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soyeah-anyways · 2 years

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alright i want to talk about the huntlow discourse going on cause the hate is getting on my nerves and i think its time somebody really dove deep into why people are so goddamn pissed over this.

so the huntlow ship started around early-mid of 2021 if im correct. and i think most people(including me) didn’t really care for the ship nor thought it made sense or was like a good ship if im being honest?(sorry to all of the early huntlow shippers lol). the ship was more of a “it probably wont ever happen but its just neat to think about.” i think the rarepair ships with hunter that were REALLY popular was probably goldric. i personally think that the only reason that ship was more popular was because of the fact that huntlow is a hetero ship(unless.. t4t?) and goldirc is just like,, white and conventionally attractive(also, edric is more loved by our fandom than willow, lets be honest, our plant baby is overlooked.) so even when the huntlow ship was first introduced it wasn’t recieved well by the fandom just cause its hetero and with a character that not many people really like too much. therefore, there was already a bias against it, so when any sport in a storm came out, it pissed people off, and now people are trying to justify hating on a ship for stupid reasons. what reasons? well,

the age gap: so a lot of people are saying that the ship is problematic because of the age gap, i think that is completely ridiculous cause 1, the age gap isnt big? they’re both in high school and its only a 2 year difference, maybe if it was a 16 and 18 year old, i would be a tiny bit concerned?(even then, its so minor that i would still probably defend it lol), but thats not even the case, its literally a 14 and a 16 year old.

people are trying to argue by saying “oh but looking at it from a psychological/emotional aspect, its too large of a gap!” ok? by that logic, it would actually go the other way around. with willow being more mature emotionally than hunter. if you think about it, hunter has been sheltered, abused, and manipulated his whole entire life and doesn’t know what its like to live the life of a normal teen, that must have stunted his emotional growth to some degree. whilst willow was able to live a pretty normal life, with a loving family, the worst thing she’s ever gone through was some bullying and a loss of a best friend. which even though that can be traumatizing, she still had the opportunity to heal and grow as a person. while hunter still has a ways to go. if anything, willow is the one who has the advantage over him. at the end of the day, the entire argument just doesn’t make sense. just let kids be kids please.

trauma and relationships: so another reason why people dislike this ship is because hunter isn’t emotionally stable enough to handle a relationship atm, and what he would really need instead is a friend(where was this convo when people were shipping goldric?? hmm??) now the thing with this argument is that i actually agree, in fact i believe that nobody should get into a relationship they aren’t mentally stable for, especially if they are teens, and to see that be depicted in a tv show would be a wonderful way to show how to actually have a healthy relationship. the only thing is, toh already broke that “rule” with lumity. think about it, amity was emotionally manipulated and controlled by her parents to the point where she suffered severely from it, but the show still decided that amity needed luz to heal instead of having her heal on her own. i personally believe that you shouldn’t need another person to heal, but a LOT of shows do this because the media depicts romance in a glamourized way(this is another convo i would like to have).

so to me? seeing huntlow do the same thing doesn’t bother me, even though yeah, it can be problematic. yknow what the thing is though? this is a cartoon, a fictional tv show, with fictional characters, and even fictional problems. not everything in a show has to have some form of in depth philosophical analysis/ideas on society. while yes, it CAN be nice to see that, its unrealistic to have that sort of expectation on a children’s tv show. i could complain about the glamorization of romance all i want but at the end of the day, it doesnt change the fact that its nice to just want to see lovable characters get into shenanigans and be happy, and there for each other. as long as the two character involved aren’t being toxic or abusive towards each other, do the technicalities of the relationship between them really matter? that’s why when i hear people say “but hunter is traumatized!” i kind of just roll my eyes because they’ve already done the same thing with lumity, but it doesn’t change the fact that the ship is still CUTE and LOVABLE and SWEET. that’s it! the characters have a nice dynamic and if anything, they could just help each other heal from whatever trauma they have. its not that deep! just let people like what they like! huntlow is NOT problematic in any universe!

they are just hetero(t4t headcanon tho...): yeah, thats right, im calling you guys out. you’re just mad that a hetero ship is in your owl show. bro, literally, i swear some of you guys are so toxic. like not even kidding, im embarrassed to be a part of the lgbtqia+ community at this point! it kills me inside whenever i see toxic people acting like hetero ships are the end of the world. the worst part is, these are the exact same people to claim they have an open and respectful mind! No you don’t! People need to stop projecting their anxieties when it comes to their sexuality and gender identity onto fictional characters, and then get mad when said characters don’t meet their expectations on what “good” representation is! people already threw a hissy fit over lunter, i don’t want the same thing to happen with huntlow!

at the end of the day, just learn to be respectful. please, some of you guys need a break from social media, you guys need to get outside and interact with people. its not fair that innocent people have to deal with your bullcrap for no reason. this is a kids show, nothing in that show is real, none of the characters are real. huntlow is just an innocent, cute little ship. why y’all gotta make it seem like it’s the end of the world. sorry for the long post, i just had to get this out because it’s literally KILLING ME INSIDE. anyways, ima go read some huntlow fanfiction. peace!

(btw, it’s totally cool if you don’t ship huntlow, or you just see them as platonic! everybody has a right to their opinion, im just calling out the problematic people who don’t seem to get that through their thick skulls. i didn’t really ship huntlow at first watch of the episode either, so i get where people are coming from when they say that they just don’t think it’s that enjoyable. if you see hunter as gay or aro/ace, or you ship willow with boscha, that’s neat! you do you! just don’t get pissed off if dana likes huntlow posts, or the storyboard artists of toh make huntlow fanart. or heck, just seeing people like the ship in general.)

#huntlow #rant #rambles #toh #the owl house #toh willow #toh golden guard #toh lumity #lumity #toh hunter #im just tired #let me enjoy my owl show pls #im ready to throw hands #im not playin #anyways #time to look at huntlow fanart

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earnestly-endlessly · 3 years

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kind of an odd request — do you have fics where erik is grumpy with everyone else but a ray of sunshine with charles?

Hi anon, thank you for the ask. First and foremost, I'm so sorry for how long this took me but I've been searching for all the fics that come to mind that fit your request. Second, this is not an odd request because I love this trope so much. I mean, it's basically canon that he's grumpy with everyone except for his Charles, right? Anyway, I might add to this list later on, but I can't sit on this any longer and hope that you have found some fics that you enjoy!!

Fic Recs Where Erik is grumpy with everyone but a ray of sunshine with Charles

Twice as Blind – Darksknight

Summary: Erik is probably the biggest asshole on the face of the earth, and because of this, he'll probably die alone. Charles is a complete flirt and playboy and, probably, will never commit to anyone ever.

(The lesson here is that when you have two friends who are BOTH secretly seeing someone, well, it's probable that they're seeing each other.)

In the moonlight, on a joy ride – scarlettblush

Summary: Librarian AU. Charles is the young librarian and Erik is the college student who is completely besotted with him.

The Proper Care of Actors – Clear_Liqueur, Clocks, Etherei, afrocurl

Summary: Erik is an A-list action star who is notoriously difficult to work with, until the day he gets cast alongside Charles Xavier, rom-com darling who can charm the pants off movie audiences the world over and apparently even one Erik Lehnsherr. The paparazzi catch them out and about soon enough, and their real-life Hollywood movie romance becomes instant tabloid fodder.

Rumor Mill – ikeracity

Summary: Erik is the grumpiest, most foul tempered worker at Stark industries. His grumpiness is the stuff of legends.

So it's obviously the talk of the office when Erik is being made to go to the company party and he's bringing his husband. There's rumors flying round about how much of a masochist or equally antisocial bastard Erik's husband must be to put up with him. Others think he must be a meek mouse perhaps bullied by Erik.

What they weren't expecting was the confident, charming, adorable and unbelievably nice Charles that turns up on Erik's arm. What they certainly weren't expecting was how much Erik obviously adores his husband and how happy he is to let others see this.

Work/Life Balance – pocky_slash

Summary: Alex is pretty sure his weird, anti-social boss is a robot. Right up until the guy's adorable husband shows up. His adorable husband who happens to be a famous actor. His adorable husband who happens to be the very same famous actor who was the source of many of Alex's teenage fantasies.

Terrifying Domesticity – ishipitsobad

Summary: Erik is the most dangerous and notorious mafia boss around for miles, and yet the strangest things terrify him.

For example: his children, and his very pregnant mate.

Of kittens and teacups and love – Ren

Summary: Modern AU in which Charles and Erik are flatmates. Charles studies psychology and likes tea and chess and keeps bringing home stray kittens, and Erik lets him because he's maybe perhaps a little bit sort of in love with him.

Fools Rush In – LoveSupreme

Summary: Erik owns a cafe on the edge of campus and accidentally starts maybe-stalking a Biology Professor there.

Growing Pains – ikeracity

Summary: Twelve-year-old Erik Lehnsherr is an angry, closed-off foster kid with trust issues and a bad temper. Ten-year-old Charles Xavier is a lonely kid in boarding school who just wants a friend.

Logan pretends he doesn't think they're both fucking adorable.

Series

Home Together (The Finding Our Way Remix) – significantowl

Summary: Erik is not the sort of person other students strike up conversations with. His expression, his posture, every part of his manner say: Don’t talk to me. I don’t want to talk to you. But none of that stops the boy ahead of him in line with the collapsible white cane, and nothing can stop Erik from falling for him, like it or not.

Melted Ice Cream and Macaroni Art – pocky_slash

Summary: Everybody likes Charles. Nobody likes Erik. And that's really the source of Erik's doubts. Also, there's ice cream and a baby. Part of ‘the Daycare’ verse.

Walling in or Walling Out – stlkrchck

Summary: Erik stifles a sigh. Of course this is Mr. C. F. Xavier. Of course.

For the prompt: Charles and Raven are throwing a holiday party. Erik is the grumpy neighbor who is annoyed by how loud they are being. So he goes to complain, and Charles makes it up to him.

(Wise Men Say) Only Fools Rush In – wildelybroken

Summary: After reading a fic where Erik and Charles are super sluts, meet at what is presumably Raven and Emma's engagement party, and end up sleeping together, I made the following comment and just inspired myself.

"They start casually texting each other throughout the day, maybe while they’re bored or frustrated at work, and start out meeting up and sleeping together semi-frequently. And eventually they accidentally start dating without noticing it at first, not until Raven and Emma get them alone and are like “wtf you two super sluts are actually dating??” And at first they deny, but then they’re both like “holy shit, we are!” And they meet back at one of their places and they don’t have to say anything, they just look at each other and come together immediately, kissing passionately and ~making love~. In the middle of it they realise that’s what they’ve been doing for a long time now and they confess their love to each other and they live happily ever after because they deserve all the good in the world."

For Charles – Shigai

Summary: Tired of being told he has to find his 'heart', classical piano graduate Erik Lehnsherr decides to travel to Italy and drink from the famous Italian passion for music. While searching for it, he meets Charles Xavier, a graduate in Fine Arts who is basically travelling around the world perfectioning his technique, and who will turn his world upside down.

Together they will discover that, sometimes, what you thought you didn't need is what you needed the most.

Erik Hates People – Anonymous

Summary: Erik hates people- it's his rule, a way of living.

Sugar – humanitys_cutest

Summary: Erik glances at the clock for what feels like the tenth time in less than half the minutes. It feels like he's been in some meeting or other since the day started almost 10 hours ago, and he's had just about enough of listening to these pompous old men discuss what would be the best design for his building like they know anything about it. He tries as subtly as possible to massage his temples to assuage the building migraine, but he knows it's no use.

He just wants to go home.

Everyone Likes Charles – Rosawyn

Summary: '“Everyone who's met him likes him.” Cain's grin was even stupider than before. “Once you meet him, you'll see.”

It was almost like a challenge then. And damn. Erik hated saying no to a challenge.'

Still Going Strong – JackyJango

Summary: Speaking of forty-eight, Erik hates it. Hates it even more that others are aware of it. While he’s pragmatic enough to know and accept that aging is inexorable, the increase in number gives the people around him the freedom to pounce at him with questions, opinions and advice he'd fought to keep at bay all year.

Besides, Erik believes that youth is a state of mind, not a phase in one’s life.

You have a child’s mind in a man’s body, Charles constantly tells him.

But despite his age, Erik is healthy. He works out daily. His muscles are steel and he can dead-lift four hundred pounds. He can break bones without breaking a sweat. Most importantly, he can still carry Charles to the bedroom and fuck him senseless. And as long as Erik can do that, he’s perfectly happy.

All I know is pouring rain and everything has changed – hllfire

Summary: Charles meets Erik, the man he had heard about many times from his sister and some friends, on a rainy Sunday morning. The stories about Erik paint him as a distant and intimidating man, but Charles finds out that maybe the stories had been wrong.

How to Successfully Ruin Your Life – humanveil

Summary: Seventeen-year-old Charles Xavier accepts a job at his local café, expecting nothing more than a fun, new pastime. What he gets is a mysterious customer and a schoolboy crush.

Stolen – ishipitsobad

Summary: Erik is a miserable, grumpy, cantankerous bastard, and he has every fucking right to be. He drew the short end of the stick when he got the Underworld as his domain, and there isn't very much fun to be had in judging and governing dead souls who would rather be anywhere else but with Erik in the depths of Hell.

So when he meets Charles, brilliant and lovely Charles who is more popularly known amongst the mortals as Persephone, and feels the promise of something wonderful that could make his eternally doomed existence infinitely more bearable... you can bet all your drachmas Erik's not going to let Charles go any fucking time soon.

Erik Lehnsherr's Guide to Saving the Universe By Meeting Your Soul-Mate and Falling in Love in Less than 72 Hours – magneto, pangea

Summary:Army Pilot Erik Lehnsherr is just trying to enjoy his day off when a mostly naked person crashes through the roof of his car. Even more alarming, the strange falling naked person—who goes by Charles Xavier when he's not speaking an ancient dead language—brings tidings of the apparent potential end of the world, and begs Erik to help him put a stop to it.

Well. His mother has been nagging at him to go out and meet new people.

The Theory of Partnership Dynamics – Pangea

Summary: “Detective Lehnsherr, how wonderful to see you out on the job!” The fed in the front greets him as they draw nearer. He’s shorter than the other two by a full head, and he’s beaming at Lehnsherr as if completely undeterred by Lehnsherr’s paint-peeling scowl.

“What do the feds want?” Lehnsherr asks bluntly.

“You know I can’t tell you that,” the fed answers cheerfully. Then his gaze lands on Alex, and, impossibly, his grin gets even brighter. “Did you get a new partner?"

“No,” Lehnsherr says through his teeth while at the same time Alex says, “Yes.”

