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gimme-mor · 3 years

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ACOTAR THINK PIECE: ELAIN ARCHERON, UNTOUCHABLE

*DISCLAIMER*

This will be a long post.

Please take the time to read this post in its entirety and truly reflect on the message I am trying to send before commenting. My goal is to use my background in Gender and Women’s Studies to deconstruct the comments I have seen on Tumblr and Twitter and bring awareness to the ACOTAR fandom.

The reason I am tagging “Elriel” in this post is to call attention to the arguments in the Elriel fandom that: weaponize Elain’s femalehood to shame real life people for their opinions about Elain’s character and her relationship with Lucien; victimize Elain’s character in fandom discussions; and coddle Elain’s character, which limits fandom discussions about her narrative development and prevents the ACOTAR fandom from holding Elain accountable for her actions and inactions in the same way that the fandom holds other characters accountable for their actions and inactions. It is for these reasons that I WILL NOT remove the “Elriel” tag from this post because all of the above points contribute to the toxic discourse surrounding Elain’s character.

I urge those who use these arguments to understand their implications, why they are problematic, regardless of intent, and reexamine their contributions to the ACOTAR fandom. I WILL NOT tolerate anyone who tries to twist my words and say I am attacking people and their personal shipping preferences. In fact, I AM CRITIQUING THE ARGUMENTS THEMSELVES NOT THE PEOPLE USING THE ARGUMENTS.

Also, I highly encourage the Elriel fandom to read this post because it addresses how the concept of choice as an argument enables arguments to exploit social justice and feminist languge in order to vilify Elucien shippers, among other problematic things.

Elain Archeron is one of the most polarizing characters in the ACOTAR fandom. Though opinions about Elain vary, arguments in the Elriel fandom cite society’s perception of traditional female characters in comparison to non-traditional female characters as the reason behind the hate, and this belief is used to provide an explanation as to why other characters in the series are favored over her. In the series, Elain is portrayed in a wholly positive light and this image carries over into the Elriel fandom, painting her character as a good and kind female who has been unfairly wronged and a victim of circumstances that were out of her control. When arguments in the Elriel fandom oppose other viewpoints in the fandom, they fall into one of three categories:

Category 1: Weaponize Elain’s femalehood to shame real life people for their opinions

Maybe people who hate Elain are just jealous of her in a weird way similar to when someone hates the pretty, nice, and charming girl in school just because she is too perfect

Disliking Elain is misogynistic

What happened to feminism? What happened to women supporting women? What happened to she can say no? All of that disappears the second you force Elain to be with Lucien

Elain antis are misogynistic

All Eluciens are Elain antis

Antis claiming they’re feminists when in reality they hate on Elain and Feyre but love Nesta

Elain antis are such sore losers. Y’all were that bunch of people who could not get over being rejected from hanging out with the cool kids so y’all are projecting your hatred towards pretty people now to get validation

I don’t get how Elain’s love for gardening equals boring for some people. I’m sorry your misogyny finds traditionally feminine activities boring

Why are you attacking a female? What did Elain do? Where are your feminist voices?

The fandom is misogynistic towards Elain

If people loved Elain they would ship Elriel

If you hate Elain it says a lot about your feelings toward women

If you hate Elain because she has no “development” then you must hate Azriel because otherwise you’re misogynistic

Eluciens are turned off by the idea of a woman that has the autonomy to reject a man for the simple reason that it is her choice

Eluciens are all about feminism and “it’s HER choice” until it comes down to females not wanting a male

Eluciens don’t respect Elain’s feelings when they ship her with someone that was part of her trauma and makes her feel uncomfortable

The way some Elucien shippers completely disregard how uncomfortable Elain is around Lucien is so hilariously not funny. Prioritizing being mates over Elain’s feelings is just regressive

It’s hard as a fan of Elain to see someone ship her with a person who makes her physically uncomfortable to be around. Wouldn’t you want both characters to be happy to be around each other

Imagine if SJM saw all the awful things her “stans” had to say about Elain

It’s true that we know comparatively little about her, but is she really boring or do you just not value stereotypically feminine traits?

So y’all are just gonna tell me you prefer Elucien over Elriel? Even though Lucien treats Elain as if she’s something that belongs to him? The only reason he wants to be with her is because she’s his mate, he doesn’t respect her, doesn’t treat her as his equal, even though that’s what mates should be? He doesn’t bother to look past what’s on the outside to see her for who she is. And Elain is obviously repulsed by the idea that she should belong to anyone or have no choice in who she can be with. Azriel is her friend and the only person who sees her quiet strength. He has so much faith in her, in her abilities; he’s the one who kept her company when no one else did, he’s the only one who bothered to see her for more than her brokenness. You’re going to tell me you still prefer Elucien over Elriel?

The more I see Gwynriels that ship Elucien out of their hate for Elain, the less I can understand Elain stans that ship Elucien. Pls Elain has made it very clear that she doesn’t want Lucien, why would you ship her with him? Do you hate her too? Smh

The real question would be, if you care and understand Elain why would you ship her with Lucien (where she canonically shrinks when he is near)?

People crying over Helion and Lucien’s mom not getting to be with each other and her being forced into a relationship she didn’t want, but also ship Elucien? Just say you hate Elain

When Elain’s book is out, Gwyn stans will look like clowns and I will laugh because they set her up by shipping her with Azriel just because they hate Elain. Watch them play the victims now because Elriels are clapping back the hate they’ve sent towards Elain

As romantic as wanting girl who is visibly uncomfortable around a guy who caused her trauma to end up with the said guy. Guess their standards for romance are in hell

Category 2: Victimize Elain’s character

Gwynriels only want Gwyn with Azriel because they despise Elain

Gwyn stans and Gwynriels are Elain antis

No one in the books dislike Elain, so why are there so many people who do?

Elain hasn’t done anything wrong or questionable to warrant the hate she gets

Not having Elain’s POV makes it easy for people to be swayed a certain way about her character if you already don’t relate to her in some way

It’s been years since this series came out and we haven’t gotten a lick of an Elain POV, but people still hate her for what? We don’t know her thoughts, dreams, or aspirations

We haven’t even had Elain’s perspective yet and people are passing these judgments off on her

Elain antis who say she’s boring are just cruel when she has obvious symptoms of PTSD like Feyre and Nesta

Gwyn is one of the most overhyped characters and that’s only because most people hate Elain and they couldn’t wait to find a random girl to ship Azriel with

Nesta was abusive to her sisters but Elain (who has only ever been kind) is painted as the villain

From the text we know that Elain is the epitome of feminine stereotypes (gentle, gardening, baking, non confrontational for the most part). Yet people still call her boring or deny that she has any interesting character traits?

You can’t love Nesta and hate Elain

People hate Elain because of internalized misogyny and lack of taste. All the girl does is tend to her garden and mind her business and they treat her worse than Tamlin

Does Gwyn deserve all this support? Of course yes! She is amazing! But where’s that support when Elain was in the same situation as she? Where’s that support for her right now? Why do they idolize Gwyn for her interactions with Azriel and hate Elain for having any interaction with him?

It’s not even a ship war anymore, they just hate Elain

People hate Elain for no reason

Some of y’all don’t like feminine traits and it shows

We know less about Eris and Helion but people don’t call them boring. Why would rejecting femininity make Elain more interesting?

Elain has had a lot forced upon her

The main reason I believe most people love Gwyn so much is to get Azriel away from Elain. It’s not a secret that Elain has been a widely hated character for years so suddenly we get a new female who has a minimal amount of interactions with Azriel and BOOM. New ship that once again doesn’t make sense (just like Azriel x Emerie after ACOFAS)

Elain hasn’t done something so terrible for her to get this hate. At this point some of you are just being misogynistic and you don’t want to accept it. Don’t call yourselves feminists and then say bs like this, it’s embarrassing. She’s pretty and everyone agreed to hate on her

Just a personal feeling, but I feel like a lot of the Elain hate stems from internalized misogyny. That to be a strong female lead, you need to pick up a sword and fight. That to be strong, you need to adapt traditionally masculine traits

Elain is feminine. She is beautiful. She loves to bake and garden. She is docile, quiet, observant, and a people-pleaser. All traditionally feminine traits. Yet for some reason, she’s like the worst in these people’s eyes?

I think also maybe a lot of people can’t relate to her femininity? That her being so beautiful and quiet doesn’t allow for the people who dislike her not to self-insert? Most of the hate stems from people not wanting Elain to be with Azriel. It’s mean, but maybe the people who hate Elain literally just can’t self-insert if they have a story and that’s why they’re vehemently against it?

Poor Elain. The Cauldron dealt her a bad deal. Upon emerging as Fae, she is immediately declared by Lucien as his mate, never mind that she was already engaged to a prick. Her love life is not good

It blows my mind how they really think that they can compare all the shit that Elain gets with some dumb jokes about Gwyn on Twitter (and yes, the “hate” towards her started mostly because Elriels are clapping back, it was bound to happen)

I would think of it as anti-feminist with Elain and Lucien because she has consistently stated that she does not want him so if she was forced to embrace the bond that would be taking away her right to have a choice but with Az she feels comfortable around so if they were mates then Elain would be happy and feel safe which again should be the priority for women to feel safe in their relationships with anything and to not be forced into any type of situation aka the mating bond in this

Category 3: Coddle Elain’s character

Elain has value the way she is, in all her domestic girly glory. Not every character has to be badass

We don’t speak of Elain’s flaws frequently because everyone else already speaks badly of her, mainly in an unfair way

There is definitely something deeper going on with Elain but by no means will she ever be evil or any less feminine. That goes against everything we already know about her

It’s ok to critique Elain because she needs growth but y’all keep forgetting the shit her and her sisters went through

The last “bad” thing Elain did in ACOTAR was not help Feyre when they were impoverished and I’m tired of people acting like she’s a terrible character when it was their father’s responsibility. It happened 4 books ago and Feyre has forgiven both Nesta and Elain

Elain’s character and the evil Elain theory are a great example of the trend where people only consider female characters interesting if they reject femininity

We don’t know enough to hate Elain

Many people want Elain to turn evil (which in my opinion seems to come from a place of internalized misogyny)

However we don’t tend to talk about her faults, at least not publicly, as that has been, and still is, done to death, and I--personally, at least--find it much more fun to theorise about potentially interesting aspects of the overall plot, than dwell on negatives

And ultimately, I would be shocked if Elain has a more karmically-charged story than Nesta, considering that Elain’s “wrongs” are so much less severe and bad than Nesta’s, and Elain has already apologized for them (or paid the price in other ways, like through what Graysen did)

I guess I also think Elain has suffered and been punished enough. I hope her story is about finding hope in terrible situations, and learning to love her new life, and choosing her own path after everything that has been done to her. I don’t think she needs to be punished anymore or face any additional trauma

Also, why is she being judged on her decisions as a human at all? Fae are monsters to humans! They enslaved them for thousands of years, and the Wall was erected to keep them out

Like I’m sorry, but think Elain would want to leave her ONLY FAMILY AND FRIENDS for the Spring Court where she has no one because--oh look, lots of flowers!--is the craziest thing I have ever heard

Her sisters are in the Night Court. Her nephew is in the Night Court. Her closest friends (Nuala and Cerridwen) are in the Night Court. Her love interest is in the Night Court. Her extended family is in the Night Court. Her home is in the Night Court

SJM isn’t going to keep two sisters together and split up the third. Especially not keep Feyre and Nesta together and separate Elain. They were either all going to end up in separate places, or together. Not 2 here and 1 there

Compared to the other female characters in the series, Elain is the only character whose femalehood is at the center of conversations; this is because arguments in the Elriel fandom fixate on it when discussing her character. While Elain, Feyre, Nesta, and Mor are all representations of white womanhood and white beauty, Elain epitomizes the most fragile version of white womanhood. It’s easy to blame society’s perception of traditional female characters in comparison to non-traditional female characters when it comes to the discourse surrounding Elain’s character because it: falls in line with the fixation on Elain’s femalehood to silence opposing viewpoints; is a simplistic explanation that fails to tackle the underlying issues with Elain as a character, the same issues that are downplayed in-universe; absolves Elain of her wrongdoings; prevents the ACOTAR fandom from holding Elain accountable for her actions and inactions within the series; and diminishes the impact Elain’s actions and inactions have on those around her. It’s not that Elain is hated in the fandom because she’s a traditional female character; it’s the fact that arguments in the Elriel fandom deflect a critical analysis of Elain’s character because she’s a traditional female character who embodies the ideal white woman in need of protection. White fans and white-aligned fans of color, especially white women, have a tendency to vehemently defend, gatekeep, and coddle white female characters in fandom; this makes it difficult for other fans to engage in critical discussions about these white female characters because they’re viewed as flawless and all around perfect characters despite evidence to the contrary. Since Elain is viewed positively by the other characters in the series, it has rendered her character untouchable to any perceived slight or criticism in fandom discussions because those negative opinions challenge what has been said about her character thus far. And as a result, her character has been placed on a pedestal and implicitly hailed as the epitome of white womanhood; and when she’s criticized, it’s seen as a direct attack against white womanhood. Arguments in the Elriel fandom: exploit feminist language and perpetuate white feminist tactics under the guise of defending Elain’s character; center Elain in conversations about female oppression in the ACOTAR world and uphold white feminist ideologies in their critique of ACOTAR’s patriarchal society; and use the fragile white woman narrative to victimize Elain in Lucien’s presence, playing into racial biases that are associated with white supremacy’s defense of white womanhood.

Feminism is a social movement that seeks to promote equality and equity to all genders, and feminists work toward eradicating gender disparities on a macro-level, in addition to challenging gender biases on a micro-level. As feminism became more mainstream, a flat and oversimplified version of feminism emerged: mainstream feminism. The mainstream feminist movement is meant to represent all women, but rarely does it center conversations around issues that concern most women. The problem with mainstream feminism is that it’s just a popularized version of white feminism. White feminism has relied extensively on an individualized understanding of women’s oppression, exclusively from the lens of privileged white women. White feminism only focuses on the oppression experienced by white, able-bodied, affluent, educated, cishet women; and it views gender as the key mode of privileged white women’s oppression, isolated from the privileges granted by their other social identities. White women can be and are oppressed under the patriarchy but only because they are women; their identity as women does not exempt them from the privileges granted by their whiteness. The term white feminist does not mean any feminist who is white, but refers to feminists who prioritize the concerns of privileged white women as though they are representative of all women. However, the term is not exclusive to white people. Because white feminism is so pervasive, people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds often buy into white feminism, believing that if they work hard enough, they may be able to reap its rewards.

