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warsmith-38 · 3 years

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How I would do RWBY Pt. 0

Disclaimer: It is easier to improve what already exist than it is to create something new. Boy howdy do I know that. That being said, I believe that RWBY has more than its fair share of flaws and this is how I would do it differently if I was behind the reigns. This is just a collection of my opinions and ideas which in the end will probably amount to nothing. I felt the need to do this because my brain just decided ‘nah motherfucker, you ain’t thinking of anything else from now on’ and this is the end result for nothing else would satisfy my rage.

I wouldn’t quite call this a complete re-haul, but more rather a rework with some of my own brand of polish. It’s not a compete rebuild from the ground up in a different world with different concepts and themes, but how I would go about a second go around with the series from the base that is already there. If a detail is missing from my musings then assume it is either unchanged or removed, depending on context.

If some of my complaints were addressed after I stopped watching, I honestly don’t much care. If it takes longer than 4 seasons to fix what I view as fundamental problems, then it’s far too little too late for me. I paid scant attention to the series post my stopping point and liked little to none of what I saw.

Please do not take this as a specific attack on anything other than the writing of the show itself. This is not directed or targeted against anyone, regardless of position or feelings on the topic at hand. If you ignore what I just said and decide to take this as an insult, then I say that you need to be more self-secure in your tastes and interests.

Things I would remove + reason why

Silver eyed warriors as a concept- it’s more or less the same concept as dojutsu from Naruto. It’s the fucking sharingan (rubygan). It’s not quite chosen one level, but crap like this is the blight of good protagonists. It’s fucking eugenics that makes you awesome not your own skills or training but on your bloodline. No need for personal development or life-changing hardship when you have a built in power that can be cultivated like a fucking bumper crop.

Maidens- Wasn’t intended originally and only made the overall story more cluttered with power creep and plot device. It’s a similar problem as above. No need for training or anything if people can just kill the person who has the power currently and take if from them. Which, at that point, why do you want that power if you’re already strong enough to kill and take it from the person who has it to begin with? It’s something someone just shouted out and they rolled with it because it sounded cool in the moment.

The Relics- McGuffin dragonballs that serve as plot device and little else. A story can be told without needing to monotonously race for Excalibur or the holy grail. Considering the Maidens, I doubt that the relics were intended in the first place and as such if you can’t tell a story without throwing something in after a few seasons because you realized that you didn’t have a plot, then you’re not that good at telling stories.

Oscar- The show didn’t need more main protagonists when what was already there wasn’t being given enough characterization to begin with. For that matter-

Quite a few characters- The cast is cluttered and convoluted enough as is with seemingly important characters getting the shaft in favor of yet another new character that would barely do anything. Time and effort seems to be put into one-off schmucks that would be better served making the story not need poochie the dog, let alone several. Character integration is not ‘create a character to do one thing and then pretend they don’t exist’. There’s already plenty of characters than can be used wherever.

The overt shipping bait, especially if it’s just going to be taken up or abandoned on a whim- I don’t mean relationship building, I mean the obvious baiting of a relationship that, in the end, might not even happen. All it does is dumb down characters and character arcs, draw out pointless scenes, and make the fans have conniptions one way or another. People are pissed off whenever things don’t go their way with shipping so the only winning move with these people is not to play their game. Looking at you Klance and Zutara. Either don’t do anything or have a fucking plan and stick to it and not make complete swerves when fans get uppity. If it genuinely matters to you, then pretend whatever ship happens at whatever point, I don’t care.

Changes to the world that I think would go over better-

Everyone has a level of aura with a naturally high level generally meaning that they might be able to unlock a semblance. A semblance is unlocked through some sort of specific event, typically a stressful one IE: Yang and Ruby are caught in the woods by grimm and Yang gets frustrated and scared at not being able to defend her sister before getting angry and her rage mode semblance unlocking. Not everyone who unlocks a semblance goes into combat schools but it is a requirement for acceptance into most of them. Having the potential to unlock a semblance seems entirely random but has a higher chance with genetics.

There are two types of semblances: 1 is hereditary like the Schnee glyphs, changing only slightly, if at all, through the generations. 2 is a random personal power like Yang having her rage mode as compared to Raven’s portals. Whichever you get tends to be random with the occasional exception depending on genetics and the specific semblance.

Every 1 in assumedly 10 people who have semblances have the potential to have two semblances, often times, but not necessarily, being one hereditary and one random. The process of unlocking the second semblance involves immense emotional distress and in some cases might not even happen for the individual who has the potential, period, thus skewing data. This gives an enhanced type power but isn’t protagonist exclusive. It shows a higher than average power capacity, but isn’t a gamebreaker to the same level as a fucking kekkei genkai or getting the powers of a fucking demigod. A good amount of characters would only have one semblance and be considerable badasses despite it and even be able to beat a couple of the few that have two.

Establish Menagerie as the official Fifth Kingdom, the newest of the great kingdoms. Maybe not the singularly strongest or most influential, but make it so Menagerie and its people, the faunus, have a considerable role in the world’s affairs, if even from an isolationist standpoint. Don’t have them as even a semi thriving entity that isn’t a kingdom because that only begs the question as to why the kingdoms are so important to begin with then.

Make the White Fang a faunus supremacist group that has very little support, if any, from the faunus people as a whole. Faunus right issues are history for the vast majority of the world and the White Fang as a whole is only using the problems in Atlas with the SDC as a means of trying to gain power. There are actual faunus rights groups trying to make things better for their race in Atlas and other marginalized areas but the White Fang dislikes them on the grounds that they go against their goal and it makes them look even worse.

Fucking pronounce names correctly, I mean, Christ. Weiss, the word, is pronounced like ‘Vice’. It’s an actual fucking word. It’s the German word for white. It’s like saying tor-till-uh not tor-tee-ah. Blake is Bella-doe-nah not Bella-dawn-uh. Shit like that. No you don’t need to put on a heavy accent to say these words but pronouncing things so inaccurately just makes you look like an ignorant rube (no, that was not a pun). I don’t fucking care what your reasons are. Why use these words in the first place if you’re not even going to try to say them right?

Ozpin is order to Salem’s chaos. Ancient demigods of both archetypes vying for power across the ages and the innocent peoples of the world be damned in the crossfire. Neither are entirely good nor evil but both are not exactly helpful to the free peoples on the world and the continued livelihood thereof. Their progenitor god created them to try and guide humanity in a balanced way. That seemed to work at first, but then failed like a bad marriage and they waged war ever since like a bad divorce. The grimm are a creation of Salem’s to test humanity and make then stronger through conflict. Ozpin ranges from the lawman to the fascist fairly duplicitously. The two can only be permanently killed by each other but neither wants to get too close to the other because of that exact same reason. If killed by other means, they will resurrect after a fashion no worse for wear.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Ruby Rose- It is a crime that the titular character has so little actual character beyond just being ‘Hyperactive Anime Protagonist #235’. Most of her (few) character traits are tell not show, and of course she’s got the fucking rubygan bloodline ability crap. She has next to nothing that isn’t allotted by default to most anime protags on the grounds of the stereotype. For the main character to have less character than any of the members of the fucking B-team is a travesty.

1. Give her a clear rebellious streak, a distinct problem with authority, and a headstrong attitude. Daddy doesn’t want her to be in danger, so she decides to become a huntress. She’s told to stay put, so she hunts down Roman. She’s told that she needs to stay home and recover, so she sets out on her own not thinking about the exact consequences. Make her the impetus for the team’s involvement with the problems of the world in the early seasons. Make her a driving part of the plot, not just being along for the ride or because someone else said so.

2. Give her blood knight tendencies. Make her VERY willing to get into a fight with the bad guys, not just fights in general, but fights against bad guys. Nothing over the top, but enough that she has a scene or three where she says “Shut up bad guy, skip to the part where we get to kick the crap out of you,” or something of that nature. Hyper combative characters are fun and ethical.

3. Give her more traits as a mechanic and weapon nerd. Include scenes of her fixing everyone’s weapons for fun or being able to analyze an opponent’s fighting style based on the type, design, and/or wear & tear of their weapon, make her a polyglot of weapons that can be at least proficient in using just about any weapon. Come to think of it…

4. Anything that could give her actual character traits. They don’t even have to be all that major traits, just give her enough so that we actually have a character with more definition than printer paper. She’s the main character, the titular character at that. This isn’t a video game with a blank-slate protagonist. If the main character isn’t even really a character, like, at all, then what’s the fucking point?

5. Convert silver eyes power into a second semblance for white fire vision that kills grimm like nothing else. Gotten as a hereditary semblance from Summer. Which is also why Summer was specifically targeted by Salem on the grounds that it makes her just a little too dangerous for her long-term plans. This makes it so she isn’t just the fucking chosen one, but still has a clear definitive reason to be involved against the big bad because, y’know, dead mom. Yes, this kinda goes into the whole ‘bloodline is what determines importance’ thing I wanted to be rid of, but it’s only a chance two generations instead of a massive lineage of nonsense and keeps more of the onus of involvement on Ruby herself.

6. Give her a very clear motivation that’s deeper than surface level. ‘Oh, I want to do the right thing’ is a flimsy as balls motivation especially compared to the rest of her team that has that AND an actual reason for thinking that way. Why does she want to be the good guy? What happened in her life that makes her this motivated to doing the right thing? Yang has her desire to find her mother (which, come to think of it, doesn’t necessitate being a good guy), Blake has wanting to make up for being a terrorist, Weiss has her desire to step out from under the shadow of her family’s reputation, even fucking Jaune, the b-team protagonist, who wants to live up to his family reputation, has a proper motivation to be involved in the story. WHY is Ruby involved beyond ‘I’m the main character’ level reasoning? As much as admitting it makes me wish to commit Sudoku, even SAO has better main character motivations. Good god, I need hooch after typing that.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Yang Xiao-Long- Her arc was mostly fine, barring some of the pacing. Raven being a maiden undercut the message of ‘screw that deadbeat bitch, go to your real family’ by making her important to the overall world state and confirming a measure of later relevance but that’s more a flaw with Raven than Yang.

1. Keep her motivation about getting strong enough to find her mother but add in the clear desire to kick her ass for leaving her and Tai. Of course it’s more about just getting the answers to her questions, but the ass-kicking should also be a major component.

2. Amp up the rivalry between her and Mercury. Mercury was designed as an opposite to Yang, I mean for fuck’s sake, look at him. Consider their respective backstories too; both raised in a single father home yet one was supported and loved (if a little neglected) while the other was horrifyingly maimed and abused. Punch vs kick. It works.

3. Make her more protective of her little sister, explicitly going along with her personal crusade to keep her safe (safer, rather). If she’s supposed to be the good older sister, maybe just maybe, something more than lip-service to that idea should be done. Hell, maybe she can be overprotective like their father, or even the exact opposite, not really giving a shit and then learning to give one. That might lead to a little tension and growth between the two of them.

4. Make her semblance consistent. Is she supposed to have super saiyan rage mode or is it energy buildup and dispersal? Is it supposed to be both? Just make it rage mode, for the sake of fuck, and don’t flip-flop. Speaking of…

5. Give her anger issues. Flesh out her being the kind of gal that would start a fight in a nightclub when she doesn’t get what she needed with little justification. This would stem from abandonment issues from Raven, Summer (inadvertently), and Tai and her general thrill seeking personality. This could lead to tensions and dramas until she overcomes it and learns to use her aggressive feelings and not let them use her.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Blake Belladonna- Shitty-kitty is shitty, here’s why.

1. Do something with the hypocrisy of being, more or less, princess of Menagerie, a world power albeit a minor one, and joining a band of terrorists that do more harm than good for the people they claim to represent. It’s like a trust-fund baby joining some charity organization in Africa for a few weeks, doing jack-shit to help, joining some jihadists, and then acting like she’s Mahatma Gandhi.

2. Make her arc less about running away and fighting Adam, more about realizing that running is for assholes and try to find her team to at least apologize for cutting and running like she did. Doing that and stopping Adam are not mutually exclusive. The friend thing should be the priority. As it stands she is almost rewarded for abandoning her team just to focus on her own problems.

3. Make her arc involve going from ‘There’s no such thing as pure evil’ to ‘Okay maybe some people are just too evil to work with’. Some people are too far gone and, despite still having good traits, will only ever continue to do evil things and don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt. Not everyone has some sort of good motive beneath the surface and, even then, does that matter when the only action they do is objectively evil? Still, y’know, save who you can, like Ilia.

4. Have Belladonna not actually be her last name. If she’s the daughter of a the chief of Menagerie, the closest thing the faunus have to a unified racial leader, then how the unholy shit does nobody recognize her name? She is, again, princess of Menagerie, yet nobody recognizes the name in a grander context. Have ‘Belladonna’ be a cover name so she can hide her identity better so that she’s using what should be a very recognizable real name in a tournament that is broadcasted worldwide. Her real family name could be “Nightshade” or some shit like that.

5. If she’s supposed to be ‘The quiet one’ maybe actually have her be quiet and not make big speeches every season or have loud arguments with her team. Just a fucking thought. If she’s still supposed to do that, then make her ‘the opinionated one’ or ‘the kind of mean one’ or even ‘the one who doesn’t shut up’. Blake, as seen, or rather heard, is not the quiet one.

6. Have her actually fucking interact with Ruby. Maybe they have a two-person book club. Maybe Blake teaches Ruby to meditate or something. Anything, anything at all would be fine, anything more than nothing at all. Blake’s whole interaction with the team shouldn’t just be through Yang and cursory scenes with Weiss.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Weiss Schnee- You can’t solve racism with like two scenes.

1. Make the racism thing a much more gradual decay rather than more or less disappearing after a single conversation. Hell, make jokes about it, ‘oh, no, one of my best friends is a faunus,’ stuff. It’s hard to unlearn an upbringing of hate, but she’s trying type stuff.

2. Involve her at least a little with the White Fang plot. It only makes sense that the heiress of the company that still more or less has slave labor is at least semi-involved with the plotline involving terrorists that want that company destroyed. Make her subject to assassination attempts at a young age, or even have her been kidnaped at a young age and held hostage, getting her scar in the process.

3. As evident by some of the intros, her rival was supposed to be Emerald. This could be serviceable, at the very least. The street rat pickpocket that had to learn life lessons the hard way and was taken in by the baddies VS. the rich heiress born with a silver spoon but raised by a dickhead. There’s potential there and it is a crime that it is not explored in the slightest. Even Yang and Mercury had a minor fight.

4. Like Yang, make her semblance consistent. Is it supposed to be summoning or physics altering magic symbols? These are two completely different powers, it’s not like super speed also giving super reflexes or whatever. Just make it one or the other, don’t bullshit us on these things. Or, hell, make it a second semblance she gets during the course of story.

5. Emphasize her loneliness. Make the main onus of her personal arc be about how she goes from this prickly, spoiled, opinionated, brat to a warm and caring friend who only wants the best for everyone. Yes, this might be the main intention in canon, but I feel it could have used a little more refining.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Cinder Fall- If she’s supposed to be Ruby’s chief rival and foil then she needs a lot of work to even be close. She shouldn’t be nothing but the rival, but at that same time she should have that be a considerable part of her characterization and role in the series. I feel the best way to do it is to have their similarities highlight their differences in both character and design. Basically, make her the Vergil to Ruby’s Dante.