#fic recs #cherik fic recs #cherik #asks #earnestly answers #I'm sure there are waaaay more fics out there #might add more later

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litchihikxriclub · 2 years

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raizou is very interesting to me, is asking to pick apart his psychology okay? like, getting a feel for his personality more

Yeah, absolutely! :D I love character analysis!

The first and possibly most defining part of Raizou's character is that he's stupid. As in, while I don't recall the source, Furuya made a comment about him along the lines of, "He's careless and stupid, like a kitten," or something like that. And that's very accurate. One of the main traits we see in Raizou is this oblivious, blissful ignorance that dominates pretty much everything else he has going for him.

Really, that's why he and Yakobu got involved in the club. They were dumb enough to wander into it and dumb enough not to try to leave. Neither of them, in my opinion, ever realized just how bad the Hikari club was. They were both so lost in their own, as I said, blissful ignorance to pay attention to how fucked the situation was right up until Zera started murdering people. And even then, I don't think they quite grasped just how bad it was. They never understood the gravity of what they'd gotten into until it very literally killed them.

So Raizou is dumb— but he's also very sweet. His stupidity isn't malicious or intentional. In fact, it's one of his biggest charms. Having a head full of nothing but being pretty and loved makes Raizou the sweetheart that he is. He's not thinking of the awful world around him, so in a lot of ways, he's impervious to the horrors of Keikou.

On the subject of "pretty", gender. Personally, I see Raizou as non-binary with less care for what gender he is than how people perceive him. "My gender is pretty," about sums up how I interpret his identity. However, this still leads to problems for him. We know Raizou behaves in eccentric, bizarre, highly feminine ways, which, growing up in a shitty, awful city in 1985, Japan... that wouldn't have done him a lot of favors. Raizou has definitely been bullied. We see bits of it in canon, but I think it's been much worse than playful teasing. His mannerisms and identity have surely made him something of an outcast. Honestly, Yakobu is probably his only real friend.

We also know that Raizou's dad abuses him. In one of the Bokura yonkoma, a very young Raizou and his dad are taking a bath together. When Raizou does something particularly feminine, his dad hits him. Hard enough for the poor kid to yelp. His dad is also a hyper-masculine sort of man who does not give off the impression that he appreciates his son's eccentricities. Between direct abuse and probably not receiving anywhere near enough attention, it's easy to see Raizou as someone who really, really just wants to be loved, noticed, and accepted by someone. Or maybe by anyone.

Also interesting is that Raizou does seem to have the same fixation on girls as all of the others. While he shows some attraction toward men throughout the various media, he does still appear to be interested in women— although he does see them as "competition" for attention as well. Considering that the only member of his family we ever hear of is his dad, I'd say it's likely that his mother is no longer in the picture. Or any feminine presence, for that matter.

This leads to Raizou idolizing the beauty that girls have and the attention they get, all while unsure if he wants to be in their place or have their attention on him instead. Being the subject of a pretty, feminine person's love would validate a lot for him (and anyway, girls are pretty!), but he also still wants to have what they do, in a way.

And... this got long. XD There's quite a bit more I could say, but I'll stop here for now. I hope this gives you some good material on our favorite "maiden" to think about, and feel free to ask for more!

#Litchi Hikari Club #Lychee Light Club #Ichihashi Raizou #Analysis

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canmom · 3 years

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Animation Night 77: Once More... Halloween

aIt’s almost halloween! Animation Night has survived the year since the last one... but at what cost? hoohoohoohoohooo...

Tonight we once again go to the dark places of the SOCIAL IMAGINARY... the grim corners of the PSYCHE... and watch some really very bad things happen to drawings. Last year’s horror animation night was one of my favourites, so I hope I can maintain that energy this time around... can’t believe we’ve kept this up so long.

So... the last article went into the history of horror as a genre, and its somewhat limited role in animated film, I don’t have a lot to really add this time. What’s change mostly is me! *cackles and turns into a bat*...

...ok sadly I can’t turn into a bat, cat, rat or gnat (not ruling out any other animals), but in this particular corruption arc I’ve definitely accepted that like, I like dark fiction sdfsdf, and I need not fret so much about revealing my evil heart by failing to point out a Problematic depiction and indeed that’s a pretty limited mode of criticism.

As such, we’re gonna return to two films I only dismissed in passing a year ago: Seoul Station, the animated prequel to the Korean zombie film Train to Busan which we watched two days ago, and Shoujo Tsubaki (The Camellia Girl), an ero-guro interpretation of a kamishibai stock character. We’ll also be watching some good old Production I.G. anime in Blood: The Last Vampire, and a fascinating Chilean stop motion film about a Nazi cult called The Wolf House.

So let’s go and put these in context...

We’ll start with Seoul Station, since that one ties in very straightforwardly. On Tuesday, we watched Train to Busan (2016) by director Yeon Sang-ho. Back then I wrote a little about his career...

Our second film tonight is South Korean zombie film Train to Busan (2016), directed Yeon Sang-ho, who is unusual among Korean directors for mostly working in animation (as we’ll see a little of on Thursday!). Still, his films are in the same idiom as other internationally well known Korean directors like Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook: dark, psychologically realistic films about poverty, trauma and the nastiness that comes from living under decades of military dictatorship, hypercapitalist stratification etc. His first film, The King of Pigs (2011), told the story of a a man reunites with a childhood friend after murdering his wife, and they recall their miserable childhood of class-driven bullying. His second film, The Fake (2013), portrayed a cult leader priest exploiting the people of a town threatened by flooding.

(See also Animation Night 20 for more about Korean animation, both north and south!)

Now of course I have seen Train to Busan; it is pretty much what he said it is, a tense and well executed genre film and a fairly straightforward social parable. Here, let me say a bit about it!

In effect, the film contrasts two bourgeoise: our protagonist Seok-woo, a divorced hedge-fund manager who has been neglecting his daughter Su-an, and a businessman Yon-suk. The film repeatedly returns to the motif of a character running towards a closed door. Early in the film, Seok-woo finds himself locking out masculine working-class husband Sang-hwa under pressures from the others. He has a change of heart after Sang-hwa opens a door for him, and the two fight through a train full of zombies to rescue their families (Sang-hwa’s pregnant wife Seong-Kyeong and a few other characters); however, Yon-suk’s selfishness causes Sang-hwa (and a couple other characters) to die, and he is able to turn the suspicions against Seok-woo’s party. In the film’s finale, both groups flee across a train yard; Yon-suk gets many people killed but is unable to avoid getting zombified, while Seok-woo, though he also gets zombified by Yon-suk, is able to secure an escape for Seong-Kyeong and Su-an.

In short, when things get dicey (and there’s zombies), don’t be a ruthless bastard (and capitalists will fuck you). The gender/reproductive futurism angle would be productive to examine (sure seems like the righteous path presented by the film is about about ‘securing a future for children’ on some level lol) but it’s certainly a compelling film. I am not sufficiently familiar (and do not have time to research tonight) to contextualise them in the history of the zombie film, and in case that’s pretty well-covered critical ground. But I enjoyed it sufficiently that, well, I’m looking forward to Seoul Station.

On which subject... produced simultaneously with Train to Busan and released just a month later, this is a prequel revealing exactly how the zombies showed up on the scene. (We know already that the main character of Busan was among the investors in the biotech company responsible for the zombies...) But it is also primarily a character drama, with the zombie apocalypse serving as a background to the abusive relationship between between former sex worker Hye-sun and her boyfriend Ki-woong who wants to push her back into it. They separate just as the zombie apocalypse starts; Hye-sun’s father Suk-gu meets up with Ki-woong and the two try to find Hye-sun in the chaos. Meanwhile the cops arrive, believing the breakout to be an insurrection (metaphor!!! sdfsf) and start barricading the survivors in zombieful territory.

I’m sure it’s going to end very well. Aren’t you?

What I like about these films is that they recognise that the horror in a zombie setting comes primarily not from the zombies themselves, but from humans with power, interpersonal and structural. (No, I haven’t seen the 28days series, although I’ve been meaning to...) Zombies are after all only as scary as a fictional thing; but a state trapping a disposable population in a situation of near certain death? Mm. Yeah. And then you get the quiet possibility of the zombie as becoming something horrifying to the established society, rejecting its values absolutely... at some point we gotta do 2013 BBC drama In the Flesh.

On an animation level, Seoul Station seems to be largely using cel-shaded CGI, frequently shot on 3s to resemble traditional animation. It should be an interesting illustration of the benefits and drawbacks of this technique; the danger is that everything starts to look a bit mechanical when you don’t have the inherent wobbliness and slight off-modelness of humans creating drawings (unless, of course, you are Arc System Works and you go to great efforts to put that into your 3D animations!)

Our second feature is a film that I’ve had my eye on for a while but hoo boy is this one some Content! Shoujo Tsubaki is based on a manga of ero-guro mangaka Suehiro Maho, first published in 1984. We talked a bit about the pre-war ero-guro-nansensu on Animation Night 69; however, the more familiar generation is the post-war ero-guro (wasei-eigo of ‘erotic grotesque’).

Ero-guro, mostly a genre of visual art and manga, refers broadly to pretty much what it sounds like: stories combining eroticism and violence/horror themes of various kinds, typically characterised by a kind of dark, sardonic surrealism. A guro manga might for example be themed around people getting physically screwed onto various surfaces according to their social roles.

Such a theme which became popular in horror and pink films of the 60s and 70s:

Examples include Teruo Ishii's Shogun's Joys of Torture (1968) and Horrors of Malformed Men (1969) and Yasuzo Masumura's Blind Beast (1969), the latter two based on the works of Edogawa Rampo. A more recent example of ero guro in cinema is Sion Sono's Strange Circus (2005).

At much the same time ero-guro became established in manga and illustration, with some famous pioneering mangaka such as Go Nagai counted among the guro mangakas, and of course good old Toshio Maeda who we discussed in the tentacle section of night 69. I’ve mentioned before but I’m pretty partial to Shintaro Kago’s particular style of surreal gore. Publications of ero-guro manga included the underground manga magazine Garo, most popular in the early 70s, which included ero-guro manga alongside

Shirato's leftist samurai dramas, abstract art and surrealism, erotic/grotesque, and punk.

as a general eclectic selection of like, interesting adult manga that tended to find an audience among students. And among this magazine’s contributors was Suehiro Maruo, whose work forms the basis of tonight’s film. More on that in a bit!

Since then of course the scope of ‘guro’ has turned mostly into a porn category (among the few filtered by default on most booru sites) primarily referring to dismemberment, and *small cough* I’ve started trying to make my own work after this tradition. (Sadly this month turned into a bit of a mental health disaster so the goretober project is going to have to take a bit longer...)

It’s been relatively rare for ero-guro proper to be translated into anime, although there are exceptions, like Rin: Daughters of Mnemosyne which is a fascinatingly odd combination of putting its immortal protagonist into slightly contrived bondage situations, and sort of cross-section through history in which characters grow old and die around the immortals (big thanks for that one @mogsk...) There are a few exceptions: Toshio Maeda’s work would often get OVA treatments in the 80s, and Go Nagai has seen many adaptations, although most of them tend to tone it down!

And then there’s Shoujo Tsubaki (1992), also known as Midori. This is a 45 minute film mostly created by one man Hiroshi Harada over a period of five years on his own funds; much like Belladonna of Sadness it involves a lot of slow pans over illustrations and only occasional bits of limited animation, meaning it actually rather resembles a kamishibai. For a long time - not surprisingly given its extreme content! - this film was limited to underground showings with Harada insisting on a circus freakshow like presentation, but somehow it did manage to get a wider international release.

The film adapts Suehiro Maruo’s manga about an old kamishibai stock character of the flower girl, which draws on the themes of old muzan-e (the gory subset of ukiyo-e) to imagine a broadly sadomasochistic paraphilic world behind the scenes at a circus freakshow. As such it’s, well cw lots of sexual violence with much of it towards children, I’m not kidding, that covers basically the whole film, I will play it last thing tonight and say when it’s over! The film’s protagonist, a young and innocent flower-seller called Hanamura Midori, is kidnapped by a pedophilic circus owner Mr. Arashi, throwing her into contact with a group of more or less sadistic circus performers who variously sexually abuse both her and each other. Eventually she manages to find some degree of companionship when a little person magician named Masamitsu joins the circus, but his designs aren’t necessarily all that good either.

Such a theme may be familiar, going back to films like the (justifiably) controversial 1932 MGM picture Freaks, source of the famous ‘gooble gobble, we accept her’ scene. While Freaks took a paranoid fantasy that the sideshow performers would be conspiring against the rest of society, and the degree to which it’s exploitative or an anti-eugenics film is controversial, Shoujo Tsubaki is more concerned with ‘abnormal’ sexual desires than ‘abnormal’ bodies (although it definitely has some of that as well). I’ll be honest: it probably doesn’t handle it perfectly gracefully (although it takes a very surreal approach that renders it something more allegorical than literal), but it’s one of the very few films that engage at all with a ‘disgusting’ side of society that people would broadly prefer to ignore, and so like, I’m going to just be very upfront about what we’re in for and hope that perhaps some of you would like to see it. I also have a subtitled interview with Harada himself which should be very interesting!

Alongside that, @mogsk prepared me a collection of horror themed short films and music videos, so we’ll put that on in the various interstices.

On top of all that, we gotta have a vampire film... and in this case we’ll turn to Production I.G. at the height of their powers, for Blood: The Last Vampire (2000). The premise of this one is pretty straightforward: vampire girl in sailor fuku uses a katana to fight other vampires. The film arose when Production I.G. wanted to make something original, rather than an adaptation:

Production I.G's president Mitsuhisa Ishikawa wanted to produce a new project that was an original concept rather than being an adaptation of an existing anime or manga series. He approached Mamoru Oshii, who ran a series of lectures known as the "Oshii Jyuku" for teaching new filmmakers how to create their own projects, about his idea and asked him to have his students submit ideas. The submissions of Kenji Kamiyama and Junichi Fujisaki became the basis for the upcoming film: a girl in a sailor suit wielding a samurai sword.[3] Ishikawa suggested Yokota Air Base for the film's setting, referring to it as the "state of California within Japan".[3]Hiroyuki Kitakubo was selected as the film's director, a position he accepted on the condition he be given artistic license with the material.[3]

At Kitakubo’s insistence, the film features designs of Katsuya Terada, whose work was at that point largely in videogames and art books; the main one I know about is the art book Bitch’s Life; and animation direction by long-term Production I.G. animator Kasuchika Kise (who would later go on to create the animation designs for Made in Abyss). It is notable for being one of the first all-digital productions by the studio, setting the stage for GitS:SAC.