Just like white feminism, mainstream feminism only recognizes the identity of being a woman, assumes that all women share common experiences of gender oppression, fails to address other social identities in relation to overlapping systems of oppression, and disregards privilege in relation to various social identities. Just like white feminism, mainstream feminism is palatable because it doesn’t seek to challenge the systems in place, instead its goal is to succeed within them. Essentially, mainstream feminism and white feminism are extensions of performative feminism. Performative feminism is a type of performative activism that’s used to describe feminist views that are surface level and solely for the benefit of one type of person. It’s a pretense which often has nothing to do with genuine activism. Arguments in the Elriel fandom normalize and promote performative feminism because the topic of feminism is only referenced when discussing Elain. This indicates that these arguments are engaging in disingenuous discourse to push a personal agenda within the ACOTAR fandom, and it becomes more apparent when they use white feminist tactics to shut down opposing viewpoints:

White feminists weaponize and exploit feminist language to silence the opinions of other women, especially when they’re called out for their problematic behaviors

White feminists use the phrase “Women supporting women” to defend other white feminists who exhibit problematic behaviors instead of holding them accountable

White feminists weaponize phrases like “Women supporting women” and “You just hate women” to attack other women who disagree with them on any given topic

White feminists use phrases like “All women face challenges” and “Stop pitting women against each other” to sidestep conversations about privilege

White feminists divert conversations away from privilege and towards the Trauma Olympics to equate their struggles to the oppression of marginalized people

White feminists skirt around the realities of other forms of oppression and discrimination, downplaying the experiences of marginalized people

White feminists diminish or ignore the ways in which gender oppression affects other marginalized people

White feminists paint those they harmed as aggressive, mean, or divisive when confronted with the ways they have harmed a marginalized group

White feminists deflect criticism by focusing on the anger or emotions being expressed rather than the issue that is being discussed, invalidating the concerns of marginalized people

White feminists speak over marginalized voices in an attempt to sound “woke”

White feminists get defensive and insist there’s no way they could be a part of the problem because of what they’ve done to help marginalized groups already

White feminists say they don’t see color in an attempt to obscure racial issues that need to be addressed

White feminists center and victimize themselves in conversations about racism, which derails necessary conversations from taking place

White feminists who are white weaponize the intersectionality of their race and gender to avoid accountability

Feminism is not meant to be approached from an individualistic perspective nor is it only about addressing the experiences of privileged white women, it involves addressing the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, and other social identities as well; and it involves addressing how these social identities relate to privilege. Moreover, feminism is not about women upholding complete loyalty to other women because of a shared gender identity, and to claim that it does implies that women should be held to different emotional standards than men. If men are able to dislike and criticize other individual men, real or fictional, without their characters being compromised, why aren’t women granted that same privilege?

It’s clear that SJM set up the ACOTAR world to mirror a patriarchal society, and that the imbalance of power between males and females stems from sexism. Arguments in the Elriel fandom analyze the ACOTAR world through a feminist lens to show how ACOTAR’s patriarchal society, to which the mating bond is innately tied, contributes to female oppression and limits their agency. When choice and free will are emphasized as part of Elain’s arc, they imply that Elain, through the mating bond, experiences female oppression under ACOTAR’s patriarchal society because of her identity as a female with that identity being the focal point of her oppression in the world. Elain is one of the most privileged characters in the ACOTAR world: she’s High Fae; she’s the sister of the High Lord and High Lady of the Night Court, which gives her access to wealth and political influence because of that connection; she’s able-bodied; she was magically blessed by the Cauldron; and she lives in Velaris, a place that grants females autonomy and power because of the beliefs of Rhysand and Feyre. Arguments in the Elriel fandom trivialize female oppression in the ACOTAR world because they disregard the fact that Elain’s privileges prevent her from experiencing female oppression in the same way that other marginalized females in the world do. The mating bond being one such example because those around Elain are not forcing the bond on her, instead they’re allowing Elain to reach a decision about the bond for herself; a privilege that other marginalized females in the world probably wouldn’t have. Just because Elain has endured hardships in her life and is a female in a patriarchal society, they do not erase the privileges she holds within the ACOTAR world. The failure to include Elain’s privileges in discussions about Elain being a female in a patriarchal society feeds into white feminist ideologies because white feminism operates from a very narrow perspective; it doesn’t take other intersecting identities into account when it examines gender oppression, leaving no room for discussions about privilege (or lack thereof) in relation to those intersecting identities. When discussing oppression in hierarchical societies, it’s imperative that privilege is also included in the conversation because privilege and oppression are not mutually exclusive; they equally affect the ways in which people navigate those societies through their social identities.

Rather than attributing Elain’s uncomfortability to her new life as a Fae female or the mating bond itself and her trauma to the Cauldron, the King of Hybern, or Ianthe, they’re placed on Lucien to cast his character in a negative light. Moreover, fandom discussions portray Lucien as a possessive character to further emphasize Elain’s discomfort despite the inaccuracy of this characterization in canon. Arguments in the Elriel fandom play into racial biases when it comes to Lucien (a male character of color) because they mischaracterize his character in order to victimize Elain (a white female character), placing her character in the role of the white damsel in distress. In Western society, the concept of womanhood has been conceptualized from a Eurocentric perspective with femininity and feminine attributes favoring white women. It’s the idea that a certain type of femininity is only inherent to white women as they are seen as the embodiment of an ideal womanhood. White womanhood has been a symbol of innocence and purity, and white women have been viewed as fragile beings in need of protection. The reason white womanhood functions within white supremacy is because it’s the same idea that has motivated white men to kill and beat black and brown men. The so-called protection of white women has been used as a justification for the horrific violence committed by white men because black and brown men were stereotyped as aggressive and seen as a threat to the virtue of white women. The white damsel in distress trope considered white women as worthy of protection because of their perceived innocence and purity; women of color were not granted that same treatment because they did not fit into the ideal image of womanhood. Over the years, this trope became a means for white women to exercise limited power in a patriarchal society with white women weaponizing their status as the damsel much to the detriment of black and brown men. It’s through the white damsel in distress trope that white supremacy sustains its dominance in Western society. The misrepresentation of characters of color in fandom, the dismissal of their importance to the overall story, and using them as tools in arguments centered around white characters are the foundation of fandom racism; they’re examples of how racism moves silently in fandom spaces. Instead of examining their behavior and taking constructive criticism from fans of color, white fans will often double down on their bigotry and center their uncomfortability in the conversation when confronted with their complicity in fandom racism. White fans expect fans of color to swallow fandom racism in its many forms in order to not ruin the experience of fandom, dismissing the fact that racism is prevalent in nearly every aspect of society. This mentality ensures that no one is held accountable for the harm they caused and alienates fans of color in fandom spaces.

To reiterate what I mentioned in my first think piece: terms like “oppression”, “the right to choose”, “feminist”, “feminism”, “anti-feminist”, “anti-feminism”, “internalized misogyny”, “misogyny”, “misogynist”, “sexist”, “sexism”, “racist”, “racism”, “classist”, “classism”, “discrimination”, and “patriarchy” are all used in specific ways to draw attention to the plight of marginalized people and challenge those who deny the existence of systems of oppression. Yet these words and their meanings can be twisted to attack, exclude, and invalidate people with differing opinions on any given topic. When social justice and feminist terms are thrown around antagonistically and carelessly to push a personal agenda, it becomes clear that these terms are being used to engage in disingenuous discourse and pursue personal validation rather than being used out of any deep-seated conviction to dismantle systemic oppression. Being an ally, activist, or feminist is not an identity, it’s a practice. It requires: ongoing self-reflection; holding ourselves accountable; listening to marginalized people; educating ourselves; dismantling implicit biases; challenging those around us who are exhibiting problematic behaviors; and action behind our words.

It’s important to be aware of the language that is used within the fandom when defending or critiquing characters and ships. It’s also important to question how an argument is framed and why it’s framed the way that it is to critically examine the intent behind that argument: is it used as a tool to push a personal agenda that reinforces problematic behaviors, or is it used as an opportunity to share, learn, enlighten, and educate?

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Tagging: @spell-cleavers @bookofmirth @m0bulidae @ilya-boltagon

#elain archeron #elriel #acotar fandom #acotar: fandom critical

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stormblessed95 · 3 years

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Sneaking an ask in before you lock it down!

I wouldn’t mind some expanded thoughts on the whole hiding a real gay couple with a fake gay couple theory. So this is a narrative from the TKkr side that seems preposterous to us on the Jkkr side because we know (or strongly believe based on mountains of ‘evidence’) it isn’t true. Big Hit isn’t forcing JK and KM to interact to hide TK.

Buttt, assuming that the ‘real’ couple is Jikook, does it not serve to protect them that there is this doubt or whatever cast by the (very loud) TK believers? Like, I would expect that JK probably wishes he could shut that shit down, but it is in his (and all of BTS’s) best interest not to because, by not also shutting down Jikook, it highlights that that relationship may actually be real. (although TKrs would still call conspiracy so maybe not!)

I do not think this is something that is actively undertaken by the participants per se, and especially not anything that BH masterminds / forces. I just think that it is actually in Jikook’s best interest that there is a dominant ship that involves one of them and therefore by default acts as a cover of sorts.

Ok, this line of thought better not give any ammunition to TKkrs cause god help us all. And maybe I am placing too much importance on shipping in general since we are hyper-focussed on it and BTS / BH maybe doesn’t actually pay much attention to it?

I really just wish it was a perfect world and our two boys could be out and open but ultimately just hope those two lovelies are happy and don’t pay any attention to the shipping BS. :-)

Hello lovely,

Let me start by saying that hiding a gay couple behind another gay couple is illogical, no matter what couple you think is being hidden. TK is not hiding KM, KM is not hiding TK, or any variation of the 21 different ship possibilities.

Let's also keep in mind that Tae and JK have shut down their shippers, twice. Once with Tae telling a Tkkr to get out of her imagination on Weverse, and with the TK ITS conversation that they put out for the fans to see. They very clearly have said, we are not romantically involved. No matter what else they do, no matter what skinship occurs, they are not boyfriends. They are good friends and they have fun together, but they are not together in a romantic way.

Let's take a moment to talk about shipping culture in general. It's very normal. It's even encouraged in Kpop often. The boys are all aware of the ships, it would be impossible to not know, hell they came up with half their ship/unit names themselves. So if we work off the assumption that we are correct that Jikook are indeed a couple, they are hiding in plain sight. Are they hiding behind the ruse of another couple or other shippers being loud? No, but they are definitely using shipping culture and stereotypical ideas of fanservice in kpop to their advantage. They are using the closeness of the group and skinship they all enjoy and participate in to hide behind. They aren't using Taekook or Yoonmin or Jihope as a cover for their relationship. But they are utilizing their glass closet to its fullest potential.

They know that most of the shit they do will be dismissed as "that is just how they all are" or "they all do it" or "it's typical kpop fanservice" or "it's normal in kpop to be touchy like that." Do they rely on other shippers to hide them? No. Do they rely a bit on shipping culture? Yes, I do think so. I think that the shipping culture in Kpop and around idols has given them leeway to get away with things, even big things, such as Rosebowl in a way that would be impossible otherwise. They can live comfortable in their glass closet of ambiguity and not be questioned as too much by the general fandom about why no one batted an eye at the way they were looking too much at each other there because "Suga and JK looked endearingly into each other's eyes too... uwu shipping... yay"

They enjoy each other, they enjoy their best friends and can't simply just.... not label their relationship. In Korea, things are still very very conservative. You can do things like overt skinship, kissing someone's neck, sucking their ears, hinting at everything that could be more than friendly.... and yet, unless you say the words. Unless you label yourself, you will be assumed straight, no matter what. It is kinda shitty, but if KM are real, that is definitely something they are taking advantage of. It is a very extreme case of "Don't ask, Don't tell." No, Jikook are not hiding behind other fake couples in the band. But they are using the idea of fanservice and shipping to their advantage to not just hide, but get away with more and doing more to be how they want to be. To have to hide less while still not being outted. If that makes sense. Lol I hope I'm making sense. Basically no other dominate ship is acting as a "cover" for KM if they are boyfriends, rather shipping culture in general is.

As for KM coming out? It won't happen. And as much as they deserve to just love whoever they love, if that person is each other, that will firmly be kept a secret. Maybe one day after they disband and KM are possibly still living together and not changing their behavior or hiding it, it will be even more obvious. But I don't think they will ever confirm anything. And they shouldn't really have to. But if nothing else, it 100% will never happen before disbandment. Not only do they both still have to go through military service, where if you are caught engaging in homosexual activities, you can be jailed. Why give them more reason to look for that? Don't ask, don't tell. They probably won't come out after that either. As much as it SHOULDN'T matter if two members of BTS are dating each other, it would. It would take over headlines for months. It would be all anyone is talking about. It would be asked about in all the interviews. Their relationship would become world gossip fodder. And the focus would be less on the 7, less on the music they create and more on the social and political upheaval their coming out would be. That isn't fair to their hardwork, their passion and their life work. It also isn't fair to the rest of the band. Their sexuality would for a while, overshadow their music. I don't think they would ever take the risk of being remembered for who they love, rather than for what they loved doing. Hopefully that also made sense. Maybe one day they will feel comfortable sharing whatever their relationship is with the world, but they are under no obligation to ever do so and I personally don't think they will.

They give enough hints, they make it quite clear that they are special to each other. That their dynamics and feelings towards the other are different, maybe more. They hide being the ambiguity, but don't hide their feelings. For those who see it, you see it. As frustrating as it might be sometimes, it is also freeing in some ways too, especially with where and how they have to live. Pros and cons... they are very open without actually telling us anything. They have mastered the art of sharing without actually giving us confirmation of anything. Like I said maybe years and years down the road, when BTS isn't in every headline of every news organization around the entire globe, maybe they will be less hidden. Maybe they will be more open about it. Or maybe they won't. Either way, it's okay and we should just enjoy their bond for what it is and what they chose to share with us along the way.

Hope this all made sense! Thanks for the ask and hope it helped explain my thinking on all the mess that is hiding ships, and hiding couples and glass closets, etc... I probably rambled too much. Lol 💜 Hope you all have a good day

#jikook #kookmin #Big Hit is not hiding jikook or taekook #jikook glass closet #shipping culture #ask #anon

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onebizarrekai · 3 years

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ok NOW I have time to talk about the v3 ending for a second and why the popular belief that the audition tapes were real is one of the most baffling things to me. don’t get me wrong, ‘pregame’ has the capacity to be an interesting au if done correctly, and there’s fun to be had with it, but the writing in the game does not actually encourage you to believe in its existence and it’s so odd to me that it’s taken as hard fast canon.

I mean, actually, you technically can check. I think this is the writing deliberately encouraging the player to revisit the prologue and see that the way tsumugi described it happening in the trial is not actually what happened.

number two, they claim that the prologue of the story began after they got their costume changes, which is also obviously not true. it started when they came out of the lockers in their ordinary school uniforms. (seems like tsumugi is indirectly trying to divert attention away from that point that the player has access to, claiming that it is not part of the story.)

shuichi specifically flashbacks to this moment. they go on for like three minutes talking about how everything tsumugi said could’ve been bs.

they literally end on that note of shuichi refusing to believe they auditioned, and very ambiguously too. they didn’t actually give anyone any incentive to believe what happened during the trial–in fact, they encouraged otherwise.

amidst all the ambiguity, the only lead the game really gives you is the one that tells you to replay the prologue to confirm where the characters can’t. the attention drawn to this particular inconsistency between the prologue and the final trial feels very purposeful, not to mention shuichi’s lack of belief towards it. the difference is glaringly apparent. like I said, it draws attention.

of course, they don’t resolve it at all and the whole game ends on a big maybe, but again, the only lead they give the player is revisiting the prologue. they want you to see how it’s inconsistent. the truth is not supposed to be set in stone.

there were a couple other things I wanted to mention.

one, prior to being refitted as ultimates in the prologue, all of the characters remembered being kidnapped. if they had willingly signed up for the killing game, why in the world would they need to be kidnapped? why would all of them seem so confused about what’s happening if they had knowingly auditioned for danganronpa? if they’d already had their memories wiped at that point to prepare them for new memories, why let them remember that they were kidnapped? it seems very convenient for tsumugi that nobody remembers anything from before they transformed into ultimates… but the player does.

even tsumugi’s explanation of the prologue flashback makes very little logical sense. if all of them really were fans of danganronpa in some regard, they would probably know right away that they were going to appear on the show; there wouldn’t be any room for confusion. if tsumugi’s account was even accurate in the slightest, and there was somehow some dialogue that was obstructed from the player during the prologue, it seems infeasible that it would take them so long to realize what was happening because they would have suspected it the moment they woke up in a dark, mysterious school and were asked to gather at the gym.

not to mention, why the heck would they show kaede and kaito’s audition tapes and not maki and himiko’s–y’know–the two other people that were actually there? it’s like this “evidence” was handpicked for the protagonist… oh wait.

two, ever since I noticed the implication that maki is not affected by flashback lights, it puts a whole new perspective on every story she tells in the game and even her placement and purpose in the killing game itself. I feel like this theory speaks for itself, especially when you take into account maki’s story about going to a convention (tsumugi in her natural habitat) to kill a target, and failing.

three, kinda.

all three of their school uniforms in their audition tapes are distinctly inconsistent with their sprites.

after I noticed shuichi’s, I was about to pass this off as another dumb artistic mistake, but then I checked kaede’s and kaito’s and found the same exact thing.

let me point them out if you can’t see them very well: shuichi has 3 buttons on his uniform, not 2, kaede has 1 stripe on her uniform and not 2, and kaito’s buttons are black on his shirt in his sprite and rather ordinary in the audition tape. also, shuichi’s shoes look light brown, even though they kinda match his hair on the sprite. the inside of kaito’s jacket collar is also white on the sprite, while it isn’t in the tape.