1. Make her Ruby’s age. Being the same age as Ruby while initially outclassing her, and even veteran hunters, provides risk and contrast between the two. Throw in an evil sadistic streak compared to Ruby’s happy-go-lucky personality to further the contrast and you’ve got a good little yin-yang thing for them. It also shows just how bad someone can turn out if raised to be a killing machine.

2. Keep her using the bow/twin swords as a comparably simple weapon in contrast to Ruby’s, even in universe, overcomplicated Scythe/Sniper rifle. Both weapons are long range marksmen’s weapons as well as vicious close combat weapons but are still very different in essence. Also make sure she keeps the red with black and gold color scheme is contrast with Ruby’s Black with red and silver. Even minor visual cues can work to the rival schema.

3. Make her one of the people who have two semblances. Pyromancy (pyrokinesis? Fire bending, she has fire bending) and dilated perception (bullet time) so that Ruby’s super speed and the dilated perception cancel each other out, adding a little extra tension to the fights now that both parties’ signature abilities are moot points against each other.

4. Make her competent. She kills Ozpin and Pyrrha and then she either fails or draws every fucking fight she has afterwards baring nameless jobbers here and there. Even before that, she needed help to take down Amber and even manages to fuck that up. The more failures she has and the less intimidating she is. Too much of that and she’s just a jobber that makes you wonder why she was ever seen as intimidating in the first place. When that happens then Ruby beating her is just the status quo and not a triumph of any sort.

5. Make her Ruby’s long lost fraternal twin sister. Incredibly cliché, I admit, but siblings make the best rivals, especially twins. Once again, it’s all about adding the similarities and the contrasts. In this case it creates the ‘there but for the grace of god go I’ idea with the two of them. Ruby seeing it as how evil she could have turned out and Cinder seeing it as how weak she could have been (Eventually becoming how good she could have had it because I’m a sucker for redemption arcs) Who said that?

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Team JNPR- JNPR was fine-ish but the over focus on Jaune and the underutilization of Ren + Nora early on are both issues. B-team should not get jack shit before the A-team gets the lions share.

1. Downplay Jaune’s screen time. I doubt this is a particularly controversial statement. Jaune is not the titular character. This is (technically) a shoujo not a shounen. It’s supposed to be about the girls more than the guys. It kind of undercuts that idea when the guy (the side guy at that) gets the lion’s share of characterization, attention, and growth before the girl (the main girl) does.

2. Make Ren and Nora actual characters earlier on. Comic relief is all well and good, but either extend that to the whole team or make these two characters more than just comic relief in the early parts of the story. Make them, y’know, actual characters. They ain’t gotta be all that important, but they do have to be actual characters.

3. Make Pyrrha’s deathflags less blindingly obvious. We all knew Pyrrha was going to get clipped. The self-sacrificing type, all the musical and visual cues throughout, being based on Achilles, and ‘oh she just confessed to the boy she likes’. Homegirl was waving deathflags like an insecure redneck with the confederate flag. When you foreshadow obvious things that much it’s not a surprise to the audience when it happens and the reaction of the in universe characters seems overdone. If it’s not supposed to be a surprise then, whatever, but that’s clearly not the case if you’re going for just shock value. It’s fine for a character to die, but for the love of Jaysus you got to do something with it more than ‘this character’s sole purpose is to die for the angst and to up the stakes’. Pyrrha was just a plot jobber.

4. Make them a little more independent in the overall plot. Give them their own full sub-plots, have them go on their own little adventures, have them do things completely separate from RWBY that has plot relevance but not overtaking the main story in grandeur or importance. B-team gets B-plots and are cool in it of themselves.

Overt changes to (and complaints about) Qrow Branwen- Take or leave this, I just felt the need to include this because reasons.

1. Just make him Dante from Devil May Cry. Just make his personality the same as Dante from Devil May Cry. Make him stylish and cool but low-key a massive dork. He’s too cool to drink or smoke or anything harsher than PG-13. This series could use a guy like that, says I.

2. Make his semblance something that makes sense and isn’t just an angst generator. How do you even quantify ‘bad luck aura’ as a power? Make it short range teleportation as a connection to Raven’s portals. Make it so that he can direct the bad luck at will. Do SOMETHING with it that isn’t just an excuse for mostly pointless character angst.

3. This technically also counts as a Raven change but whatever. Make the Branwen family old nobility and not a loser bandit tribe from nowhere. Or at least make it so they used to rich or something. They come from a family that had a good amount of cash and even a chateau in Mistral. After the money dried up and the chateau ransacked by grimm, the Branwen twins had differing opinions on how to proceed. Qrow fully integrated into the hunter thing while Raven ran away and became a bandit, using it as further excuse to skedaddle on Tai and a recently born Yang.

#RWBY #RWDE #I guess #Ruby Rose #Weiss Schnee #Blake Belladonna #Yang Xiao Long #Ozpin #Cinder Fall #Tagging this as much as I please #Team JNPR #Jaune Arc #Rewrite #Hate if you wish #How I would do...#Pyrrha Nikos

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kuroopaisen · 3 years

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omg you’re a history major too!! 👁👁

hi, i love all your answers. they’re intelligent and rooted in reason. (there are so many toxic aot fans dear lord that I feel like most of them are just watching for Levi without understanding)

anyway, yeah, interesting view points tho!! and it’s always in the context too. Western and Asian perspectives are so different.

history’s always been written by the winners most of the time... but the Japanese perspective on expansionism and wwii is kinda tricky.

Although if you’ve seen Grave of the Fireflies, then you’d get a glimpse or an idea of the Japanese side of the story.

UGH i love my majors so much?? i genuinely think i wouldn’t be the person i am today if i hadn’t chosen them, and i know that sounds dramatic, but i think history and anthropology are just... so valuable for informing your worldview? i’m grateful that my uni offered both! and sure, some people might tell me that “well what are you even going to do with that?” but no degree has a straightforward track unless you want to be a doctor or a lawyer; and even then, there are no guarantees.

oh quick side note because i rambled a lot and i understand if nobody reads this but i just want to say: a government is not the people, and i really hate it when people assume the worst of someone just because they were born in a certain country. yes, governments usually come to power due to the will of the people, but not always. there’s a lot of political manoeuvring and playing the system that goes on. and people aren’t stupid. at least give the everyday person time to prove themselves.

i really wish people would stop either decreeing someone as A Horrible Person or infantilising them by being all “oh, they don’t know any better uwu they’re [insert commonly fetishised culture here]” because both are... so awful? a lot of people are open to new perspectives and willing to learn. and if they’re not, then... well, then they probably are an awful person.

i think an issue with being on the internet is that people tend to assume that everyone else has the exact same knowledge as they do about things, but that’s rarely the case.

ANYWAY THAT’S AN UNNCESSARY RANT but you make a really good point about people “watching without understanding.” and i guess it’s one of the pitfalls of death of the author (and i’ll be honest i. i hate that concept i think it’s Stupid), because what isayama did or didn’t intend to do with his story doesn’t matter. aot is quite popular with the far right; so even if he wanted it to be an anti-war, anti-hate story, it’s still resonating with people who believe quite the opposite.

and i think the trouble with fandom is that... well, by it’s nature, it tends to trivialise things. make memes (cleaning levi, pOtAtO wAiFu), cosplaying as the characters, focus on the cutesy bits, avoid talking about any greater themes or messages outside of meta posts. and aot’s fandom is so big it means that there’s no way of knowing what the general consensus on the message is. also, not everyone’s going to be consuming it critically; when i listen to the opening songs, i equate them with propaganda because of how ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’ they make the military look while fighting the titans, even though the show itself rarely, if ever, features characters slashing down their enemies left and right as they fly through the air like superheroes. but what might the person next to me be thinking?

yeah i think a lot of people in the west just. don’t think about how... different other parts of the world are? in my very first anthropology essay, the marker told me not to use ‘the west’ as a monolith when talking about culture because even among the three english speaking countries, there’s a world of difference. and while it might not seem like that at first, there really is. the thing about culture is that it’s pervasive; we often don’t recognise our own because it’s in everything. and it’s more than just food, dress, traditions. no-one is ‘without culture’, even if they think they are.

and local differences have more of an impact than people think. my old roommate is ethnically chinese, but she’s lived her entire life in malaysia, meaning that culturally, that’s what she resonates with. and the chinese community living in malaysia have a different culture than chinese people living in china, or chinese people living in america.

i think something else interesting about the “history is written by the victors”... world history is for sure, but i feel like local histories tend to be written in favour of it’s country of origin? at best, they’ll begrudgingly talk about some of the awful things they did in the past, but they often like to gloss over it.

and i have seen grave of the fireflies! albeit, i think i was too young to watch it at the time; it scarred me sfdjfdslkj

#discourse tw #kind of #rowan rambles #attack on titan tw #should i be using that as a tw?#if people don't wanna see aot on their dash then #i want to help them avoid that as best i can?#anyway #anon #rowan replies

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notthatiwilleverwriteit · 4 years

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1/2 I do think that he tian approached jian because he was lonely and because he knew of his father. But I also think ox made he tian seem interested in jian to make us root for zhan more it that makes sense? Because he tian called jian a puppy(104) just like he said about mo. and he garbed jian nack(121) like he does to mo. And called him handsome(108) just like he called mo. so he did those things to jian but then to mo someone he really is interested in. I dont think he had interest in him

Hello, dear anon!

Here are my earlier thoughts on JY and HT’s relationship in the beginning:

JY & HT (and ZZX & MGS)

It kind of sounds to me like you’ve already checked out that post but I’ll link it anyway in case someone is interested.

“I also think ox made he tian seem interested in jian to make us root for zhan more”

When HT was starting to become a permanent fixture in the story, I remember being annoyed by him because - as you said - it looked to me like he was interested in JY. I was rooting for Zhanyi and was not looking forward to any kind of love triangle situation or the pace of Zhanyi’s development to slow down even more. So, in a way, I was rooting for Zhanyi more because of HT. However, in retrospect, my interpretations of HT’s early conduct changed. Instead of being romantically interested in JY, I think HT was both keeping an eye on him and also trying to be his friend in his own “HT way”.

Ultimately, OX is the only one who knows what their “purpose” for HT’s character was in the beginning. Maybe they wanted to introduce a new character as a potential love triangle? Maybe they intended HT as a friend instead? It could even be OX’s plans for his character changed somewhere along the way. Our privilege as readers is to make interpretations, and those rarely have anything to do with the author.

So, I can’t really tell “why” OX made HT act the way he did around JY. But you mentioned some things comparing the similarities of how HT treated JY to how he now treats MGS. From what I understood from your question, you brought them up because those details were OX trying to make it look like HT was pursuing JY. I think I see where you’re coming from with them but still found I had read them a bit differently. Also, the instances you brought up are very far away from each other chapter-wise, so I don’t know how accurately you can really compare them.

“he tian called jian a puppy(104) just like he said about mo”

HT has compared JY to a golden retriever and called MGS a puppy. Even though they’re both dog-related remarks, I think their contexts are different which gives them different meanings in my eyes.

This was JY as golden retriever (ch. 104):

HT used JY passing by as a convenient opportunity to joke around and mess with him. JY was “fetching” or “retrieving” a pile of papers on what seems like a task assigned to him by a teacher. In that situation, JY kind of looks like an obedient dog.

Compared to that, HT calling MGS a puppy is different (ch. 241):

MGS is very much the “mad dog” character type - a hostile delinquent with a short fuse and bad reputation. This wasn’t the first time the dog-discourse is connected to MGS (for example, when HT promised to give him dog treats for his hard work). He barks and growls at people, and everyone steers clear of him. To HT, on the other hand, he’s more like an adorable puppy. MGS might have a short temper, but he’s still fluffy and soft in HT’s eyes.

So, yes, HT compared both JY and MGS to dogs, but I didn’t really take them in a similar “romantic interest” way because their contexts are different. To me, HT was messing with JY whereas with MGS, his tone was more endearing.

“he garbed jian nack(121) like he does to mo”

Overall, I would say HT is a rather physical character. He doesn’t have much regard for other’s personal space (pointed out by JY). He likes to physically cling to people and mess with them in general. It’s also a way for him to assert himself and dominate others.

When he grabbed JY’s neck, I see HT just messing with him in his usual manner (ch. 121):

He saw an opportunity to bully him a little and was quick to seize it as always. JY hadn’t wanted to take a shower, so what a better reason to pinch him by the neck and give him one. Especially, when the water out of the hose is probably cold. When JY stopped resisting because it actually felt good, HT lost interest.

The interesting question one might ask at this point is why doesn’t HT mess with ZZX physically like that. I don’t think we’ve ever seen HT directly bully ZZX the same way he does JY and MGS. Whenever the boys are horsing around, someone is usually “between” them. ZZX is involved in the battles by JY and usually ends up with the short end of the stick - or the bottom of the pile. HT messing with ZZX would probably look so weird...I wonder how ZZX would react. (I’ve briefly talked about ZZX and HT in one of my previous answers. For the most part, their relationship is a bit of a mystery to me.) I think JY is just the type that kind of invites HT’s type of people to mess with them a little.

Either way, compared to when HT has grabbed MGS’s neck, I think it’s different than with JY (ch. 200, 210, 282, 301, 318):

HT uses his strength to bully MGS and be frisky with him for sure, but I would say the occasions HT has grabbed MGS’s neck (or otherwise controlled him by touching his neck) are vastly different from when HT bullied JY. In the beginning of their relationship, it was mainly about HT dominating and overpowering MGS. He needed to occasionally remind MGS of who he was to listen. It was a bit crude but it got the message across. MGS’s neck seems to also be essential when HT is demonstrating his strong possessive streak. Lately, HT touching MGS’s neck has also gained endearing and protective vibes. It’s a way for him to show affection and give comfort.

I would say when HT grabbed JY’s neck in the beginning, it lacked those kinds of nuances. Again, the act itself was the same but the contexts were different.

I purposefully excluded all the countless panels of HT hooking his arm around both JY and MGS’s neck. I think that is just how HT is around people whether they are friends or someone he’s romantically interested in. Physically, it’s a really dominating hold and effectively keeps people from escaping him. Well, keeps MGS from escaping him.

“called him handsome(108) just like he called mo”

It’s true that HT complimented JY’s looks and I don’t see why he couldn’t think JY is handsome in his own way. However, I think he had his own agenda when he called JY handsome in that situation (ch. 108):

I would say HT flattered him and leaned closer to him like that to distract JY from HT slipping the note in his pants. Again, HT’s behavior easily comes across as him being interested in JY - and I’m not trying to deny that since I think it’s open to interpretations - but there’s also a strong possibility he was just messing with JY.

However, when HT was calling MGS handsome, I don’t think there was really much room for interpretation as to how he meant by it (ch. 293):

As usual, HT wasn’t shying away from teasing MGS but he also genuinely finds MGS is cute and good-looking. As in “I have a crush on you” rather than “huh, now that I look closer, you’re actually not that bad”. With MGS, people don’t see what HT sees. MGS is always frowning and overall scaring people off with his crude words and hostile behavior. HT, on the other hand, knows the softness and “good” that is buried in MGS if you just give it a chance to come out.

