Or even that the painting reminds Will of the time in his youth he missed out on due to the mind-flayer and upside down and that his childhood of campaigns in Mike's basement is over, or Will could be grieving the party he is no longer near and his friends he is so far from. Or he could be so overwhelmed by many emotions over many different things that he doesn't know how to articulate.

Mike usually just registers what Will is feeling and not why Will is feeling that way. Mike never needed to know why because him and Will are a team and, before this season, Will was, to Mike's knowledge, always open and honest with him (hence where Mike got the 'friends don't lie' thing he told El in the beginning) and Will would come to Mike when he wanted to talk about things, so Mike probably figures even if their relationship feels strained right now, that wouldn't change and if Will wants to talk about it, he will come to him, much like how Jonathan doesn't push Will to come out.

I think it's important to draw parallels between Jonathan and Mike's behaviors, how both act towards Will: both are overprotective of Will, both very adamant early on in the show about how being 'weird' does not equate to being bad, and also about how Will doesn't have to feel negative about being different because they are weirdos as well (making it a shared experience so he doesn't feel alone). Both are also careful when it comes to making sure Will feels safe and comfortable which includes not forcing him to talk about things unless he wants to (while still reassuring him they are there for him should he want to).

This is probably why Mike doesn't bring up that Will is lying (he knew El's letter well enough to know she missed the flowers and brought her some he handpicked so they would be Hawkins flowers, so he would also know about the painting and how El had no idea what is was or who it was for, because Will wouldn't even let her see it), but he doesn't bring that up because he thinks Will probably has a reason for lying, and he trusts Will, so he is happy to let Will share in his own time. This is another parallel to Jonathan and Will when Jonathan hints he knows Will is not straight but doesn't force Will to talk about it, instead letting Will come to him at his own time when he feels ready. I don't think it's a coincidence both Jonathan and Mike act the same way towards Will because both probably witnessed first-hand how Lonnie treated Will.

When Will came back, we know Mike was protective, which we don’t know if it was him trying to cope with the trauma of not only losing Will for a long time but also the recent loss of El, or if he was always that protective over Will, but it is implied in season 1 this was a status quo of sorts from before Will went missing. Mike would feel protective over Will and he would fight back with no self-preservation in mind, especially when people would act in similar ways towards Will that Lonnie did (like the bullies making fun of Will for being gay just like what Joyce brings up Lonnie would make fun of Will for, which prompted Mike to shove them before getting saved by El), which is most likely due to Mike being around during the abuse Will faced from his father which caused him to be protective of Will, and to a lesser extent all his friends (not lesser in extremes, I mean season 1 he jumped off a cliff about to kill himself for Dustin and from Dustin immediately screaming for him not to do it, fully convinced Mike would, and to be fair he does without even knowing El is there to save him, we can infer it is a common thing that Mike is willing to go to great lengths, even risk his own safety, in order to protect. But in terms of frequency instead of amplitude, he is chronically protective of Will while only really protective of his other friends when he feels they need particular protection he can provide).

Mike said he became friends with Will on the first day of kindergarten which means they were likely around 5 and Lonnie was still in the picture. This was before Lucas and Dustin, as Mike says Will was his first friend, so Mike probably knows more about it than either of the two of them, and like Jonathan, was there helping Will through it and supporting him/protecting him to some extent, for longer, which is why he is likely so perceptive of Will's emotions and what Will is feeling, even if he can't pinpoint why.

We are told this whole time that Will is a ‘sensitive boy’, and Lonnie would abuse him and try to change him for that as well as his perceived sexuality, so actually I think it’s important Mike didn’t say anything and let Will cry because it shows Mike provides space for Will to feel, space that others didn't and sometimes still don’t. He lets Will be sensitive and cry even though both of them have had people trying to teach them to suppress their emotions, especially their fathers (Mike's parents, especially Ted, did not respect Mike's grief over Will when he was missing and was not taking him seriously because Mike was not following those same ideals of toxic masculinity Ted and Lonnie were both trying to enforce, to different degrees, in their sons).

Mike is actively trying to stop the cycles Will, and himself, endured. He is trying to be conscious but accepting of all Will's emotions so Will doesn't have to go through what he did with Lonnie. He refuses to give up on or abandon Will when he went missing because Will had a dead-beat dad who stopped caring and abandoned him. And Mike not only praised his art but kept every piece given to him, with binders of it in his room and hanging it on his walls, keeping and displaying it proudly when we know Lonnie didn’t like Will making art because it fueled the ‘sensitive kid’ who was queer narrative he tried to force out of Will.

That's also why Mike immediately looks so guilty in the rain scene when he said what he said about Will's sexuality, because he realizes it is something Lonnie would say. That is also why he immediately goes to apologize despite the same rain he was telling Will not to leave because of. Why he prioritizes making amends and admitting wrong-doing when it comes to Will in a way he doesn't even do with his girlfriend. He is trying to break the cycles and not enforce the toxic masculinity Will painfully had to endure with Lonnie for years and he is trying to, despite feeling the effects of toxic masculinity himself that he is trying to overcome in his own 5-season arc, make sure it is not in his relationship with Will, especially not by his own hands.

Overall, I guess I think it’s not that Mike didn’t notice, but that Mike lets Will feel whatever he feels without judgement or trying to change or 'fix' it. He just sits beside Will and acts normal because he doesn’t want Will to feel like it’s bad to cry; he wants to normalize emotions between the two of them because he wants Will to have a safe place to express emotions, which is important for someone who’s dad abused him and enforced toxic masculinity before abandoning him because he saw him as ‘too sensitive’. It shows Will he is not 'too sensitive' for others and that people won't try to change him or abandon him for being himself, or even for being 'too much' or 'emotional', like his father did and probably convinced Will everyone would do. I don't think Mike realized the crying was because of him, but I think he did notice that Will was crying. He noticed the what and trusted that Will will tell him the why when he is ready.

[chizups]

Oh, John, it was decided by the council that there is a free space in my basement and it has your shape.

[sad-kiersten238]