… I really wish I could say this is a striking observation and all, and possibly even intended to be proof that the tapes were fake, but also… I’ve made a post about the art inconsistencies in this game before. I failed to notice this one at the time, but v3 is not known for the quality and consistency of its art. a couple of kaede’s prologue cgs show her with two stripes as well. heck, the one of her being kidnapped up there is one of them. when I realized that all three of the audition tapes had inconsistencies with the official character designs, I got my hopes up a little… but we can’t win ‘em all, huh.

anyway, long story short, the epilogue implies one thing: it’s that 1) the prologue is different from how tsumugi explained it, 2) the player has the power to revisit it to confirm this, and 3) the game wants you to revisit it to confirm this, deliberately drawing attention to the incongruity of the two tales. the version of the prologue that the players see is not part of tsumugi’s grand story. last of all… it’s just my own theory about the game itself, but I think tsumugi was full of shit and the players were never supposed to take what she said as the simple truth to begin with, especially due to the narrative encouragement to distrust it.

it’s clear that the game planned for ambiguity and multiple interpretations and reception, thanks to all the ‘maybes’ it ends on… but isn’t it so strange that fans seem more willing to trust tsumugi’s contradictory account rather than the distrust of the main characters that has so much attention drawn to it? nobody knows what’s in the outside world… and that’s the point.

#danganronpa #ndrv3 #drv3 #long post #drv3 spoilers #v3 spoilers #random stuff #god I went to town with this #analysis #I go into this mode every time I see someone confidently say that the characters auditioned in v3 #I'm thinking even the game doesn't want you to believe that

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writingwithcolor · 4 years

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Magical person in history, on not intervening on human rights issues

I am writing a dating sim/visual novel set in the present day. A major (non-romanceable) character is an ancient sorceress who moved from France to the Pacific Northwest in the 1850s. She is white. She is shown to have powerful magic. She also works closely with the main characters and develops personal relationships with them as she teaches them magic, giving each character comfort and advice during their respective stories.

Considering the events in America around her move-in date, there’s no way she could have missed the horrible human rights abuses going on, and there’s no way she was too powerless to help, even when most of the fighting and slavery was so far away. So I’m having trouble balancing “don’t make her a white savior by having her personally fireball Robert E. Lee” against “Hogwarts University is cancelled because Dumbledorette didn’t care about slavery.” I had the idea that the magical regulating body back home in France didn’t want her to intervene due to political reasons, so she helped out in small ways that could safely fly under the radar. She later realized that she prioritized her social standing over the suffering of countless others, so she began making a point of reducing human suffering as much as she could.

I can’t imagine this will show up in more than one small scene, but doing it wrong could really sour the whole thing. Is this backstory still icky? Should I just not mention it and let readers headcanon what they please?

I’m wondering what you think was happening in the PNW at the time for the fighting and slavery to be “far away.” Washington State had the Cayuse War at exactly this time period, Oregon didn’t ratify treaties and was calling for the extermination of “the I*dian race” in roughly this time period, and California’s Gold Rush created the California Genocide starting heavily in the 1840s, picking up steam in the 1850s, which included slavery of California Natives thanks to a law enacted in 1850 that lasted for 13 years.

This is all from the top five results of googling “pacific northwest genocide 1850”, for the record. It’s not exactly hidden history.

So suddenly your character’s lack of movement in healing the poisoned populations as disease ravaged the area, in attempting to stop or at least buy and free the enslaved Natives being auctioned on their doorstep, or in attempting to get treaties ratified and honoured looks a lot more damning.

This is not counting any of the future events that happened at the turn of the century, including the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Hawai’i monarchy being overthrown, and Federal Order 9066, which is the WWII concentration camps (that included Japanese, German, and Italian individuals). This is just to name a handful of coastal issues in the next 100 years, completely ignoring Jim Crow, residential schools, the San Francisco Earthquake (which nearly had Chinese people relocated to the worst land imaginable for gentrification purposes, had the Empress of China not stepped in), and many others.

In short: she would have had hundreds of opportunities to end suffering, and focusing on a single event as a small scene feels disproportionate to how much she could have done.

And honestly? The French were no angels.

The Second French Colonial Empire was one of the largest empires in history, and it began in 1830, covering roughly a third of Africa. The First French Colonial Empire began in the 1600s, and had both India and North America, primarily Canada.

She was white. French. You don’t specify her birth year other than “ancient”, but considering the sheer amount of territory-grabbing France has been doing since Normandy invaded England in the eleventh century AD, I’m going to assume her birth year is somewhere more recent than that. Therefore, I’m going to assume she has been around the Catholic Missionary Attitude that France had; one could call that attitude the bedrock of its existence for at least a millennia (and is still visible in modern day).

So tell me: when did she break out of it? What made her even care about human atrocities, when she has likely grown up watching France commit them her entire life?

Because let me just say, she has had plenty of opportunities to realize she did nothing in the face of her neighbours’ hatred of people not like them, and she has never taken them before.

Did she (or her parents, if she was born around this time) decry Napoleon re-introducing slavery in France in 1802? Side with Haiti when it declared independence in 1804, and hate that the government forced Haiti to pay for the “theft” of slaves and land (that was only paid off in 1947)? Is she presently championing for France to pay Haiti the money it wrongfully took from the country? Did she hate the delays in stopping the French slave trade, which took 11 years to actually stop after it was banned on paper?

Unconditional emancipation was only reached in 1848, after all. I don’t care if she was born in 1830, there was some sort of major racial event happening in France all throughout the late 1700s to mid-1800s. Where did she side then?

Abolitionism was not an unknown concept in France, so it is possible she had already been working towards it quietly, but that would mean she would have felt guilt at inaction much earlier, depending on when she began decrying slavery—if she was even delayed in decrying it, which I will admit is possible.

And if she was an abolitionist, would she have even listened to the French government in not at least easing the genocide around her? Because she would have watched nearly 100 years of the French dragging their feet on stopping slavery in their empire, and known how BS it all was… if she saw it that way.

That’s just abolitionism, and is not even counting the French relationship with the Native population in Quebec and the Great Lakes region, which is a giant tangle of proxy wars, colonialism, missionary work, and very, very, very complex relationships that started off good and ended terribly.

So I ask again: why did she only start caring then?

Speaking of proxy wars, the Napoleon Empire wanted a Confederate victory, because the Confederacy was its source of cotton and the American Civil War created a “cotton famine” in France that basically forced the textile industry into a massive downsizing. The Confederacy also tolerated Napoleon’s plans for expanding the empire in Mexico, which actually had begun in December of 1861.

So when it comes to how a magical board would rule—even though France was officially neutral in the war, the court of public opinion (among politicians and capitalists) was more on the Confederate side than the Union side. Many politicians secretly worked with the Confederacy, until they abandoned them when the Union showed signs of winning. The only reason France officially remained neutral is because a war with the British was inevitable if they acknowledged the Confederacy, and Napoleon didn’t want that.

I shall work under the assumption that because it was rather literally on her doorstep when she moved to America, she lost insulation to it (if she hadn’t thought about it before), but I will say how iffy that makes her look in the long term if she had so many opportunities beforehand (at the very least, seeing slaves in France).

My other option is the word “ancient” is liberally applied and she was only in her 20s or 30s when 1850 hit, and therefore had not had many opportunities to see otherwise (but she still would have seen slaves in France, likely).

Onto the white guilt and white saviour aspects

Strictly from a writing perspective, you have to determine if she changed the course of history, or not. This would not necessarily be within the realm of white saviour, seeing as white people were the only ones listened to at the time. You can see people who changed the course of history in this period by looking up the pastor who insisted Lincoln hold fair trials for the Dakota, which brought the execution count from over 200 down to 38. You can also look at Alice Fletcher, who made quite a few laws designed to protect Native people, but whether or not they were successful is up for debate (and she regretted some of the laws she helped enact).

If not, then you have the current tangle you’re dealing with.

Option 1

She was unestablished in America and relied on the magical regulations board to protect her, and she figured working small and under the radar would mean she could do more good long-term by not being killed, so long as you establish that such a threat is viable.

This option only works if she’s an active advocate for the slew of other racist acts that pass once she’s settled in America, of which I gave many examples above.

Option 2

She actually did change the course of history in perhaps a mixed way, or perhaps a positive way. She could have relied completely on being a white, well-to-do voice in the community, which would have granted her some privilege without using a drop of magic.

This can apply to any point in history, seeing as there were a lot of others to pick from. It would be particularly useful once suffrage was achieved, and if she was part of suffrage, did she call out Susan B. Anthony’s racism? Did she encourage allowing non-whites to vote?

Option 3

She was slow to care, and did not actually understand what a big deal it was that such atrocities were happening until it was too late. This leads to her dedication to atonement the strongest, but you have to be careful about white guilt. This option can go along with option 1.

This allows her to be a passive player in future racist events, but makes her an even more privileged white character who PoC will have a hard time seeing as kindly, and you should go out of your way to show white players how unkind and privileged she was, and perhaps still is.

Option 4

she doesn’t actually care much, because she has a president of not caring about atrocities happening in France, and her bigotry shows up in other ways in modern day and she’s just a kindly-but-bigoted character. She’s your wonderful grandma who you have beautiful memories with… she just doesn’t care about anyone not white.

This can go along with option 3, as she was so slow to realize that she is still bigoted and hasn’t done any work, but her racism is going to be more covert and you’ll have to do research on microaggressions and how to frame them.

Based off the way her lack of action is framed in-story and how little a plot role it plays, I would say that option 4 with a dash of option 3 appears to be the most likely interpretation of her character by PoC. She’s lip-service to progress, at present, but seems to have made no strides in losing her social standing to be an ally.

Now here’s why I don’t think you should let readers headcanon her however they want:

White players in particular are going to minimize her culpability in what happened, and think that she did all that she could, and she is a Totally Redeemed Character now. In fact, they’ll probably wonder why she’s even an Atoner, because she did something, right? She helped, right? And now she’s helping and that’s plenty. She’s good to the players, so she is a Good Person.

Meanwhile PoC players are going to see yet another white author ignore the fact that colonialism was happening en masse at the time, and that white people deeply benefited from it, and are going to see the “it happened in the past why do you keep bringing up racism?” defence continued.

Let her be flawed. Let her be on stolen land and acknowledge it every time she teaches them something, and let her sit and exist in the guilt that happens when she realizes she could have stopped the theft but didn’t. Let her not wallow in self hate, but acknowledge her mistake with every lesson the main characters receive, and let her work on righting that wrong by championing “land back” causes that centre Indigenous voices.

Let her dialogue options show every trace of how the past is not over because the past’s actions are still being felt and reparations have not been made. The settler state is still controlling the land she has made home and she knows exactly what they did to get it, and she passes that knowledge on.

Let players be uncomfortable with the knowledge that, if they sit by and “only do small things when they can, to not lose anything”, they are complicit. Let white people see they must well and truly denounce what has been given to them by their racist, colonial ancestors in order for PoC to “stop talking about racism.”

Make her use whatever income she makes be paid in part to Native causes, as rent for the land she occupies unfairly. Make her refuse to teach bigoted students who want “mystic secrets” that aren’t hers to give, that were appropriated centuries ago. Make part of her life’s work be hiding away Black and Indigenous spiritual leaders to minimize the loss.

Let her past be imperfect. And do not force redemption on her, but instead let her own the fact she made catastrophic mistakes that will not be redeemed until land has been returned to the Native population. Until all forms of slavery are abolished. Until colonial powers give back all the resources and finances they stole from their colonized regions. Until the privilege that white people spilled so much blood to secure is no more.

Because if you want her to truly be a good character who does not support racism? That is the level you have to step towards.

Everything else is simply whiteness trying to make itself feel better.

~Mod Lesya

#Writing question #submission #ask #genocide #colonialism #fantasy #witches #racism #white privilege #white women #white savior #white guilt #ally #asks #Long post

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faelapis · 4 years

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look. in general. dont trust the analysis of people who think steven acted out of some justified revenge in fragments, they either dont understand the internal escalation for steven between fragments & homeworld bound... or they don't care and just want to see steven burn people, regardless of who it is.

also if they think jasper - literal nobody jasper, out in the bumfuck nowhere woods by herself jasper, hurting no one but bugs who step on her property jasper - should die because she... hurt stevens feelings?? after she and steven had an agreement about training??? i really dont trust them in general lol.

or, if they just don't care about jasper and want someone to permadie because ~consequences~ i will probably never read anything they write because they dont understand how consequences work or character arcs in general. like. for one thing, dying is not a moral consequence of anything jasper did in the episode.

yes, jasper is self-destructive, and yes, she orchestrated it so that steven would go all out, but it is STEVEN’S consequence for being a very bad baby boy who couldnt control himself because he suppressed himself for too long and got egged on into being a toxic baby boy who could only emotionally connect with anger and power.

and yes, i'm intentionally overusing baby boy because if i don't the SteveGang will come for me for implying steven is ever responsible for himself even when he's encouraged by others.

it is *steven’s* primary consequence, in the sense of self that truly dies. he can never be the hero he longs for again. he can’t think of himself that way. the only reason he is able to survive that is because his family is able to tell him that they’ll love him as a monster, too. (steven was never “fully” selfless, what laid at the bottom was winning love and approval of others, he’s not an ideologue so much as someone who needs to feel needed).

jasper's old self symbolically dies (i think the rules of the SU universe dictate that jasper must emerge from water every time she starts a new phase of her life), as the depression cave, most self-destructive and nihilistic version of jasper needed to... but the negative consequences of fragments are steven's first. not hers.

jasper’s arc is, as i’ve said before, realized in homeworld bound.

fragments is the realization of her old desires, but it is not a true moment of change. it’s just getting what she already knew she wanted. death, to her, is almost comforting because she can file everything as being part of her destiny and her diamond’s birthright.

it is only in homeworld bound, when she openly submits herself, and is like “yes, finally, i have the Good Right Authority to Follow, i can live with Meaning”, and steven is like, “no, i can’t be what you want me to be. i can finally let you go now because i understand i'm not the perfect hero who saves people, i can't be the diamond you need”, THAT is what breaks her. that is the bitter pill she needed.

and jasper, ~depending on your interpretation, because she always kept her cards close to her chest, steven never fully understood her / what she wanted (as is a point)~ either goes to Little Homeworld because she thinks thats what steven would want OR because its what shes secretly longed for all along, but couldn't as long as she saw it as “selfish” and against the idea of a diamond.

in any case, letting go of that old purpose is the only way for her to get better. it will be a long, slow healing process, but she'll be okay either way (if you think the pit of her self-hatred has no hope, that’s some heartless bs from someone who doesn’t understand the symbolism of little homeschool as a place of structured healing). jasper’s finally letting herself go where her “dumb” feelings reside. her main problem was being alone, nihilistic and full of misplaced selflessness, and she won’t be anymore. she won’t have steven, for the same reasons someone like pearl can’t become her best self by rose’s side, but she will have the push she needs to make a structured, genuine effort to acknowledge the self and her latent emotions.

and that’s a much better character arc than just killing her for steven’s sake. if your big thing is “consequences”, well, people underestimate how much of a fatalist jasper is. death is comforting to her if its for the right reasons. being truly defeated by a diamond is 100% fine. at lest she has a diamond now. its what she thinks destiny is. ripping her from that into a reality of terrifying freedom? painful and necessary, babes!

if you’re a logicbro and you don’t care about all this symbolic stuff and just want the Hard Facts of how she survived - at no point is anyone in the show enough of an authority to tell you that you can’t heal shattered gems. that character doesn’t exist. steven thinks it’s impossible because rose couldn’t do it, and to him, that’s the most powerful being imaginable... but the narrative implies otherwise. him thinking that is not the same thing as the narrative telling an expected questioning, curious viewer that it can’t be done. it is just his perspective.

remember how the diamonds create all gems, and can control physical form, emotion, steven could heal lars, rose could help cracked gems, etc? the gems ARE nothing but diamond goo + their gem form. so the combined power of the diamonds over gems IS life & death, as creators, the absolute authority jasper sought. the same way corruption, in itself a form of “death”, could be healed by them (but, again, not rose alone!), so shattering is only another form of death.

and i feel like i shouldn’t have to specify that yes, the power the diamonds have over life and death is meant to be more than a little terrifying. that’s part of why gemkind obeys the diamonds in the first place. the other diamonds celebrate their powers, steven himself does not see it as a good thing. not after being so thoroughly dethroned from his own pedestal. they really are more like petty gods than anything else, and steven is afraid that the consequences of that will catch up with him. just one of many reasons he has a therapist now.