I’m not sure it will have the full album cover overload of something like Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, but it promises to be a pretty gorgeously animated film, and it is also another 45 minutes one.

Our last major feature is Chilean stop motion film The Wolf House (La Casa Lobo), which obliquely deals with a real Nazi expatriate cult that tortured people for Pinochet whose members include people like Mengele. Presenting itself as a propaganda fairytale devised by the cult leader inevitably corrupted by his ideology, it tells the story of a girl who runs away, only to find herself in a house run by two pigs that turns into a surreal nightmare.

This one dropped in just 2018 to extremely positive reception, and it’s reviews like this one that give the most detail. The film uses a variety of animation techniques, including paintings on walls and stop motion to show characters distorting and transforming; it looks very unusual and compelling. The creators, Diluvio, have a vimeo account here with various shorts that led up to The Wolf House.

In amongst all that, of course, we’ll be digging into some of the delightful creepypasta energy of Yamishibai for a suitably spooky breather (see last week for explanation :p ). If you have a favourite look up the number and hopefully I’ll be able to show it for you!

Sadly it is not possible for me to show you this year’s most exciting horror animation release, the stop motion Mad God by Phil Tibbett - but hopefully that will get a wider release by this time next year if we’re somehow still going! We also have an anime adaptation of Junji Ito’s legendary horror manga Uzumaki to look forward to sometime next year.

So if you’re ready to head into the dark with me, please turn the lights on or off according to preference, grab some kind of plushie, and join me now in the dungeon of Animation Night 77... at twitch.tv/canmom !

#animation night #ero guro

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hopeymchope · 3 years

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Wonder Egg Priority finale thoughts

My Tumblr has a lot of anti-bully content, so it was probably no surprise when I began to watch and enjoy Wonder Egg Project this past spring. The series famously hit production delays that forced them to put out a mid-series recap episode, and that decision in turn forced them to push the final episode until late June. But now that the series (or at least season 1) is out there and complete, I thought I’d talk about how it all shook out in the end as well as the questions it left me sitting with.

For the uninitiated, here’s a bit of the context: Wonder Egg Project deals with four middle-school teen girls who’ve undergone hardships either at home or at school or both. They all lose someone they care about to tragic suicides, and then they discover the titular wonder eggs. They get these eggs from a vending machine and then, when they fall asleep, they enter a dreamworld where these eggs hatch to reveal a young person who recently committed suicide. For that night, it is the duty of the girl who got that egg to fight and defend that suicide victim from monstrous enemies that represent their abusers and oppressors. The girls are told that if they protect enough of these victims over many nights, they will be able to resurrect the specific person they lost to suicide. But of course, if you get injured or killed in the dreamworld, it affects your body in reality as well.

The squad: Ai, Neiru, Rika, and Momoe.

Obviously, bullying is among the topics most frequently explored here, but we also deal with so many other terrible things that people might experience during childhood and adolescence. Physical, verbal, and sexual abuse are all on the table. Coming to terms with one’s gender identity is raised. It’s a show that manages to tackle a lot of heavy subjects through the lens of what’s essentially magical girl combat. I mean, there are no outfit transformations or any of that stuff, but still.

With THAT out of the way, let me talk about how the series wrapped up.

It’s clear to the viewers that there’s a lot that doesn’t make sense during the show — it’s intentionally very trippy and ethereal at times — and there’s also a lot that raises obvious questions even if you grasp it. Where do the eggs and their connection to the recently deceased come from? How do the psychological traumas of the various egg-children manifest as monsters that can literally kill you? What’s the deal with Acca and Ura-Acca and their freaky dummy bodies? What are they getting out of this whole deal with the eggs and the girls? What do the repeated references to the “temptation of death” mean? How does access to the Egg Garden even work? Is it really possible to resurrect their dead friends? Is Mr. Sawaki a predator or a chill guy or what? Why did Neiru’s sister stab her? And so on.

The writers could’ve opted to keep things mysterious and hazy and metaphysical for the entire run or they could’ve provided lots of explanations and tried to ground this weird story in some sort of strange logic, but I’m actually pleased that they opted to go down the middle. There are answers for many things, but not for all. And when those answers come, they typically just raise more questions as well as doubts to their validity.

SPOILERS for the finale/”special episode” below the cut.

So, obviously the answers for Acca and Ura-Acca are centered around Frill. Frill is this interesting fusion between the artificial and the organic; her body can be injured like any regular physical body, but she’s actually an A.I. on the inside. Acca and Ura-Acca are the exact reverse of this — they’re human minds inside of completely artificial bodies. Exactly how Frill started invading girls’ minds to lure them towards suicide is kept incredibly vague, but she serves as the embodiment of the “temptation of death” that was so-often referenced in the show. Frill doesn’t really appreciate life or care about the finality of death, making her a pretty natural foe for the heroes who have spent the entire series learning to appreciate their lives and bemoaning painful losses.

Can you even believe this bitch?

Acca and Ura-Acca also have documents talking about how warriors of Eros need to battle against Thanatos, the embodiment of death, but what’s that all about? We don’t really get into it. Is Frill somehow Thanatos herself? I mean... I guess maybe you could go that route, but I sincerely don’t think that’s meant to be the case. I assume she’s just another player in the game, and she happens to have taken Thanatos’ side in things. Her artificial existence and resentment of her fathers leads her to treat death flippantly. She was programmed to be selfish sometimes, and that selfishness has ultimately manifested itself in the worst possible ways. Intriguingly, we see Acca and Ura-Acca act similarly selfish in how they drive our four heroes to risk their lives just to battle Frill. Acca in particular shows that he’ll risk anyone’s life to get to Frill, who killed both his wife and daughter. But Acca never has to risk his own life. He’s just risking other people. Both sides of the equation are treating human lives like disposable pawns in some kind of war game.

Y’all are SUPER-SKETCH.

It’s never really clear how these eggs work. We’re told that the Accas created the eggs, and honestly, I could’ve figured as much on my own. But they don’t try to explain how the eggs can contain the souls of suicide victims or how they manifest those people into dreams, and frankly, it’s probably better not to try.

I was really shocked that the girls actually manage to resurrect their dead friends. I was 100% certain that was going to be a scam and the point was going to be about learning to move on and live for the moment and appreciate those bonds while you had them, etc. And there is some of that. Alas, the price of resurrecting those people they care about is that the people in question no longer know them or remember them. That was pretty brutal... having our heroes nearly die over and over in service of people who ultimately will no longer care about them at all. Although they did the impossible and brought someone back to life, they had to lose those people all over again. I suppose this, like much fo the finale, emphasizes that we should appreciate our relationships while they last, because you can lose them for so many reasons. Regardless, I’m not surprised that Momoe just wanted to quit and avoid getting hurt after that. It’s understandable.

There’s a lot of discussion around parallels in the last two episodes. Parallel worlds with alternate versions of the self are raised multiple times, Ai gets an awesome encounter with a parallel version of herself that really brought her emotional journey to a head, and we even have to deal with a doppleganger of Neiru at the end. This leads to the revelation that Neiru looks exactly like her formerly deceased sister... a fact that presumably was part of what drove the sister to attack Neiru in the first place. Given that we’ve already been told that they were both genetically engineered, their identical appearances don’ seem that strange. But then the finale tells us that Neiru’s one dream is “to be human,” and suddenly the characters assume Neiru was an A.I. just like Frill. That... seems like a leap to me. I mean, she was genetically engineered to lead her company and never had a family of her own; no wonder she feels inhuman! So I’m not sure if I should take this at face value.

Neiru real or fake challenge

Another thing that I don’t think we can take at face value is Mr. Sawaki’s explanation of Koito’s death. In episode 12, we meet a parallel version of Ai who actually killed herself. The big boss monster for Ai to fight while protecting Alt-Ai? It’s a dark, abusive version of Sawaki. And our Ai inexplicably assumes this monster was made from her own fears. A very bizarre conclusion to jump to when you remember that every single boss monster has been the abuser of the victim that the girls were defending in that episode. By all available evidence, the Sawaki monster should be a parallel-world Sawaki who is very much exactly the scumbag he appears to be! Notice how Alt-Ai never says a damn word about the Sawaki Monster - never asks who he is or why he’s like this, etc? She’s not even surprised. That just lends further credence to my belief. FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE.

So in the finale, when our version of Mr. Sawaki claims (via a VERY awkwardly inserted voiceover) that Koito’s death was an accident after she tried to ruin his reputation because she fell in love with him, why should I believe any of it?! The previous episode introduced me to Abusive Sawaki! Sure, we don’t have any reason to assume our Sawaki is That Dick, but we JUST learned that he’s certainly capable. Furthermore, how could Koito suddenly be the ONLY accidental death among all of the available suicide victims in the dreamworld? She shouldn’t have even appeared there if it was just an accident! Although I’d like to believe that Sawaki was someone who Ai and the girls were jumping to conclusions about based on nothing... but it sure doesn’t look that way from here. And given how the show ends things, I fear we may have a hard time learning anything else about Sawaki. Ai changes schools and runs away, there is zero comment on what happened to Sawaki’s relationship with her mom... he’s just gone now.

As the final episode winds down, we see Rika and Ai fall back into bad habits, as they all treat Neiru just like they treated the girls they tried so hard to save. Rika acts disgusted by a friend and abandons her, treating Neiru the same way she treated Cheimi. When Neiru finally reaches out to Ai and calls her, Ai ignores the call and throws her phone away, thereby ignoring her friend’s needs in the same way she ignored Koito’s when she failed to record the bullying Koito was experiencing. You might even be able to connect Momoe’s choice to walk away for the sake of self-preservation to her decision to reject Haruka and walk away, honestly. And to compound the bad news that the show gives us near the end, we skip forward months to learn that Ai, Rika and Momoe have all drifted apart. Ai is in a new school, but we don’t see her with any new friends. She’s back where she started the show.

The difference, however, is that she doesn’t seem hopeless and lonely. She seems wistful, sure, but she never seems beaten down. She still treasures the friendships she built even if they wind up fading away. So there’s still a message in here about moving on, because even if you lose a person or a connection, it will forever matter.

*insert engine rev-up noises*

In the final moments, we see Ai preparing to run in the exact same pose she used back in episode 1 when she first stood up to the abusers within the dreamworld. This time, she runs to grab her chance to reunite with a dear friend. She takes charge of her own future and her own self-worth, somehow gets back into the Egg Garden (even though Rika wasn’t even allowed to enter after she rescued her specified victim, so uh... how did Ai get back in exactly... ?), and insists she’s going to use the eggs to see Neiru... even though the eggs only let you see the dead up to this point, so uh, that doesn’t really make any sense either. Consistency, motherfucker — DO YOU USE IT?

Amidst all the uncertainty that the finale left us with, at least we can see Ai find herself in a more confident place. She spends much of the series learning to stop running from her problems in the real world. Even after she gains confidence in the battles of her dreams, she struggles to face reality. It’s a huge step when she returns to school. Yet even in the very last episode, she opts to run away to a new school rather than cope with seeing Koito each day. But at last, she decides to take charge of her reality and try to reunite with her new best friend, Neiru. She’s wavered on her path, but ultimately, she’s grown. Although you could simultaneously argue that she’s failing to learn the lesson that rescuing Koito should’ve taught her...

“Ai Ohto is BACK!”

I don’t think any of us expected this finale to be a cliffhanger coming into it. And unfortunately, we don’t know if there will ever be another season or a movie or anything. Given how people reacted to this finale with such overt hate, I really don’t expect anything more. And I think that would be a goddamn shame. Even with a finale that doesn’t quite stick the landing, I still found it fascinating and engaging. The series is more than worth the trip for the characters, for the themes and topics it explores, and even for the fluid action scenes and music. And this is a series that was made by first-time writers and a first-time director! Yet I’d easily call it one of the best animes from the past couple of years. For total newcomers, that’s a goddamn TRIUMPH.

So I hope we reunite with these girls again. I hope Ai manages to get the band back together, find out exactly what’s going on with Neiru, and face down Frill. Even if they never wind up in some ultimate battle with Thanatos, I don’t know that that’s the point. All of us are in a battle with Thanatos every single day, after all. They just need to show how they’ve all gotten stronger together and truly overcome the “Temptation of Death” by beating back Frill (and her ridiculously powerful dreamworld bug-people) as a unit.

But maybe that’s too obvious and simplistic of a message for a show like this one. Maybe this complex ending centered on the main protagonist’s self-actualization and the value of fleeing relationships is more in keeping with the melancholy nature of the series.

... I still really want to see the more obvious happy ending, though. I think they deserve it.

#wonder egg priority #ai ohto #wep #anime #anime reviews #wonder egg special episode #wonder egg priority special episode #wonder egg priority finale #wonder egg finale #wonder egg

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robininthelabyrinth · 4 years

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Nie Mingjue and Wen Ning as conscious fierce corpse buddies

ao3 link

By everyone’s agreement (except his own), Wen Ning was the sect leader.

Of course, practically speaking, Nie Mingjue actually ran everything; he was the one with the experience in it, after all, and he claimed he was no good at teaching, which was the other thing they generally did.

This was, of course, a blatant lie – the few times he did agree to take on some classes, they were by far the most popular – but Wen Ning had yet to figure out how to get Nie Mingjue to do anything he didn’t want to do, and anyway he really was very good at all the work that went into being sect leader, so it all worked out quite well for everybody in the end.

How they ended up with a sect in the first place, Wen Ning will never know.

The school had been Song Lan’s idea, though; that much was certain. Or, well, Wen Ning supposed it was actually Xiao Xingchen’s idea to start with, or possibly both of them, but Song Lan had been the one to make it an operational proposal and anyway Xiao Xingcheng had been a scattered soul at the time so Wen Ning felt pretty comfortable ascribing the idea to Song Lan.

Xiao Xingchen’s back now.

So was Xue Yang, but that was unfortunately unavoidable – their souls had become so intertwined by the time they’d both died that there was really no bringing one back without the other, much to Song Lan’s annoyance. Out of lack of better options, Xue Yang was currently being kept very firmly under control, even lock and key if it seemed appropriate - he didn’t object as long as it was Xiao Xingchen applying the locks - and they hadn’t entirely decided if he was going to need to be executed for the good of society at some point.

Still, at least for the time being, he was being useful. No one could say that Xue Yang wasn’t a genius when it came to inventing new things, even if he wasn’t as good as Wei Wuxian, and their school was as much about research as it was teaching.

After all, demonic cultivation was pretty new. There was a lot out there to discover.

A lot out there to teach.