I mean, if you forget about HT trying to prank JY, those two situations are a bit like you can compliment someone’s looks without necessarily being romantically interested in them.

Again, it’s impossible for us to tell for sure if those occasions were HT being romantically interested in JY or just being a friend who likes to prank and mess with others. Or if OX made it look like HT was romantically pursuing JY on purpose. Or even if HT’s character’s objectives changed at some point for OX. But if you compared those occasions with JY to their MGS “counterparts”, I don’t know if they’re entirely comparable. Especially, if you keep them in their respective contexts.

Thank you for your question, dear anon! I hope I answered what you were asking about.

#19 days #he tian #Jian Yi #tianshan #mo guan shan #answered ask

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joylessnightsky · 3 years

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As a dyslexic person…

You know, often times people hurt us without intending to. Us just meaning humans in general. We’re a stupid species, and we make mistakes. That’s okay. And everyone’s feelings are different, I know. Still, sometimes I have to really wonder how people don’t realize how what they are saying is hurtful.

And this post is half a vent and half a cautionary thing. If you ever talk to a dyslexic person, please be mindful of these things. Whether or not they’ll actually be hurt by some of these is not for me to tell you but for them, but you should still be mindful of it. Conversation and stuff, works with people of all kinds, you know?

If you have dyslexia yourself, please feel free to add on with your own experiences. And please read the post yourself, too. Because, as I already said, sometimes we hurt each other without wanting to, because different things hurt different people.

Now, let’s get to it:

1) A lot of the time people will say something like “That’s great for someone with dyslexia!” And I know they mean to compliment me. I know they mean to say that it is an accomplishment. And it probably is. But by saying that, you’re actually devaluating my accomplishment. It’s basically the same problem as if someone said “You’re so nice for a man.” or “That’s such an impressive career for a woman.” There’s a serious difference between giving a compliment and giving a compliment in relation to something about you.

I worked for the reading speed I have. I worked for the capability to write with so little misspellings that I could pass as just another student. I worked for being able to read a text I haven’t read before. I worked for being able to read out loud to the class without making an utter fool out of me. I worked, for years, about an hour a day, in therapy and at home, until my head hurt form the effort, despite the frustration, despite the insults, despite questioning if anything would ever actually help. So the last thing I need is for you to tell me that my efforts and my work make me “good for a dyslexic person”. Tell me I did good. I’d love to hear that. Tell me my work can be seen. But don’t remind me that my efforts will only ever be seen in the context of my diagnosis. At one point, I managed to become one of the top students in my literary class when it came to spelling in exams. And I still only got praised with that phrase. It’s honestly gotten to the point where the compliment makes me feel bad about myself. It’s not a compliment anymore! Just… Don’t. Don’t.

2) One time I was talking with my teacher about how the others would call me pretentious and say I only relied on my diagnosis and the “advantages” I supposedly got (they meant the stuff that was supposed to make my disadvantages less bad, I think). And she said that I shouldn’t take it to heart, that they didn’t know what they talked about and “whoever says someone like you shouldn’t be here is stupid.” A little context, we have a system with different forms of schools, the one I choose to attend is the form with basically all advanced classes.

Now, in on itself, this was a really great thing to say. The reason it’s still stuck with me years later in a negative sense is because no one had, in fact, questioned my position at said school. I had never even heard anyone say that dyslexic people being at this form of school was weird or anything. Never. The first time the idea that I had to prove myself capable of belonging there had been placed in my head at that very moment. She didn’t meant to do that, I know she didn’t. And that makes it all the worse, because she was trying to make things better and she was so kind about it. I can’t even be angry at her for planting that thought in my head! And the way she so casually said that, as if it was a known fact that people would think I didn’t belong there, as if it was only natural for people to say something like that to me - even if she said they’d be stupid and wrong to do so - really hurt. A lot.

So all I’m asking is, please check what was said to someone. Don’t assume what they might have heard others say about them. If you’re wrong, knowing that people could possibly think that on top of everything else can feel… icky.

3) I’ve meet a lot of ignorant people in my life. We all have, haven’t we? And one of those people was my teacher for one horrible year. I pity everyone who ever has to live through her classes at this point. Why do people who can’t respect others have a mind of their own become educators again?

Anyways, I’ve posted about this before, but she was sure that she knew better than me what dyslexia meant, as well as that dyslexia had to be the same as reading and writing disorder and I had my facts wrong. Surprising no one she never really cared much that I couldn’t do the things my classmates could do. And one day she had the nerve to tell me that “class is over and you should have been able to write that down in time if you’d actually worked. So, if you really need these notes, just ask someone for them. I’m sure even you can manage that, right?” and take the notes down from the board. She didn’t have to do that, and she had put those notes there in the last minute. I’d told her they were too small for me to read and that I couldn’t tell the letters apart like that. She hadn’t cared. Yeah… That was one of the few times a teacher made me cry in the bathroom.

So, even though I can’t believe I have to say that, don’t assume you know what someone can or can’t do, and listen to them when they talk about their experience. If they say they can’t do something, they can’t. And no matter how much you think to know about a disability, when someone lives with it, they know what it’s like in a way that you could never know.

4) I’ve also had a math teacher, and he was great! One of those teachers that just make sense and that actually really care about their students and them understanding things rather than learning them like vocab cards. He was the only math teacher who I’ve ever felt comfortable with enough to confess that measurements can be tricky on some days. Does it say “cm”, “dm”, “km” or even just “m” there? Is it “L”, “cL” or “dL”? “g” or “kg”? He was really nice about it and we made a deal: In every class test I got the measurement would not change within one task. Helped a lot. And yet…

Students talk. They noticed. Because what my teacher had done, you see is adjust just my class test. I didn’t need to switch between measurements, the others did. and I see why that wasn’t considered fair. It really isn’t, because that doesn’t have much to do with reading or writing. Yet the issue at the bottom was still there. What I’m saying is that if you change a task so that a dyslexic person can work with it, don’t change it just for them. Especially not if the task itself changes then. Dear teachers, if you’re reading this, do it for everyone or not at all. Yes it helps if you do that, but no it isn’t fair if it’s just for one person. And I honestly still feel like I cheated after hearing what my classmates said.

5) Sometimes people will tell me that it’s impressive that I work against the dyslexia, you know, did the therapy and everything (even though many people just can’t afford it and would do it if they could). In that context a little sentence often fell that I just hate from the bottom of my heart: “If only everyone would do as much. It’s great that you don’t just rely on your diagnosis to take care of everything.”

First of all, I was lucky. I was lucky my health insurance covered not only one but two therapies. It didn’t for my brothers, my parents had to pay for that themselves. And that is not cheap! Not everyone can afford to do therapy. Not everyone has the chance to do therapy. That the therapy worked as well as it did was, again, luck. That my dyslexia was on the lighter side to begin with was also luck. That I knew I was at risk and got tested early on, so that I was diagnosed at an age where a real difference could be made through developmental psychology was also luck. Don’t ever make the mistake to think that one person who got lucky can be used as the bar.

Secondly, everyone’s dyslexia is different. You can’t compare mine to other people’s struggles. Again, my form of dyslexia isn’t that bad. Both my brothers have it worse. Sure, it might not be the easiest to deal with and it’s not the bare minimum for the diagnosis, but others have it worse than I do. And they have different symptoms. I can’t even deal with most of mine, they are just easy to conceal until I have a better day. We’re not all the same, so don’t compare us in a way that makes it look like we are.

Third, a lot was my own research. No one told me that there is a fond that was developed for dyslexic people to read easier (”OpenDyslexic”, if you are interested. It’s free to download). No one told me about all the side effects, no one told me “hey, this might actually be because of your dyslexia, too”. No one told me having subtitles on in a language I already spoke would help remembering the spelling of words. No one told me how to articulate things. I didn’t get an awful lot of help along the way, you know? Keep in mind, I come from an environment in which I got more help than on average. And you saying that is basically pushing the responsibility onto us. You made a world in which we have little to no access to help, and you’re shaming us for not finding any.

Last but everything but least, you make it sound like the treatment and the way we handle this is what makes the dyslexia valid. If you’re really thinking so, you’re wrong. Like, really wrong. I chose to work my ass off to teach my brain how to keep up. I managed to find information on it. I was lucky to get the possibility to do so, because of the way you are handling this. None of that makes my diagnosis valid. It doesn’t, because it already is. My struggles, my feelings about it, my experiences, my symptoms are what makes this valid. The diagnosis, dyslexia? That just gave it a name.

6) “That might be hard for you to do. Are you sure you can handle this?” I’m glad that you are concerned on my behalf. But as someone who also has a lot of anxiety and has lived with this shit in my mind for my entire life, I can guarantee you that I do, in fact know my limits. I have lost many opportunities in my life because I wasn’t sure I could handle it, or because I couldn’t tell beforehand if I would have a “good day” or a “bad day”.

I’m aware of the risk. I decided to take the risk, or am in the process of decided whether or not to take that risk. You aren’t helping. If you are concerned, offer to help me should I struggle. If you can’t help me, offer support. If you can neither help nor support me, I don’t know you well enough for you to be meddling with my choices so you should just leave me alone.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for taking your time to read this. I hope this’ll help. And if you do make a dyslexic person uncomfortable or hurt them with something you say or do, please remember that that will happen, no matter what someone’s dealing with. Even my brothers will hurt me sometimes and I will hurt them sometimes, even though we are all dyslexic and have known each other for literally all our lives, because we all experience this differently. And that’s okay. You can’t always know what will hurt someone and it’s not you job to read their mind and figure it out on your own either. Important is that you recognize you’ve made a mistake and that you make a conscious effort to avoid said mistake in the future. And remember: Sometimes it’s not what you’re trying to say but rather how you’re saying it that hurts. Formulations can make a huge difference.

#dyslexia #dislexic #mental health #what to avoid #please add on to this #long post #I decided not to add a cut because I don't want to cut any of this off #So it's a bit longer to scroll past #sorry about that

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warrioreowynofrohan · 4 years

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Stormlight Archive Epigraphs (1) - Letters

I’ve been going through the Stormlight Archive epigraphs to see if there are hints or foreshadowing or information that I’ve missed; before now, I hadn’t pulled together ones from different chapters, and it’s been very interesting to get a clearer picture of them.

These posts are as much for my own reference as anything else.

This one covers the letters between Wit and his, hm, associates, which are in TWOK Part 2, WOR Part 4, and OB Part 2.

Wit’s Letter

Old friend, I hope this missive finds you well. Though, as you are now essentially immortal, I would guess that wellness on your part is something of a given. I realize that you are probably still angry. That is pleasant to know. Much as your perpetual health, I have come to rely upon your dissatisfaction with me. It is one of the cosmere’s great constants, I should think.

Let me first assure you that the element is quite safe. I have found a good home for it. I protect its safety like I protect my own skin, you might say. You do not agree with my quest. I understand that, so much as it is possible to understand someone with whom I disagree so completely.

Might I be quite frank? Before, you asked why I was so concerned. It is for the following reason: Ati was once a kind and generous man, and you saw what became of him. Rayse, on the other hand, was among the most loathesome, crafty, and dangerous individuals I had ever met. He holds the most frightening and terrible of all of the Shards. Ponder on that for a time, you old reptile, and tell me if your insistence on nonintervention holds firm. Because I assure you, Rayse will not be similarly inhibited. One need only look at the aftermath of his brief visit to Sel to see proof of what I say. In case you have turned a blind eye to that disaster, know that Aona and Skai are both dead, and that which they held has been Splintered. Presumably to prevent anyone from rising up to challenge Rayse.

You have accused me of arrogance in my quest. You have accused me of perpetuating my grudge against Bavadin. Both accusations are true. Neither point makes the things I have written to you here untrue.

I am being chased. Your friends of the Seventeenth Shard, I suspect. I believe they’re still lost, following a false trail I left for them. They’ll be happier that way. I doubt they have any inkling what to do with me should they actually catch me. If anything I have said makes a glimmer of sense to you, I trust that you’ll call them off. Or maybe you could astound me and ask them to do something productive for once. For I have never been dedicated to a more important purpose, and the very pillars of the sky will shake with the results of our war here. I ask again. Support me. Do not stand aside and let disaster consume more lives. I’ve never begged you for something before, old friend.

I do so now.

Reply 1:

I’ll address this letter to my “old friend,” as I have no idea what name you’re using currently. Have you given up on the gemstone, now that it is dead? And do you no longer hide behind the name of your old master? I am told that in your current incarnation you’ve taken a name that references what you presume to be one of your virtues. This is, I suspect, a little like a skunk naming itself for its stench.

Now, look what you’ve made me say. You’ve always been able to bring out the extreme in me, old friend. And I do still name you a friend, for all that you weary me.

Yes, I’m disappointed. Perpetually, as you put it. Is not the destruction you have wrought enough? The worlds you now tread bear the touch and design of Adonalsium. Our interference so far has brought nothing but pain.

My path has been chosen very deliberately. Yes, I agree with everything you have said about Rayse, including the severe danger he presents. However, it seems to me that all things have been set up for a purpose, and if we - as infants - stumble through the workshop, we risk exacerbating, not preventing, a problem. Rayse is captive. He cannot leave the system he now inhabits. His destructive potential is, therefore, inhibited. Whether this was Tanavast’s design or not, millennia have passed without Rayse taking the life of another one of the sixteen. While I mourn for the great suffering Rayse has caused, I do not believe we could hope for a better outcome than this. He bears the weight of God’s own divine hatred, separated from the virtues that give it context. He is what we made him to be, old friend. And that is what he, unfortunately, wished to become. I suspect that he is more a force than an individual now, despite your insistence to the contrary. That force is contained, and an equilibrium reached.

You, however, have never been a force for equilibrium. You tow chaos behind you like a corpse dragged by one leg through the snow. Please, hearken to my plea. Leave that place and join me in my oath of nonintervention. The cosmere itself may depend upon our restraint.

Reply 2:

Dearest Cephandrius,

I recieved you communication, of course. I noticed its arrival immediately, just as I noticed your many intrusions into my land. You think yourself so clever, but my eyes are not those of some petty noble, to be clouded by a false nose and some dirt on the cheeks.

You mustn’t worry yourself about Rayse. It is a pity about Aona and Skai, but they were very foolish - violating our pact from the very beginning. Your skills are admirable, but you are merely a man. You had your chance to be more, and refused it. No good can come of two Shards settling in one location. It was agreed that we would not interfere with one another, and it disappoints me that so few of the Shards have kept to this original agreement. As for Uli Da, it was obvious from the outset that she was going to be a problem. Good riddance. Regardless, this is not your concern. If Rayse becomes an isdue, he will be dealt with.

And so will you.

Reply 3:

Cephandrius, bearer of the First Gem,

You must know better than to approach us by relying upon presumption of past relationship. You have spoken to one who cannot respond. We, instead, will take your communication to us - though we know not how you have located us upon this world. We are indeed intrigued, for we thought it well hidden. Insignificant among our many realms. As the waves of the sea must continue to surge, so must our will continue resolute.