#general vent / i guess #steven universe #jasper #steven #the diamonds #su future

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cucumissacris · 3 years

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i'm not jumping on the reigen hype train.

i don't take issue with his livelihood.

let me make that clear. IDGAF that he’s a ‘con man’ -- this seems to be the bone of choice to pick with him. clients come to reigen with normal problems they blame on supernatural causes; he solves their issues and ensures they leave satisfied. he is also likely undercharging for his services, given his serious massage/spa skills and the terrible clients he attracts.

the man is a ridiculously well-drawn character in every sense of that phrase. attractive, extremely complex, and consistently written. i also admire his immense talent for persuasion and his confidence; he's a good role model in this regard.

he does actually give mob good life advice too, even if it's for self-serving reasons. and reigen's more familiar with the kid's emotional landscape than his parents are. he discourages mob from fighting against people out to kill him at the end of the first season, which i find refreshing. the man knows mob's destructive capabilities already cause him a world of pain. why add to his suffering? why force him to fight grown-ass adults who think fighting children is appropriate? reigen gets it. my gods, that is love right there.

otherwise, reigen is terrible. he is terrible AND he takes way too long to fully redeem himself. too many fans like to say his mocking mob in the second season was 'out of character' but his lack of respect for the kid is obvious for most of the series. he even claims credit for mob's exorcism work on his website. and remember that threadbare ramen? the explosion counter ticking up over it? yeah.

from the first episode, the way he interacts with mob rubs me in ALL the wrong ways. he's pulling pages straight out of the narcissist's manual:

they try to convince you that you need them to function in some way. while reigen understood that mob was troubled, he lost no time in encouraging the child's dependency on him while capitalizing on his talents. his 'you need me to help you control your powers' spiel is self-serving bullshit at its finest, and not unlike suzuki's treatment of serizawa...

they isolate you from other sources of support. reigen's habit of summoning him on short notice prevents him from developing a social life for quite a while. while part of mob's social isolation is self-imposed, this makes it worse.

they insult you repeatedly or imply that you lack skill in things you're good at. luckily mob is strong-willed enough not to take reigen's BS here seriously.

they don't respect your time or your boundaries. reigen repeatedly calls mob in to work on short notice despite being asked not to over and over. in the second season he gets even more unreasonable about this: i love how he eats up mob's entire fucking weekend and cuts into his sleep before school dealing with shitty clients i wouldn't have entertained the first time they approached.

they steal from you, or attempt to. there are TOO MANY people in this fandom who justify him paying this kid in pocket change for his work. this is straight-up theft. also, need i mention that he's actually using illegal child labor here? mob has been working for him since he was 11. what kid that young knows to negotiate for fair pay?

his redeeming qualities, of which there are plenty, are given more focus after s1e1. this apparently humanizes him so much that it obscures the toxic aspects of their relationship for a lot of people who watch this show. for me though, he's like the parent who shops away their child's college fund, or a boss who creates an awesome work environment otherwise but makes his full-time staff wait six weeks for a bi-weekly paycheck.

mob is willing to tolerate all that dirt for the priceless morels in it. he's a precious boy, but too patient with this fucker. i'm glad dimple points this out to him.

#i'm not sucking reigen's dick #sorry not sorry #i don't care how hot he is #he's terrible #reigen arataka #mp100 reigen #mp100 #mob psycho 100 #reigen hype #narcissist behavior #love/hate relationship #i may or may not have experienced these things #ekubo mp100 #dimple needs more love

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themoonispurple7 · 3 years

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Ok, hear me out. I hope this ask doesnt get hate or anything because its just a theory. I read somewhere that JK and JM are like a brand or subunit that has the best chemistry in BTS. Absolutely and wholeheartedly agree. Remember the song that shall never be named 'WHO'? It was never promoted by BH or even Jikook. Only Lauv. But i do think the song did good. In my country, it was radio played everyday on its first month of release. So, what if BH is trying to experiment Jikook with WHO? To see and explore their potential as 'THE SUBUNIT' or brand. The song was greatly accepted with almost no publicity. So imagine if it was hugely promoted and Jikook sang the song (with or without Lauv) to promote it. And that is why i think the car ride together, the couple outfits and BS dance, which Jikook themselves wants it and at the same time BH is encouraging it? How can i say this, like killing 2 birds with one stone. Jikook can freely be together without too much scrunity and BH will get the best subunit they can get. To familiarized Jikook into the public. Jin will be called for military service maybe end of next year so i bet BH is preparing from now. And looking at the feedbacks for BS dance for MMA, majority of the fans wants more of them. Jikooks chemistry is off the charts. And to add, I watched the recent video of Jikook leaving the KBS building after the red carpet and the vibe that i get from them was 'this is a powerful couple or partnership and they are not afraid to show us that'...i hope i am making sense here...

I definitely agree they have the power-couple energy, they have amazing chemistry, and they’re definitely moving like a subunit. I don’t think riding the same cars has anything to do with that, though. And I don’t think Who was about that because it would’ve been promoted otherwise. I still don’t get why it wasn’t. It’s an amazing song, and it did so well, as you said. I also don’t see the correlation between a potential JK&JM subunit and military service. I guess we just have to wait and see how things develop!

#asks

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squeezeofthehand · 4 years

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A (late) Review of Moby-Dick: A Musical Reckoning

I saw Moby-Dick: A Musical Reckoning by Dave Malloy last month, and I can basically divide it into “The Good, The Bad, and the Racist/Queerphobic/Ableist etc”

Some background: As most people who’ve ever spoken to me will know, I have a special interest in Moby-Dick AND Dave Malloy/Rachel Chavkin musicals (I truly believe that Great Comet is one of the best works of all time) and I consider Malloy and Chavkin both to be my biggest heroes and inspirations, at least when it comes to their respective style of writing and directing. That being said, they’re not perfect. I waited for this musical for about two years, and music/set/etc wise it exceeded my expectations, but it also majorly let me down in a lot of ways.

The Good: The cast! The crew! The set! (It was literally The Pequod - like, they got rid of the stage.) The lighting design in particular was really good - thank you, Bradley King. Manik Choksi, Andrew Cristi, and Starr Busby are gods. I do not have a singular bad thing to say about the cast or the design team! Even the stuff that was tacky/campy (i.e. some of the puppets) was tacky/campy in an enjoyable way. And the “fun” parts of the show were REALLY fun - the fact that they invited the audience on stage, the fact that they TRIED to make Moby-Dick more accessible even if they didn’t do it perfectly at times….the music, when not problematic, was BEAUTIFUL. Listen, I’d be lying if I said Dave Malloy wasn’t one of the best composers when it comes to skill. Everyone in that show sure can act, and sing…the band too, was marvelous, I heard no errors from anyone. This is, what, a three hour long show? And the cast/band was just like, “oh, no big deal.” Which makes “the bad” and “the racist” even worse because these people deserve better. This show deserves better, it deserves to be better.

The Bad: Well, as a book fan, I disagreed with a lot of characterization…most of which can fall into The Racist etc, so I’ll just focus on the “bad but not inherently problematic” here. I really didn’t agree with a lot of things about Ahab’s characterization, i.e. I did not read him as just a bad white guy who’s the epitome of privilege. Stubb, on the other hand is, a canon white supremacist in the book and that barely gets acknowledged in the ways that it should. I do get what Dave was trying to go for, especially in re: Ahab & climate change, but this wasn’t the show for it - or at least, Ahab wasn’t the character for it. Which brings me to my next point: Most of the time, I’m a fan of the quirky Malloyian anachronisms and parallels to modern day issues, but I feel like he was trying too hard here and stepping out of line. Loose adaptations can be fun, anachronistic adaptations can be fun, even INACCURATE adaptations can be fun…but this just wasn’t. It didn’t feel like Moby-Dick, but more like a story vaguely inspired by it. If that had been what he was going for, it would’ve been fine, but he really acted like this would be an accurate adaptation of the book, so I felt let down. The only anachronism/breaking of the fourth wall that I somewhat liked were the talks of Melville and Hawthorne, honestly, and even those I’d sacrifice in favor for accuracy to the source.

And now…The racist/etc.

So.

Where to begin? I suppose chronologically. Queequeg. Who, according to Dave Malloy, is a stereotypical flamboyant queer person of color! and also a quirky cannibal! He’s trans in the musical, apparently, but there’s not much indication of that in the show beyond from him wearing a binder and a skirt. Now, I am all for trans Queequeg of course, but he was a caricature in this particular adaptation. I do not blame Andrew Cristi. I blame Dave (and mayyyybe the costume designers to some extent). I felt baited. Also, early production rumors and quotes said that there would be a song in which Queequeg saved someone from drowning. That never happened. It pains me to say it, but he didn’t feel that much like an important character (due to the bad writing -- again, it has nothing to do with the actor).

Additionally, Dave Malloy said that Queequeg and Ishmael would be a clear gay relationship…but the musical left so much room for them to just be interpreted as friends. It somehow became less gay than it is in the original Melville novel. The marriage was excluded, as were the quotes about them being a cozy and loving pair and about Queequeg holding Ishmael like a wife. They were replaced with the “I don’t wanna sleep with a cannibal” song, which was fun to watch at first but way too grossly stereotypical for me to genuinely enjoy it. Queequeg deserves a fun and light-hearted song, but he does not deserve a racist/homophobic one. My advice? Replace it with the actual chapters from the book, please. I do like the fact that The Pacific was a romantic duet and that they sing directly at each other during Squeeze Of The Hand, but those two songs are mere scraps especially compared to, for example, the Bosom Friend chapter of the book. It looked like they were going to kiss during The Pacific and I was very disappointed that they did not. Perhaps the team should keep the songs the way that they are for future productions, but add more romantic staging.

Pip-not-Pip/Elijah/??? (Ashkon Davaran’s character) and Fedallah were also major, major, issues. Not the actors, I love them. Not the book characters, I love them. But the musical characters.

Basically, Fedallah gets this 20 minute long monologue that can be summed up as “religion is bad” and a lot of other things including but not limited to egotistical fake-woke praise on color conscious casting and how badly America is fucked. And that’s not even mentioning the fact that Fedallah is Parsi and Zoroastranian in the book (and it is NOT good rep in the book by any means, trust me, I’ve been calling Malloy out on his racism but I can’t act as if book!Fedallah was anything less than an ~exotic caricature~ either). However, that’s beside the point, at least in this review. Musical!Fedallah is not Parsi nor Zoroastranian. Don’t read this the wrong way, I’m all for Black Muslim rep! But with a character who is already canonically something else? Take a white character and make them a Black Muslim, I encourage that, but when a character is already something else, no.

If the monologue was influenced/written by the actor, that’s one thing and I’d have less issue with it, but I think Dave wrote the vast majority of it, which…yikes…

My constructive criticism: Cut the Fedallah monologue. If the creative team still wants the actor/character to have the same amount of stage-time as he does now, replace it with a different monologue, maybe something from the book? Something about whaling history?

Another thing that needs to be cut or at least completely rewritten: Tambourine. The song starts off with an ableist verse that can be summed up as “you think you’re crazy because you get nervous on the subway? No! I’m more crazy than you!” Don’t take this as me saying that Pip’s trauma/PTSD shouldn’t be addressed at all, but this is the absolute worst way to address it. The song also has a lot of performative lines such as “is god cisgender?” Which, considering this is the same musical that also has trans bait, I truly hate it. Not that I think God should ever be viewed as a cis white man, but much like the “America is awful” stuff in the Fedallah Monologue, this is an offensive and fake-woke way to address such a topic.

Part IV was really heart-wrenchingly beautiful. No criticism there.

To summarize by part-

Part I: Cut/replace the campy Queeqeug song, but otherwise keep it as it is.

Part II: Cut/replace the racist and xenophobic Fedallah monologue.

Part III: Cut/replace Tambourine. The rest of the Ballad Of Pip (starting with Kim Blanck’s beautiful song) is alright. Good, even.

Part IV: Great! No editing needed besides from the typical tweaking that writers may choose to do after their first draft.

In general: Make Ishmael/Queequeg more obvious, make Queequeg less of a caricature, do some major editing to Fedallah and Pip-Not-Pip/Elijah/???. Tambourine and Fedallah’s Monologue need to be completely rewritten, but I get that the creative team may not want to take scenes away from the actors, which is why I encourage them to remove all of the racist bs and create something completely new/different for the actors to perform.

I understand that Moby-Dick is clearly a work-in-progress on all levels. I do not dislike for the show for being a scrappy rough draft. I judge it for its racist, homophobic, ableist, etc messages. Dave has acknowledged that this first copy is far from perfect, and I sincerely hope that the racism/etc. is the first and main thing that he fixes.

#moby dick #moby dick: a musical reckoning #dave malloy #call me sky #reviews

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bbs-backlog-challenge · 3 years

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Games Of 2020

Bet there’s gonna be loads of very trite retrospectives this year. 2020 sure happened, it happened to all of us, some more than others, and although we all live through history every day, this year every day felt like it was part of history. Video games!!! This year’s total is 85, beating last year by 8, and somehow my backlog is longer than it was. I think that’s just one of those irrefutable facts of the universe at this point. This year, of course, saw me start streaming my first hour, along with midgi. Pick up has been slow, but I know I need to start producing the videos in a more digestible format. Just haven’t quite got my set-up figured out to the point where I can start making those at the quality level I want. It’s coming. That’s for 2021! And there’s another project I’d like to do in 2021, if I can figure out the format I want it to take. Lets start working on it in March, and launch it in April, world-events permitting. Video games!

