#we are humans and are complex

[illgiveyouahint]

I'm catching up on the last 4 episodes of HOTE (I am always waiting for @isaksbestpillow's subs 'cause this story is too precious to have it be misinterpreted by bad Gaga subtitles).

I am so fascinated by both of the characters. They're so traumatized and yet there's this hint of hope that can be built upon. They're trying to find something healthy among all the cruelty of their life. Their relationship is at times incredibly toxic and yet it is the best thing that happened to either of them. They're so desperately trying to cling to the bit of good that's there. I do not know whether it will end well but I am fascinated by the characters and the story being constructed here.

[morporkian-cryptid]

I'm reading The Murderbot Diaries (Network Effect, so, spoiler alert), and man, Murderbot's relationship with ART makes me insane. It's like, you're an insufferable asshole. You're my best friend. Saying that word makes me retch. You're the only person in the universe who could possibly understand what it's like to be me. I can't possibly understand what it's like to be you. I must look like an ant to you. I've put my unconscious body in your hands and let you alter it. We both love our humans to the point of destruction. You've killed people to protect me and my friends. You only did it because you were between two jobs and bored. We watch TV shows together. I saw you have an emotional breakdown about a historical drama. You could kill me in a hundred different ways. I've brutally murdered several people to avenge you. You were ready to kill all my friends to save yours. I've brought you back from the dead. You're keeping us prisoner. I'm your only chance of saving your friends. I've lived and traveled inside your body, and you've been a passenger in my brain. We don't even know each other's real names.

[inkskinned]

you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.

(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)

but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.

(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)

there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.

(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)

you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.

(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)

you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.

in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.

but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.

they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.

it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

He was just being a silly little guy!

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[rebel-girl-queen-of-my-world]

From @theinnocenceproject:

This is it. We only have 48 HOURS to stop Missouri from executing #MarcellusWilliams, an innocent man.⁠

⁠

Every hour, every minute, every second is critical right now. And even though @GovParsonMO's office is closed today, we can’t let a single moment go by where we’re not urging him to take action. So today, we’re asking you to SHARE Marcellus’ story far and wide by creating your own post about him using the social media toolkit at the link in our bio, and include a call to action to sign our petition and call @GovParsonMO at 417-373-3400. ⁠

⁠

It is not too late for Gov. Parson to ensure that Missouri does not take an innocent man’s life.⁠

⁠

[beemovieerotica]

so I guess if you describe a decades-long international crisis involving multiple world powers as "complex" then somebody on tumblr is gonna be like "umm where is the complexity here?" to try and gotcha you?

and then you realize that their idea of simplicity is based solely on declaring who is morally at fault, and having decided that and posting about it online they're relieved the burden of ever conceptualizing an actual outcome to everything going on, because their activism begins and ends with identifying the "good guys" versus "bad guys" and not talking about what the fuck is supposed to happen next, and definitely not addressing any of the actual core political problems or history therein that have enabled this genocide

[hyperblue]

you know how tim never actually wanted or planned to become robin? and how for a long time he was sure that he's not going to do this for the rest of his life and how once he'd gotten a chance he would put down the mantle immediately? so about that

i know that a lot of things changed as he got older and shit hit the fan multiple times, but i can't help but think that cloning a child would finally give him just enough of a reason to finally let go of being a vigilante. because as much as he learned to love being a hero, being robin, the moment he has this child is the moment when he decides yep guess that's it for me. and one of the main reasons is, deep down inside he still waited for this excuse. for something to force him into making this choice for himself. and nothing could've forced it better than realizing that there's plenty of vigilantes in gotham right now, but his child only has him, and his child needs him much more than gotham or even batman has ever had.

[shiveringsoldier]

Lawrence of Arabia (1962) dir. David Lean

[redlyriumidol]

the plot of inquisition is fairly basic/unoriginal imo UNTIL you factor trespasser in as the real ending. that elevates the story so far beyond a simple fantasy "bad monster guy wants to take over the world. the plucky hero and his friends stops him" to something much more compelling. the moment you find out corypheus was really just small potatoes and you should have been worrying about the unassuming, soft-spoken elf who you thought was your friend and would always be by your side.... unparalleled. of course trespasser shouldn't have been a dlc I mean... we shouldn't have had to pay extra for something which is absolutely critical to the story of inquisition, but anyway...... it's truly the plot twist of all time. corypheus was a bit blah as a bad guy but really he was just a distraction- all you've been doing this whole time is cleaning up solas's mess so he can freely carry out his plans. solas is already an incredibly good villain, just being able to see and get to know the "human" side of him for an entire game is amazing set-up for da:d

[hyacinthsgareth]

people claim to want ‘evil’ female characters but can’t even handle characters like penelope featherington or tashi duncan

[thefirstlioveyou]

the main reason why people struggle to empathize or get mike is because we don't have his pov anymore. so it's easy to just call him an asshole and call it a day. obviously he's gonna look an asshole when we aren't seeing what's going on w him personally. s5 is gonna make yall take back a lot of things yall say abt him

[bakuhatsufallinlove]

Who Wants To Talk About Japanese Orthography In Manga???