It wasn’t like not having anyone around to teach them stopped there from being demonic cultivators in the first decade or so after Wei Wuxian’s death, especially given how easily it could be picked up. Unfortunately, most of them weren’t very good at it, and there were pitfalls for any cultivation path, much less such a dangerous one, reviled by the whole world.

Song Lan, who’d picked up the basics during the time that he’d been controlled by Xue Yang, had argued that it was cruel to allow people to pick it up out of desperation and to charge ahead with no guidance – that without a firm hand to show them the way, most people would end up getting corrupted, or just mess something up and end up in a qi deviation.

(Nie Mingjue was understandably a bit sensitive about those, so that was the argument that had worked on him. Wen Ning, for his part, was a little bit bitter about everyone, and hadn’t much cared what happened ot them, but on the other hand what else did he have to do?)

So they’d started the school.

Only about a quarter of their disciples so far were there willingly – most of the others were dropped off by Jiang Cheng, who had some trouble dropping his habits of finding them wherever they were, and everyone agreed that their school was a better place for them than his dungeons – but the number was steadily growing as their reputation got out there.

Their reputation as teachers, that is. Everyone knew about the other thing.

The whole…fierce corpses thing.

Hard to avoid everyone knowing, what with Wen Ning, the Ghost General, being the sect leader.

Obviously in a perfect universe, Wei Wuxian would be the one in charge – of the school, of the sect they formed to support the school, of the whole demonic cultivation path that he invented – but he was busy in Gusu doing…something.

Mostly his husband.

At least he came by to visit on a regular basis?

Though actually now that Wen Ning thought about it, he didn’t actually like the times when Wei Wuxian and Xue Yang would get drunk together and came up with new ideas – it’d been Nie Mingjue who’d figured out how to restore a sense of taste to a fierce corpse, though he refused to divulge where he got the idea or how he’d come up with it but no one really cared to pry too much because it worked – because the ideas were invariably fascinating, innovative, and uniformly awful.

Also, Wei Wuxian visiting usually meant that Wen Ning needed to sit with Lan Wangji all night to make sure he didn’t accidentally liberate any of their staff, usually in the guise of keeping him company, and he knew the man didn’t like him. He always had a look of a man sucking a lemon whenever he visited.

…maybe that was just the name of their sect that he object to.

In their defense, neither Wen Ning, Nie Mingjue, nor Song Lan were especially creative people, Xiao Xingchen and Xue Yang hadn’t yet been revived, little A-Qing hadn’t yet been reincarnated nor revived her memories – they’d just picked the most straightforward name they could think of.

And, well, they were all gui. What was wrong with calling it the Gui Sect?

Sometimes Wen Ning thought that Lan Wangji was unnecessarily judgy.

“What are you brooding about?” a voice interrupted his thoughts, and Wen Ning looked up with a smile.

“Sect business,” he lied, and Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes at him, clearly not believing him for a moment.

“What about sect business? The trade disputes?”

Wen Ning frowned. “We have trade disputes?!” He hadn’t even heard about – oh, no, Nie Mingjue was laughing. “We don’t have trade disputes.”

“We’re supported by all four of the Great Sects, between Wei Wuxian at Gusu, Jin Ling at Lanling, Jiang Cheng – as a favor to the former two – in Yunmeng, and last but not least my brother. Who’s going to start a trade dispute with us?”

That was comforting. Sort of comforting?

“Are we bullying people with our resources?” he asked, worrying his lower lip with his teeth.

“Of course we are,” Nie Mingjue said, sounding satisfied. Ugh, sect leaders. Somehow – with some admittedly fairly major variations in style – they were all the same, always looking for an advantage for their sects.

Wait, he’s a sect leader now. Does that mean he’s like that?

No, he’s a terrible sect leader, which means he’s exempt. A bit like Nie Huaisang had been all those years, as the Head-shaker…on second thought, that was part of a giant plot that had in fact ended with the Nie sect ascendant above all the others – the Jin sect in tatters, the Jiang sect isolated as always, the Lan sect putting all their attention on having to corral Wei Wuxian – so maybe it wasn’t the best comparison.

Ugh. Why is this Wen Ning’s life?

“Stop thinking about running away to be a rogue cultivator again, it’s much too late for that,” Nie Mingjue advised him, not unkindly. Wen Ning hadn’t even said anything. “Besides, you like teaching juniors. Even delinquent juniors.”

“They’re mostly not delinquents anymore,” Wen Ning objected. It was really amazing how being forced to attend a class taught by Xue Yang was enough to drive most young people far away from the mere idea of being a delinquent again lest they risk turning into him – and to help identify the remaining ones that needed to be kept under very close supervision. “Speaking of teaching, when are you taking another class? Your training sessions with Baxia don’t count.”

“From the number of people watching, they should.”

“It still doesn’t count,” Wen Ning said firmly, even if it really probably should – watching Nie Mingjue, a fierce corpse, working seamlessly with a spiritual weapon specifically designed to eradicate fierce corpses was truly a fascinating sight.

Of course, most people were more fascinated by the fact that Nie Mingjue usually did his training shirtless – including Wei Wuxian, irritatingly enough, though interestingly Lan Wangji, who was usually the first one at the vinegar jar, didn’t seem to object – but nothing much could be done about that.

(Fierce corpses did not need to worry about the heat, or sweat, or any of the usual motivations for going shirtless, but Nie Mingjue claimed it was a psychological need based on years of habit-building. For anyone else, Wen Ning would think that they were vain and secretly enjoying the attention, but with Nie Mingjue…it probably really was just habit.)

“Fine,” Nie Mingjue said. “Give me one of the basic seminars; I’ll do that. Not one of the musical ones.”

Wen Ning had learned by now that there was no point in smothering smiles – after all, he was a sect leader, and no one had the right to criticize or yell at him for smiling too much or for taking too much attention to himself.

Take that, Wen Chao.

“No,” he said. “I haven’t forgotten that you’re nearly tone-deaf.”

“At least one of you hasn’t.”

“Xiao Xingchen means well,” Wen Ning said, even though honestly by this point it was pretty clear he was just forcing Nie Mingjue to try out new and increasingly exotic instruments for his own (and everyone else’s) amusement. “It’s a little funny.”

Nie Mingjue rolled his eyes again, looking long-suffering, but he had a pretty good sense of humor about these things.

Also, if he was ever actually upset about something, Nie Huaisang would have fixed it.

No one would have enjoyed Nie Huaisang fixing things, but he would still have fixed it. He always fixed things that affected his brother.

(Example number one: Jin Guangyao, his eventual demise, and everything that happened after that.)

“I actually came here to give you news,” Nie Mingjue said. “Would you like to hear it?”

Wen Ning had politely requested – a little desperately – that Nie Mingjue check first. The other man had a way of just saying things without any consideration for the anxiety of the person he was talking to, with things like “we’ve misplaced a student” or “don’t worry it wasn’t a student we actually liked” or “Xue Yang is on the loose and he’s summoned something again” or, one memorable instance, “Baxia decided to summon a dozen of her close friends and family and they may or may not be attacking the staff rooms, but honestly she’s having so much fun that I don’t really feel like stopping her, thought you should know.”

Wen Ning took a deep breath that he didn’t need, firmed up his emotional resiliency, braced himself, and said, “Yes.”

“A-Qing thinks she found your sister’s reincarnation,” Nie Mingjue said, and the air shot out of Wen Ning’s lungs as if he’d been punched. “You know that she’s been sensitive to these things ever since her rebirth, we did some investigating, and we’re pretty sure. How would you like us to handle it?”

Wen Ning scrubbed his face. “I – have no idea. I thought her spirit was still haunting the place where her ashes were?”

“Just one of her souls, and the new body is one short. They’ll have to be reunited eventually or else she’ll suffer the physical effects of missing a soul, but there’s a way to do it that maximizes the chances of her recovering her memory from her previous life and a way to do it to minimize it.”

Wen Ning put his head down on his desk. “I…I don’t know. Our life was pretty awful, so maybe she’d be better off not remembering? But I also want my jiejie back…I hate decisions. Why did I become a sect leader again?”

“We told you that you didn’t have a choice and you lacked the spine to resist.”

“…thanks.”

Nie Mingjue shrugged. “Sometimes I really do wonder what you did in a previous life to deserve this one.”

Ouch. “Thanks.”

“Anytime,” Nie Mingjue said. “Come out and spar with me, it’ll help you think it over.”

“I don’t have time to think about anything else while we spar, though…?”

“Exactly.”

“…do I get a choice about this?”

“No. Get a move on.”

Wen Ning let himself be dragged over to the training fields. “You do remember I’m sect leader, right?”

“So is my brother,” Nie Mingjue pointed out and – fair.

“Your brother is one of the most terrifying people in the cultivation world.”

“And he still lets me boss him around. What’s your point?”

…fair.

“No point,” Wen Ning said, and waved to some of their more promising students, who immediately perked up at the thought of getting to watch them spar. “No point at all.”

In the end, he thought, his life hadn’t turned out that badly after all.

#mdzs #wen ning #nie mingjue #my fic #my fics #Anonymous

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testudoaubrei-blog · 3 years

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TL/DR - Catra is a uniquely complex and compelling character who has -so much going on- compared with most characters in any medium. Her character arc is psychologically astute, morally powerful and dramatically compelling, and it pushes the boundaries of the audiences sympathies in ways that are really groundbreaking for a kids show, and her arcs conclusion celebrates love, growth, and the power to change in a way that is all too rare in TV for grown ups.

Content note for mentions of suicidal ideation and self harm.

Well, now that the summary is out of the way, here’s a massive fucking dissertation on why Catra is such a great character.

This is the first of a series of posts outlining things that make She Ra a truly great show, one that stands out even 15 years into a golden age of TV animation for kids. This isn’t going to be a comprehensive account for why the show is great - the real answer is that this show has so many arcs and so many fully realized characters and they are all growing and changing in ways that interact with each other and complement each other so well. But I’m going to highlight some particular standouts, things that this show does better than anything else, things that made me step back and say ‘holy shit they did this in a show pitched at 10 year olds?!’

And so the first of these posts is about Catra. I’ve never seen a character in a kids TV show like Catra before. Depending on the season, she’s an anti-villain, an outright villain and an anti-hero and then, in the end, a hero. Being glib, I describe her in villain mode as a Saturday morning cartoon Supervillain as written by like, Dostoevsky. She’s got the trappings of classic villain camp - long speeches, sneering, over-complicated plans, she’s oddly ineffectual at times etc/ Yet all of this is underlaid and justified by something much deeper - her feelings of rejection, her desire to lash out at everyone around her, at her self-hatred and hatred of everyone and everything else (at least by Season 4. Good God.) And her actions are as dark as her motivations - she nearly destroys reality out of spite, betrays literally everyone who cares about her (often multiple times) and isolates herself so completely that in the season 4 finale she is a solitary, suicidal wreck of a person. Hell, in her last fight with Hordak, I was definitely rooting for Hordak (to say nothing of Glimmer, who is a pretty impressive antiheroine, like if Sparkles had just blasted her into glittery oblivion would we have held it against her?).

Let's start by discussing trauma. It comes up a lot with Catra for obvious and good reasons. But I almost feel like that word is insufficient for what's going on with Catra, or at least, we shouldn't stop with it (I know there are terms like complex trauma, but rather than simply using those I want to explain the difference between Catra’s consistent abuse and a single traumatic event). To use another example from a different show, Korra was also traumatized in season 4. But she was traumatized by a series of an events when she was a young adult. She had something horrible happen to her, and it fucked her up, and then she had exposure therapy with Zaheer and at least starts to get better. Catra...Catra is much more consistently abused. It's not just that shadow weaver traumatized her with the various acts of torture, but that Shadow Weaver taught Catra both an explicit worldview and a series of coping mechanisms that she struggles with through young adulthood. First, Shadow Weaver trained Catra to seek her approval. This is something she is particularly vulnerable to with Shadow Weaver, but also what she does with Hordak and to a extent Double Trouble. Catra's instinct when people mistreat her or show that they aren't trustworthy is to invest further in the relationship, until the breaking point. By contrast, when people treat her well Catra lashes out or takes them for granted. This is uh…a dymamic I am acquainted with among people who have been abused as kids, people whom I love. It is pretty rough.

She also developed a desire to prove herself. This starts off being tied to her drive for approval, but combined with her competitive streak (which is expressed in both healthy and unhealthy ways with Adora) it turns into a desire to beat Shadow Weaver and then Hordak at their own game.

At the same time, Catra learned by always being blamed for everything to evade and deny responsibility, no matter what. I think this form of self reassurance is tied to her self doubt (I think at some level she does think she is worthless) and her self hatred. It is also enabled by Adora’s martyr complex and willingness even act as Catra’s punching bag (as we see in the flashback in Corridors). This is a dynamic that actually repeats in an even worse fashion with Scorpia. Far from being arrogant, her constant evasions, put downs against others and preening speeches sound like the words of a woman who is trying to convince herself most of all. This tendency borders on narcissistic self delusion by season 3-4, which she begins recounting her version of events and possibly believing it even when it is obviously false, and everyone knows it.

When it comes to worldviews, Shadow Weaver taught Catra that love is about control and manipulation. We see this in seasons 1-3 where she congratulates herself for manipulating Adora when all she has done is take advantage of Adora's lingering love for her. Meanwhile, she’s learned that power is her only protection, and that the only way to stay on top is to abuse those beneath her.

The final kind of static tendency in Catra is her identity in the horde and her view of herself as one of the bad guys. This is something she rarely articulates but underlies much of her her decision to stay and not join Adora (at least at first). I think one thing to consider is that even if Catra never believed horde propaganda, it may have made her cynical and unwilling to imagine something better for herself or the world. Another factor is having struggled to belong in the horde for so long, she isn't going to give up now. At first this ties into her desire to win the approval of shadow weaver and Hordak, then it comes from her desire to prove herself better than them. Another factor is her self hatred. She sees herself as someone who hurts people, perhaps as a monster. She sees herself as a bad guy and so team evil is her side.

So yeah, our girl is kinda fucked up.

And yet Catra is never reduced to the sum of her traumas and bad habits. At every step of the way she is shown as a moral agent. She is shaped by shadow Weaver's abuse but she remains aware of and responsible for her actions. This is a double edged sword. She is fully responsible for her actions, but also she is never shown as broken by abuse or mental illness. She’s fully responsible, but by the same token is also redeemable, because she still has a choice.

So with that our of the way, let's go to Catra's arc.