Alone.

Did you expect anything else from us? We need not suffer the interference of another. Rayse is contained, and we care not for his prison. Indeed, we admire his initiative. Perhaps if you had approached the correct one of us with your plea, it would have found favourable audience. But we stand in the sea, pleased with our domains. Leave us alone.

We also instruct that you should not return to Obrodai. We have claimed that world, and a new avatar of our being is beginning to manifest there. She is young yet, and - as a precaution - she has been instilled with an intense and overpowering dislike of you. This is all we will say at this time. If you wish more, seek these waters in person and overcome the tests we have created. Only in this will you earn our respect.

Reply 4:

Friend,

Your letter is most intriguing, even revelatory. I would have thought, before attaining my current station, that a deity could not be surprised. Obviously, this is not true. I can be surprised. I can perhaps even be naive, I think.

I am the least equipped, of all, to aid you in this endeavour. I am finding that the powers I hold are in such conflict that the most simple of actions can be difficult. I am also made uncertain by your subterfuge. Why have you not made yourself known to me before this? How is it you can hide? Who are you, truly, and how do you know so much about Adonalsium? If you would speak to me farther, I request open honesty. Return to my lands, approach my servants, and I will see what I can do for your quest.

Basically everything that I know about Wit and the Cosmere beyond the events of The Stormlight Archive comes from the Stormlight Archive Rereads on Tor.com. Here’s my understanding of what is going on:

The God of Sanderson’s Cosmere, Adonalsium, was splintered into many different pieces (Shards - not to be confused with Shardblades and Shardplate), each consisting of a separate characteristic, and each characteristic was taken on by a different person. Up until I put these epigraphs together, I thought there were 16 shards, but from this, it sounds like there was a 17th that Wit was supposed to take on, and chose not to, and that his sixteen associates are displeased with him for that (and are trying to get that Shard back?).

The tone of the different replies is very interesting. The first one, I have some sympathy with, as one of many reasons why I tend to oppose military interventionism is that generally the intervenors have no idea what they are doing and risk making things worse; the author fo the first reply seems to have genuine affection for Wit despite his aggravation.

The second reply is very much the opposite, starting courteous but being the most clearly hostile of the four. The third reply indicates that Wit’s letter went to a Shard-holder other than the one he intended, and to someone who is broadly antagonistic (given that they “admire Odium’s initiative”). The fourth one, I’m gathering from bits of comments from other people on the broader Cosmere, is from the person currently holding the Shards of both Ruin and Preservation.

I’m not sure any of the material from the letters is essential, or if it’s just an addition for the enjoyment of Cosmere fans; the broad takeaway seems to be that Roshar is on its own and no one else is inclined to provide large-scale assistance against Odium.

I’m not sure whether I’m corrent in assuming that Tanavast is the original name of the person who took on the Shard of Honor, in the same way that Rayse is the original name of the person who took on the Shard of Odium?

#the stormlight archive #brandon sanderson #hoid #epigraphs

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babyspacebatclone · 4 years

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Regarding the entire “SPoP is just a kids’ show! Stop trying to apply logic (analysis of the “war” aspect) or find deeper meaning (accusations of ableism and unfortunate fantasy racial implications).”

There are two problems SPoP is facing against “it’s just a kids’ show. One is not necessarily its fault, although it seems they leaned into it pretty heavily and so are not completely free of it. The second is entirely on the show.

The first is the context of which She Ra was released - basically, in a post Avatar the Last Airbender world, and to a lesser extent following shows such as MLP:FiM and Gravity Falls. Of course, Western cartoons with in-depth mythologies and teased elements existed before AtLA (Gargoyles comes immediately to mind), but AtLA definitely changed the game about what could not only be shown/stated in a Y-7 cartoon (death if an entire people explicitly stated in the first few episodes to bring home the point) but also what could be talked about (effects of child abuse with Zuko and Azula being prominent). It spanned three seasons, with novels worth of backstory.

Suddenly, a Western cartoon didn’t have to be “just a kids’ show.” It’s not fair to expect every show to live up to that, but now it has been proven to be possible.

Did She Ra ever promise in marketing to be the next AtLA? I have no idea, being completely ignorant of anything during the run, but I also doubt it. Did at least marketing hope to ride on the coattails of “myth arc” style cartoons, drawing in more viewers? Undoubtedly. It’s a nostalgic property, emphasizing modern concerns (women’s power, LGBT+) and streamed through a mainstream service. Of course they’d want to fill their numbers with older viewers hoping for the next big story.

So, it’s not fair to put the expectation of being the next AtLA on SPoP going in, but it’s also to be expected that the fans would want it.

But what about the series itself? What did the show promise?

Unfortunately, I believe the show set up more than it could deliver here, and that is on the show runners and any execs that axed anything that might potentially have improved the situation (although from the sounds of show runners meta, I don’t know how much this contributed).

What did the show do to tease fans with complex myth arcs? Obviously, it doled out information on a “need to know” basis, leaving room for speculation and theorization. Scorpia being a princess and what that would mean about the Black Garnet, for example, is a perfect set up for this. The use of First One’s writing might have been initially been intended as an insider joke, the translations said to be released for “marketing,” but they still went forwards and then incorportated key phrases that would require fan translation - feeding more interest in searching for more clues. And finally, it paid off with some big foreshadowed twists, specifically Lighht Hope’s ulterior programming and the truth about the Heart of Etheria.

You can’t leave cryptic messages the fans can translate, twist our perspective of the “Benevolent Forerunner Race,” and then claim the fans are reading too far into things. You can claim the fans are going further than you intended, but you started them on this path.

And how do we know there’s disappointing, unresolved ends to these paths, and not more backstory like explored in the AtLA comics? The Crew Ra admitted it.

At first, when I heard that some of the Crew Ra had “headcanon” about Imp’s origins - that he was an attempt by Hordak to clone himself a stable body hybridized with Etherian animal DNA - it seemed cool. It made the Crew human, fans like us.

But how much harder would it have been to make it canon? Animals on Beast Island were apparently designed specifically to imply this missing link to Imp, and appear in the show; why can’t this then just be written into the show bible, a canon background that just isn’t said aloud in the show.

The most obvious answer, and the only reasonable one without further evidence, is that the people in control of the show bible just didn’t care. Didn’t care about what Imp was, other than a character from the previous She Ra. Didn’t care who Frosta’s parents were, or why she’s been ruling since 8. Didn’t care what actually happened with the Scorpian Kindgom when Hordak “overthrew” it, because that detail mattered less to them than the fact that Angella describes her husband’s (falsely assumed) death was one of Hordak’s “first victims.”

So the fans shouldn’t care, either, right?

No. The show runners can’t have it both ways. They can’t present the show as deep (question the facts you were raised with, because they may be biased by cruel predecessors!) and relevant (people should be allowed to be openly homosexual and nonbinary) and then only accept discussion on points they themselves raised.

Especially since many of the questions I hear asked without answer have been raised, towards others, within the show itself:

What measure is a victim? (Catra is a victim of Shadow Weaver’s abuse, Frosta twice questions the ethics of attacking Etherians, both Horde and chipped, but Prime’s clones are faceless mooks?)

What measure is acceptance? (Why are all but one of the princesses all-but-human looking, including the half-angel Glimmer, on a world of beast people? Why not explicitly condone literal physical abuse of a person [Entrapta, hair pulling and leashing] by her supposed friends for being “different” if we’re supposed to openly accept divergent sexualities? Neurodivergence doesn’t measure up to gender divergence?)

What measure is redemption?

SPoP started these discussions. It might not be fair to hold it to the same standard as AtLA for depth, but the show runners are the ones that copied elements of its formula to tell their story.

It’s not a serious war drama the way AtLA is. But how much effort could it have taken the show runners to at least look into more of their own questions, especially when others on the crew imply on social media they were asking for the same?

Note: Links will be added in a follow-up post; I’m on mobile, so it will take a bit to compile them. I’m aiming for tomorrow. If anyone who can have multiple windows open can send me direct links to relevant Tweets or at least screenshots I know I’ve seen here on Tumblr, that would be appreciated!

#meta analysis #they started the discussion #we have a right to continue it #spop #she ra and the princesses of power #atla

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nomadicbeard · 5 years

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Hi! I saw on one of your posts you said that you used to be a stucky shipper. I actually started off as a stony shipper but then absolutely fell in love with stucky but I like both . I was just wondering what made you "jump ship" on stucky lol. Sorry if this comes across as annoying or anything im just curious!

Hey! As you can see a couple of people have asked me this over the last couple of weeks and I’m really lazy and haven’t got around to responding yet, but the people deserve an answer so here we go. Before we start a quick disclaimer: I’ll only be talking about the ships themselves, not the communities or any of the discourse surrounding them. This is not a ship-bashing of any kind and please do not take it as such, it’s just my own personal experience surrounding these characters and these relationships.

Buckle your seatbelts kids, this is a long one.

I first got into Marvel c. 2015. I’m European so I’d never really watched any marvel movies before that, I watched Age of Ultron on a plane and remember being vaguely aware the Steve/Tony was a thing (what is pretty interesting is that to this day I have no clue where that knowledge came from) but was mostly just excited by the superhero stuff. I then got home and watched The Winter Soldier and fell in love. I love the Winter Soldier, it’s probably still one of my favourite marvel movies (it got kicked out of its top spot by Black Panther last year unfortunately) and to me no other marvel movie could hold a torch to it at the time. So I came onto tumblr, searched up The Winter Soldier and was just inundated with Stucky stuff, as expected. I rolled with it, got invested just from constant exposure (it was also around the height of the Stucky ship) and as far as I was concerned, that was that. I was super into Stucky for almost six months and was pretty much your average shipper, I didn’t understand stevetony, loved Steve Rogers, was close to creating a Stucky sideblog wit some ridiculous pun as my username, I was gone over this ship.

Then one day, I sat down and read the man on the bridge by boopboop on ao3. You’ve almost definitely heard of it, but it was the most popular fic in the Steve/Bucky tag on ao3 at the time (for some reason I had just never got around to reading it until then, it was long and I didn’t have the stamina I have now). It was your pretty standard Stucky fic, Steve gets Bucky back, they have to deal with his trauma which results in Steve and Bucky declaring their long lost love for each other etc. etc. What was different about this fic, was that it was all told from Tony’s point of view, and since Steve and Tony were on the same team at that point, their dynamic was a huge part of the fic. And I found myself falling completely in love with Steve and Tony’s dynamic. I went back to the fic for this post (and god it is a good fic) and pulled up the first couple of chapters and instantly just found so many instances of that dynamic

(grade A stevetony arguing over each other’s safety with a side of flirting from Tony)

(Idk why but the image of Steve and Tony not going to sleep, but rather staying up and brewing coffee together was such a vivid one when I first read this fic, I still remember it to this day. )

(Tony picking Steve flowers while trying to desperately play off that he didn’t aka. Tony caring while trying desperately not to care)

(Everyone knowing that Steve would definitely come to Tony, apart from Tony himself.)

Now obviously, this is a stucky fic and I went into it knowing this, but I found when Steve and Bucky finally got together I felt honestly a bit bored, a bit cheated. I had no idea why at the time. I remember very clearly x-ing out of the fic at the end and feeling really uneasy, I came onto tumblr, went straight back into the Stucky tag and all was well.

When I next went back onto ao3, I started out with a couple of oneshots in the Stucky tag, but for some reason it wasn’t working for me anymore. I remember sitting there, a little bored, not at all invested in this relationship and just missing something. I figured I was probably missing Tony’s presence in the fic and so filtered in Tony Stark’s character tag. I read a few of those and all was well but I realised the same thing was happening as had happened in man on the bridge, the moment that Steve and Bucky got together, the fic lost something for me. Desperate at this point, and a little annoyed at myself I conducted an experiment and went into the Steve/Tony tag on Ao3 and as they say, the rest is history. If you go onto older posts on my main blog there’s a pretty drastic, almost overnight shift c. January 2016. I have to admit, I expected Civil War to be a conversion so I enjoyed stevetony without consequence for five months, while still labelling myself as a Stucky shipper because I expected to be pulled back to Stucky after civil war, the reality was that somehow I came out of civil war shipping stevetony harder than ever before. From there, I spent two years reading my way through the stevetony tag on ao3 and finally set up this blog in 2018, with a really obscure reference as my username and it’s been stevetony til I die ever since.

I just couldn’t read Stucky anymore. That’s what I mean when I say on this blog that stevetony has ruined me for every other ship, because it has. Steve and Tony’s firecracker dynamic pulled me away from what was fast on its way to becoming my favourite ship in 2015, all because they had a bit of banter on the side in a fic. It’s kind of depressing really, the sort of hold that Steve and Tony’s dynamic has over me,

It’s strange you say you fell in love with Stucky, I fell absolutely out of love with it. I have thought a lot about how I ended up falling into stevetony and why I was so drawn to them instead of Stucky in the first place and I think it all comes down the the story itself. To me, Steve and Bucky’s relationship carries much more weight as a friendship, I still have no doubt that Bucky is one of if not the most important person in Steve’s life, but having that be a lifelong friendship is way more powerful and impactful to me, (especially since what I know I misconstrued to be Steve’s obsession with Bucky is actually Steve’s obsession over the past. I’m not saying Bucky isn’t dear to Steve and he does want to obviously rescue him, but looking back on it there’s more to Steve’s obsession with Bucky than just love, it’s a fear of change and it’s him desperately trying to hold onto a past that’s gone.)

Conversely, I feel like adding a romantic element to Steve and Tony’s relationship enriches the story being told, if you look at something like civil war (either MCU or 616 tbh) in the context of Tony being desperately in love with Steve, it makes a lot more sense, especially with things like The Confession in 616 or the stuff brought up in that strange conversation in the conference room in the MCU. There’s lines from Steve like “I’m home/you gave me a home” or even straight up “he loved you” and his tormented behaviour throughout infinity war and endgame that just really makes you wonder, not to mention lines from others like “you two still gazing into each other’s eyes/sounds like both of you got into bed with the wrong people” and they did have to share a bed at Clint’s farm after all lol. The tragedy of their story is heightened if you look at it through the context of them being absolutely in love with each other, just never having actually got around to telling it to each other’s faces. This tragedy is heavily implied in The Oath/The Confession in 616 when they confess their deepest darkest secrets to the other’s comatose/dead bodies, and apparently it’s always been that they love the other person. Actually you could easily introduce a romantic element by making relatively few changes to the MCU, but that’s a post for another time (I have a long and comprehensive list in my notes app on how little you actually need to change to make that happen, it’s literally the matter of a few lines of dialogue and one major story change at the end of IM3, an interesting thought exercise to say the least).

Finally, there’s a quote that came up on my dash the day I made that fateful venture into the ao3 stevetony tag, “your soulmate isn’t someone who comes peacefully into your life. It is someone who makes you question things, changed your reality, somebody that marks a before and after in your life. It is not the human being everyone idealized, but an ordinary person, who managed to revolutionize your world in a second” to this day, it resonates so strongly with me about stevetony. It’s everything I love about this ship just compressed into a quote.