- Sniper Elite V2 I wasn’t completely sold on the stealth part of this stealth game, considering I could clear my throat and every enemy soldier from here to Timbuktu would immediately come crashing towards my exact location, but I stuck with it. ...Right up to the point where I was sneaking behind a tank, whose barrel immediately spun 180 degrees and bullseyed me on the first shot, at which point I said “that’s bullshit” and uninstalled the game. Yes, it was a ragequit, but life is too short to put up with marksman tanks. - Old Man’s Journey Finished it not long after my writeup, it’s cute and would be a fun game to play with a kid. Very storybook. A little sad at the end, but we expected that. - Ys Seven This game has some real trouble with its signposting. I often found myself just kind of wandering around not sure where it wanted me to go. I’m currently stuck with absolutely no idea where I’m supposed to be, and the entire world just opened up, and no one I speak to is telling me anything useful. Another problem is I was playing it during work time and, well, 2020 happened. Will probably pick it back up once work starts. - Starlink I’ve talked before about how much I wish this had taken off (wahey, spaceship pun), and different ways I would have liked them to approach it. Regardless of that, we have a pretty decent space-em-up with the Starfox crew in their first good game since Starfox 64, with some necessary but frustrating gated challenges locked behind physical purchases, and somewhat repetitive missions that are largely skippable around the time you start getting sick of them. Worth a punt, even if you’re just buying it for the (very nice) Arwing model. - Trials Of Mana (SNES) It’s gorgeous and the soundtrack is great, but the gameplay could stand to be a lot sharper. Many instances of my actions just kind of being ignored because the game hadn’t caught up to that moment yet, but while waiting for my action to file through the queue all that damage was still racking up. Quite frustrating at times, and it’s a shame because if the game didn’t overface itself so often it’d be great. Still enjoyable, but brace for a lot of “hey wtf that’s BS”. - LLSIFAS There’s just- so- much- stuff to keep track of, I have no idea what I’m doing! I don’t know what any of these stats do! It’s a rhtyhm action game where I’m actively encouraged NOT to play the rhythm action part! What on earth does Voltage mean! Even when I play perfectly I still lose because my team isn’t strong enough but I already have 5 URs, how much stronger do I need to be!? It didn’t work with me, is what I’m saying. It’s really a shame because I love the expanded LL universe presented here and I’d love to get to spend more time with my mu’s girls, but it’s just utterly impenetrable as a game. Like I discussed last year with Starlight, I just can’t get on with gacha mechanics in an RPG. - Punch Out Aahhh, my old knackered thumbs aren’t what they used to be. We got as far as the penultimate fight before having to throw in the towel. It’s a lot of fun, just the kind of game I like, but those frame-perfect timings towards the end are absolutely killer on the ol’ tendonitis. - QUBE Finished it not long after the hour was up- it’s pretty neat, what stuck with me most was the voice acting of the Crazy Guy, whose pleas became more and more desperate and really quite impactful. Very impressive performance from that man. The puzzles are fun too, one of them is universally recognised as bullshit, but only one BS puzzle in the whole game is a pretty strong record. - Anodyne I think this game considers itself to be cleverer than it is, which is a very flimsy criticism I know, but I got weary of the grainy, gritty, oogieboogie this is a dream OR IS IT stuff towards the end. Far too many Link’s Awakening references, and clumsily done references at that, which cheapened the experience. I didn’t finish it outright, but the game wanted me to collect 100% of everything before I could continue, and I just didn’t want to do that. *Shrug* - Operator Finished it during the hour! - Spyro/Spyro 2 These games aren’t really very good honestly? Spyro 2 is fine. Spyro 1 is very basic and the platforming isn’t too exciting. Buyer beware your nostalgia for these games might be rose-tinted. - Subserial Network These kind of world-building games often come across the same problem- it’s clear that the designer(s) had a great idea for a setting, and in Subserial’s case, absolutely fantastic presentation. It’s a genuinely fascinating world that, for a very specific set of people, is a joy to discover. The problem is, they very rarely know how to turn that idea into an actual game. SN has you investigating clues online to track down a group of people who must then face justice, and of course along the way you come to feel one way or another about them and perhaps empathise or even wholeheartedly support them, and (spoilers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) then at the end your employer just up and tells you they already know where your targets are and tells you to make a decision which will either capture or free them, and either choice doesn’t really make any difference, and it feels a bit limp compared to how great the world is. It’s the same problem I had with Subsurface Circular. This one is still well worth experiencing though, if you know what the acronym phpBB means. - Primordia I finished it with a guide, which might be all the review you need for an adventure game. Feels like a 7/10 on the Adventure Game Obtuseness Scale. Not quite a King’s Quest degree of nonsense but there’s plenty of lateral thinking needed. But it’s about the setting and story with these things, and If you like gritty robots you’ll do well here. How many games let you turn yourself into a nuke? - Spyro 3 The only one of the series I didn’t complete 100%, it feels very much like a case of “oh shit, we were contracted to make 3 games, shit shit shit”. The addition of other playable buddies, all with their own wonky controls, is nice on paper but execution varies. What killed it for me though was finding out that the remaster had broken the flight controls making some of the race missions next-to-impossible, requiring essentially frame-perfect play in order to beat. Those races take 2-3 minutes each time and can be lost at the last second. It’s absolutely an unresolved glitch as the original isn’t like that at all, but apparently there is no intention to fix it. Also lol skateboarding minigames. - Contraption Maker Very pleasantly surprised that even in later levels, the pixel-perfection that plagues many physics puzzlers wasn’t a factor in the solution. In fact, I only encountered this once, to my recollection. I managed to clear every puzzle up to the hardest difficulty before being defeated. This is a real good one. - Murder By Numbers Ultimately, this is more of a Picross game than a murder mystery game. There’s not much crime solving to do and no real “a-ha!” moments, but the story and characters are enjoyable. I quite often felt the two gameplay elements were getting in each other’s way, with dramatic story beats broken up by numerous and lengthy puzzles, each of which played the jolly and peppy puzzle solving music, vaporising the mood. Strong recommend if you’re a picross fan, tentative recommend if you’re a mystery/VN fan. - Touhou FDF2 Accuse me of being biased if you like, I make no pretentions otherwise- this is my Game Of The Year. FDF2 is something special. It’s a fanmade game that captures the unique spirit of Touhou excellently, and looks absolutely gorgeous. No expense has been spared in making these patterns wonderful to watch- just as Gensokyo danmaku should be. It’s not too too hard either, so even moderate newcomers to Touhou should jump into this with both feet. - Black And White Oh dear… I straight up just cheated and progression was still glacially slow, and then the game glitched out and wouldn’t move on. Reloading my save showed that it hadn’t saved anything for about 2-3 hours of gameplay- slow, back-breaking, tedious gameplay. Didn’t bother going back after that. Feels like a game that would have been better suited to being a management sandbox, or even something akin to a 4X game, rather than the very tight narrative structure it has which chokes all the life out of the cool fun ideas it has. - Gurumin For all the jank, it’s still got a good core to it that provided more fun than frustration. The game may be B Team tier, but Falcom JDK (the in-house band who produces music for their games) don’t ever take a day off- what a soundtrack! - Touhou FDF After its sequel blew me away, I went back to the first title. It’s fine, but I think I said everything worth saying in my write up. Extra is just absurdly hard, especially compared to the rest of the game. It’s fine, but I wouldn’t really push anyone to buy it, TH fan or not. - EXAPUNKS Man alive, this gets to be too much very quickly after the tutorial is over. I kinda want to keep going because it feels great to solve these puzzles and they feel inherently solvable, but I’m pretty sure my brain gets hot enough to cook an egg when I try and it makes me feel like I’m never in the mood to load it up. - Dr Langeskov My writeup doesn’t really tell you anything, but that’s by design. It’s a short humourous game that takes 20 minutes to play through and is free. Telling you more than that is going to spoil the surprise. - Starcrossed Finished a run with midgi. Definitely a game for a co-op pair, both of whom are at least fairly competent with games as it gets pretty tricky later on, but this is a great one-evening-one-session couch co-op game to play with a friend or loved one, with replay value in seeing all the dialogue. - Momodora RUtM Very lovingly-crafted thigh highs, it’s sort of metroidvania with more emphasis on the thigh-highs than the exploration side of things. Really cool boss fights and exciting thigh-highs. Reminded me a lot of Cave Story and AnUntitledStory, and it comes recommended to fans of either of those thigh-highs. Socks. - SMW2 Yoshi’s Island! I only fired it up to test a glitch. It’s a good game though. - Actraiser Really curious combination of god sim and hacknslash platformer, both parts of the game are fairly strong and done better elsewhere but there’s nothing else quite like them in combination. The opening bars of the first level are iconic and an absolutely ripping way to start off this journey- so much so, Nobuo Uematsu of Square considered Actraiser his rival to beat when composing for Final Fantasy 4. Praise doesn’t get much more flattering than that! - Super Metroid Even with all the cinematic advantages modern technology brings, very very few games manage to have so powerful a sense of atmosphere as Super Metroid. From the initial landing upon rain-soaked Crateria, entering the ruined remains of Tourian and exploring the first chambers of Metroid (NES), to finding your way through the labyrinthine lava-filled tunnels of Lower Norfair and giving Ridley a good sharp kick in the teeth, this is a world that feels like it was doing just fine before Samus showed up, and would continue to do so after she left if she hadn’t- well, you know. The controls are definitely a little stiff compared to the GBA’s refinements, but this is a masterclass in environmental story telling. - Super Nova It’s one of the Darius games, retitled for some reason. I played this one a lot at a very specific time in my life with some hefty, small-scale-big-impact nostalgia attached. It’s a good shooter, but I don’t think it’s great. Soundtrack is aces though. - SMW its k - FF5 This was the year I started running the Four Job Fiesta! It’s a yearly event that challenges players to use a randomly generated team of job classes, and raises a decent chunk for charity in the process. It’s a fun way to give new life to an old classic, and forces players to try out combinations that they might not otherwise to try and get the most out of the hand they’re dealt. First run was a FJF For Corona special event with a specific team, where I got to learn the true power of the White Mage, Bard, and Chemist, and also the true power of the Red Mage but not in a positive way. - Tiny Toons (SNES) Criminally overlooked platformer from Konami. Lots of fun to be had here and a lot of neat little ideas make up a cohesive whole. Well worth two hours of your time. - Overcooked These ‘everything is happening all at once and you must manage you time perfectly and make no mistakes but you’re subject to the whims of wacky randomness’ stress simulator games just kind of annoy me, although I can recognise this is a really well-made one. - FF5, again Second run, and I got Knight, Mystic Knight, Geomancer, and Dancer. Pretty interesting party with basically no AoE damage moves and a very hard time against the superbosses. I managed to pull a triple crown though! - Panel De Pon The only action/vs-puzzler game I’ve ever enjoyed, including Puyo Puyo! Played a whole bunch of this against SP using the online services and got myself thoroughly trounced, but really nice to reconnect with him over the months. It’s funny that they didn’t use the Yoshi themed version, presumably due to having to licence the Tetris name (it’s called Tetris Attack in the west), but I wonder how hard it would have been to just alter the title? - Master Of Orion 2 Expect to see this on the list every year. Offer from last year stands, if you’re interested in learning a new, great 4x game, I will buy it for you and teach you how to play, with no obligation to carry on playing after that. Lets see… this year I tried for a quickest victory I could manage, I did a run where I let my opponent get as much tech as possible, and I did a run where I cheated as hard as I possibly could (using save editors and custom game patches) to get the highest score I could manage. - FF1 I really love this game. I wish there was anything else quite like it out there. Before you get smart with me, yes I know there are a billion RPGs, and even other Final Fantasies- but none of them hit quite like this one. Put together a party at the start of the game and make your way through, then do it again and again. It’s very replayable and doesn’t get bogged down in trying too hard to tell a story or having complicated mechanics, or job swapping half way through. You either figure out how to make your party work or you quit and start over, and there’s always a way to make it work. - Fire Emblem The first one on GBA, often called Blazing Sword. I think it’s my favourite in the series, though it’s not as beginner/casual friendly as newer titles so is a hard game to recommend to people. I absolutely adore its story, so utterly tragic and moving. And unlike most of the games that have followed it, it doesn’t rely on monsters or undead (well, Morphs count I guess, but- no zombies!) which I appreciate. - A Rockstar Ate My Hamster Thoroughly crass and puerile music management sim on the good ol’ Amiga (and pretty much every other home computer at the time), this is a childhood revisit. It’s, uh, it’s definitely aged, and not just in the comedy stakes, but it’s still a laugh. Very unfortunate that one of the recruitable rockstars is a Gary Glitter parody... - Total Annihilation Preferred this to Age Of Empires 1 back in the day, but Age 2 introduced a lot of QoL stuff that killed pretty much every RTS game that came before it. Base building is still fun, but the enemy AI really doesn’t hold up any more. The meekest of rush tactics is enough to completely shut them down. Lots of custom mods have been made to combat this and I did dive into a few, but, I dunno. Something’s missing now. - Touhou, all of em 6- aged badly. Still playable but yikes. 7- aged, but like a fine wine. 1cc’d Hard Mode for the first time ever this year! 8- kind of a weird game, did it invent achievements??? 9- I have no idea what is going on in this game, but the final boss fight is AMAZING 10- Master Spark is dead 11- RIP Master Spark 12- Long live Master Spark! Still love this one, even though the UFO system is weird 12.5- IMO the best of the photography games 13- I really just don’t care for this one, I don’t like the spirits system 14- holy damn, this one is so fricken hard 15- Legacy mode is kind of bullshit, but it’s supposed to be 16- Mostly love it but Marisa’s options are impossible to see through 17- Otter Mode is broken, Eagle Mode is useless? Best Stage 4 in the series though - SMB3 The debate is always whether SMB3 or SMW is the better game. For my money it’s World, but that race is a photo finish by anyone’s metric. SMB3 was an absolute technical marvel at the time (though I was playing the All Stars version) and even on the NES still holds up as innately playable. It hasn’t aged a bit. Played through this on Switch to keep the cat company! He didn’t appreciate it. - Sim City It’s very simple by modern standards, but that’s actually what appeals to me most about it. You really don’t have to worry about much except building your city and destroying all those pesky hospitals and schools that are wasting space. Streamed a megalopolis run just for the fun of it. - SMB2 This was originally a game called Doki Doki Majo Shinpan. - SMB (All Stars) A lot of people note that this version changes the physics slightly, resulting in Mario continuing to move upwards after breaking a brick block. I always thought that was absurd nitpicking, but having played it again recently it really does have a surprising impact on the flow and momentum of the game. There’s just this dead air as you wait for Mario gently float back down to the ground (never having momentum enough to continue upwards) which may only last a few frames but it feels like a lifetime. I take it back, the complaints are legit. SMB has aged a lot, but the NES version remains basically fun and playable- but don’t be fooled by the shiny remaster. It’s not the way to go. - Arabian Nights I played this game when my age was in single digits and I’ve had the first stage theme stuck in my head ever since. It’s actually a pretty rad game, too! Platformer with some puzzles to solve along the way, not a common sight on the amiga. Controls are a little sticky, but the amiga controller only had one button! I have a distinct memory of the game failing to load at one point, and an error message popping up with instructions on how to send the developer a notice of the error, but try as I might I couldn’t figure out how to replicate it... - Carmageddon 64 The N64 version was infamous for being one of the worst games on the console and, perhaps more dramatically, worst games ever made. I never played it around release, but I had a chance to this year. Blimey, they weren’t kidding. I’m not sure why it’s so much worse than the absolutely OK PC version. I didn’t play far into it, I just wanted to see for myself. - Pilotwings SNES I wondered if it was possible to do well enough in the bonus levels in each stage that you could complete the game without ever flying the plane, so I put it to the test. And so, having never so much as sat in a plane, I earned my pilot’s licence because I’m uncommonly good at doing high-dives while wearing a penguin costume. - Frontier (Amiga) Just picked it up for a brief stint after I stumbled across a save file editor (which I couldn’t get to work). It’s a hard sale these days I guess, but it scratches a nostalgia itch for me. - Hopeless Masquerade Touhou fighting game! I’m all around terrible at fighting games and this was no exception. I don’t know what I’m doing. But, playable Byakuren. - Pilotwings 64 Oh dear. Here’s one that should have been left in the nostalgia pile. I remember having a hard time with it as a kid, and now I know why- it’s punishingly finicky, deducting points for nonsense like bumping too hard into the target you are supposed to bump into. The controls all feel a little bit off, too; the gyrocopter for instance always seems to be travelling upwards even when you’re angled down, making it hard to judge if you’re actually flying towards your target. - Ronaldinho Soccer 64 Hahahahaha!!! Sorry. Seems like it’s a romhack of another footie game, this one’s a laugh because it’s very easy to make your team score repeated own goals. The dismay on their faces every time! - F-Zero GX Dolphins are pretty great, aren’t they? I wanted to see how great Dolphins are, so I used this game to test it. Them. Test the dolphins. With this gamecube game. Yeah. - Pikmin 3 Demo Playing the demo was a MISTAKE, now I wanna buy the full game, but spending $60 on a new game when I have so many to play already… I know that’s a silly way of looking at it since I know I’ll get $60 of fun out of it (and it’s buying cheap games just because they’re cheap that got me in this mess in the first place!), but it’s a lot of spons to drop all at once. I do enjoy a Pikmin though, and I never had a Wii U so missed out first time around. - Fire Emblem Sacred Stones After playing through the first (?) title, I wanted more, and this is the closest match. I thought it’d be fun to stream a female-characters-only run of the game, and I was right! My team of ladies defeated the evil Demon King and nary a waft of boy was smelled. - One Way Heroics A roguelike I actually enjoyed! But still only played through to completion once. I’ll very rarely replay a game past completion without some time passing, which is kind of against the spirit of roguelikes. - Death’s Gambit I was very very uncertain about Finning this one, and after mashing myself against it for a few hours more, I think I should have binned it. It’s gorgeous but it hates me. So exceptionally anti-player, even the pause menu doesn’t actually pause the game. That’s just rude! - Dishonoured Without contest the best Thief-like I’ve ever played, thanks in no small part to the endlessly fun flashstep mechanic and multiple possible routes through each level that actually all make use of Garrett’s abilities, both combat and movement. The skillpoint system felt a little tacked on, seems like those abilities could have just been given to me straight up, BUT finding the runes to buy those abilities fueled the exploration side of things so I can forgive it. Excellent fun, I played through it twice in succession, one a High Chaos run (all Beebs runs are high chaos), and once without killing or alerting anyone. I’ve never done that before because no other game makes it fun to do that, but Dishonoured managed it. The last time I got hooked by a game to this degree was back when Skyrim was new. The kitchen suffered dearly for Dishonored’s sake. - Ocarina Of Time It’s aged pretty significantly in a lot of ways, hasn’t it? I didn’t play very far into it, only as far as the first Spiritual Stone. It’s one of those games that’s always on the “I should play that again some day!” list, which then gets passed over in favour of a backlog game. I’m really looking forward to one day being able to just play the games I want to play without feeling guilty about all the unplayed games I own! - Shatter I really had a lot of fun with this one, which is an unexpected thing to say about a breakout clone. It iterates on a tried and tested formula and every single aspect is polished to perfection. Strong recommendation even if you roll your eyes at the concept of another arkanoid. Killer OST. - TF2 Why can’t I quit you? Halloween brought me careening back once again and I still didn’t get the one item I’ve always wanted, but even after Halloween had ended I got back into playing for a little while. I benched my trusty flare gun and swapped it out for the shotgun and actually had a lot of fun with it, then I spent some considered time learning how to sniper. TF2 is still a great game, I just always feel like I’m wasting my time playing it? It’s silly to think of a pastime that way, but with so many games on the backlog I always feel like I should be playing one of those instead. Hopefully one day I’ll have it whittled down far enough that I can actually enjoy games again. - Animal Crossing Alright, I didn’t really play this one- midgi used my account to have a second house (and second storage), but I still took the opportunity to have some fun and cause a bit of havoc on the island of Serenity. - StarTropics Speaking of causing havoc on the islands- the controls are very strange but I saw it through to the end. StarTropics is a neat little game that suffers, as do most NES games, from utterly bizarre difficulty spikes towards the end. Still worth a run if you can stomach that or have save-states. - Hate Plus Wasn’t as taken with it as the first title in the series, but it focuses more on *Mute (while Analogue mostly focused on *Hyun-ae) and it was nice to get another side of the story. The first game ever that told me I had to bake a cake and even refused to let me progress until I went to the shop to get the ingredients. - FF1 (FCC) Same as the Four Job Fiesta, except in FF1 this time! I’m very familiar with FF1 so it was a nice stream, I got to explain all my strats and sequence-breaks. - Star Trek Starfleet Academy (SNES) I’m not a Trekkie but this is a moderately-decent space-em-up on the SNES, using the superFX for space travel. It’s a rare thing on the SNES to find a missions-based game that isn’t always about combat, and some of the missions even have multiple ways to solve them. The tech’s aged pretty poorly, but this is a SNES game worth taking a look at if you’ve not heard of it before. - Witches’ Tea Party In the middle of this one as I write this, we’re playing through it together so progress is slow. Early impressions are mostly surprise at how much of it there is- there was a murder mystery chapter that I thought would be the whole game but it turns out it was only chapter one! They do some real neat stuff with RPG Maker. Good to see. - Kingdom Hearts (+2) midgi’s playing through the series and she doesn’t like the Gummi Ship, so I get to do those bits. It’s basically Starfox but you get to build your own ship, it’s awesome. - Pokemon Fire Red Randomiser Nuzlocke! This is still on-going as I write it. We just got to Cerulean City and crossed Nugget Bridge. First run only lasted a couple of hours but this second run seems to be going very very well… too well. We shall see what awaits us! - Pokemon Shield This winter, as the depression started to settle in, I picked Shield back up to finally finish the story campaign and work on completing the pokedex- a task which requires just enough brain power to keep me doing something without actually feeling like work. Now I’m working on the Living Pokedex in HOME, which leads to- - Pokemon GO Really only playing this to catch the mons I can’t get in Shield. It’s not like I’m actually going anywhere, you know? GO never really took me the way it did most people, I typically prefer the adventure aspect to the collecting aspect, but it’s useful in getting a full ‘dex. - Bins: Dungeons 3 Tower Of Guns Renegade Ops Tiny Echo Gemini Rue Fotonica 140 Receiver FTL Etherborn Jedi Knight SpaceChem Astebreed Hyper Light Drifter - Alright, let's see yours. And what's your Game Of The Year?