I’m not going to recite everything terrible Catra does because I’m still on my first complete rewatch and I honestly find it hard to list it all. It’s a lot. So let’s talk about her shifting motivations. Early on, we see her desire for approval and recognition motivating her in ways that are so easy to sympathize with - she’s been told she’s worthless for years, and she wants to be worth something. We see how much she’s been scarred by Shadow Weavers abuse and by the ruthlessness and callousness of the Horde, and can sympathize with her desire to survive and advance since her own position is so untenable. We also see how, at first, she wants to be reunited with Adora. Her first huge turn into much darker territory is Promises, when she tries to kill Adora in order to permanently sever her connection with her own life and eliminate a possible rival for advancement (should Adora ever return). She’s told herself that she doesn’t want Adora back, and at least partly means it. Yet we still show her care for Scorpia and Entrapta and even Shadow Weaver in Season 2. It’s when Catra realizes that Shadow Weaver has chosen Adora over her once again that she takes her darkest turn. It’s not just that she destroys reality out of spite, it’s that she rejects her chance for a better and happier life, betrays every friend she has and focuses single-mindedly on hurting Adora (and arguably herself) and then on surviving when her attempt fails. Then Catra spends an entire season both fully inhabiting her role as a villain (and not a sympathetic one - really only our history with her leaves us sympathetic) and being utterly self-destructive and miserable. At the end, as mentioned, she’s a broken, suicidal wreck who has destroyed everything she’s strived for. If this was an HBO drama, we’d roll credits here and she’d go down as another self-destructive antihero. It would perhaps be too much to call her ‘Walter White as a catgirl’, but still. Of course, her story doesn’t end there.

Something that is incredibly dark that is happening in step with this is Catra’s hardening of herself, indeed, her dehumanization of herself. We see her struggle with her natural compassion, her kindness, her need for connection, her desire for happiness, and we see her ignore it all, stamp it down and nearly snuff it out. This is a huge factor in her descent into becoming a real villain (no ‘anti’ qualifiers needed). Every step of her descent is a struggle for Catra - not going with Adora in the second part of ‘The Sword’, trying to kill Adora in ‘Promise’, going back to the Horde, betraying Entrapta, lying about Entrapta, threatening Scorpia, destroying the world - but she always chooses evil. And with every step she becomes more isolated, more callous, and more cruel. Her default reaction becomes not just bravado and mockery and insolence, but threats, bullying and intimidation, until her management style is identical to Hordak’s, and indeed, is quite a bit worse. Catra starts off fighting for Hordak and Shadow Weaver’s approval and struggling to survive, and ends up cackling maniacally at her brutal and murderous conquests. She has very deliberately turned herself into a cruel conqueror, and a tyrant. This self-dehumanization is a huge part of evil in the world, I think, and it’s really powerful to see it so clearly in a kids show.

Meanwhile her insistence on evading all responsibility finally results in a self-serving, self-protective narrative that insulates her from responsibility or self-examination but also cuts her off from reality and other people. It’s always a bit unclear to what extent her various untruths (about Adora leaving her, about Shadow Weaver’s escape and her concealment of it not being her fault, about Entrapta betraying Hordak) are things she believes, lies she is telling to have power over others (mostly Scorpia) or things that she doesn’t quite believe but is trying to convince herself of. It’s probably all of these at various times, and in different degrees for each lie. The end result is that Catra is even more alone, because only she inhabits the safe cocoon of lies she’s built around herself. It also is the key to her and the Horde’s downfall - Catra is so isolated and in such denial that she can’t see how thin her forces are spread, and this crack shows up even in episode 1 of Season 4, with her insistence that the Princess Alliance is in shambles (when, in fact, it’s already rebounding, and proves more resilient than she allows herself to believe, and is led by a woman as ruthless and determined as herself). This part of Catra’s arc brilliantly shows how deception (of yourself and others) can feel protective by keeping shame at bay, but ultimately is destructive and strips someone of so much of the intellectual and moral qualities that we call ‘human.’ It’s also chilling to see since we’ve seen the end game of this mentality play out in US national politics, at the highest level.

I said at the opening that we’ve never seen a sympathetic character like Catra in a kids show. What about Zuko? I would argue that Zuko is never a cruel, or as callous, or as self-destructive as Catra is at her worst. Zuko is motivated by a desire for recognition from his abusive father (much like Catra is initially motivated by desire for recognition from Hordak and Shadow Weaver, and indeed Adora), and perhaps a desire to belong in the Fire Nation. All of this gets wrapped together in his ‘Honor’. He’s a young man with a very weak sense of what he truly believes, instead relying on external guides to what he should do. He’s also incredibly self-involved, and initially indifferent to anyone’s pain but his own and anyone’s needs but his own need to restore his honor. Uncle Iroh is there throughout to push Zuko both to see the needs of others and to become his own person. Zuko’s redemption arc, then, is a twofold quest to recognize other people and to find his own moral center and act from it. This is a pretty powerful coming of age story in that it is about him becoming his own person and throwing off the shackles of his upbringing. Politically, it’s a powerful story of a young man taking responsibility for his own actions in an authoritarian regime and refusing to participate in its imperialism any more and to embrace a new way forward both for himself and his nation. At the same time, in some ways it is easy to sympathize with Zuko because his greatest crimes are those of weakness - he’s not strong enough to stand up to his nation and his family until midway through the last season. Catra though...Catra does what she does, eventually, because she wants to hurt people. She’s cruel, and spiteful, and destructive in ways that are truly scary and which prevent any excuse or mitigation.

Which brings up the other comparison - Azula. But while Azula is (somewhat inconsistently) shown either as a monstrous child sociopath or a traumatized and broken child who can’t help it (and thus, perversely, as not a moral agent but something like a monster), Catra is consistently shown as a moral agent. Catra chooses her own path, every step of the way. She has so many chances to do something else - Adora’s offers to leave together in the two-part series opener, Promises, Scorpia’s suggestion that they dessert the Horde and become desert gang leaders, etc - and until season 5, she turns them all down. While Azula seems destined for evil and madness, with Catra we see a young woman very deliberately walk down the path into unmitigated evil with both eyes open. And then we see it destroy her.

And after she is basically destroyed, we see her build herself back. This process actually starts in Season 4 with the creeping realization that even when she is winning she is miserable and alone. She doesn’t even notice Scorpia is gone for several episodes, then she completely loses it. She spends the entire time when she is at her most triumphant isolated and raging and borderline incoherent, as ineffectual as she accuses Hordak of being. She’s won, and she’s alone, and she’s the most unhappy she has ever been, and I think for the first time she realizes that. And that’s the worst blow to her, even before all the external things come crashing down. She’s already miserable before Double Trouble and Glimmer deal her a triple coup de grace of destroying all her armies*, turning her and Hordak against each other and then Double Trouble’s epic evisceration. By the time Glimmer shows up, Catra is, as mentioned, literally suicidal. But she’s also already begun the process of changing in that she knows that she has a problem (her, and her self/other-destructive tendencies). Moreover, she knows, at some level, that what she really wants isn’t conquest, or to prove herself as the baddest leader of the Horde, but love - and she’s seen how she’s squandered that at every opportunity.

Let’s just pause for a moment to observe how much better Glimmer is at villainous machinations than Catra. In a couple episodes she makes a faustian bargain for unlimited power, kills all her enemies armies, sets her two chief foes at each other’s throats and literally cripples one while rendering the other helpless. And given her ironic non-answer about hurting Catra (‘we’re the good guys, remember?’ and the fact that she’d tried to kill Catra twice before**, she walked into Hordak’s sanctum fully intending to end Catra’s life, one way or another. She does all this through ruthlessness, recklessness and treachery, and she could give like, a TED talk on villainy. Of course it also blows up in her face and is actually way worse than the portal did in Catra’s, endangering the whole universe (I always assumed that the portal only threatened Despondos), dooming Etheria to invasion and all that. Of course, Catra pulled that switch and then fought Adora knowing that the world was ending, while Glimmer was just ignoring warnings from...just about everyone, including Shadow Weaver. So yeah, Glimmer, best kids show antihero since Princess Bubblegum***(unless we’re counting Catra as an antihero, which works for the first half of season 5).

Anyway, at the beginning of Season 5 Catra is adrift. Though some interpretations, like TV tropes, see her as immediately falling back into old habits and casting her lot in with Prime, I see her actions from the end of Season 4 onwards as more ambivalent. She seems to be kind of...going through the motions. She doesn’t have any of the drive or passion in her plotting that she once did, she seems to be maneuvering into Prime’s good graces out of habit. At best she’s back in the survival mode of early season 1, but without the ambition and desire to prove herself that motivated her. Some interpretations put a lot of stock in Prime being someone that can’t be bargained with or appeased, but...I don’t buy it. I take him, to an extent, at his word when he says that he was ‘exalt’ Catra (I am sure it is something awful). Catra actually gets what she wants halfway through “Corridors.” Only it’s not what she wants. She’s done jockeying for advantage, especially in a world where she truly would be alone because all she has is this psychopathic narcissist and his clones for company. She wants connection. She wants to do what is right. She’s suppressed all her humanity (felinitity? Anyway) for years and it’s made her miserable, and now she’s ready to embrace it. At the same time she confronts her own culpability, seeing just how much harm she’s done and admitting it for the first time. Her first lifeline is Glimmer, the only person she can actually talk to, the only other Etherian, the woman whose mother she doomed and who has nearly killed her three times. But Glimmer is also going through her own dark night of the soul - Glimmer and Catra’s character arcs were converging at the same time that Catra’s and Adoras and Glimmer’s and Adora’s were diverging. And they come together on either side of that forcefield, just talking and being people in an environment that is designed to be as dehumanizing as possible. Even this barest lifeline is enough for Catra to hold on to for dear life, and enough to inspire her to not just feel bad about the bad things she’s done, but do something good.

But the first way she does this is a cop out. Her plan, like Shadow Weaver’s in the finale, is to sacrifice/kill herself doing ‘one good thing.’ That way she doesn’t have to figure out how to live with the consequences of her actions, face the possible rejection of the people she loves whom she’s wronged, and do the hard work of building herself back up as a better person. She gets to die a hero rather than live as a villain. That said, unlike Shadow Weaver she does at least get off one apology, and it makes all the difference.

Then Adora fucks Catra’s sacrifice up, in glorious, space operatic, gay AF pulp fiction fashion, by saving the cat. Catra is mind controlled or unconscious for most of this episode, but what she does do is so crucial. When Adora comes for her, she reaches out to her, as soon as she is able. She doesn’t push her away, she takes Adora’s help, and her love, and Adora does the rest in badass fashion. The next few episodes plus the so perfect its canon Don’t Go are my favorite part of Catra’s entire arc.

She nearly falls back into her old habits, at least partly. Now that she has to live with what she’s done rather than just dying for it she just wants to run away again. But when she has to choose between losing Adora all over again and confronting herself and her past, she chooses Adora, and asks her to stay.

Catra then spends the rest of Season 5 slowly easing herself into the very human world of the Princess Alliance - the comaradery, the dedication to others and a cause, the goofiness. I’m going to talk a lot more about her relationship with Adora in my Catradora post, but I do want to highlight three moments.

The first is Catra running away again. This is actually a big change from what she’s done before - she’s not leaving because she’s angry, or bitter, or spiteful, she’s leaving because she doesn’t want to see the woman she loves sacrifice herself yet again (maybe this time for good) after being manipulated by the woman who had abused them both. But then she comes back. And then she confronts her abuser in a way that she has never done before - for the first time in the series, she not only calls Shadow Weaver out but calls her to do the right thing, and doesn’t give up until she does (this is after Adora also calls SW out and cuts her off forever, meaning that her two charges have finally called her on her bullshit and chosen each other over her, more in my Shadow Weaver Rant...and I guess my Catradora rant).

Then, at the end, Catra both stays with Adora through her potentially fatal harnessing of the Heart of Etheria and then her comes in and rescues her by challenging her to do something for Catra and for herself. Not to be with Catra, or to kiss her, or love her, but just stay for her. Needless to say, Adora responds far more enthusiastically than Catra had dared hope. (more on this in my Catradora rant).

Catra starts the show convinced she doesn’t need anyone except Adora, and she’s willing to even push Adora away if she can’t have Adora on her own terms. She goes down that path - ambition, manipulation, treachery, cruelty and isolation - until she has nothing left. She then slowly, painfully, turns around and reaches out and begins to heal the pain in Etheria and the universe rather than causing more. This is a psychological journey in many ways, but even more than that it is a profoundly moral one. It is a story of her accepting responsibility for her actions, facing reality, reaching out to others and making amends. It is in every sense a redemption. And while it works perfectly with Adora’s own development into her own, fuller, happier, healthier person, it works not because of Adora or the power of love, but because of Catra herself. Adora’s companionship, Adora’s rescuing of her and holding her to account, all of these are necessary for Catra to change for the better. But in the end it is Catra herself who chooses the right path, maybe for the first time in her life. And that’s what makes the romance work in turn - Catra is motivated to change not simply by a desire to impress her girlfriend or by Adora’s shining goodness (to the contrary, Adora’s a healthier and less self-sacrificing person at least in the finale...she comes around later than Catra) but by her desire to be true to herself and seek out what she really needs and wants - which is love, and connection, and to do good rather than evil. It’s a gorgeous story that takes an antihero all the way down to hell and then back again, and this makes it a truly unique redemption arc in all of kids TV - not just because of how far Catra falls, but how far she travels overall.

*(I know a lot of fanficcers talk about there being a lot of Horde Soldiers left but like...in the show...they’re nearly all dead, guys. Glimmer and company...okay mostly Mermista... just about killed them all in an afternoon. The cadet Triad survives because they deserted and weren’t there to get drowned/frozen/suffocated by plants when the grand invasion of Brightmoon went sideways)

**Okay, once she was only an accessory to Shadow Weaver’s attempted murder of Catra, the other time she leaves Catra for dead in ‘Pulse’

***I stan PB so hard guys. So hard. Machiavellian genius, mad scientist, god figure, possible Nietzschean Ubermensch? She’s so great. So great.

#she ra #she ra adora #she ra catra #spop catra #redemption arcs

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vivithefolle · 3 years

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Hi Vivi, can you share some thoughts on the "Hermione deserves to be/should have married to XYZ because she is way too good for Ron" mentality of this fandom??

I’m gonna copy-paste a Quora answer of mine, because recycling is important!

Claiming that Ron is “out of Hermione’s league” is a statement rooted in sexism, classism and probably a bunch of other -isms.

It might seem like I’m just throwing buzz-words around but let me explain.

First off, the sexism.

Oh, the sexism.

As I’ve pointed it out in yet another one of my answers (I’m so sorry for drowning you all in a plethora of links), Ron is very much a female-coded male character.