So yeah it was basically a bunch of happy coincidences, but thank god it happened. As a writer, stevetony has taught me so much about character and dynamic, stuff that is honestly invaluable. When you have long fics that basically detail the day by day life of Steve and Tony post-civil war in rural Italy and consists of them sleeping, crying and working through their repressed feelings (looking at you @silkspectred ), it is the characters and their unique dynamic that drive the entirety of the story. Steve and Tony, in the hands of a compelling writer, can keep me hooked over a frankly embarrassing number of words. I still have a bit of a special place for Stucky in my heart really, it did start me out in marvel after all and it was one of my first ever ships, but your first love is only so good until you meet your true love, not to get all sappy but stevetony has completely destroyed my ability to ship anything else. I might get a bit flirtatious with some other ships, like sambucky (I still love Bucky, and I love Sam!), or the riverdale ships (beronica and jarchie or bust), or even the game of thrones crack ships (daensa til the day we die), but I’ll always come back to stevetony.

So yeah this escalated into a far longer post than I intended to make but I’ve never really spelled out on this blog how or why I ended up jumping Stucky to Stony when I know it’s usually the other way around. I guess it just comes down to stevetony catching me out when I least expected it, and never having let go of me since.

#and WORD #jesus this is a long post #stony #stony meta #stevetony #what i should be doing: maths. what i'm actually doing: crying about stevetony. it's an average day #ask #answered #anon #idk whether to tag it as stucky or anti stucky tbh #i'm going with neither and pray i don't get shouted at #steve rogers #tony stark #superhusbands #long post

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blindrapture · 4 years

Text

The Structure of Ulysses, plus Sonic, Part I

Ulysses is a big book. And I intend on adapting all of it at some point into a series I call Sonic Hamlet, where everyone is played by video game characters. I’m not going to explain why video game characters just yet, you’ve got to just accept them for now.

So far, I have not made much progress with the actual adaptation (I have the first third of the first episode done and on YouTube, click here for it). However, I have made progress in rereading and understanding Ulysses, I’ve made far more progress than I honestly thought I was capable of. And I think I might be ready to at least outline some things. I believe strongly that Ulysses will be of interest to many people alive today, and I do not accept language as a valid barrier to comprehension, only a temporary obstacle. But the onus is on those of us who have read Ulysses, we have to be the ones to clear those obstacles away, we cannot just expect people to read it, we have to help because those obstacles are very much there! Ulysses was hard to read even at its time, but there’s a difference between an intentional challenge and the changing of parlance over time. And the intentional challenge? Is wonderful. It in fact helps us embrace life, the big and the little things in it, the complicated cycles that overwhelm, the fast-paced sarcastic comedy of young people, the slow-paced enigmatic wit of those so ancient they perished long ago, the clash of cultures suggesting inevitable conflict and yet still hiding pathways to real diverse peace.

As an adaptation, my work is a sort of translation, this has to be. I don’t want to change any of the words, though-- Ulysses has a structure to it, a mathematical and logical and literary structure, and the specific words are a part of that. Translations into other languages, those naturally must deal with changing the words, but they try their best to still stick within the plan of the original’s intent. The only language I’m translating into is the extratextual-- I’m adding images, sounds, pauses for reflection. I’m realizing an interpretation of the original text, in the hopes that my audience might have a better foothold for comfortably examining and interpreting Ulysses themselves. The original words can still fit in that context. But character names? Sure. I can accept changing those.

So. So. Sonic Hamlet. As Ulysses is a book, so Sonic Hamlet is a show. As Ulysses is of three main parts with various Episodes in each, so Sonic Hamlet is of three seasons with various Episodes. Following me?

Part I, my Season 1, has three episodes. It is sometimes called the Telemachiad, as it deals with the Telemachus of the story, Stephen Dedalus (hereby Sonic Dedalus), as he goes through the motions of an increasingly despondent life without a trustworthy guide.

Part II, my Season 2, has twelve episodes. It is sometimes called the Odyssey, or the Wanderings of Ulysses, as it deals with the Odysseus of the story, Leopold Bloom (hereby Mario Bloom), as he navigates the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in hopes of returning home victorious.

Part III, my Season 3, has three episodes. It is sometimes called the Nostos, or the Homecoming, as it deals our Odysseus’s bold return and the stratagems which fell the suitors of his wife, Marion “Molly” Bloom (hereby Peach Bloom).

I will, for now, compose three posts, one for each Season. I will not point out all the coolest shit, all the patterns and correspondences, but I will give a general outline as best I can. Maybe this outline, alone, will give all the help a reader needs to “get” the premise of Ulysses and thus be able to read the original. But ultimately I write this not for any reader but for my own benefit. I need to organize and consolidate some things, see. And I’d may as well start somewhere.

So. Here we go.

Part I / Season 1: The Telemachiad (8 AM - Noon)

Episode 1 / 101: Telemachus

Sonic Dedalus is 22 years old. His mother died last year, putting a damper on his aspirations of travelling other countries and becoming a poet. Now he’s contributing rent money to a buddy’s cultural project (”let’s rent out an old watchtower and turn Ireland into Ancient Greece,” that’s about as thought-out as the plan became). His buddy, Big Mulligan, doesn’t seem to have much respect for Sonic, just an incessantly jovial tolerance. Staying with them is Shadow Haines, an Englishman with a gun who wants to write a book of all the quirky folk-sayings of the primitive rural Irish. Big thinks Sonic could contribute a lot to that. Everyone seems to like Big and Shadow; their conspicuous and confident personalities shine above the material worries of the Dublin lower-class. The lady who delivers milk for their breakfast that morning (played by Tikal) listens to Shadow with reverence and doesn’t even seem to notice Sonic, who pays for the breakfast and sees Ireland’s spirit in her. That morning, Big gets Sonic to promise him a sizable chunk of Sonic’s salary will go towards getting them all drunk later. He also gets the key to the tower from him, for some reason. And he gets naked and goes for a swim, as Sonic walks off to do his day’s work.

Episode 2 / 102: Nestor

Sonic works as a temporary teacher at a nearby school. Today, he teaches his class about the historical battle at Asculum, where Pyrrhus gave his famous quote (”another victory like that, and we’re done for”). They’re not terribly interested, since today’s hockey day and they want to play outside, but that’s okay, Sonic’s mind isn’t really focused today either. He’s got some themes battling in his head, and they won’t go away. Though they don’t stop him from at least giving the kids a strange riddle and helping a poor kid with his math homework. And the kids all play hockey. This episode takes its name from an old boastful king, whose advice keeps young Telemachus going (waiting for his father’s return from the war), but also whose company is a bit much in long bursts. Here, Nestor is played by the headmaster of the school (whose video game character I have not assigned), Mr. Deasy. Deasy is a West Briton, the type of Irishman who thinks he’s English and thinks Ireland is just the westernmost province of England. So, probably a Protestant. I really don’t remember right this minute. But in practice, it means Deasy talks down on a lot of people all while thinking he’s being a nice old man. He has money, he keeps his money, he says this is a very English thing to do, and he judges all those who can’t pay their way. He loves history, sees it as one steady march towards the real manifestation of God, and he thinks Sonic unhappy for his view that history is “a nightmare from which I am trying to wake.” But he at least pays him, his salary and some decency. And, knowing Sonic has some “literary contacts,” he gives him a letter to deliver to the newspapers, a letter proposing a solution to foot-and-mouth disease (this will come up later). And as Sonic leaves the school for the day, Deasy hails him down to say one last thing: a jovial bit of earnest antisemitism. “You know why Ireland is one of the only countries that never persecuted the jews?” “Why?” “She never let them in!” And he laughs, the light of the sun dancing coins on his shoulders.

Episode 3 / 103: Proteus

It is now 11 AM. Sonic, after leaving the school, walked all the way to Dublin proper. Here he is on the Strand, a sort of beach, having some alone time, thinking of many things, many memories (his short stay in Paris as a poet, his interactions with the family of uncle Richie who lives nearby to the Strand, his childhood), many subjects (Greek philosophy, Latin theology, aspirations, self-loathing), the sights he sees (midwives with bags, someone walking a dog, lots of flotsam). Ultimately, there’s a trend of trying to pin down the unpinnable, to put into words the ineluctable modality of the visible, the limits of the diaphane; this clues us into the Odyssean correspondence. Proteus is god of the sea, ever changing shapeshifter, who it is said will grant a wish to anyone who is able to hold him still for long enough. Just as Telemachus, in now understanding some context about his father, waits by the sea and wonders how he-- how anyone-- could successfully return with their wits intact when the gods are so multifaceted and the waters so unpredictable, just as Telemachus watches the sea, so does Sonic watch the morphing world of his senses.

And that’s Part I of Ulysses, and that’s Season 1 of Sonic Hamlet. We will see Sonic again later in the day, we’ll actually see quite a bit of him, but this is the point of departure for the text itself. This whole time, the text has taken Sonic’s psyche, the energy and passion and associations dormant in his thoughts, and infused it with a more novel-like narration of What Actually Happens, altogether producing The Text what readers read. It’s happened relatively slowly, with sparks of surprising creativity manifesting in each episode, the “narrative” doing “weird” “things” “all of a sudden,” and Proteus acts as a sort of climax, allowing Sonic’s psyche the whole spotlight and putting What Actually Happens in the background. I’ve said before that the text “wakes up” over the course of these early episodes, but I now think what really happens is the text holds back in order to allow the reader to wake up, to recognize that the text, the narrative itself, is the narrator, that not even focal characters like Sonic are the source of the viewpoint we see, that.. there’s something more going on. A greater Argument being made. But it will take time to even see the whole argument. And here let me bring up medieval pedagogy regarding the art of syllogism: it has been conventional to view the initial order of cognitive thought as “Subject, Middle, Predicate” (as opposed to any other order of those terms which are all, in fact, valid). This is a big factor behind why we’re taught to view stories as constituting a “beginning, middle, end,” and why we’re taught to give arguments (essays!) in the same structure. It’s all because that’s how Christian theology saw the Greek tool of syllogism should be taught, back in the middle ages. With me so far? Okay, cool. So Ulysses is made up of three main parts. There’s a lot of reasons why given episodes are strictly in one part and not others, but perhaps one of the most aesthetically pleasing bits of trivia is that Part I begins with the letter S, Part II begins with the letter M, and Part III begins with the letter P. Subject, Middle, Predicate. A valid structure for a formal argument. Season 1 of Sonic Hamlet, in following Ulysses as far as I feasibly am able to, gives us the thematic subject of a greater argument being made. And that makes Season 2, or Part II, the bulk of the argument, the middle.

So what goes on, then, in the middle of this grand argument? If Sonic isn’t the point, then who is? If Sonic is Telemachus, then who is Odysseus, the wise father-king-husband-hero coming home from the great war? We can interpret the sea of his voyage as probably being his shifting senses, as per Proteus, so then what are the trials on his sea, the trials on his senses? Who are the gods that he faces, what are the stratagems he comes up with in order to appease and survive?

Well, Joyce was adamant of this: The modern Odysseus in Ireland would have to be of Jewish descent. He would have to be a staunch pacifist. He would have to have a marriage in a questionable state of stability. He would have to be a stick in the mud, a party pooper with an adorably dry sense of humour and a physically average build, a serious and unrelenting cuck, and yet a man with sensible ideas of how to spend money generously and pipe dreams of a socialist nation where love and equality triumph. He would not stand in opposition to the modern bigoted uncaring society, his friends and neighbours, but he would be tasked with changing it all the same.

The modern Odysseus is Leopold Bloom. The modern Odysseus is the prototypical social justice warrior.

And that’s who the bulk of Ulysses is about, that’s the psyche we’ll get to explore, that’s what I’ll post about later on.

#sonic hamlet #in making this post i finally went and made the makeshift pictures for Nestor and Proteus #the images are not necessarily reflective of how the final products will look #it would drive me crazy if i tried to keep them all perfect and consistent #because i've still got to make a lot more of them #the episodic structure is honestly one of my favourite parts of the book? it helps me dig in.#so i do want to emphasize an outline around that structure. making sonic hamlet a 'show' naturally follows from this.

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vroenis · 4 years

Text

Reaching Out, Reaching In

It would be criminal not to use ABIIOR for the lede given I’m going to quote Matty albeit not quite verbatim - nevertheless - buy this album, it’s incredible.

But of-course, I’m going to start by talking about

I mention BT a lot; he enters the lists often in my writing, in my discussions. Like many artists in my collection and listening rotation, I seem to be really into an artist for a period of time and then reach a cutoff point where I stop being into them. This probably happens for most people, I don’t know, I’ve not asked most people, but I do want to be very careful of not living in the past or rather dying in it. Still, I like to keep finding new things or rather I’m compelled to. I enjoy things that continue to grow older each second time passes, but I always thirst for new creations by all artists of all ages, whether they bring to bear the experience of years, or they’ve only been around for a few. The point is everyone is here on this wild ride and art is their response to the stimuli; it’s what comes out of us in abstract and semi-abstract, re-translated and it forms these amazing emotional and often transcending connections and multifaceted responses in us and by us I mean me.

I’m getting distracted.

In the last and understandably downcast piece on my deathbed playlist, there are three key BT albums and it’s worth noting the years he released them;

2006 - This Binary Universe

2012 - Nuovo Morceau Subrosa

2016 - _ (untitled - there’s a story, you can look it up if you like, it’s more or less just referred to as the character *underscore*(verbal))

There were other albums in-between but naturally those don’t make the list as far as what I want to be hearing if I’m half or unconscious or in a delirium on my way to imminent death. In 2019, BT released two albums;

October 2019 - Between Here And You

December 2019 - Everything You’re Searching For Is On The Other Side Of Fear

You may remember I wrote a whole lot about 2009 - 2019 and these albums were absent.

If you go to the wiki for BT, which are his initials for Brian (Wayne) Transeau, you’ll see a wonderfully rich history of a stupendously talented musician and immensely intelligent individual. He is part of a collective of people most wouldn’t know about (which is perfectly fine, to be honest) who are responsible for the digital audio revolution that has completely changed the way we create, record, produce, publish and distribute music as we know it. There are parts of that people may think are negative and some elements certainly are, but the net benefit is unquestionably positive even if only on the sole subject of accessibility. Accessible digital audio has put creation and power within reach of everyone and of-course this means there’s a glut of material available, but it also means we catch sight of more amazing art rather than never see it, or it not seeing the light of day. I lean on humans seeing it and saying that directly rather than speaking in abstract. The light of day is literally us - we humans, seeing the expressions of one-another and hopefully remunerating appropriately so that we can continue to live and improve each other’s lives.

I have always had and continue to have immense respect for BT. He began writing This Binary Universe when his daughter was born, and as she grew, continued working on the album with this tiny infant often in his lap as he worked. He wrote it from creation in 5.1 surround sound, rather than all other “surround sound mixes” being done in retrospect from the stereo stems. It is an astonishing work and See You On The Other Side may very well be one of the greatest pieces of music in history. When I first listened to TBU in 2006, I had a myriad of emotional responses and I certainly didn’t have as much knowledge of BT’s creation process and background for the album at the time, but I can appreciate that shortly thereafter upon learning it, it probably does form biases in how I feel about the album. This will be important to the discussion later. Nevertheless, the album feels massively injected with specific intent and yes, surely every artistic work is regardless and we’ll get there. This is going to be personal but all writing is - that doesn’t warrant further discussion, we should always be making that assumption.