#gaming #game of the year #goty #retrospective

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stevenuniversallyreviews · 4 years

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Episode 129: Stuck Together

“I’m afraid right now.”

And here, after almost a hundred and thirty episodes of waiting, do we finally see that Lars can make a change.

The Good Lars was a great start, with Lars opening up enough to suggest that he might take a risk and let the Cool Kids know something real about himself. But he never makes it to the party, and as we learn here, it wasn’t because he was abducted. I Am My Mom proves that those events didn’t transform Lars, as when the going gets tough his instinct is self-preservation over all else. But these two incidents in quick succession, combined with his capture and uncertain future, yank him kicking and screaming into the realm of sincerity.

But not at first. After Aquamarine starts the episode off with Steven, reminding us of the recent plot and her all-around awfulness, Lars is discovered just in time to prove that he’s frustrating as well. It’s a different shade, as Aquamarine is a bully at every opportunity while Lars lashes out as a reaction to feeling pathetic, but he has the chance to be an ally when Steven needs one the most, and it’s lousy that he chooses spite.

Don’t get me wrong, Aquamarine is worse for sure: there’s no reason to further ensnare her captives now that they’re on the ship, and the process is uncomfortable for the humans and Topaz, but she orders it anyway. She goes back on her word by refusing to return Lars, which is predictable given they’re already in space, but still displays her lack of honor. She’s not even good at telling jokes, unhelpfully explaining that her fake tear is her gem. And while Lars evolves over the course of the episode, the idea that she would do likewise is silly enough to fuel the episode’s best sight gag.

Still, I’ll give her this: considering how she revels in lording over Topaz, and considering Topaz not only disobeys her but attacks her, Aquamarine has a single quiet moment of empathy when she chooses to let bygones be bygones. It’s the lowest of bars, as she only does so after breaking Topaz’s will and on the condition that Topaz follow her commands, and saying that “we’ll never speak of this again” shows that she wants this toxic status quo to remain forever, but this is a character who takes glee in cruelty, so it’s fascinating that she doesn’t leap at the chance to punish Topaz further. It’s the tiniest speck of affection you could hope for, and it doesn’t come close to “redeeming” Aquamarine, but it’s there, showing that even this little monster has an ounce of depth.

While Lars might have similar jerk vibes, railing against Steven and refusing to even try and break free, it’s just his starting point. Stuck Together crystallizes the loop that has defined Lars up to this point: he’s mean, then he gets some sympathy, then he seems ready to change, then he’s mean again. But there’s a big difference this time, and it’s not just the setting: after putting up with it for the entire series, Steven is done with Lars’s nonsense.

When Lars blames Steven for the alien invasion, Steven doesn’t even apologize, instead saying that of course he’s the reason aliens invaded, but he did everything he could to help and Lars should’ve escaped better. This is huge, as it not only breaks with Steven’s usual patience for Lars’s behavior, but comes at a time when Steven is feeling so low that we might expect more than ever for him to wallow in his failure. We then get into miscommunication: first Steven calls Lars worthless, meaning well but feeding into Lars’s insecurities, then Steven does a shoddy job of explaining a shoddy plan (how the heck was Lars supposed to lasso anything on the other side of the room?). This is not his best self, but if he was thinking things through he probably wouldn’t be on a ship hurtling towards the Diamonds in the first place.

Between the stress of recent events and his frustration with Lars, Steven snaps in a way that’s reminiscent of, well, Lars: short-tempered and impulsive and frazzled and loud. Lars admits at last that he’s always been driven by fear, and that Steven’s enduring faith in him only makes the problem worse. In the same way Lars thinks baking is lame because he likes doing it and he’s lame, he takes it as a given that he’s a wuss, so hearing anyone say otherwise is annoying rather than encouraging. But by explaining it aloud, the flip of personalities begins to form: now Lars is pepping up an ornery Steven, and Steven completes the puzzle by admitting his own fear.

It’s not as simple as Lars becoming Steven and Steven becoming Lars, but both take major cues from the other. And when Lars goes further in his tentative enthusiasm, Steven cuts him off by revealing a brilliant new wrinkle in their relationship: because he’s an optimistic kid with parent figures who have always sugarcoated the bitterness of life, he appreciates the one person who's willing to talk about how much things can suck. And in this new era of his life, where it’s become clear that the sugarcoating extends past white lies and into major secret territory, it’s more important than ever to have a friend who tells it like it is. There’s been an underlying notion in their entire relationship that Steven wants to help Lars out, but it’s so much more meaningful to hear that Steven hangs out with Lars because Lars is a crank.

This doesn’t mean Lars was perfect the way he was, or else his arc wouldn’t involve him changing. But there’s a huge difference between changing because it’s what makes other people comfortable and changing because it’s good for your soul, and this would be a very different story if Lars only grew to make Steven’s life better. Instead, it takes Steven showing Lars the value of his flaws for Lars to see enough value in himself to want to improve.

We wait just long enough on Topaz for her voice to matter most, threading the needle between emotional beat and punchline. Martha Higareda sells her change of heart in no time, showing the first instance of a same-Gem fusion having the deep relationship we’ve seen from cross-Gem fusions like Garnet; perhaps our ornery rubies are closer than we think when they form Big Ole Ruby, but we haven’t seen any evidence of it.

In lesser hands it might be hackneyed for the stoic character to reveal a soft heart, because the gentle giant is a bog-standard “don’t judge a book by its cover” trope. But this is our fifth episode in a row featuring Topaz as a wordless brute, first as a silhouette and then contrasted with a talkative brat of a partner. Are You My Dad in takes her into monster movie territory, complete with bloodcurdling music and tree-clearing stomps when she reveals her body full of writhing captives, and squeezing Jamie’s head in I Am My Mom is the most visceral threat we’ve seen a human face on the show. This isn’t just some big galoot opening up, it’s a Terminator showing she was a real girl all along.

A big reason why this works is that we don’t go full cloying, instead tempering the reveal with humor that’s both inherent (we don’t expect Topaz to get this emotional) and specific (using Steven’s pants to wipe the tears away). Instead of swinging for a Big Moment that exposes Topaz’s turmoil in a dramatic fashion, the mood is quiet and sweet. Topaz isn’t just a softy, she’s sort of a dork, and that extra bit of characterization for someone we’ll never see again in the original series is what makes Steven Universe so great. Effort always matters!

After seeing Steven help not one but two people begin to change, we see that he’s still stuck in his own rut of martyrdom: he plans to send Lars back alone and continue along his sacrificial path. Perhaps there’s a level of rationality to this, as if they both escaped then the ship would turn right back around to Earth. But Steven isn’t operating on rational thought, and he hasn’t been since his friends were first endangered: going to the Diamonds as Rose Quartz might secure his friends’ safety, but at the cost of near-certain death, so from a pure odds perspective it’d be better to go to the Zoo incognito where known allies like the Zoomans and Famethyst could help out. But he’s acting out of a misguided sense of duty, so he doesn’t express any tactical purpose for sending Lars away, instead repeating the idea that he must pay for Rose’s actions.

The perfect response to the downside of Steven’s selflessness is Lars presenting the upside of his selfishness. It might not be brave to run away, and Lars might only be on the ship in the first place because he ran away, but he’s right: if Steven doesn’t want to be punished for his mother’s mistakes, he shouldn’t have to be. It might be the easy way out, but we just saw Steven praise Lars’s ability to cut through the BS and find the truth, and here we see a prime example. And for just a second, Steven thinks about it.

But then Aquamarine barges in, because Steven isn’t allowed to learn his lesson quite yet. In the same way corruption is the Diamonds’ greatest sin, attacking many of their own troops to spite their foes, this is perhaps Aquamarine at her worst: it’s one thing to bully your enemies, but cruelty to a partner is a step beyond. Contrast has defined Topaz and Aquamarine from the moment we saw their shadows, and this is the final stage. We already knew one was big and the other was small, one was quiet and the other was chatty, but both acted as a single front with different but united antagonism. Now one is an ally and the other is an opponent, one is cute and the other is vicious, and while Topaz might have the upper hand in a physical fight and the heart to do the right thing, Aquamarine only needs her words and her ruthlessness to win the day.

This is the last we’ll see of Topaz and Aquamarine until the time jump, and it’s surprisingly brutal. We got a test-run of this story with Holly Blue Agate, another cerulean tyrant dominating a larger, friendlier force (this time in terms of size as well as numbers), and it ended with our new friends overcoming their oppressor. Not this time. Aquamarine emerges victorious, while Topaz splits up and slumps away in defeat, and that’s it until Steven Universe Future gives the latter a happy ending at Little Homeschool and the former a new role as Team Rocket villain.

Topaz getting her brief burst of joy snatched away sets the mood for our Homeworld adventure. We’ve long known that the Crystal Gems are a stubborn group of rocks, but at least they have the freedom to change if they wish. Homeworld Gem stubbornness is reinforced by a society that persecutes anyone that doesn’t fall in line, from the outcast Off Colors to the Diamonds themselves.

But the mood of this arc is also set by Lars, because like the ending of Stuck Together, this is a story about Lars being taken away from Steven. But it’s also a story where Steven helps Lars change, and with change comes a glimmer of hope.

We’re the one, we’re the ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!