Ron is emotional, wears his heart on his sleeve, has anxieties and inadequacies, walks off in order to cool down, has a temper, puts other people before his needs, and pretty much adopts Harry when he rescues him in the second book. He’s the Heart of the Trio: he doesn’t rely on sole logic, he can believe something without proof, he is sensitive and thus is the easiest to hurt emotionally.

Whether you call it a “beta male”, a “wuss”, “defying gender roles” or a “soft boy” is your own business, but the core of it is that Ron doesn’t meet the standards for people’s vision of a “desirable” masculine figure.

The little things Ron quietly performs in the books - when he helps Harry into his pyjamas in Chamber of Secrets because Harry’s arm is bloop; when he’s worrying about Hermione’s whereabouts in Prisoner of Azkaban; when he helps Harry unwind after his visions in Goblet of Fire; when he puts food onto Harry’s plate and wakes him up from his nightmares in Order of the Phoenix; when he beams that Hermione was “perfect, obviously” when she passes her Apparition test - all those caring gestures don’t seem like much, but if you bother to think about it, they paint an enormous picture.

Who gets Hermione to stop overworking while making her feel good about her accomplishments? Who comforts Harry from his nightmares and cares for him in the dead of the night, when nobody is awake? Who makes sure his friends are healthy and happy? Who wards off the dark and depressing thoughts, be it with his fists or a joke?

It’s Ron.

When you think about it, “traditional masculinity” in Harry Potter is as much frowned upon as “traditional feminity” is - which sometimes bites Rowling in the butt when you remember how she obviously seems to consider that Hermione and Ginny are the only desirable kind of girls.

Vernon Dursley? The entrepreneur “king of the household” prejudiced suburbian middle-class Dad? Fits in the usual tropes of traditional masculinity.

Dudley Dursley? The typical “boys will be boys” spoiled middle-class only child who’s the apple of his parents’ eyes and even takes up boxing, as if he wasn’t traditionally masculine enough.

Draco Malfoy? See Dudley, but toss in “upper-class posh aristocrat bully who doesn’t like to get his hands dirty so he has henchmen do it for him because he’s too rich for this sh-t”, would remind you of a few Christian Greys or Gatsbys.

Dolores Umbridge? Oh no, cat pictures, decorative plates, talks to teens as if they’re babies and PINK, SO MUCH PINK!!! So disgustingly feminine!!

Rowling very much frowns upon traditional gender roles - with Molly Weasley being an exception because Rowling feels very strongly about being a mother, and relates to Molly a lot.

Right - so, being a beautiful mess of paradoxes and contradictions (a “soft boi” who also punches bullies in the face, a fussy mother-hen who swears like a sailor, a tall athlete with badass scars on his arms who’s nurturing and sweet; in short, a wonderfully human character), Ron is obviously going to be a polarizing character. You painfully relate to him and get defensive when he’s criticized, you feel his characterization hits a bit too close to home so you hate him, or you disregard him completely because you can’t see anything “special” about him…

Now, onto another very, very sexist point that is often made.

People say that Hermione “deserves better” than Ron, often claiming that they “aren’t intellectual equals”, then citing Harry (who is mistaken as being some sort of slumbering genius but honestly, the kid is really a bit daft) or Draco (since apparently, being rich must equal to being intelligent) or, god forbid, Snape (because he’s a teacher and teachers are meant to be clever).

Soooo, I could go the loooooong way and pull out all the receipts that prove that none of these characters are perfectly intellectually matched to Hermione…

Or I could go the long way and simply give you this: this obsession with finding an “intellectual equal” for Hermione reflects the mentality of “women are not allowed to be better at something than their husband”.

Yep.

A woman has to be all-around pretty good at everything, whereas a man has to be the absolute best in his area of greatest competence (surely better than any puny female!) with a help-meet there to compensate for his weaknesses. People are very, very uncomfortable when Ron and Hermione reverse this dynamic. Hermione is extremely intelligent and dedicated to intellectual pursuits, but is complete pants at things like self-care and people skills. Ron is bright enough to keep up with her and strong in her areas of weakness.

Even if Ron was as dumb as a sack of rocks (he’s not), his other virtues are more than enough to “justify” Hermione loving him. (Because she needs an excuse?) But no. A woman has to be with a man who outdoes her in her area of greatest strength. - credit to @lytefoot

People don’t want Hermione to be with a man who’s her “equal.” They want her to be with a man who can be The Man so she can know the contentment of being The Woman.

But, with this sexist line of thought, how do we justify how Ron is supposed to be such a bad match for Hermione? Because if it was just about mere sexism, Romione would surely be more popular. Imagine! Ron happily raising the children, being a house-husband and proud of it, while Hermione is out there fighting for justice in the wizarding world! What a power-couple, defying norms and gender roles and not being the least bit conscious of it, prime OTP material for sure! So why do people still want Hermione to put Harry, Draco, or god forbid², Snape in Ron’s place? Is this an irrational hatred of redheads? An Harmionian’s delirious wet dream? A failure to separate the actors from their characters?

It’s all this and, quite frankly, something more: the inherent classism that comes with Ron’s status as an explicitly working-class coded character.

I know, I know, “Vivian! Calm down with the buzzwords, you’re starting to sound like an online pretend-feminist magazine!”

Or “Come on, people who don’t ship Ron and Hermione together aren’t all sexist or classist!”

Of course, of course! I know that! I’m not implying that!

But some of the “reasons” why they claim that Ron and Hermione can’t work - are extremely classist in nature, that’s just it!

Come on, think about it! What are the Number Ones arguments people always pull against Ron? Or the most common Ron-bashing tropes (look at fanfics and watch the number of stories that use at least one of those)?

Ron is stupid/mediocre

Ron is lazy/useless

Ron resents his wife’s hard work/success

Ron is a homophobe

Ron is a drunkard

Ron (the big prude who at 16 had never kissed a girl and sees a first kiss as the prelude to a wedding) is massively oversexed and cheats on Hermione with anything that moves

Not only do these “reasons” completely ignore ALL OF RON’S CHARACTERIZATION - except for the “lazy” bit but come off it, all teenagers are lazy and Hermione’s the exception to the rule - but it matches perfectly with the negative stereotypes associated with working-class white men in fiction.

It’s also very funny to note how many (assumedly middle-class or financially secure) fans look down on Ron for being “whiny” or “greedy” when he expresses the desire to have money of his own, or blame his parents for “not knowing when to stop” or “being irresponsible”, or even look down on them for being “too proud to accept help”!! Also how shocked people are when Ron dares to stand up for himself when Hermione or Harry act badly towards him. How dare this country boy not listen to the wisdom of his social “betters”?

So, obviously, because our Heroine can’t go with a Nasty, Mediocre Working-Class Man, she must be paired off with someone of Proper Status: say, a Hero that was raised in a middle-class home and might be a bit psychologically damaged but it’s nothing all those gold coins in his vault can’t fix; or this Rich Posh Aristocrat who actively rooted for her death, he’s a little bit eccentric and has some exotic pet-names to call you, but I’m sure you’ll learn to love him and will unearth the gold coins in his bank account… I mean, the heart of gold that lies within the surface; oh, why not a Way Too Big An Age Difference Teacher if you’re looking for a “cultured man” who has zero things in common with you; we can also bring Convenient Plot Device Famous Rich Foreign Athlete if you want some diversity and you don’t feel original!

But we can’t - oh, we mustn’t let her be with this Terrible Working-Class Boy! His brothers are fine, they have money, they have jobs, so they’re obviously Not As Mediocre. But let our precious Hermione be with this Just-Got-Out-Of-School hooligan? She can’t possibly be in love with him! You’ll see darling, you’ll get bored eventually! He’s too mediocre for you, you deserve a man who outclasses you - I mean, who can provide for you! You’re a fragile little flower who scars people for life when she’s not happy with them, what makes you think that this boy can possibly handle you even though he’s done so for the past seven years?

You wanted it, you got it.

People are shallow, have misconceptions about Ron’s character that they are unwilling to correct or use classist and sexist arguments to try to make it so that either Ron is the Devil himself / Hermione is a higher kind of being that can only orgasm if sufficiently “intellectually stimulated” / what-have-you.

#vivi answers #ask #ron weasley #hermione granger #romione #ron weasley defense squad #ron weasley defence squad #sexism #classism #hp meta #fandumb #hp fandom

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thetravelerwrites · 3 years

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Ravadhi (Part 9)

Rating: Mature Archive Warning: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationship: Female Human x Male Half-Orc Additional Tags: Exophilia, Half-Orc, Monster Boyfriend, Interspecies Romance,Angst, Slow Burn Content Warning: Domestic Violence, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse Words: 4148

Holly finds out what her mother left for her in the deposit boxes. Afterward, she and Ravadhi settle into a comfortable routine until it's suddenly shattered. Please reblog and leave feedback!

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Holly arrived at the bank only ten minutes after leaving, which was not at all enough time to mentally prepare her for what she was about to find in the deposit boxes, left for her by her dead mother.

She waited in the line anxiously, her fist clenched around the keys that Tonri had given her and her chest tight.

“I can help the next guest,” The teller called. Holly knew him distantly from school, he was a Ratfolk man name was Auro. The two of them hadn’t been friends or really even spoke to each other, but like everyone at school, he knew who she and her dad was, and speculated along with everyone else. Despite that, he hadn’t ever bullied her or ignored her existence out of guilt.

“Hello, what can I help you with today?” He asked as she approached

“Hi, I inherited the keys to safety deposit boxes--” She checked the paperwork she’d received from Tonri. “F152, F153, F154, and F155.”

“Okay, I’ll just need the keys, a photo ID, the death certificate of the decedent, and inheritance letter?”

“Uh, yes, right here.”

She handed the documents to Auro, who took them and scanned them briefly, stopping on the name and glancing up uncomfortably. It was a well known fact that Holly’s mother had disappeared when she was young, but she guessed the news that she was dead hadn’t made the gossip rounds yet.

Auro cleared his throat. “Of course, right this way.” He left his desk and led Holly to a private room. “Wait here a moment and the boxes will be brought to you,” He said.

“Okay, thanks.”

She waited tensely for about five minutes. Then, Auro returned with the four boxes, setting them on the table in front of Holly. He also left a large bank bag on the table.

“Would you like privacy?” Auro asked.

“Yes, please,” Holly replied in a small voice.

He nodded and smile sympathetically, then left and closed the door.

Feeling tears prick her eyes, she sat in front of the four boxes, steeling herself to look inside. She picked the one on the right and pulled it toward her. With shaking hands, she turned the key and slowly opened the lid.

The first thing she saw were the pictures. Hundred of them. Pictures of her, of Holly as a baby, of the two of them smiling and happy and together.

Holly cried softly. She thought all the pictures had been destroyed. She spend a long time looking at the photographs of her and her mother. As she shuffled through them, and envelope fell out from the pile. She picked it up and examined it, and on the front, in her mother’s handwriting, was the word, “Holly.”

Sniffling and attempting to stem the flow of her tears, she carefully slit open the envelope and took out the contents. It was a letter. It was dated seven months before Holly’s mother disappeared.

My baby girl, I’m so, so sorry. If you’re reading this, it means that son of a bitch actually killed me and my attempt to escape with you has failed. I’m sorry. I tried. I tried so hard, but he was always one step ahead of me, no matter what I did. You once asked me, when you were very little, why I was with your father if he made me so sad. I couldn’t answer you then, because you were too young to understand. I was hoping to tell you this story in person one day when we were free of him, but it looks like that day will never come. Abusive relationships never start out that way, you know. Your father started out sweet and kind and affectionate, and I was fooled. By God, was I fooled. He spent the first year of our relationship waiting on me hand and foot, doing anything I asked, lavishing me with gifts and attention. I was so struck by his attentiveness and loving nature that I fell for him very quickly. Looking back, I realize it was too quickly. I didn’t realize that his attention was manipulation, or that a pattern of dependence was beginning to develop. The change was so slow that I didn’t even see it. It started with comments, off-handed observations. “Your mom was kind of rude to me today and your brother doesn’t like me. We shouldn’t go over there as much. Your friends talk about you behind your back. You should dump them and get better friends.” He began to drive a wedge between me and all of my relationships, until he was the only one left. He’d convinced me that my family hated me, that my friends were jealous of me. I started cutting ties with people who I loved dearly, and when no one was left, all I had was him. Which is exactly what he wanted. Then there were sudden negative criticisms about my appearance or how I cooked or cleaned. I was gaining too much weight and wasn’t as pretty as I had been when we first started dating. I was spending too much time at school or work and not enough time with him. He began questioning where I went, how much money I spent, who I was with, why I was out so long. Whenever I protested, he simply said he was worried about me and that he didn’t want anything bad to happen to me, that I was careless, even reckless sometimes, and that I could get myself in trouble. I started questioning myself and actively avoiding things that would upset him. I thought he got angry with me was because he loved me. I didn’t realize he was trying to control me. Before we got married, he had been pressuring me to leave school, saying that it was too expensive and he couldn’t afford it. I told him I could apply for grants and scholarships, but he wouldn’t hear a word of it. His temper was getting shorter and shorter by the day, and before I knew it, it seemed like he was always angry. He started drinking not long after we were engaged. But I loved him, and I figured it was just stress because of money. It was easy to dismiss the emotional and psychological abuse as stress or concern, but now I know it was never any of those things. The physical abuse started shortly after we got married. By then, I wasn’t speaking to my family or friends anymore and we had moved to Willowridge for his work, so I was completely isolated. We had another argument about school, and it was the first time he laid a hand on me. He slapped me so hard that he knocked me to the floor, and I was shocked. Looking back now, it’s almost comically obvious that the relationship was heading in that direction, but at the time, I was terrified and so very confused. I was a smart person; smart people didn’t get into abusive relationships, it wasn’t possible. And now that I had alienated all of the people who could have helped me, I felt powerless. My mother died, and I wanted to go to her funeral and patch things up with my family, but your father convinced me that my family didn’t want me there. They hadn’t called me, after all. There had been no invitation to attend. So I didn’t go. Then my father died, and shortly afterward, my brother took his own life. Suddenly, I was without family and it was now too late to reconnect with them. I dropped out of college due to a mental breakdown, which was what your father wanted. It was then that the abuse became extreme. He would beat me for any small thing. I had no money, no friends, no resources, and I was now living in a town of which I wasn’t familiar. I felt trapped, but I also felt like it was my fault for falling for it, so perhaps it was what I deserved. I developed an eating disorder, lost a lot of weight, stopped leaving the house, and fell into a deep depression. I always felt anxious and sick. I didn’t even realize I was pregnant with you until I went into labor. You were a month early, and so tiny. I hadn’t been to the doctor since before our wedding and the eating disorder made my period stop for months at a time, so I had no reason to believe I could have been pregnant. When you were born, everything changed. I may not have been able to get out for myself, but for you, I would move mountains. I made a deal with your father; you know what it was. He wouldn’t let me work, so I had to scrounge and save any way I could. I was the weirdo who took all the coins from the “take a penny, leave a penny” tray. I dived into wishing fountains and scooped up handfuls of quarters. I’d lie to your father and say I lost the receipt when I went to buy groceries and couldn’t remember what the total was. It always earned me a beating, but it was worth it if I could manage to squirrel away even five dollars. I even sold my wedding and engagement rings. I expected to tell him I had lost them and get a beating, but he never asked about them. Someone who controlled every aspect of my life for years didn’t care that the proof of our marriage was missing. Fitting, I suppose. I’m not sure how much I’ve managed to save; I’ve never had the chance to count it. I’ve also put away all of my jewelry, collectables, and any small thing I thought might be valuable sentimental or otherwise. I hope beyond hope that you’re free from him as you read this, but if you’re not, I hope I’ve saved enough to give you a chance to get away and live a better life. If there’s only enough for you to buy a bus ticket and get out of this godforsaken town, it’ll have been worth it. I love you, Holly. I love you so much. If any good thing came out of that miserable bastard, it was you. You were a surprise, but once I saw your little face and your tiny hands gripped my finger, I’d have done anything to keep you safe. I’m sorry I fell short. If you hate me, I understand. But please, never doubt that I loved you. I only wish I could have been a better mother and protected you, and I hope you’re not too disappointed in me. Forgive me. Forgive me. Mommy

There were tear stains on the paper, old ones from when it was written, and new ones as Holly read it. Holly held the letter to her chest and wept bitterly.