I follow BT on Instagram and saw him build his awesome new studio, an amazing space for all his gear and synths and something any music professional would love to have in some way... which I may check in a moment, or perhaps not so soon but I hope I don’t forget to come back to that. I will say that I do like it. It is a wonderful playground of vintage, rare and new synths, of super powerful computers with extremely new software and plugs, of high-end analogue desks and outboard units, extremely nice monitors and custom designed absorbers, panels, racks and furniture. It is an absolutely amazing space.

After the studio was finished, he did some collabs with some other artists and folks, some of which I also follow on Instagram whose setups are wildly different so it was nice to see some cross-over. He also interspersed with increasing regularity work on his albums which included clips of 100+ piece orchestras and often DAW session captures of the stems and him working on them. It was all pretty cool and the tiny snippets he posted were rad.

In October 2019, I was travelling to visit family due to cancer treatment, something that’s been at the centre of my life for well over 18 months, and I have my first full listen-thru of Between Here And You on an early morning when the rest of the house is asleep. It’s pretty great, sonically I like it a lot. I don’t have the same response to TBU but I don’t expect to, I should give it a chance, but it still doesn’t elicit a really significant response in me. At this point it has to be said that on the same trip, I have my first full listen-thru of Telefon Tel Aviv’s Dreams Are Not Enough, having slept on its initial September release, and that might be enough to give context to how I responded - it may have been where my head was at and remains to this day. I couldn’t shake it tho, as I still really have an affinity for TBU and I was wondering what was up.

Fast-forward to December and the release of Everything You’re Searching For Is On The Other Side Of Fear, and I do not respond to this album at all. It has some decent BT synth and sample work in it that exhibits his amazing talent, but it’s cut with orchestral and choral music that to me is indistinct from any other contemporary material available on a Pandora channel playing similar genres. I hate the sound of myself being so critical of someone I admire so much, because for someone who can write bangin’ trance and intricately complicated micro-rhythms and sample-chopped music, someone who writes their own freaken’ software and who edits audio down to the sample because their attention to detail is so specific and demanding - for that same person to be so talented to also be able to write scores and choral vocal arrangements is immense. I’m sure it all means so much to BT and I’m so proud of him for creating what to him must be an amazing work. I’m not trying to say anything negative about the work itself...

But I just don’t respond to it. Almost all the other music I’ve been listening to over the last 10 years including very recently, feels like it’s been created in response to extremely personal experiences that haven’t all been great - singular or accumulations of events that have precipitated significant introspection, and the art that has resulted from it for me reflects it clearly. BT’s two albums feel like... a very fortunate and privileged guy who’s had a lot of time and opportunity to play with his gear, record it and release it. The title also sounds presumptuous as if to position that systemic poverty and oppression and struggle outside of ones’ control can be solved by the oppressed simply stopping being afraid and I border on hating it every time I read it... - and that sounds so horribly mean because it is, I don’t intend for it to be mean. I need to check my expectations and I need to respect that Brian is still doing what he wants to do and he doesn’t owe me anything, least of all in something as abstract as how something sounds and whether or not I like it, because ultimately that’s all I’m talking about here, no matter how obscure I want to make the discussion. The intent of the title, especially - I’m certain - isn’t to diminish those who suffer, and I should be careful in my reading of it. So keeping myself in check, I’m here to explore the rest of my response, and I’m going to try and give further context.

Coldplay

I’ve no problem telling you I like Coldplay. I guess if you knew more about my musical background, it’d be less of a surprise, tho if you’ve been following along, it’ll make sense. If you’re reading this journal backwards, it may or may not, depending on how much I write about production in the future. To cut a long story short, like many bands I’m almost not at all into the band themselves and almost entirely into the production that surrounds them. Meow meow meow, all the art purists will bang-on about how music is about the performers but producers and engineers are artists in every way as much as performers are, and even bands or individuals who “just perform” with their instrument and no-one else on stage and no technicals (screens, lights, unseen backing musos etc.) still have a myriad of people surrounding them without which they can’t execute their working careers. Anyway, feel free to remain ignorant of those facts if you like and be all “pure performers”, no problem - magic can be real for you.

I lost track of Coldplay at after their 2015 album A Head Full Of Dreams. I’m less emotionally invested in the band and totally don’t mind that they’d up until that point releasing more or less the same sound for four consecutive albums. I really like the sound and if you pay close enough attention, it was actually evolving nicely, enough for me at any rate. I’d forgotten all about the band which is easy to do when you don’t really pay attention to pop-music and the activities therein, and then a couple of months ago (January maybe?) by whatever divination of the YouTube algorithm, a video titled Coldplay: Everyday Life Live in Jordan came up in my recommendations - a thing I was until then, unaware even existed. I’d no idea what the band was doing and I’m always keen to give them a shot, so I clicked-thru.

Moments ago I said I was happy with the band doing the same sound over and over again, and when I listen back to those albums, I’m still fine with them - let’s call it the Viva/Prospekt’s/Dreams anthology. Several things struck me about Everyday Life. Given my personal experiences of the last ten years, my struggles and the struggles of everyone around me, both personal and the cultures I observe and choose to observe, watching these four guys geared up in these ruins in Jordan looked stupendously privileged and a massive flex of wealth and influence. It looked like money buying good photography, framing and impossible location kudos and style. The sound in culture to my personal experiences also felt irrelevant.

And now I can finally talk about

The 1975 - Reaching Out, Reaching In

I now don’t remember whether it was at the ABIIOR concert in Melbourne, September 2019, or in one of the many interview snippets on YouTube or an article - I’m fairly sure it was his voice, so I either saw him say it in a video or he said it at the concert or both. Matt Healy said something along the lines of...

“... I know our last album was very inwardly focused... but A Brief Inquiry is very outwardly focused... it’s more about the world... and you... and us...”

That is not at all what he said verbatim but it was something very similar to that so I desperately hope a 1975 fan drops in and corrects me or can find a clip of him repeating it. Anyway there are a lot of really good things to extract from that, firstly from what it means about The 1975′s music and the culture that forms around it, and then about the discussion I’m having.

BT, Coldplay and The 1975 all live in my Ultimate folder on my hard-drive, but while BT and Coldplay fall where they will alpha-numerically as far as directory structure is concerned, The 1975 have the auspicious honour of having leading zeros in their text so they appear first. This is so that I never have to scroll all the way down to T in any program or utility (like my car’s head unit) to find them. Worth noting that composer Yoko Kanno is 01 and Underworld are 02.

The album that preceded A Brief Inquiry... was released in 2016, titled I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It, an intentionally Emo title, I believe or at least hope, and it is definitely an inwardly focused album in the themes indicated by its lyrical content. It’s to date one of my favourite albums of all time, superbly performed and produced and overflowing with emotion - there’s some truly heartbreaking sound and words therein. I feel like this album is a perfect inclusion with the others in my Circa 2009 - 2019 piece that was somehow vaguely about how much of a struggle those 10 years have been. I guess it’d be difficult to get a notion of that if you’re not familiar with the music and material, but all of that music is introspective - it’s all about reaching in. As mentioned above, the art these artists are producing is the result of deeply intimate experiences, some they share directly with us outside of the abstract of art - relationships, family loss, drug addiction, mental health - but many that they don’t so clearly telegraph and leave us with the abstract; the art.

A Brief Inquiry.../ABIIOR certainly is about reaching out, even when the lyrics do seem to be personal, but to me as an individual, it feels to reach out in the right way - that is to say *I* feel it’s reaching out to a world *I* identify with, in a way that *I* agree with or find agreeable. The songs in ABIIOR are about misunderstanding, they’re about not giving up, making mistakes, desperation, honesty, the chaos of the destruction of modern society. One of my all-time favourite songs has sprung from this album and has become anthemic for me - Love It If We Made It and I’m going to embed it;

youtube

And now I feel I want to say that naming an album “Everything You’re Searching For Is On The Other Side Of Fear” and also performing a concert in ancient ruins on the top of a mountain during a picturesque sunrise in Jordan with expensive drone photography both feel to me like also reaching out but in ways that I don’t like and agree with, that feel irrelevant and/or culturally inappropriate but I use the term culturally to mean my personal culture; the culture I see myself fit into as an individual that interacts with others, the struggles we seem to share as a collective.

I feel as tho Coldplay once did reach out in the good way I’m trying and possibly failing to describe, or perhaps just trying to frame from a position I prefer. I felt they had a more grounded sense of community with everyday people which makes the irony of their most recent project more apparent. It may well be that I just don’t like what these artists are doing any more and that’s fine. Sometimes we might feel entitled to a sense of righteousness, to validate our distaste for something on a more grand cultural level, to co-opt others into our critique so more fingers can point and collectively say “See?! That thing you’re doing really *is* BAD! More people said so!” but I really am keeping myself in check and not wanting to do that. I think I’m writing this journal to explain myself to myself - yes, to log my justifications because I believe in them, but also ensure I don’t turn into an arsehole.

Still - I stand by my criticisms because they’re important. I don’t know why in-particular these few examples struck in this way when others didn’t. I bought a bunch of Anjuna music that has nothing to do with culture and emotional response in the ways I’ve discussed them and I love them. Sometimes music is about bangin’ beats and euphoria and that’s OK. Still, the world isn’t entirely a joyous place for me at the moment and hasn’t been. There are positives to celebrate, but I have never been one to only log my celebrations. In particular from a mental health perspective, only documenting positives is incredibly hazardous and I condemn the practice. As much as these entries are laced with darkness and difficulties, each one also contains the things that assist me in surviving, keeping me nourished and navigating this often hellish experience of life. Ultimately of all my skills, seeking out art I identify with is the most valuable survival skill I have, it is the only one that matters.

Love is a kind of art, there’s nothing abstract in that statement - the love between people is artful, in any and all forms it takes - hence the tags; Art Worth Dying For, and Art Worth Living For.

#music #The 1975 #A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships #ABIIOR #BT #Telefon Tel Aviv #Dreams Are Not Enough #Coldplay #Love It If We Made It #art worth dying for #art worth living for #chrono #2020 #writing about music

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xishi · 4 years

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TAKANE MOMOCHI * Main Story (EP 1-3) - Rough Translation

Disclaimer: I am not Japanese, nor can I read or understand Japanese. To translate this I am using Google Instant Live Translator. Which means, this “translation” of Takane’s story is inaccurate and may even be completely wrong in most areas. By choosing to read this, you acknowledge that for the most part I try reiterate based on my assumptions from their dialogue and keywords that I can make out from the live translation.

Introduction: Hey, everyone! I just wanted to say that by posting these rough translations I do not want to discourage you from investing in Takane’s LC main story when it comes out on the Love 365 (english version). It’s actually the opposite, my main purpose is to get you more attached to him, and get you interested in experiencing it yourself. I’m 100% certain (pun intended) that it will just be so different. Reading a synopsis, compared to actually experiencing the visual novel itself can’t be compared. So please support Voltage Inc, and I hope you also fall in love with Takane like I did (yes, by this point I’ve already finished the whole main story).

Select ‘keep reading’ below to read more. Spoiler below this point!

Episode 1

The MC is shocked to find out that the app has notified her of a 100% body compatibility match.

(I assume this means compatible in sex life, but I could be wrong. Or it might just be 100% general match and my translator be playing me.)

She is further shocked to find out who exactly is her 100% body compatible match, to which at first she doubted on whether or not it was actually him. But his name is uncommon so she decides it’s actually the very same Takane who had kicked her to the curb so many years ago.

Her friend eggs her on to hurry and accept and to message him, the faster the better. But of course due to their history she is both scared and hesitant to do it for fear of another rejection.

(Now, the following segment it’s unclear on who started chatting to whom first but it looks like Takane was the first to message MC.)

The conversations starts off a little weird where the MC kind of questions in her head if he remembers her or not, but it seems like he does.

From the conversation the tone seems casual, he says generic things like, “It’s been a while, I haven’t seen you since college graduation” etc.

(I don’t exactly know if she points out his casual tone, I don’t know about you but I would’ve been like… how can you sound so casual about this? You did me dirty.)

She tries to respond as casually as possible but corresponding with him is beginning to crack her armour, and revive all the bad memories pertaining to Takane.

They talk for a few more beats, until he finally says that he wants to see her and find out if they are compatible for more than body compatibility(?)

So they decide to meet up and agree on a date and time.

The day comes around when she will finally meet Takane after so long. The meeting spot is like an airline VIP lounge and she is kind of in awe about how luxe everything is.

However, she notices one small detail that the airline lounge she’s told to meet him at doesn’t seem to be for the airline that Takane had mentioned working for on his profile.

(I don’t know if she just had a passing thought, or if she was suspicious about it.)

She has a small run-in with the lounge receptionist, she kind of questions what the MC is doing and states that this lounge is for VIP members and companions only.

Then in walks in Takamine in his pilot uniform (looking delicious by the way). He says to the receptionist that the MC is his VIP (hoho). The receptionist is kind of like, “you’re the 100%?”

I kind of somewhat forgot what happened after this, but I think it’s just the MC talking about how Takane be looking good, better than she remembered.

Episode 2

The MC is lost for words at how handsome Takane has become, even when he goes up to her and greets her. I think he even compliments how much prettier she has become but she was still lost for words because she just couldn’t believe the same guy who had rejected her was complimenting her in this way. She thanks the fact that she prepped so much for this moment.

They make their way into the lounge, with a drink of champagne in hand.

The MC mulls over how beautiful the scene outside the lounge was, you can see the aircrafts on standby. She also is really overwhelmed by the whole atmosphere of the VIP lounge itself.

Takane also makes a comment about the scenery, spotting the aircraft he just flew in on as a co-pilot.

The MC asks where did he fly in from, he states New York and she was flustered because instead of resting he was spending his evening here with her.

She points out about the JSA and FJL airlines and why he put the wrong airline in his profile, he admits to it as being part of policy that he can’t associate himself publicly with the airline he actually worked for. The MC also apologises because she also lied about her workplace. To which Takane didn’t care too much about, saying he also did the same so it was okay.

(Although they didn’t talk much about this part, he did seem evasive about this topic when she commented about the great reviews about the airline he worked for. For a swift moment his face dropped, but was quickly covered with smile.)

While downing their champagne, he stares at her for a beat longer and comments about how beautiful her skin is and reaches out to stroke her face.

He comments about how he really likes this natural look (I think). And how he was tired of see the makeup of cabin crew.

The MC is glowing in his praise, equally surprised but happy at how open he is to compliment her. She goes on to gush about her work and how makeup is like a weapon. She talks fondly about her work and the power of makeup.

Takane empathises, saying he is also proud of his work and how he holds the safety of so many passengers even though he is only a co-pilot.

Then the MC asks about whether or not he has ever met with anyone from college or high school, Takane says that the MC was the first he met after a long time and that he didn’t even attend the reunion event.

This seems to have triggered something, as soon as he said that he straightened up and looked at the MC with a serious expression saying he needed to tell her something that he wasn’t able to before.