Me, it's me, I do, and I have been chomping at the bit to get the chance to.

Orthography refers to the conventions of written language to represent sounds. That may bring to mind the idea of rigid grammar rules or spelling standardization, but in a linguistic sense, orthography simply describes observable trends across language use. This isn't about authority--I am not going to talk about what schools teach or say people should write one way or another. This is about examining how real people use written language creatively to convey different things in popular media.

This is a huge topic, so I'm only going to use examples from MHA to highlight Horikoshi's style.

First, let's get a run-down of the main parts of written Japanese and how they tend to be used.

We've got kanji and kana; kanji are logograms, while kana are syllabaries. Kana refers to both hiragana and katakana collectively, but we will delineate the two from here on.

The Wikipedia page for kanji, describing this more succinctly than I'm about to.

For clarity, I'm gonna color-code each one.

Let's take a quick look at all three in action.

Chapter 65

By virtue of being the syllabary that grammar particles are written in, hiragana can get away with a lot that kanji and katakana can't.

You can write simple sentences in hiragana alone, like so:

The sentence is perfectly comprehensible like this, but it reads as casual or perhaps a bit immature, like the person is either leaving out kanji for speed or simplicity (like online) or they aren't confident using kanji. Although, the word hito (person) is extremely common and its kanji is simple, so this would probably look more natural:

But there are also kanji for the word kawaii, so you could also write it this way:

On the other hand, writing the whole thing in katakana looks weird as fuck:

bECAuSE iT kINDA reADS LIKE THis, or maybe L I K E T H I S

It seems almost alien, overemphasizing the phonetic sound of the words, implying there's something notable or unusual about them.

But what if you write it like this?

Both ways use katakana to put flavor on a specific word. The first puts it on person, which could be used in a situation where someone hasn't been named yet, but the speaker tonally emphasizes your knowledge of them--like "oh, you know who."

The second emphasizes cute, which could read as sexually suggestive, teasing/joking, or even a threatening tone, depending on the context. "Real cute, ain't they?"

Basically, the connecting grammar bits need to be in hiragana, but nouns, verbs, and adjectives can typically be written in any of the three systems. That introduces choice into the matter, and these choices may have some cultural connotations.

This is a subtlety in written Japanese that manga loves to take advantage of. Orthography contributes a lot to characterization and tone, so individual creators develop little quirks as part of their own writing style.

Now let's finally take a gander at some of Horikoshi's!

Kanji instead of hiragana for semantic emphasis

Chapter 48

Best Jeanist could have used only hiragana for the word "good" (いい, ii), which is a very common way to write it. But he's not just commenting that they are nice kids, he's talking about them as "goodie two-shoes" and even puts brackets around the idea. The kanji emphasizes the cultural idea of a Good Child™, a well-behaved, morally upright, obedient young person.

Kanji instead of hiragana denoting a serious or severe tone

Chapter 36

Katsuki's "you" pronoun omae being written with kanji comes across as markedly serious, especially compared to how his dialogue is normally written. This is actually the only time Katsuki says omae and it is written with kanji--all the rest are in hiragana, which tends to read as more casual.

Hiragana instead of kanji denoting a gentle tone or youthful/childlike language

Chapters 129 and 183

Katsuki and his omae show us how kanji use can be seen as more mature and serious; Eri's dialogue does the opposite of this by using hiragana when it could use kanji, emphasizing her youth and innocence.

Katakana instead of hiragana or kanji for emphasis or slang

Chapters 209, 207, and 2

As I detailed above, one of katakana's most common uses is similar to italics or all-caps.

But you also tend to see slang written with it, and depending on the slang, the word being in katakana can immediately clarify it from other, perhaps more standard meanings. In Jirou's case, her personal pronoun uchi can mean a couple other things, so it being written in katakana clarifies her usage. It could arguably also imply she is taking a bit of an argumentative tone--Katsuki's slang is typically written in katakana for both of these reasons!