“I don’t hate you,” Holly sobbed. “I don’t.”

It took several minutes to compose herself. When she’d sniffled to a stop, she turned her attention to the other boxes. In the first, she found jewelry, coins, stock certificates, and the proof of purchase on the house. In the second, there were trinkets she’d saved from Holly’s childhood, like her footprint, her hospital bracelet, and the blanket in which she’d been wrapped in. In the third was a single item: a bank account card.

Holly took all of the items in the boxes and stepped out of the room, walking back up to the teller’s desk.

“There was this account card in the box,” She told Auro. “Do I have access to this?”

“Yes,” Auro said. “Your name is on the account.”

“Oh,” Holly said, surprised. “Can I check the balance?”

“Of course,” Auro said, entering the number into the computer. His hands stilled and he stared at the screen.

“Well?”

“Right,” He said, clearing his throat. “At present, you have $53,640.35 available in your account.”

“Fifty-three…” Holly trailed off. “That’s… mine?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Auro said. “You can use it whenever you like. I can give you a checkbook before you leave, and have a debit card mailed to you within the week.”

“Yes, please,” She replied faintly.

She rode home in a numb fog. When she arrived, Ravadhi and Sarah were sitting on the front porch as if waiting.

“Are you okay?” Ravadhi asked, immediately pulling her into a hug. You accepted it gladly. As soon as he wrapped her up in his arms, she started sobbing again, unable to stop, and started to collapse, her legs crumpling underneath her.

“Hey, it’s okay,” He said softly, moving to sit her down on the porch. Sarah sat on your other side and rubbed her arm.

“What happened?” Sarah asked.

“She left me some things,” Holly managed to gulp out, pulling some of the things from her bag to show Sarah

“Are these you when you were little?” Sarah said. “I’ve never seen pictures of you as a kid.”

“Dad got rid of them all,” Holly replied, shuffling through them to show her. “Or, I thought he had. Mom managed to save some.”

“You were really small,” Sarah said wonderingly. “Even smaller than me.”

“Mom said I was a month premature. I didn’t know that before,” Holly whispered.

“You’re mom said?” Ravadhi asked.

“Oh, she wrote me a letter,” Holly replied, pulling it from her pocket. She began to read the letter out loud to Sarah and Ravadhi. As private and emotionally charged as the letter was, Ravadhi and Sarah were the only two people in the world who Holly felt she could share it with, and because she could, she did. Not only that, she knew they would understand it in a way that no one else would.

“Do you hate her, like she said?” Sarah asked.

“No,” Holly told Sarah. “No, I couldn’t hate her if I wanted to. I wish she had been your mom, Sarah, she was such a good mom. The best.”

“Dad tricked her,” Sarah said, looking up at Holly sympathetically.

Holly nodded. “Yeah.”

“He didn’t trick my mom,” Sarah said bitterly. “All he had to do was pay for her drugs and vodka.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah,” Holly said. Sarah shrugged.

“So you own our house?” Sarah asked, changing the subject. “Are you going to kick mom out?”

“No,” Holly said. “It doesn’t matter what my feelings are for your mom, I will always make sure you have a home to go to, no matter what. But I think it’s best if she doesn’t know I own it, so maybe keep it under your hat.”

Sarah nodded knowingly.

Holly sighed heavily, wiped her face, and stood up abruptly. “Well, I am absolutely starving. Do you guys want breakfast?”

That night, Holly lay in bed, unable to quiet her mind. She had decided to keep the news about the money to herself until she knew what she wanted to do with it. There were a million possibilities bouncing around in her head, and she couldn’t pin one down. She could fix up the house for Sarah, put it away for Sarah’s college, put a down-payment on her own house, go back to school, anything. But deep down, Holly was worried.

Ravadhi had said at the beginning that she was to stay with him until she got back on her feet, but now they were dating. Would he want her to to find her own place since, she had the money to do it? She liked living with Ravadhi. It was the healthiest environment she’d ever lived in and she didn’t want to have to start all over again on her own. Was that co-dependent? Maybe, but healthy co-dependence was better than depressed, anxious solitude, as far as she was concerned. She didn’t want to leave, and she didn’t think he would just kick her out. But, as her mother’s letter had taught her, you could never be truly certain of a person’s motives or intentions. Ravadhi had been nothing but kind and caring toward her, but… people can change.

What if she could get custody of Sarah? That would be amazing. If she could prove Diane was an unfit mother, would they even let Holly get custody? She knew that they wouldn’t let Sarah live with a convicted felon, though, so if she could get custody, the matter of continuing to live with Ravadhi in his house would decide itself. As much as she cared for Ravadhi, Sarah was her first priority.

What if she lost the custody case and they put Sarah in some kind of group home? Ravadhi’s tale of being in a group terrified her and she’d never subject Sarah to it. Was it best to leave her in a neglectful environment where at least Holly knew she could take care of herself and be safe? Or try for custody and run the risk of losing her in the system?

Maybe she could ask Sarah. She had a good head on her shoulders and could make good decisions for herself. A lifetime of neglect from her own parents as well as having to take care of her beaten and bloodied sister on a regular basis had aged her prematurely, so she was used to it. Unfortunately.

There had been another thing that had been weighing heavily on her lately as well, even before learning about her inheritance: she and Ravadhi had been officially dating for about a month, but they had both cared about each other longer than that. Would… he be expecting sex? Even if he did, she didn’t think he would be the type to pressure her into it, especially given his history.

Eventually, she fell asleep, wondering if she should ask him about it. A few days later, when they were alone with each other and just sitting down to dinner, she broached the topic.

“Ravadhi?” She piped up shyly. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course, anything,” He said, picking up his fork and getting ready to tuck in to his pork stirfry and rice.

“Do… do you want to have sex with me?” She asked.

He immediately began to choke on the first bite of his food, and Holly rushed to get him some water in alarm.

When he was able to speak again, he asked, “Before I answer, is that an inquiry or a request?”

“An inquiry,” She replied.

“Okay,” He said, taking a deep breath and bracing his hands on the table. “Okay.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” Holly said, wincing.

“No, no, it’s okay,” He replied, clearing his throat and taking another sip of water. “I’m glad you feel comfortable enough with me to ask. That’s really important to me, that you feel safe and comfortable.” He knitted his fingers and took a second before answering, pondering the question over in his head.

“The short answer is: yes, I do, because I care about you in both a emotional and a physical way, and part of that is wanting to be intimate and sexual. The long answer is: yes, I do, but.”

“But?”

“Yes, I do, but… I know that it scares you and that you’re not ready. Yes, but I never want to do anything to hurt you or make you feel unsafe. Yes, but I’m willing to wait as long as it takes until you feel the time is right, even if that never comes. I’m here for you because I love you, not because I want to have sex with you. Your happiness and well-being is more important to me than that.”

Holly blinked and her mouth fell open. She stared at Ravadhi in silent shock.

His brow furrowed. “What?”

“You said you loved me.”

His cheeks darkened. “Oh. I… well… yeah. I do. Love you, I mean. It’s okay if you don’t or don’t want to say it.”

Holly’s heart raced and she felt confused. “Give me some time?”

He nodded. “Yeah, absolutely.”

She nodded in return, relieved. “Thanks. And… I appreciate you being cool with everything. It may not seem like a big deal to you, but it means a lot to me.”

He smiled fondly at her and continued eating.

The school semester came to an end, and Ravadhi passed all his exams, despite working two jobs and having taken Holly in during the month when he needed to study the most. Now that school was over for the summer, he took some more time to work on the house, which he hadn’t been able to do for a long time. Holly was happy to help him, and it became a new bonding activity for them both. Sarah slept over often since it was summer break, and the three of them were happy.

It was becoming easier for her to be physically affectionate with him, holding his hand and giving him hugs and kisses more casually, which was a huge step for her. He never brought up sex or being more intimate, and Holly appreciated it.

Ravadhi still had the plumbing and overnight security job, but now that school was out, he was able to take more shifts. Holly would stay up and text him until at least his lunch break at eleven P.M. to help him stay awake.

On a warm Thursday evening as the sun was going down, Holly sat on the back porch overlooking the closed-in backyard and watched some videos on her phone while texting Ravadhi back and forth. He was bored, like he always was during his shifts at the power plant. He worked alone at the front lobby and watched the cameras, which Holly was sure was nothing short of riveting. At least he was allowed to listen to music.

>What have you got playing? She asked.

>Sevendust. It’s my go-to band. Very effective at keeping me awake.

>I bet. Do you listen to any female fronted metal bands? I think you’d really like Epica and Otep. Epica has got a great opera vibe. Oh, and Sister Sin is a really good hard rock band. Great vocalist.

>I haven’t heard those bands. They sound awesome.

>I’ll make you a playlist.

>Nice. What are you up to?

>Enjoying the nice evening. I was going to clean up the kitchen before I went to bed, but I was tired. I’ll do it tomorrow after work.

>Going on rounds. I’ll text you back in a minute.

Holly switched back over to watching true crime videos on YouTube. She blinked, and when she opened her eyes, suddenly the sun was completely down. She looked at her phone and realize she must have fallen asleep: two hours had gone by. She went over to messages and texted Ravadhi. He hadn’t texted back yet, which was weird.

>Sorry, I fell asleep. Find anything?

Holly decided to go inside and actually clean the kitchen. By the time she was done, Ravadhi still hadn’t texted back.

>Everything okay?

Ten minutes passed and there was no response. Holly began to feel uneasy. With a pit in her stomach, she dialed the power plant’s main line. Ravadhi had to answer that phone, it was part of his job. The phone rang and rang and rang. Ravadhi never picked up.

Holly’s breath stalled in her chest with panic and she called the sheriff’s department.

“Sheriff’s department,” Holly heard.

“Hi, um, look, my boyfriend is at work and he’s not answering the phone, which is part of his job, and I’m worried something may have happened to him,” Holly said in a rush.

“I’m sure he’s fine, ma’am,” The deputy said dismissively. “He’s probably in the bathroom or something. I’m not sure this warrants a welfare visit.”

“I’m telling you, something is wrong,” Holly insisted. “I haven’t heard from him in hours. That’s not something that happens.”

“You’re probably overreacting,” He said. “Just calm down--”

“Who am I speaking to?” Holly asked, getting angry.

“Deputy Reynolds.”

“Well, Deputy Reynolds, my name is Holly Stevenson. Do you know that name?”

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end. “Yes, ma’am, I know who you are.”

“Then you know you owe me. You owe me.”

The deputy didn’t respond.

“The least, the very least, you can do is make sure the person who saved my life is okay. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” The deputy replied. “I’ll send an officer right away.”

“You do that,” Holly said. “And I expect a call when you get there.”

“Yes, ma’am,” The deputy said.

Holly hung up the phone and waited anxiously, biting her nails and pacing. A full thirty tense minutes later, she saw red and blue lights outside. She rushed to the door and threw it open. The sheriff himself stepped out of the car.

“What happened?” Holly asked.

Since my work is no longer searchable, please do me a favor and reblog this story if you enjoyed it. Help me reach a wider audience! To help me continue creating, please consider buying me a Kofi, becoming a Patron, or donating directly to my PayPal!

Thanks for reading!

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everything-laito · 3 years

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Hypersexuality and Laito Sakamaki (UPDATED)

Hiya guys! Been a long ass time since I’ve made a post like this, I’ve been getting so much ask box activity + had school so I haven’t had the time to make an original post! This has been something I wanted to write for a while, and not only was I busy with school, but this one hits home hard to me personally, so I was going back and forth for a bit writing it. But I think I’m ready :)

I know there’s kind of a general consensus that anything DL related comes along with a trigger warning whether stated or not, but just a TW considering I’ll be talking about some real life experiences; not in depth or detail of course, but just mentions of it :) Not only is this a Laito analysis but it’s also an educational tool to help other people know about this!

So, without further ado, rant under the cut!

Hypersexuality is something that many sexual assault/harassment and rape survivors experience after the abuse. People associate asexuality or sexual repulsion as the only (or common) psychological affect after experiencing those situations. However, there is another affect that can happen, and it is more common than people think, and aforementioned, it’s hypersexuality. It’s basically having more sexual feeling and urges after the experience, in order to cope with the nonconsensual one. And it’s exactly what Laito experienced after Cordelia’s abuse.

I’ve also experienced something like this. I don’t believe I’ve experienced it in full swing, but definitely something like it. I haven’t been raped thankfully, but I have been sexually harassed/assaulted before a handful of times. I know I’ve briefly mentioned that in other analyses, but I’m just explicitly stating it here.