The episode ends with a cliffhanger.

Episode 3

Takane continues where he left of by saying that he wanted to apologise to the MC about that time (I assume is the rejection). He kind of points out the fact that he was young and stupid, to which he knows that is not an excuse to hurt someone the way he did to the MC at the time.

His apology and his words break open old wounds and she has a flashback of the day he rejected her.

The flashback begins in the college cafeteria, the MC calls out Takane’s name and he comments that she’s too loud. Mustering up the courage she tells Takane that she needs to tell him something and to stay back in class later.

He nonchalantly states he is free now, but since it’s a confession it wasn’t something she could just say amidst all these people so he agreed to meet her later not really knowing what it was about.

In the classroom she finally confesses to him after so long of loving him in secret. But without even a moments hesitation he rejects her. Distraught, she asks why. Takane says something along the lines of “not now” or something.

The MC asks if not now then when (paraphrasing). He says something like, “no that’s not it.”

Trying to find words to respond because of her shock and sadness, he catches her off guard when he says “for now I’ll leave you with this memory at least you have this” (paraphrasing). He kisses her.

From the context she gives after the flashback ends, it seems like it wasn’t at all romantic or supposed to be romantic. It was a trade off for him. Like, since I can’t reciprocate your feelings I’ll give you this kiss in return for your feelings, I hope this is enough. Almost like he was wiping his hands clean off of her confession.

(Which is a dick move by the way.)

Back in the present, he continues to be apologetic about that time. In her mind and heart the pain seemed still a little raw, but the fact that he was apologising for it now was a catalyst for her realisation that she still has feelings for him.

He seems to want to start anew, that their match through the app seemed to be destiny that they should try this out.

The MC thinks about how he is much more different, and more mature and open in her eyes compared to how he was in college which she described him as being “cool and indifferent, cocky” etc.

(Basically a fuckboi.)

A little while later he has to send her off because he had work early the next morning, and his work meant he had to go place to place so he was staying at a hotel. He couldn’t drive her back home himself due to this reason and felt relatively bad about having to send her off in a taxi instead, as stated in his messages to her later after he confirmed if she had reached home safely.

Next morning at work the MC receives another message from Takane to which he arranges another day to meet.

Next: Episode 4-6 > (Coming Soon)

#voltage inc #takane momochi #あと1%で運命の恋 #destind: mr. almost right #100シーンの恋+

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jaimetheexplorer · 5 years

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PROBABILITY DISTORTION - Or why Jaime Lannister is less likely to die than you think (part 3)

Once the narrative arcs and foreshadowing analysis pokes enough holes in the “inevitable death” prediction, the arguments to support it usually tend to turn to non-text-based points such as writing style and tropes. Most of these arguments generally revolve around the idea that GRRM is evil and kills characters off to traumatize his readers, and that Jaime’s story is a redemption arc and therefore will end in a redemptive death like all redemption arcs do. These arguments, however, do not really hold much water once you take into account that GRRM actually isn’t the sadist people like to think he is (including sometimes George himself, because it makes for good PR), and that one thing this series prides itself on is trope and expectations subversion.

GRRM is a realist, not a sadist

“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.”

Of all the quotes that have come out of the show, this, right here, is the one I have come to hate the most. Not only because it is often irritatingly used as an empty argument against anything that suggests a non-tragic ending for a character (especially one like Jaime), but it’s thrown around as if it’s the most representative of ASOIAF/GoT ever. In part, I get why. It’s catchy, and the series has broken a lot of boundaries by actually killing people off, putting them through terrible ordeals, maiming and traumatising some for life. It gained its notoriety for killing off the perceived main character of the story at very beginning, and for the shocking bloodbath of “good guys” that was the Red Wedding. But I feel there’s a tendency, amongst fans and journalists alike, to exaggerate how gloomy and sadistic the story/GRRM really is, relative to the context it is set in (medieval war time).

GRRM often explained the reason why he kills characters off as fundamentally being down to two reasons: wanting to depict war realistically and annoyance at stories where the heroes are untouchable and survive, unscathed, any situation (which ties into the topic of trope subversion, too - more on this later).

“You can’t write about war and violence without having death. If you want to be honest it should affect your main characters. We’ve all read this story a million times when a bunch of heroes set out on adventure and [...] the only ones who die are extras. That’s such a cheat. It doesn’t happen that way.” (GRRM)

GRRM is a realist, not a sadist. And I would argue he’s not as bloodthirsty as people perceive him to be, when it comes to main characters. If you think about it, only *two* POV characters have been killed off so far: Ned and Cat. Jon, the other main POV to be killed off in the books, we know will be resurrected thanks to the show. And just as GRRM inserts POVs for a reason (when he needs that new perspective, or when a character’s story needs to be told), there’s a similar reason in his killing too. It usually comes when the characters have fulfilled their purpose in the story, or if their death is a plot point for someone else’s. In Ned and Cat’s case, they die after falling into Littlefinger’s scheme that pits Lannisters against the Starks, kicking off the War of the Five Kings. Ned’s purpose was to discover the true paternity of Robert’s children and Cat dies after tasking Brienne to bring Jaime to King’s Landing in return for her daughters (which sets off a massive domino effect of plotlines). They also both needed to die in order to break down centralized parenthood in the Stark family so that the Stark children could go their separate ways and have their own stories and development.

While POV and non-POV deaths alike can be shocking and/or heartbreaking, they aren’t thrown in there just to fill some death or shock quota for no other rhyme nor reason. This is not The Walking Dead. And “realism” also means a ton of other options that have nothing to do with death. It’s not just an issue of “death vs. survival”, to post another excerpt from the quote above:

“They go into battle and their best friend dies or they get horribly wounded. They lose their leg or death comes at them unexpectedly.”

Having a loved one die, or horrible injuries are also part of realism for GRRM, not just death. Does that “lose their leg” sound familiar? Thought so. So saying that Jaime (or any character) will most likely get killed anyway because GRRM is a sadist is not only a weak argument, but a big misrepresentation of GRRM’s writing style. Jaime, who has already added his contribution to the “realism” jar by losing his hand, might die if and when he has fulfilled his purpose in the story, but not because “GRRM is a jerk”.

Subversions

Perhaps a stronger case for Jaime’s survival odds is the fact that, if there is one thing this series loves to do, it’s subverting tropes and expectations, and, alongside Ned’s death and the Red Wedding, Jaime is perhaps one of the most famous examples of how this story does character trope subversion so well.

Right out of the gate, it wants us to hate him, because he’s arrogant, ruthless and incestuous, he betrayed and murdered the King he was sworn to protect and he pushed a child out of a window. From book/season 3 onwards, that initial perception is slowly challenged and eventually subverted, especially throughout his journey with Brienne and with the revelation of why he killed the Mad King, but also in how he takes risks to protect Tyrion and Sansa from his own family. In the show this is particularly fun, because once you go back to earlier seasons, you notice several subtle moments of writing and acting where the seeds of these revelations were already being planted. While I understand he is not everyone’s cup of tea and some hate him just as much as day one, I think that we can all agree at least that this is what the story is aiming to do, even if not all readers/viewers embrace it. And that’s the most important thing when making a point about authorial intent.

I already mentioned when discussing narrative arcs, that the difference between the classic redemptive character trope and Jaime is that, in Jaime’s case, the story is exploring the process of redemption, rather than seeing redemption as the last minute goal, and how that makes a classic redemptive death less likely. But there is another difference with the traditional trope that makes Jaime not only subvert expectations but, partly, also subvert the redemption trope itself. And that is that many (not all, but many) of the things we are initially supposed to hate Jaime for, actually turn to be misconceptions or prejudices from other characters’ perspective (a huge point of having a POV structure). While Jaime undoubtedly goes through a transformation through the story, for many things it is our initial perception of Jaime is meant to change, not Jaime, the character (again, POV structure!). Looking at Jaime as the trope of the “bad man who is turned good by the good woman” (i.e. Brienne) is a complete misread of the character. Brienne exists to reawaken what Jaime used to be like in his past/can potentially still be, not to transform him into something else (it is Beauty and the Beast they are based on, after all - the beast used to be a prince, and gets turned back into that prince). Therefore applying the outcome of the traditional tropes to Jaime (i.e. a redemptive death) makes little sense when Jaime is meant to be a subversion of that trope to begin with, if not even a different type of character altogether.

Another trope worth considering is the “all the bad guys will die” trope.

Not only this view fails to acknowledge that most characters and families in this series (and its extended universe - see the Targaryen as portrayed in Dunk & Egg) aren’t 100% “good” or 100% “bad”, they sit on a spectrum, but even if you wanted to see a specific character or family as “evil”, that doesn’t necessarily mean they will die or go extinct. We can go back to his quotes about why he kills off characters to see how “bad guys will die” is also a trope he might be interested in subverting.

“It’s really irritating when you open a book, and 10 pages into it you know that the hero you met on page one or two is gonna come through unscathed, because he’s the hero. This is completely unreal, and I don’t like it.” (GRRM)

This quote above can be looked at in reverse too: just as it is annoying to open a book and know 10 pages in that the hero will survive (and GRRM subverted that trope with Ned), it is annoying to know 10 pages in that the villain will die (and Ned’s villain counterpart in book one is Jaime), or that the family that is perceived as the “evil family” (i.e. the Lannisters) will go extinct in the end (let alone if it’s with the exception of the “good” Lannister, Tyrion, playing right into the trope of both “good vs bad” guys and “good vs bad families”, since the only Lannister allowed to survive is the “good” one).

So even if one doesn’t want to buy into Jaime’s redemption and trope subversion, and wants to hold onto the book/season one interpretation that he’s an awful human being, if the author(s) intend for Jaime to be a subversion of the redemption death trope, or to subvert the “all bad guys must die” trope (or both), then his odds of death or survival are not really influenced by whether the audience agrees with that or not.

GRRM is both a gardener AND an architect

As I wrap up my 3-parter, one final aspect of GRRM’s style is important to note, because it ties it all together.

GRRM says he is a “gardener”, who likes to plant seeds and see how they grow. So one might argue that there is no guarantee that just because he set off in book one to make Jaime the subversion of the villain who must die (through redemption), he will never decide at some point that, actually, a death will be a fitting and satisfying conclusion.

However, it is important to remember that when he talks about being a gardener he means it in the sense that he finds knowing the *details* of how a story will develop to be a turn off for his inspiration and motivation, not that he does not plan anything ahead and has no idea where the story is going.

“For me, writing a book is like a long journey, and like any trip, I know the point where I start the journey and the point I wanna get to. I also know a little bit of the route, such as the main cities in which I wanna stop by, and even a few monuments I would like to visit. What I do not know is where I will eat the first night or which songs will be on the radio. I discover all that details while I am writing the book and that’s the reason why I go so slowly: because sometimes I have to go back to change certain things.” (GRRM)

While he creates the story as he goes along, he does work with the broad strokes of the endgame and the final fates of the main characters in mind:

"I know the broad strokes, and I've known the broad strokes since 1991. I know who's going to be on the Iron Throne. I know who's gonna win some of the battles, I know the major characters, who's gonna die and how they're gonna die, and who's gonna get married and all that. The major characters. Of course along the way I made up a lot of minor characters, you know, I, uhm...Did I know in 1991 how Bronn, what was gonna happen to Bronn? No, I didn't even know there'd be a guy named Bronn. [...] So a lot of the minor characters I'm still discovering along the way. But the mains-"

[question if he knows Arya's and Jon's fates]

"Tyrion, Arya, Jon, Sansa, you know, all of the Stark kids, and the major Lannisters, yeah." (GRRM)

Furthermore, he absolutely loves to drop cues, hints and foreshadowing to future events and plot twists, something that would be completely impossible for him to do if he were writing with no clear ending and direction in sight. So he sets out to make sure his story adds up and makes sense, even if it means having to give up the surprise factor, either because someone already figured it out (e.g. R+L=J):

“The fans use to come up with theories; lots of them are just speculative but some of them are in the right way. [...] They say: “Oh God, the butler did it!”, to use an example of a mystery novel. Then, you think: “I have to change the ending! The maiden would be the criminal!” To my mind that way is a disaster because [...] the books are full of clues that point to the butler doing it and help you to figure up the butler did it, but if you change the ending to point the maiden, the clues make no sense anymore; they are wrong or are lies, and I am not a liar.” (GRRM)

or because the show surpassed the books:

Though he used to worry about it getting to the end before him, he's not even about that life anymore.

“I said, to hell with that. Worrying about it isn’t going to change it one way or another. I still sit down at the typewriter, and I have to write the next scene and the next sentence … I’m just going to tell my story, and they’re telling their story and adapting my books, and we shall see.” (GRRM)

Jaime’s fate, as a “main Lannister”, is therefore already clear in GRRM’s mind and he has been seeding and foreshadowing and working towards it, even if *how* he will get there is anybody’s guess (and the show and books have already substantially diverged in that sense). It will likely not change on a whim, invalidating everything that has been written all along.

So, as we reach the end of part 3 and take all the stuff I’ve discussed in this 3-parter in consideration, I think it’s safe to conclude that: given Jaime’s arc and related foreshadowing, knowing that GRRM develops his stories sloooowly, carefully and purposefully, always with a goal in sight, going back to change things if they don’t fit or contradict, relying heavily on the concept of butterfly effect across arcs and characters, and with a penchant for trope subversion sprinkled on top, you can see why I feel that the odds of Jaime’s death in the fandom and general audience are HIGHLY overinflated, and mostly due to selectively attending to one or two pieces of evidence, without considering how they fit in the overall picture. While this is still no guarantee he’ll definitely survive, I’d argue that a likelihood of survival follows from the material (and general writing style) more than death.

Now, if you’ve made it this far without falling asleep, congratulations! I’ve addressed pretty much everything I wanted to address to estimate Jaime’s survival odds from a relatively non-speculative angle, using the current material and quotes available, rather than theorizing too much about what I think are likely future developments for his story. I tend to dislike when people use events that have not yet happened and may never happen (looking at you, valonqarists), to make a case for their arguments, so I refrained from doing it as I don’t really think it’s helpful or even necessary to make my case. BUT, if you’re interested in taking a wild leap into theory-land and how that may further affect his survival odds, I’ll be posting a more speculative part 4 hopefully soon (which will be heavily Jaime/Brienne friendly - you’ve been warned).

#jaime lannister #jaime lannister meta #game of thrones meta #asoiaf meta #asoiaf #game of thrones #my meta #essay

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survivingart · 5 years

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STORY IS EVERYTHING

Be it online or in person, there’s a lot of competition in the arts. And the fact that the art world is much smaller compared to the world of business, law or medicine, only makes it harder for any one artist to succeed. While everybody online is telling us to “niche down”, and explaining why it’s so important, usually no specific tactics are disclosed, and the how is left for us to figure out for ourselves.

This blunder is intended for anyone who wishes to find their focus and stand out in today’s oversaturated creative market by understanding the immense power of storytelling — especially when positioning ones creative skill and aspirations in the market.

Regardless if you paint, sculpt, make experimental video installations or are a political performance artist, the main goal for all of us is to express ourselves.