Katakana denoting regional dialect/accent, nonstandard pronunciation/muddled speech, or confused articulation

Chapters 102, 208, 394, and 2

Ochako gets flustered and defaults to her regional Kansai dialect. Instead of "chigau wa" (Tokyo dialect), she says "chau wa" repeatedly.

Katsuki and Toga both drop the w- sound from a word. Katsuki says "ore a" instead of "ore wa," while Toga says the word "kawaiku" as "ka'aiku" and "kawaii" as "ka'aii." Notice how the katakana which represents the vocal omission/hiccup is actually smaller than the others? That's also a little stylistic detail for communicating this kind of nonstandard speech.

Izuku repeats All Might's words, chikara wo, in a confused daze because he isn't following All Might's point. By removing the kanji especially, this kind of katakana emphasizes him sounding the words out without recognizing the underlying meaning.

Basically, Japanese has some excellent ~vibes-based~ orthography because of how the language is structured!

Of course, you find this kind of thing in English as well--especially in the age of the internet, where people note that "how dare u" reads as tonally distinct from "how dare you." As you develop language fluency, you tend to pick up these things subconsciously more than anything, but it's one of my favorite things to analyze and compare.

These are just a few examples and my own interpretations of them. I'm sure there are many more uses and flavor-nuance I'm not picking up on. Since any given choice can be read a few different ways, context is very important. My examples aren't definitive proof of anything, but it can be fun to keep these kinds of details in mind while reading.

Shueisha and Shonen Jump surely have in-house standards for text, and mangaka must operate within that range. That said, I have indeed seen every one of these examples in other manga as well.

And on the independent side of things, doujinshi and online manga are basically the wild frickin' west--I have seen tons of totally crazy, highly creative ways to take advantage of the unique flexibility found in Japanese, but that's a post for another day.

I will probably write more about this kind of thing in the future when I can pinpoint some more observations, but I hope you all enjoyed the ride. <3

[freaky-wasatch-range]

"mormonism is american exceptionalism" has gotta be my least favorite anti-mormon take out there like you could talk about literally anything and THAT'S what you're going with????????? like you can talk about our weird relationship with manifest destiny and colonisation (extremely valid talking points!!!!!!) but to act like some kind of specific allegiance to the united states as an institution is inherent to our doctrine is so..... silence......

[wolfram-but-art]

i adore ur engie having a chord tail so re: requests how does spy feel about/interact with it

he'd mostly think it's endearing, part of Dell's silly charm. sort of like when you see a puppy

sometimes Dell uses it to get Spy' attention, or to make sure he's still with him and Spy sometimes uses it to make sure Dell doesn't impulse buy a set of power drills or a tablesaw

though, no matter how much spy thinks the tail is cute, he knows it was designed out a desperation.

things rarely go without complications when dealing with amputation and prostetics - things like phantom pain or conectivity issues and basically an every day issue Dell will be forever insecure about the fact he can't just engineer it all away, he definitely regrets cutting half his arm off.

so he designed the tail as a way to counter his weakness. but what if Dell doesn't just stop at the tail? what if he tries to mess with his anatomy further? what if he ends up doing something that irreversably destroys his body? sure he's an engineer, but not a medical proffesional.

what if the pain becomes unbearable for Dell though? what if further modifications are necessary for him to live in peace? will Dell know when to stop? Will Spy know when to draw the line? when to put his foot down?

what if Dell loses himself to the idea that he can elliminate all that is wrong with him with mods like this? what if this is just the beginning?

for now it's probably fine. probably

[lazycranberrydoodles]

ughhhhh so probably the tgcf scene i think the most about is in the final battle when hua cheng is holding xie lian and backwards gripping eming with his other hand i . god. this is referenced off of The Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel (i’m pretty sure everyone has seen it by this point) which is surprisingly pretty topical for tgcf.

[tomatolandsca]

Not to be too involved in fandom discourse but I think that the good omens fandoms (and most fandoms out there) has an issue with going back at the source material. I don't mean this in an patronizing way because I do it too, and it happens, you get so involved with a character and with a story that some things become blurred and more reflective of yourself (the watcher/reader) then of the story itself.

But sometimes, specially if you happen to find yourself hating a character that it's literally part of the main couple of the story you love, I think it's good to go back to that story you love and revisit the things you like about it and remind yourself what they really are like in canon.

The thing about Good Omens is that it is of course a very touching love story with very important themes, but it's also a clever comedy about two immortal beings and the insane divine/human world. Aziraphale and Crowley aren't two beings who are torturing themselves because of their love for centuries, they love and have fun with each other and the silly good/evil things the world has to offer.