I first learned about hypersexuality this year actually, and my Laito nerd brain was like “holy shit that’s the name of what Laito is going through.” Then I was like “oh fuck I’ve gone through that a little bit too.” I thought going along with would help me “heal” myself, and it really was doing the opposite. (UPDATE: realized that what I thought was a lot of sexual trauma/hypersexuality was mostly compulsory heterosexuality (but still with those dabbled in too—quite a terrible combo) because last month I realized I’m not attracted to men! Although those experiences I mentioned did mess me up a bit, realizing this is a huge step in the right direction for my own mental well being. Just had to make this correction on my part, since the original post had more emotional investment than I would have liked it to :))

Like I have said in my little update, I realized I was going through mostly compulsory heterosexuality while also going through some minor sexual trauma/hypersexuality. Although again, I have not had it as bad as Laito has or other sexual assault survivors (which I am grateful for that), I still have a personal grasp of coping mechanisms with traumatic experiences or experiences I did not particularly enjoy. (If you are interested in learning more about compulsory heterosexuality, feel free to send me an ask! I just don’t feel that it’s appropriate to talk about it in regards to Laito or make a post about it, since it doesn’t relate to him)

And that’s probably also why I can resonate with Laito so much, at least on that scale, and even if I experienced a grain of what he’s going through. I know he’s fictional but these are definitely real experiences and real feelings.

Laito’s case is a bit different than just feeling overtly sexual. Although he’s trying to heal himself through sex and other intimate actions, he’s also doing it as a type of revenge. He doesn’t like purity, and in fact, he’s quite jealous of it. I’ve heard this is also a pretty human way of coping with this type of abuse, and it is why I love Yui as a character. She’s incredibly strong and sets an example for Laito. This makes Laito jealous yet entertained by her, and that’s also a reason why he probably keeps her around. He also attempts to use Yui as a vessel to avenge his own feelings (even not knowing about Cordelia being in her at first). I personally wasn’t like that, but given the circumstances, there’s definitely people who are. Laito’s character can be so human to me sometimes, its astonishing, despite him being a character, a vampire, and just generally does some wacky or terrible shit.

You could say his hypersexuality could also be similar to typical Pavlovian Conditioning. You’ve probably heard of the whole experiment of training (conditioning) a dog to expect food when they hear a certain sound and thus, his mouth waters. We’re conditioned by a lot of things in our lives, from triggering a “flight or fight” response from this specific ringtone or high school bell. It’s just a built in “routine” our minds utilize to process pattern recognition. I know I say this a lot, but we don’t know how vampire brains in the DL universe compare to human brains (and quite frank, I don’t think we will), so I will just do my typical human brain picking.

In Laito’s case, he was conditioned to “love” Cordelia in a fashion that was incredibly gross. No, I won’t sugar coat it. In my Cordelia/Laito analysis, I talk about how Laito was probably groomed. Grooming is another type of conditioning. Although I don’t believe his grooming was sexual, it definitely “prepares” the victim to be exploited in that fashion later on. It’s to build a false sense of trust to be betrayed. Later on, when Cordelia started having sex with Laito, he became used to it in a “conditioned” fashion. When someone said that Cordelia was calling him, he knew what it was. He also thought it’s what he wanted, even though he knew that he didn’t. I believe I have referenced his MB Dark Prologue monologue before, but not this part of it. Here’s the monologue:

――Who is it that I give my love to? Throwing myself away, I caught the sight of someone Someone I didn’t recognize, Suddenly, I realized I was looking into a mirror. The mirror reflected myself within it. I couldn’t see anything else. I am disgraceful for this greed. I was wearing a visage. What I wanted, certainly was love. It’s not that easy. Because of these words, I suffer. No matter how many times love is said, The only thing that will be important to me, Is only the physical contact and body.

I know I've said it in the Laito/Cordelia analysis, but Laito is visibly confused in his flashbacks. He’s trying to grasp what love is, but then convinces himself that love is physical contact, and not emotional connection, especially near the end. He knows he’s suffering but he is still conditioned to think like this. Same case for people who suffer from hypersexuality.

Although many people do not know why it occurs, it can be a symptom or “side effect” from disorders, medication, and the like. In the sexual trauma case, I believe a main reason is that the person utilizes sex to cope with trauma, or because they are used to sexual acts being forced upon them. That’s where conditioning still comes in. He’s treated as one of her suitors, lovers, or the like. Even as a stand-in for Richter and Karlheinz. He doesn’t consider Cordelia to be his mom until the DF Vampire ending. On top of him not receiving emotional gratification which leads to all sorts of just awful stuff for him, sexual attention is the only type that he receives until Yui comes along. He is used to not having emotional support or connections, which is why physical contact is what he is more “comfortable” with, while at the end of the day it still does not satisfy him.

It creates a positive feedback loop of him being unsatisfied, while being confused about where he’s unsatisfied in, leading to him trying to “fix” himself or avoid his own personal, emotional problems through lust and sex, but then still finding himself not “healing.” Then the cycle continues, enthusing his hyper sexual behavior even more.

I was sent some great articles from @souchiika on the DL discord (thank you so much!) and one of the articles stood out to me, since I did not talk about this type of topic on this blog yet. Here’s the link to the article, and here’s the quote that stood out to me!

Furthermore, indirect effects were also statistically significant, providing support to the hypothesis that depression and guilt would be serial mediators of trauma-hypersexual behavior relations. The paths through depression and guilt have been found to be the most significant with moderate and high indirect effects on hypersexuality. Moreover, male gender, as covariate variable, is a relevant risk factor for hypersexual behavior.

Hypersexuality is something that is still being researched like I mentioned earlier, but since these findings came out, it definitely makes sense in Laito’s case (and in general). Like I said, Laito does feel unsatisfied and even shameful of his actions, which is more apparent in the beginning of his and Cordelia’s “relationship.” In those flashbacks, he asks himself if this is what he really wants, and although he attempts to force himself to like these actions as a coping mechanism, there is still a relative degree of shame and guilt he has. It is also apparent nearing his DF Ecstacy ending when he finds out that Karlheinz foresaw Cordelia having sex with him, and even wanted it to happen. All that shame and guilt came bellowing out while he was in a fit of distress. In initial attempts to mediate this guilt and shame, he projected his feelings onto other women through sexual acts, leading to more of this hypersexual loop. I know I talk about Laito projecting a lot, but it is frequent in his character. Like I’ve always said, it’s typical “bully” power dynamic manipulation. If Laito can bring a victim of his down to his level, then he feels better about himself (but it satisfies him for only a short while, until Yui in MB+).

Also, note that this is no excuse or justification for him to rape or sexually assault others. It is merely an explanation as to why he does it (as for my posts in general, it’s not a justification, it’s an explanation).

Another reminder that rape and sexual assault isn’t about the sexual urges, but about power. That’s why anybody with any background can do it, given the circumstances.

This post was a bit hard for me to write, so I apologize if I got too overtly personal for your liking. Like I’ve said in the past, I’m not writing this to gain sympathy too, and sure that sounds superficial of me to say now (although I truly mean it), I just want to use my platform as an educational tool. Sorry about the change in my typical tone :)

Sorry if this was too much of a doozy, I really wanted to talk about it and to educate people, despite it being a bit personal. I just felt like the most effective way was to convey how real this topic is, despite this fandom knowing about it in a fictional setting.

I hope you have a great day! -Corn

#analysis #laito sakamaki #sakamaki laito #corn gets personal #sakamaki raito #raito sakamaki #diabolik lovers #dialover #dialovers #dl

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thusatlas · 3 years

Text

Can we talk about Barty Crouch Jnr?

This tweaked bastard has been living in my head, rent free, since I read the Goblet of Fire - in 2005.

Think how much rent that is!

You see, this malevolent set of cheekbones is not only a brilliant portrayal of a true psychopath, but he’s also somewhat responsible for Voldemort’s death. And it all comes down to one, beautiful, sweet, doe-eyed glow-up baby -

Let me lay out fifteen years of thoughts here for you.

1. Is he a psychopath?

Well first let’s define psychopath. I’ve spent much time toiling over this conundrum for my Masters (not as long as Barty Crouch Jnr but enough). Hollywood has made the image of a psychopath synonymous with Hannibal or Patrick Bateman, but let me assure you - that is a very, very small percentage of what would actually be considered a psychopath. According to the DSM - V, there is no such thing diagnostically as a “psychopath”. This is for two reasons: law and philosophy. Philosophically speaking, the MindBody Problem is still at the forefront of conversations about the conscious, and so when faced with the paradox of a psychopath, the MindBody problem freaks the fuck out. Briefly, this problem is that we as neuroscientists and psychologists can map most - if not all - the ‘hardware’ of the brain. So the mechanical actions like moving your arm or drinking some tea. The hard problem - the actual problem - is we haven’t got a fucking clue what the Mind is. It’s all a bit... ineffable (that is legitimately how we academically put it, Neil Gaiman = God). Religion says that the Mind is the soul. Science says - we haven’t got a fucking clue what it is; it’s qualia, its unquantifiable experience that effects your entire worldview and make you wholey unique from everyone else on the planet.

And we can’t fucking find it on a map - hence its a problem.

Now this ineffable, unquantifiable mind, soul, conscious whatever you want to call it, is the thing that directs your moral compass. Psychopaths seem to present behaviour that does not prescribe to the moral code that we, in our relative societies have agreed upon. There is evidence to suggest that they do not feel guilt, which is a key ingredient in Moral psychology (I direct you to the research of Jonathon Haidt). Within the law, internationally, individuals with psychopathic traits are perceived as being predicated to criminal behaviour - therefore, exempt from taking any insanity defence. Now within psychology, because of the law and philosophy, and the mindbody problem - IT’S VERY FUCKING HARD TO DIAGNOSE A PSYCHOPATH BECAUSE WE CAN’T DECIDE WHAT ONE IS, because of all of the above. It’s all very... grey.

But what we can agree on, is there is a list of qualities that you would usually find in a psychopath, these are measured on the PCL-R (Hare 2003) and the PPI-R (Lilienfield and Widows 2005):

Machiavellian Egocentricity

Rebellious Nonconformity

Blame Externalisation

Carefree Nonplanfulness

Social Influence

Fearlessness

Stress Immunity

Coldheartedness

Early behavioural problems

Lack of realistic long term goals

Juvenile Delinquency

Parasitic Lifestyle

As you can see, Voldemort was a psychopath, but I digress. Barty, not so sure, and this is earmarked with the fact that we don’t know the entirety of his character. By the time he’s outed the first time, he has a seat on the Wizengamot and Crouch Snr is all shocked - like he never saw this behaviour coming. It can be inferred that a) Crouch Jnr is a excellent liar, capable of manipulation those closest to him with machiavellian behaviour; b) probably quite a well behaved young boy. So I would disregard the idea of juvenile delinquency and early behavioural problems.

And this scene stands as evidence that Crouch Jnr is capable of Rebellious Nonconformity as well as Blame Externalisation. We know that he was a politician prior and well liked, so I will again infer that he had Social Influence. I will also infer that he had a predilection for Stress Immunity given he was outed infront of the entire court room and his reaction was this:

Not screaming and running for the high hills. I’ll raise you the fact that he was undercover as Moody for an entire year, rubbing shoulders with Dumbledore, and seemed pretty chill about the whole thing given that he was acting in, what I can imagine to be, was a very stressful situation.

So as you can see, a fair argument could be made for Crouch Jnr to be diagnosed as a genuine psychopath.

And yet we come to the reason why this has bothered me for fifteen years.

2. The Character Development of Neville Longbottom

It’s a well loved narrative that Neville goes from the bumbling bucktooth first year, to the Gryffindor God slaying Nagini in the Battle of Hogwarts.

...deceased.

Anyway, years 1,2,3 Neville is still treated as the weakling: he’s forgetting books, he’s leaving Common Room passwords lying around so that they’re stolen by nefarious Kneezles who let in escaped convicts etc etc. Come forth year, we open with Neville stepping in the trick-step that everyone knows to miss and yet bumbling Neville, still doping along. At this point, you’re like, ‘na this kid is gonna die because he trips over his own shoelaces or something.’

And then that fateful Unforgiveable Curses lesson happens.

For those who need reminding, here Neville offers up the Cruciatus curse to which Professor Moody - aka Barty Crouch Jnr, tortures a spider using it as a demonstration. Neville is stricken by the whole event because of his parents. After the lesson, Hermione hurries Ron and Harry (who haven’t really realised that Neville was that effected) to find Neville who staring at a wall in a side corridor or stairwell - I can’t remember which. Neville’s shellshocked, saying he’s fine but keeps talking about dinner. He’s in full trauma.

Then Moody Crouch comes along.

3. The paradox

Moody Crouch then takes a traumatised Neville to his office, gently reassuring him, offering him tea and calling him ‘laddy’. Here, he tells Neville that Professor Sprout was singing his praises in Herbology and gifts him the book on African plants, I think it was. This book is what Harry and Ron see him avidly reading later. This is the start of his love of herbology, which then leads to him being the one to get Harry through the second challenge, which then allows Harry to go on and touch the portkey Triwizard cup. Whilst also setting Neville on the path of having confidence in himself. By book 5, Neville’s braver, he’s no longer forgetting things, and this only improves by the time we get to the Battle of Hogwarts where he becomes a literal Hero from a Greek Myth.

So, Psychopathic Machiavellian behaviour would say, he needs to get Harry on side. You do that by showing that you care. So you go over-board punishing the known bullies and enemies:

Whilst being nice to Harry’s friends (Neville with the book). He could have deliberately orchestrated the Unforgiveable curses lesson, in the attempt to traumatise Neville so that he could then be the Hero and be seen looking after him by Harry. Then you use the friend as a means to ensure that Harry is able to get through the second challenge, by setting him on the path of plants. Ergo, you complete you mission and your year long con. You got Potter to the graveyard, to the Dark Lord - you’re the best little psychopath and nobody suspected you the entire time.

BUT. He was nice. He was caring. He was tender with Neville.

And if you remember, psychopaths also have a tendency to have a Lack of realistic long term goals, and have behaviours that display Carefree Nonplanfulness and Coldheartedness. Getting Harry to the cup had to be a sure-fire thing. The plan had to be solid. It is my belief that Moody Crouch had a plan in place for every trial, but I do not believe he was the puppeteer pulling the strings. The aforementioned plan has too many if’s and but’s. Too much causality. Too much left up to circumstance. I think if Neville hadn’t done something, then Moody Crouch would have, but it was never the intention for Neville to be his tool - just a happy accident.

While he can be ascribed to portray some true psychopathic behaviours, I don’t believe that Barty Crouch Jnr was a psychopath. I think he was just rebelling in a really hard way from his Stiff, Loveless Father. Because this moment of caring, was a product of guilt. This was where Moody Crouch’s moral compass kicked in and he began to mentor Neville throughout fourth year (like a father) thus inadvertently setting Neville on a path to defeat Voldy-bollocks.

Thus the paradox: the best teacher Neville Longbottom ever had was a Death Eater.

And that just fucks me up.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

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