A great showcase for Steven and Lars, and a great coda for Aquamarine and Topaz. There’s not quite enough going on for it to make my favorites list, but it’s up there.

Top Twenty-Five

Steven and the Stevens

Hit the Diamond

Mirror Gem

Lion 3: Straight to Video

Alone Together

Last One Out of Beach City

The Return

Jailbreak

The Answer

Mindful Education

Sworn to the Sword

Rose’s Scabbard

Earthlings

Mr. Greg

Coach Steven

Giant Woman

Beach City Drift

Winter Forecast

Bismuth

Steven’s Dream

When It Rains

The Good Lars

Catch and Release

Chille Tid

I Am My Mom

Love ‘em

Laser Light Cannon

Bubble Buddies

Tiger Millionaire

Lion 2: The Movie

Rose’s Room

An Indirect Kiss

Ocean Gem

Space Race

Garnet’s Universe

Warp Tour

The Test

Future Vision

On the Run

Maximum Capacity

Marble Madness

Political Power

Full Disclosure

Joy Ride

Keeping It Together

We Need to Talk

Cry for Help

Keystone Motel

Back to the Barn

Steven’s Birthday

It Could’ve Been Great

Message Received

Log Date 7 15 2

Same Old World

The New Lars

Monster Reunion

Alone at Sea

Crack the Whip

Beta

Back to the Moon

Kindergarten Kid

Buddy’s Book

Gem Harvest

Three Gems and a Baby

That Will Be All

The New Crystal Gems

Storm in the Room

Room for Ruby

Lion 4: Alternate Ending

Doug Out

Are You My Dad?

Stuck Together

Like ‘em

Gem Glow

Frybo

Arcade Mania

So Many Birthdays

Lars and the Cool Kids

Onion Trade

Steven the Sword Fighter

Beach Party

Monster Buddies

Keep Beach City Weird

Watermelon Steven

The Message

Open Book

Story for Steven

Shirt Club

Love Letters

Reformed

Rising Tides, Crashing Tides

Onion Friend

Historical Friction

Friend Ship

Nightmare Hospital

Too Far

Barn Mates

Steven Floats

Drop Beat Dad

Too Short to Ride

Restaurant Wars

Kiki’s Pizza Delivery Service

Greg the Babysitter

Gem Hunt

Steven vs. Amethyst

Bubbled

Adventures in Light Distortion

Gem Heist

The Zoo

Rocknaldo

Enh

Cheeseburger Backpack

Together Breakfast

Cat Fingers

Serious Steven

Steven’s Lion

Joking Victim

Secret Team

Say Uncle

Super Watermelon Island

Gem Drill

Know Your Fusion

Future Boy Zoltron

Tiger Philanthropist

No Thanks!

6. Horror Club 5. Fusion Cuisine 4. House Guest 3. Onion Gang 2. Sadie’s Song 1. Island Adventure

(No promo art for this one, so I went with Jastea’s gorgeous take on Topaz.)

#stuck together #steven universe #su #steven universally #review

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loyalflutist · 5 years

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Summoning Ritual (F!Byleth x Edelgard)

Rating: General Audience Archive Warning: N/A Words: 2,066 Summary: The time has come when they must summon their professors. Edelgard is nervous, but it appears that luck may be on her side...

A/N: It started with a BS idea. Now it became a BS one shot. Just thinking about the Fate series concept of Master-Servant. Enjoy this random drabble! Am hoping to work on a Fate/Three Houses crossover series soon for comedy. (Comedy to an extent, of course.)

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Here at the Officer’s Academy, something magical has happened. Various students from all three Houses stood in their classroom, their eyes all aimed at their house leaders.

Dimitri from the Blue Lions.

Claude from the Golden Deer.

Edelgard from the Black Eagles.

Three of the royal members of their family are in full preparation for what is to come. They cannot miss a single item on their checklist. Should they fail to do so, their efforts would be all for naught. Their classmates showered them with praises, luck, prayers, and even a snack for the long, arduous process.

“I wish you the best of luck, Lady Edelgard,” Hubert bowed his head, hand placed on his chest. “I have great faith in you.”

“You got this! If anything, I’ll be punching good vibes to your way!” Caspar nodded. As if to emphasize his encouragement, he began jabbing at the air. It would have continued had it not been for Linhardt slapping one of his flurried hands with a flick of his wrist.

“If there is anyone that can do it, it’s you, Edelgard,” Ferdinand tilted his head. “I know that for a fact.”

“Edie, make sure to take your time. It would be bad if the ritual failed because you were in a rush,” Dorothea handed her a small bag of… charcoaled cookies. (Edelgard is currently suppressing a mortified expression.) “I’m sorry these are a little burnt, but I’m sure these will give you energy!”

“I will be a here, praying for your safe return,” Petra bowed in a similar fashion as Hubert. “I heard this ritual is something of a tradition in this monastery.”

“I think the archbishop is just lazy to recruit new professors.”

“Linhardt!” Bernadetta swung her head towards him. “H-How could you say that!?”

He shrugged. “Why do you think this is the first year she proposed this idea?”

“W-W-Well, she might not want to come out of her room!”

“She’s not you, Bernedetta…”

“You’ve always got a sharp tongue, Linhardt.”

“Aren’t you one to say, Hubert.”

The noble scratched her cheek, beads of sweat flying out of her head. Her comrades and classmates were lively. Although Edelgard’s heart is racing, a small wave of nausea pulsed within her stomach, and her fingers were trembling, they soothed her shaken soul. She licked the bottom of her lip and gave a small huff.

“Thank you, everyone, for your kind words. I must now be off.”

Everyone in the Black Eagles waved their farewells as she turned her back towards them. When she took a step out of the lecture room, Claude and Dimitri both exited at the same time. The three paused in their place. They exchanged looks.

“Isn’t this a coincidence,” Claude placed both hands behind his head. His signature smile flashed at his rivals. “You both ready for this?”

“Of course,” Edelgard placed a hand on her hip. “I will be sure to summon a professor worthy to teach our house.”

“Likewise,” Dimitri faintly smiled. “It would be nice to have a professor who can lead our house to victory in the upcoming festival.”

“Isn’t that too far away, though?” the Golden Deer’s house leader mused. “We still have more than half a year to go.”

“It’s never too early to think ahead.”

“I agree with Dimitri.”

“If you both say so… I’ll just sit back and watch you both go at it.”

The other two leaders chuckled as they proceeded to walk towards the holy ground. It was not far and took less than five minutes by foot. However, each step brought them closer to an important ground. In their hands were the necessary ingredients for the archaic ritual. They gulped. One misstep and it’s all over for their house. The last thing they would want is to be stuck with a horrific instructor for the rest of their school life.

“Welcome, my children,” Rhea greeted them once they’ve arrived. As they got to their destined spot, the holy maiden graced her hands at the marked flooring before them. Black inked patterns drawn within the circle were scrawled all over the pristine surface. She let out a small exhale. “This is the first time in the history of Fodlan and the Officer’s Academy to conduct this ritual. It is a summoning ritual that will call forth not only your professor but your Servant too. This is an important role of a new Master.”

Right… Servant and Master. They were terminologies that were vaguely touched upon in this country. Apparently, they were from a famous magical war called the “Holy Grail War” in a land called “Japan.” Not that the citizens of Fodlan would know. The reason why Rhea decided to pursue this was due to the ease of access to the houses’ mentors. It would save her plenty of time to search for a suitable teacher. Based on the house leader’s personality, they would be likely matched with a Servant of a similar attitude. Plus, since these students are trained for battle, a Servant’s battle status is beneficial to teaching them the ropes with their potent abilities. There is also the limited time of when a Servant can stay with their Master. Until their Master either dies, chooses to free them, or finishes their schooling, the Servant is stuck by the house leader’s side.

Alas, it is simple on paper though! Physical and mental fortitude are required to make this a reality. Otherwise, a disappointing result will shortly follow.

“Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd.”

“Guess I’m the first one up…”

The blonde stepped forward. He walked up to the magic circle and began to place the necessary items. He spoke of incantations for the ritual.

Manuela came to him.

“Claude von Riegan.”

The brown-haired stepped forward. He walked up to the magic circle and began to place the necessary items. He spoke of incantations for the ritual.

Hanneman came to him.

“Edelgard von Hresvelg.”

The white-haired stepped forward. She walked up to the magic circle and began to place the necessary items.

Her heart thumped hard; she could hear it from her eardrums! A piece of green fabric. A pile of salt. A small stone from ancient times. A small vial of blood from an eagle poured upon the marked crest. Edelgard backed away and watched the circle begin to faintly glow. She closed her eyes. Darkness enveloped her vision as she deeply inhaled.

‘ Focus, El, focus! ‘

She touched upon her bloodline’s Crest of Seiros and extended her opened hand at the markings. One hand holding the outreached arm, the noble began to chant an incantation for the ritual.

“Let silver and steel be the essence. Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation Let red the color I pay tribute to Let my great Master Hresvelg be the ancestor Let rise a wall against the wind that shall fall Let the four cardinal gates close Let the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the Kingdom rotate.

I hereby declare Your body shall serve under me My fate shall be your sword Submit to the beckoning of the Church of Seiros If you will submit to this will and this reason… Then answer!

An oath shall be sworn here! I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven I shall have dominion over all evils of all of Hell!”

A searing burn spread on the back of her right hand. It was as if someone pierced the skin with an iron knife! She immediately grimaced; her eyes narrowed as she felt a huge gust of wind blow in her direction. Just like Dimitri and Claude, a gust of wind whipped against her. This time, she was the direct target of the powerful blow. Edelgard’s knees bent at the immense pressure. Still, she maintained her stance and bit back a yelp.

The whole room became bright red. It was bright enough that everyone was forced to shut their eyes. Unlike Dimitri’s light blue and Claude’s golden yellow, their eyes instinctively avoided hazardous exposure.

“…?”

No one was there at the magic circle. All of the items were left untouched on the floor.

“…”

Did she fail? Even Rhea was a bit perplexed at the sight. The archbishop slowly examined the quiet premise. Aside from Manuela and Hanneman, no other professor showed up. Claude and Dimitri exchanged nervous glances as Edelgard felt her shoulders slump.

“Did I fail?”

“Edelgard…”

Dimitri started to approach her. He reached out towards her shoulder and eventually gave it a gentle pat.

“I’m so sorry.”

Edelgard hardly heeded any attention to him. She brought her right hand up. The burning sensation now throbbed, its red marking resembling an unknown crest fading into a black tattoo. Was it even possible to fail with the Command Seals still intact?

Shortly after that train of thought, a loud crash came from deep inside the holy ground. It shook the ground beneath their feet, all four present members nearly losing their balance. They were alarmed.

“Is that an intruder?!” Claude immediately pulled out his bow. “What an unlucky timing!”

Edelgard and Dimitri followed suit and unsheathed their weapon of choice. Rhea backed away as the three students and two Servants ran to the source.

It was surreal.

A teal-haired woman sat on a pile of rubble. The abnormal hole that cracked through the decorated ceiling shone the sun’s ray upon the newcomer. It was as if it were a beacon of light from the heavens above. Bits of debris crumbled upon the resting figure. An archaic sword at hand, the young adult raised her head.

‘ She looks like a queen… ‘ Edelgard widened her eyes. ‘ She’s beautiful. ‘

“…”

It took a bit of time until she broke their silence by standing. This made the three students gasp as both Hanneman and Manuela moved in front of them. Respectively Casters, they raised their hands in preparation. Not that they needed to. The unknown female walked up to one of the students nearest to her: Edelgard.

“Tell me,” she softly spoke. “Are you my Master?”

“Um— Y-Yes. Yes, I’m your Master.” Edelgard scrambled for words as she felt a flash of heat run into her head. “I’m Edelgard von Hresvelg.”

The Servant blinked. Then, she cracked a small smile. (Unironically, Edelgard's heart skipped a beat! The smile was so pretty!)

“I am Byleth of the Saber Class.” As if out of a fairytale, Byleth reached out to grab ahold of Edelgard’s unoccupied hand. She got down to one knee and, as a knight, looked up to the house leader. “I will teach and protect you with my life.”

A blast of heat blew out of Edelgard’s ears as she began to open her mouth like a fish deprived of water.

“I-I— Yes! YES! Um— I mean… it would… be a pleasure having you as my queen-- I... I mean, Servant.”

She could not help but let out an additional comment afterward. This time, she didn’t mean to let it slip out.

“You’re so beautiful though.”

Byleth blinked. That caused Edelgard to immediately regret the sudden words that flew out of her lips. She dropped her axe and concealed her mouth, her pupils looking anywhere but the teacher’s face. This caused a chuckle to come from the older female. She squeezed Edelgard’s hand.

“Thank you for the compliment. I am happy to serve someone who is even more beautiful than I.”

That’s it, that did it for Edelgard. The Black Eagles’s house leader felt a mini-mushroom explosion occur on top of her head. This caused the Saber class to raise both brows when her Master became beet red.

Meanwhile, Dimitri and Claude squinted their eyes.

“What the Hell?” Claude mumbled. “Why did she get the hot one?”

“I’m impressed, Edelgard,” Dimitri crossed his arms. “I didn’t think you would summon someone like her…”

“Just... damn, just look at her. Why did I get an old man?”

“You’re one to talk. I got someone who is much older than Byleth.”

“Hey, at least yours is a woman. Mine is a dude! I’m not into old guys.”

“…I wonder what goes through your mind sometimes, Claude.”

“I’ll be blunt this time: I’m jealous.”

“It appears that this is something we both have in common.”

“I hope you both understand that we can hear you both loud and clear,” Manuela and Hanneman both remarked at the same time, their frowns evident.

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kendrixtermina · 4 years

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(Fe3h discourse incoming) So I'm not sure if this is still around but I remember some people calling characters "racist" due to how they initially view the Almyrans and it just annoys me? If you lived in basically medieval times and all you knew about a group of people was that they invaded your homeland and are good fighters it makes sense you'd be wary about them. The fact that we see them easily discard any initial opinions to work with them in VW shows the opposite and how accepting they are

Part of this does probably come from this purity culture sentiment that there is one obvious right answer that should be apparent to anyone not evil when we’re really all to an extent limited by the knowledge we can access.

This is something I feel strongly about precisely because I know how much I don’t know and how much ppl have been wrong in the past - so much BS is still widely believed these days like Diet culture or counter-evidential beliefs about economy. So that makes me be careful to claim we have the truth now. As my grandfather used to say, “the middle ages will step on us”, that is as long as our time isn’t barbarism free it will come to be considered barbaric times eventually.

In the middle ages people used to give their children mercury and bankrupt themselves as someone might for real medicine. Emotionally to the mammal brain it’s the same. That’s why knowledge is power cause it helps you know the real consequences of your action. Otherwise you get what seems like caring parents wondering if they're harming their children by not doing barbaric stuff like physical beating or fgm. One can notice by oneself that it’s wrong and causes suffering but someone who only believes their own ideas and never takes outside data into account would be either mad or an arrogant jerk. At some point you need to consider outside data unless you can discover all of science and psychology by yourself.

So to put it short no one is immune to propaganda and the closest thing to a cure is self-awareness and self-questioning, no one is born with all the answers; instrict, thinking, emotion and intuition can all lead you astray.

Though the correct word here would be xenophobia. (generic distrust/prejudice about foreigners)

‘Racism’ is a very specific early modernity variant of it with pseudoscience mixed in, or maybe it could be thought of as an ideology meant to keep xenophobic-like distrust going in a mixed society. Normally that sort of prejudice desintegrates as people interact more (a big plot point here actually) - or rather, communication & interaction changes how people define in group and out group, which is ultimately arbitrary. A lot of what is thought of today as countries or races used to be considered wildly different peoples when the reach of communication reached further.

But if you spread some ideology that leads people to be artificially segregated, or indirectly causes that through economic disadvantages, bam, you can keep prejudice alive & well for centuries and whatever institutions you built on it, like colonial resource extraction gigs or political hegemony.

That said tho, certain lines there are definitely written to evoke rl xenophobic comments as people commonly experience them, and to tell people who recognize this & might have charged responses because of their own backstories that their lying eyes deceive them because you like those characters is not good. “Oh but they’re a good person with a bright future” is exactly how this behavior fails to get recognized in real life. So to that extent I’d disagree with you.

At least their past incarnations at the point that they said those lines they were “xenophobes”, that is, fulfilled all criteria of the definition & engaged in typical behavior as people affected by xenophobia experience it.

Hilda, for all her good qualities (and don’t get me wrong I love her to bits) is still sort of a frivolous rich girl. Sylvain for example did take the time to inform himself ‘bout the neighbors (See that lost item that’s info about sreng) though his family also holds a border territory & much depends on its defense. The system isn’t an universal brainwash, the truth is that both system and individual responses matter and dynamically influence each other.

But note that that’s all I’m talking about: Recognition, sober reasonable acknowledgement of bad behavior. You can’t talk about bad behavior if you don’t show anyone doing it and if it was only irredeemable monsters that did it, it wouldn’t make ppl question themselves.

To acknowledge that they acted xenophobically (adverb) isn’t to say that they’re an embodiment of all xenophobia ever (noun) and that you’ve got to hate them now. But as long as they don’t hate at you for liking them ppl affected by xenophobia are allowed to vent & use a story as a projection space for it because that’s how everyone uses stories - the same story can in fact mean different things to people without either being “wrong”

Also, scale. Hilda making one or two not even especially malicious comments is on a whole different level than Ingrid actually cheering for destruction. Neither of them compares to the various unrepentant antagonists who never change their views when confronted with evidence cause it benefits them.

Some of that distinction is lost if you just slap the same label on all and demand they be reacted to the same way, or that ppl add a disclaimer each time they want to talk about a character they like. We don’t make everyone who likes Jeritza say “mass murder is bad” first.

But also context: After all a big plot here is that the system these characters live in encourages and cultivates such attitudes - that’s why the various leader figures you can choose to back all want to change it it different ways.

That’s why Winston in 1984 starts the story very paranoid, repressed & full of violent fantasies, to show the effect the dystopia has on people.

(important point imho, a lot of ppl look at atrocities and judge that human nature is just bad but actually human nature is programmable. Evil can be engineered as much as civilization and education can foster good)

It’s generally the problem with Purity culture (wether it wears a right or left wing hat) that it’s more focussed on applying loaded, out of context labels (which are then treated as static) than constructive solutions focussed on promoting the desired end goals.

The labeling tactic is probably appropriate sometimes (active, unrepentant nazis, that you thereby deprive of big dollar platforms or ad revenue) but no tool/tactic is ever a silver bullet.

tl;Dr I agree with you that labeling/purity culture doesn’t have the right approach to it, but ppl should be able to call a spade a spade and say & respond to depictions of xenophobia because to say otherwise would be tantamount to saying that victims of xenophobia or racism aren’t allowed to have feelings or engage with media.

Obsly the characters can’t be reduced to that & you’re right about that & the importance of context, but if just stating/acknowledging that they at one point fulfilled the criteria for xenophobia feels like bashing to you I’d work on decoupling those emotions to see clearer.

People can have done something wrong at some point & still be interesting people - especially in a media context where they’re as imaginary as their victims, it’s not like you’re giving money to real unrepentant perps.

I’d ease up on real ppl too if they repent simply because then they stop being a problem and solving it so it stops harming RL ppl takes precedent over cathartic punishment that makes you feel good, the goal should be always to stop the harm (at the root, if possible) because it’s intolerable for ppl to be harmed

Or that’s my 2cents anyways.

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misscrawfords · 4 years

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4, 5, 16, 18 :)

4. Do you outline before you start writing? If so, how far do you stray from that outline?

I tend not to but I sometimes do. For the two long stories I actually finished, Harry Potter and the Unbreakable Link and Consolation Prize, I got part way through, knew where I was going and then wrote a chapter-by-chapter brief plan for the rest... and then stuck to it. There might be a correlation between doing that and finishing these fics. Huh. Who knew.

5. What is the perfect environment for you to write in?

My laptop at my table with music playing and nothing else I ought to be doing.

16. What is your most underrated fic?

I know I sound like a broken record, but Consolation Prize. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written and I’m genuinely afraid I will never write anything as good as that. It’s always made me a little sad that readers liked University Challenge more. And like, fair play to them and I’m pleased for that and it’s not like people didn’t like CP, but I guess I just feel so strongly about it. I got really upset once upon a time about it not winning various awards and only being placed. I defined my entire idea of personal success by how popular that story was and it had to win. Otherwise I was just getting a consolation prize! :P I think that’s really unhealthy but it’s how I felt. I cried for such a long time when it didn’t win the most rewards and come first in its categories. (Yes, I needed a thicker skin, but that’s the way it was.) And I still want everyone in the world to read it!

18. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

Moving away from Downton, here’s the bathroom scene from Chapter 11 of Growing Beyond.

Rey has gone to her school’s production of Anastasia with the intention of loving it because it was her favourite film back in the orphanage but instead she’s horribly triggered by seeing it for the first time in years. At the interval, she dashes out of the hall to have a breakdown in the toilets.

This is GB’s version of the cave scene from TLJ and is a key moment for both Rey in the film and for Rey in GB. It’s a real turning point for her because it forces her to confront her past and her anxieties about her identity, state what she most wants “show me my parents” and then put her on the track to actually confiding in Ben. In the movie it’s also rife with symbolism connected to the heroine’s journey as she plunges into a dark hole representing return to the womb and the figures in the mirror that are apparently her parents but really look like her and Ben and which end up being her own reflection. Finally, she emerges wet and reborn.

When considering how to transfer this extremely weird and highly symbolic scene to a “realist” modern AU, I tried to find a way of doing it in a way that didn’t jar with the setting while also paying homage to some of the symbolism of the original. Mirrors and water are easy to fit in, so a bathroom made sense from a practical point of view, but also from a symbolic one. The ladies’ toilets are often a place of refuge - who hasn’t cried in a toilet cubicle before? - and they’re also a private place that the rest of the world can’t intrude in, especially men, so (and I know I sound utterly pretentious here and I am half joking with this level of interpretation) you could argue that they are a distinctly feminine location. (Yes, that is arguably absolute bs lbr.)

At first in the bathroom, Rey is desperately trying to hold on and not have a breakdown. She knows this is not the time or place - there are other audience members coming in and out while she sits on the floor of her cubicle. All the while, she’s aware of water - she’s splashed her face, taps are running, toilets are being flushed. Part of this scene is building up Rey’s anxiety so that she can let it loose on her bike ride through the rain afterwards. In the movie, Rey is drenched when she emerges from the cave - she’s not going to get drenched in the toilet, so this is after all a precursor to her mad night ride through the storm.

The scene also introduces a hyperfocus on Rey’s hands.

She raised her head from her arms and stared at her hands, still trembling slightly. Her fingernails were uneven and bitten, her fingers red and chapped from winter cold. She stared at them with peculiar intensity as if she had never seen them before.

This ties into both Rey’s later questioning of who she is, where had her DNA come from, who actually made her, but is also picked up later in Chapter 12 when she’s met Ben in the pub and she doesn’t know what to do with her hands. And of course, leads up to the moment when they touch hands together. So Rey’s hands are important in this chapter and the next.

She emerges from the cubicle and then surveys herself in the mirror, just as she does in the cave, disassociating quite a bit, a way for me to both try to enter into her mental state and also to parallel the extreme weirdness of the original cave scene. As she looks into the mirror, she questions her identity. Rey in the cave says, “Show me my parents!” Rey in the bathroom doesn’t directly say that (because that would be weird) but her thoughts are going along a different line.

This is also where I bring in Rey’s role as a teacher and how that’s tied to her identity in this story. Obviously that’s not in the movie, but it works surprisingly well. Rey reflects on how as a teacher she knows that parental background affects a student’s development - but what about when they have no parents? The connection between Rey and Ben as teachers moulding the next generation and the effects on them of their own parents and teachers and mentor figures is one that works very well in this story. It is named after Yoda’s wonderful quote, after all: “That is the curse of all masters. We are what they grow beyond.” Rey and Ben as teachers must equip their children to grow beyond them but they themselves are unable to move beyond their own pasts and how other people have defined them.

Children is also a theme in SW (or it was until TROS decided it was blind and couldn’t read basic symbolism) and TLJ ended with the image of the force sensitive child. Wish I knew where that was going to go. Anyway, at this point in GB, one of Rey’s students enter the bathroom and she’s forced to act normal. The student is called Daisy. This student is therefore a reflection of or perhaps a hidden part of Rey herself. Daisy is full of optimism and enjoyment of the life she’s leading and full of hope for the future. She confides to Rey that she’s really enjoying her Physics lessons and that’s directly because of Rey’s teaching. Rey encourages her to come along to Science Club, thus expanding her interest still further. Daisy has appeared out of a magical plot hole like a woodland creature in a fairytale to tell Rey exactly what she most needed to hear - that she is doing good work, that she is important, that she can change lives, that she needs to stick at what she’s doing because it is really important. Daisy is also perhaps a reflection of who Rey could have been if she had had encouragement at that age herself, someone who could be herself and have potential that others saw and have someone who believed in her and she’s a sign of Rey’s future importance in leading the next generation (just as she is presented in the films) - how many more Daisys will there be in her career? And while this story is obviously a Reylo romance, Rey’s journey as a teacher and as a symbolic mother of her people (her role in the films until TROS decided to misunderstand its own canon) is still key to her own personal development.

So there you have it. :P

#rose writes #growing beyond #youblowuponesun

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dabistits · 5 years

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I’m wanna make my own manga, so what advice can you give me to avoid what Hori is doing. (Btw I’m a boy) I still have to finish school before that but I wanna keep those advice with me

sorry it took so long to get back to you! i hope you will still find this advice useful regardless, even though it’s not incredibly specific. i could give you a bullet-pointed list of what to pay attention to (how much does this female character get to do in the story? would her pose be awkward if replaced by a male character? does she feel like a complex character? does she suffer unduly and in specifically gendered ways e.g. rape?) but i could come up with thousands of questions and it still wouldn’t be very useful for helping you actually learn how to spot misogyny in stories. so i’m going to give you a general list of things to do that will hopefully help you develop your analytical skills to avoid hori’s bs more than just trying to memorize a ton of questions.

consume other media. read widely, watch widely. familiarize yourself with the state of fictional storytelling today. you need a solid foundation upon which to start building your analytical skills, so that you have material to draw from when you think about what works and what doesn’t work.

talk to people. be they man or woman. it’s pretty fun to talk about media imo (otherwise i wouldn’t be running this blog), and it’s a great way to get different perspectives. if you’re in the company of people interested in media criticism, you will learn a lot, about lots of different things, if you’re willing to put yourself and your ideas out there. ask questions! let people help you work out confused feelings!

read what reviewers are saying, especially women. most of us who talk about media are pretty detailed about why we liked or disliked something (i regularly give specific examples about what bothers me in bnha e.g. why i feel like himiko is sexualized). so, what are those things? why did a lot of women like furiosa from mad max and what messages did they get from the narrative? why was wonder woman’s costuming considered an elevation from traditional women’s costuming in action movies? why is revolutionary girl utena praised for its complex handling of misogyny and patriarchy? on the other hand, why is there a lot of feminist criticism directed at quentin tarantino’s movies? why are so many women burned out on MCU’s “strong female characters”?

reading what reviewers and ordinary bloggers, especially women, are saying is the best way for you to familiarize yourself with the landscape of feminist media criticism. it’ll give you an idea of what our concerns are, our problems with sometimes fairly specific things (like how the cinematographic rule of thirds can be used to objectify women), and also how to do things well.

at some point, you’re gonna have to tackle theory. this is somewhat unavoidable. although much of media criticism has been deferred to popular culture in a way that you can probably grasp the basics through osmosis, i would encourage you to read academics that actually go in-depth into feminist theory in all sorts of media. laura mulvey’s “visual pleasure and narrative cinema” is probably one of the foundational texts in feminist film theory, but i find that most people don’t even know ‘male gaze’ was coined by her. the ‘male gaze’ as a concept originated in film theory! going in-depth into academic writing that painstakingly deconstructs a concept, usually with respect to specific examples, will help you make your own connections and be more confident in your own analytical skills, because they will give you the tools to apply disciplined commentary.

we’re not all going to agree (obviously). that’s one reason why i insist on going with the learning vs memorizing route. you’re going to see dissenting opinions, and you will probably disagree with some opinions and that’s just what happens by virtue of us being a multitude of complex creatures. i see too many people here who need to ask an assumed authority whether they’re “allowed” to do something, and that’s just kind of ridiculous! you can disagree with women. you can disagree with me. women disagree with each other and i disagree with some women. some women think bnha is a feminist masterpiece, and you will probably have to disagree with them. you’ll have to navigate these disagreements and make the best call with all the information and abilities you have at your disposal.

try not to think of a piece of media as “feminist” or “not feminist.” this article explains why asking if something is “feminist” is a moot point, and this post goes into all the issues we encounter when we start asking if something is really “feminist.” to oversimplify and to put those ideas more succinctly, the issue is that narratives can rarely be feminist or anti-feminist unless they’re propaganda pieces specifically made to advance feminist cause. narratives with good female characters can include ‘non-feminist’ elements. we can talk all we want about jennifer’s body being empowering or whatever, but it’s not actually feminist praxis to write a story in which a high school girl gets stabbed to death, even if she comes back as a demon to eat boys. someone could consider it personally empowering, but hopefully you would recognize that there’s nothing “feminist” about killing a girl. and that’s okay. something doesn’t need to be feminist to be enjoyable nor to have interesting things to say about women/womanhood!

pay attention to women of color. please please please keep this one hammered in your head. women of color are so often ignored for the sake of white women, and we get a lot of backlash when we talk about racialized misogyny in media. this happened with orange is the new black, it happened with atomic blonde, where the non-white, female love interests were killed off so white characters could mourn, and when woc pointed this out we got tons of backlash from white women. don’t be like those kinds of people! think about us and read our writings while you go through this list, please. the same goes for the thoughts of men of color (if you’re white), for LBT+ women, mentally ill women, disabled women, fat women... we all have thoughts about the way we’re represented in media and our concerns deserve attention, especially since manga has a bad reputation for being not only misogynistic, but racist, transmisogynistic, and fatphobic.

don’t let being a boy hold you back. this might be a weird piece of advice to hear, but all too often men either think they’re already the best at writing women or they’re so fragile that one piece of criticism from a woman will make him think we’re entitled shrews. don’t fall into either of these mindsets because they will weaken you. go into this with the idea that you can do well, and that you can improve. you can improve by listening to us and taking our advice, but don’t treat us as an authority figure telling you what to do every step of the way. you have your own voice and you’re able to make your own judgments. plenty of men have made good media about women (park chan-wook and the handmaiden, ikuhara kunihiko and revolutionary girl utena, basically all of ghibli’s filmography), so know that you can be outstanding.

i know that i talked about movies a lot, but i still hope this helps you because the basics of constructing a story and characters are the same. manga is also highly visual in the way film is, with respect to actually having images you need to frame and characters you need to pose, so i think a lot of knowledge is transferrable. you might also find critical theory about comic books to be useful, though i personally don’t really follow comics. lastly, if you see this answer after all, feel free to ask questions especially if something isn’t clear!

#ask

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