We do so not because it’s the quickest or easiest way of making a living, but because it’s who we

are. Most of us love our craft in some form or another and follow some internal aspirations that guide our interest and consequently the kind of art we make.

But while creativity is a general term, it could not be describing a more colourful and rich abundance of personal motifs and ambitions of why we do what we do.

For example, I could be selling skilfully crafted portraits because of my passion for creating narratives about beauty, intimacy and connection. But it could also be that I just really enjoy painting figures and fabric and am good enough at it to charge for my work.

Both are great reasons to make a portrait and market ones skill, but even if the end product looks similar in both cases, their target audience couldn’t be more different.

So, let’s put the “art” in artwork.

I’d like to open this conversation with one of the hardest, but probably the simplest of all questions to answer, because we need to get it out of our way to really get the point of why story matters so much. But to find the answer we will have to go all in and drop the proverbial A-bomb.

We’ll have to ask the big question. The one you can read about in 50€+ books, written by prominent and knowledgeable art historians and theoreticians, whose answers are mostly written so thoroughly, so extensively, that one needs a dictionary to find their point.

Ready?

What is Art?

Boom.

Unlike most other questions like: “What is carpentry?”, “What is music?”, even “What is philosophy?”, we artists and other creative souls appear to have an enormous problem — none of us really seem to know what the heck we are doing in our lives. Not because we are confused, undisciplined or too spontaneous, but because no-one actually seems to know what art is.

If you ask most academic professors, they will usually give you an academic answer. If they’re more on the liberal side, it will surely have to do with the freedom of expression and the lyrical power of images in the fight against social injustice.

Ask a person in the street — anyone you want really — and they might tell you it’s something pretty, something that looks good. And probably also something that is quite expensive. For a wealthy collector it might be freedom; a way of expressing themselves without the need to actually learn how to paint or draw or sculpt.

A tattoo artist will tell you it’s tattoos. A barber will tell you it’s an exquisite haircut. An IT technician might even tell you it’s a perfectly sorted and laid out collection of ethernet and electrical cables in the server room.

Just don’t ask an aesthetician — the branch of philosophy that researches art — and they might tell you a lot. Truth be told, they might tell you too much while saying very little. A wonderful example is Tiziana Andina’s prominently titled book: “The Philosophy of Art: The Question of Definition: From Hegel to Post-Dantian Theories”. Read at your own peril.

Art seems to be everything. And we all know that something that is everything is consequently nothing at all.

We have to take a closer look into the production of art; the making of paintings, sculptures, videos and maybe even haircuts and tackle the question by investigating the process of making something an art piece.

So, let’s see if we can’t fix this mess of tattoos, pretty pictures and ethernet cables into a more workable definition by asking a better question: What makes something art?

In the 1960s the art world had a small crisis, caused by none other than the famous pop artist Andy Warhol. The root of the crisis was his artwork, titled simply: Brillo Box.

It looked exactly the same as a normal Brillo soap pad box, albeit being made out of wood. The question: What made Andy’s Brillo boxes art, but at the same time dismissed the original boxes made by James Harvey (the creator of the design) as mere industrial design?

Surely it wasn’t looks, and it couldn’t have been materials — the prestige of using silkscreen on wood instead of printing on cardboard was not the deciding factor after all. The only real difference that one could discern was the name associated with either product.

You had Andy Warhol superstar and the other guy.

Apart from being a marvellous posh object to own, Andy’s Brillo box shines light onto an immensely important topic in art, namely that when push comes to shove, the classification of an artistic piece does not have anything to do with its physical composition — be it medium, motif, size, you name it…

This is immensely important, because if we distill the factors that make up art, we can get a pretty rough, yet quite precise equation, that looks a bit like this:

ART = Viewer + Art Piece + Artist

But why does it now seem like the art piece, the central point of the equation isn’t really important? Well, there’s another surprise coming up.

The artist has been regarded as a genius ever since the invention of the cave painting about 40.000 years ago. The master painter, listening to the whispers of his or her muses and transcribing the messages of the gods into reality, for all of humanity to experience the righteous powers of the divine.

As humans, we couldn’t have been more proud of the lineage of artistic mastery that our planet had created over the years, and we had every reason for it. From the Ancient Greeks to Giotto and Titian, then Caravaggio, Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso … all geniuses in the craft, that shaped how we perceive reality itself.

But then came the trickster. The black sheep, the snake, the devil himself. Then, came Duchamp.

In 1917 as part of The Society of Independent Artists’ exhibition at the The Grand Central Palace, he unveiled his biggest joke of all — a urinal. And even though the organisation of the exhibition had promised that each and every art piece that was entered in the application stage would be shown, they decided to remove The Fountain (as Duchamp named his vertical toilet) from the exhibition.

It was serious.

But the problem that Duchamp’s art piece created was minuscule compared to the big issue that was yet to come. His simple question : “Is this art?” didn’t just create a revolt inside The Society of Independent Artists, it started a revolution.

Thus, conceptualism was born.

The point he was trying to make was simple: Art is an internal human experience, not an invisible aura imbued into an object by some artistic genius.

The art world though, instead of getting his point, concluded that Nietzsche was indeed correct; the gods of art, beauty and aesthetics truly did perish. The murderer’s weapon was finally found — fully drenched in nothing but bloody ideology, the Fountain stood as proof.

Now, more than 100 years later, this narrative is still the bedrock of many institutions, both commercial and educational. And I feel it is about time we change this.

Not only could more people start to appreciate art — instead of thinking of it as a pretentious playground for the rich, filled with expensive junk and weird intellectuals — but by removing some of the misconceptions that either artist or artwork are the origin of the artistic experience, we could actually improve the status of us artists in society.

How?

By educating the viewer. By making our artistic process visible to all via social media and other means. By not trying to overcomplicate our work descriptions and artist statements and ending the need to feel like we have to defend our right to paint, sculpt, dance or make videos, with big words and complex explanations.

By connecting with our audience and being strong, sincere and genuine people. And with social media exploding in a constantly connected world, the timing just couldn’t be better.

Art is a multitude of stories, each different from another and all created by every one of our viewers.

And like good spelling and a decent vocabulary are the bedrock for any novel, we visual artists have a bunch of tools that we can use to build our narratives too.CREATING YOUR STORY (CONTEXT AND CONTENT)

In 1976, artist and critic Brian O’Doherty published his essay Inside the White Cube, that not only created lots of buzz in the art world, but gave this popular mode of displaying art in museums and commercial galleries a catchy new name.

While his wonderful critique of the White Cube is better to read in the original form, I would like to focus on one psychological factor that made his essay become so well known.

People experience things instantly and as a whole, rather than a collection of individual parts. When looking at a red triangle, we can’t just decide to see it as a triangle or just as something red — we always see both of its features at the same time.

Similarly with music; we can’t decide to hear just the tone of a note, while zoning out the colour of the sound (for example hearing the same note being played on a drum compared to a double bass or saxophone).

We as beings need context for just about everything in our lives — even our ability for differentiating object sizes and various temperatures is done by creating context from the surrounding environment.

Ok, but what does this have to do with art? Truth be told — everything.

As art is subjective, we can never really take full control over how a viewer of our show or a customer who bought one of our pieces will understand the work’s narrative.

A description of the work might help, but some actually prefer to make up their own mind about what a particular art piece means to them on a strictly personal level, rather than listening to the artist describe what it should mean. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that in my opinion.

But, while we aren’t able to control everything our viewer will experience, there are many aspects of our work that we absolutely can and should be thinking about. Because understanding them makes our job of finding potential buyers or getting a place in an exhibition incredibly easier.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

Choose materials carefully, not just as a means to an end but as building blocks of your work’s narrative.

A marble sculpture and a wood carving of the same motif tell different stories. Both may be a portrait of someone, but marble will always communicate prestige, longevity and may form subconscious connections to Ancient Greek and Roman statues of prominent individuals, making the portrayed look even more respectable and important. Wood on the other hand is softer and warmer in appearance and more suitable for creating intimate portraits emphasising emotion rather than status.

Evoke emotions, then seal the deal with a well prepared concept.

Nothing is worse than a conceptual piece that doesn’t also work on an emotional level. The appearance of your work will make or break its ability to convey your message, so regardless of how brilliant your idea may be, if your work doesn’t first captivate your viewer and make them curious enough to step closer, all is lost.

Presentation is really important when exhibiting your work.

Adjust lighting, surrounding objects like tables, chairs, plants … to compliment your work, or at least not to distract your viewers attention.

Impressionists used a lot of green leafy plants to compliment the vibe of their paintings, modernists decided to completely remove everything (including the frame of a painting or plinth of a sculpture) to maximise emphasis on their work — hence the White Cube principle.

When showing work online, it is imperative to get it right.

Show your work not just as a clean, shadowless and speckless photograph with good colour correction (because the images should look identical to the real thing), but incorporate it into an environment — even a generic architectural shot of a living room will be better than nothing.

Give your online images enough context and help your visitors understand the colours, size, textures and other features of your work by providing enough visual information; a few detail shots, a side view and maybe even the back of the work (if it’s 2D). For spatial works, maybe make a 360° GIF by stitching together multiple angles — nobody wants to buy a sculpture only to find that they don’t like the rear end of it.

The venue is a big part of your exhibition.

If you paint a picture of an apple being picked by a woman somewhere in a forest and hang it in an office of a juice company, people will probably see a nice lady picking apples. But hang it in a church community centre and people might see the highly complex concept of Ancestral Sin.

Same painting, same communication, immensely different results — just by changing the context.

So whenever you have the chance — for example if you are invited to create a show in a certain gallery from scratch — work with the space in mind, or change it if you can to make it a better fit for your work.

Regardless of what kind of art you create, if you make a thorough examination of the materials you use, the message you are trying to tell and the environment you are telling it in, you can use all of this information to reverse-engineer your work to find your target audience.

It should never be the other way around.

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#artist life #contemporary art #surviving art #make art everyday #blog

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moistwithgender · 5 years

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Monthly Media Roundup (June-July 2019)

Well, I neglected doing a post last month, and now another has passed. I haven’t done too much, about three games each month and not anything else media-wise, so let’s get it all done right now!

Little Nightmares (PC/Steam):

These types of spooky “cinematic platformers”, like LIMBO and INSIDE, never really scare me or fill me with dread. Part of this may be that due to the trappings of cinematic platformers. Checkpoints are very fair, and nothing is too difficult because priority is on delivering the story. Little side challenges exist, like trying to light all the candles or break all the porcelain dolls in the short 3-hour run of the game, but these are also pretty reasonable, even if you’re in a chase sequence. I’m reminded of a youtuber I briefly followed who talked about how horror games aren’t scary anymore, and somewhat unintentionally delivered the point that as you become accustomed to the limits of a medium, and therefore are less likely to be surprised by it, you’re also much less likely to be scared by it. It’s a somewhat unfortunate and inevitable trade-off to becoming more invested in a hobby. When I was a kid, all games held infinite possibility, and so an NPC in Harvest Moon telling me that wild dogs came out at night led me to think that night time held the possibility of ENEMIES in a game without combat. What the NPC meant was that you should build fences. As an adult who has spent my life playing games, I can tell you that a game is almost never going to put you in a situation without the means to deal with it. If there’s going to be combat, you’re going to know how combat works before an ambush. If there’s an escape sequence, you’re going to be in an area that facilitates your escape (often a narrow space that leads you in a direction while also making it as harrowing as possible). Games are theme park rides, and while learning that can make seemingly difficult games more manageable and enjoyable, it also gradually disillusions you. Thankfully, there are always new things to learn if you keep an open mind.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS):

2019 has been about thoroughly enjoying the games that I considered overrated in my young adulthood. I joked on twitter that 70% of my personality was disliking Final Fantasy VII and Ocarina of Time, and honestly, it might as well have been. I earned a lot of undeserved respect in college through arrogantly spouting hot takes about “objectively good art”, and a lot of people reasonably assumed this must mean I know exactly what I’m talking about. The way I process art and media is much looser and more personal than it used to be, partially due to burning out and becoming too exhausted to deal with other arrogant people. I think a lot about how tiring I had to be for other people to talk to. Watching Tim Rogers bleed his personal trauma into his video series on the subtleties of FF7’s japanese script was the most instrumental in turning me back toward the game. When Square Enix revealed gameplay footage of the remake at E3 this year, I was hooting and hollering with the longtime fans.

But, this is about Zelda, not Final Fantasy. I had already played through OoT, as hurriedly as possible, just to say I had done it. It was the better part of a decade ago, at the urging of a then-girlfriend who had nostalgia for it. Frustrations with the Water Temple in the original version are valid despite it being largely well designed, due to some minor shortsighted-ness that blows up into nagging issues, but I think I had put myself in the headspace to dislike it from the get-go. Similarly, I didn’t want to do any collecting in the game as a whole. I had convinced myself that there was no joy to be found in collecting in games (a take bereft of nuance). When the point of Zelda games is to inspire the player to explore every nook and cranny in search of rewards, going in as a player and stubbornly trying to avoid any of that ensures that you’ll miss the point of the whole experience. I’m not sure what it was that made me want to go back. It might be that I wanted to prove my younger, cockier self wrong, and pave over my old evaluations with more nuance.

It certainly worked out that way, as several previous opinions changed entirely. Ruto used to be annoying to me, but was now one of my favorite characters. Doing all the little minigames felt rewarding in itself, and in turn I was unexpectedly rewarded with important items (they really did bet everything on the entire world they’d made). The Water Temple, now tweaked for a bit more convenience in the 3DS version, was extremely interesting. The side quest to acquire the Biggoron Sword was easily doable, whereas I had grown up assuming it impossible. And the story which had never appealed to me (because I wouldn’t let it) now felt relatable in a way I hadn’t expected. Link intends to do good, but through unfortunate circumstances and honest mistakes becomes unable to take part in the world, and it spirals downward for years as he remains trapped in a room, aging but inactive. Something about that mirrors my own experiences with depression. Sure, Link, can travel back to his younger self at any time, but there’s still a powerlessness in the inability to affect the seven year gap. You can flash back, but you can’t change what you’ve lost.

Banjo-Kazooie (N64):

You know, as a kid I probably would have just accepted that Grunty was evil, but as an adult it’s hard not to see her as a product of her environment. Obsessed with asking her cauldron who the objectively prettiest in the world is, she seeks out and kidnaps the younger girl given the title in an attempt to steal her youth. Every character in the game describes Grunty as ugly, rather than evil, and even her own sister shows up in every area to tell you how gross she is and how terrible her lifestyle is. I ended up sympathizing with her more than anyone else. I’ve only played half an hour of Banjo-Tooie, but it was a relief in multiple ways to see her pivot to straight up murder after rising from the dead.

Despite playing Donkey Kong Country multiple times growing up, I’d never really grown to love Rare’s in-house aesthetic of big-eyed cartoony animals. It might be hypocritical, but Smash Ultimate’s reveals for both King K. Rool and Banjo (and) Kazooie made me see the charm in these characters. Something about how Smash canonizes characters as essential pieces of game history always causes me to drop any negative pretense and adopt them as favorites. It’s a little intellectually hypocritical, but I can’t help liking what I like. After the trailer for B-K in Smash, I immediately started up the original game in Retroarch. Thankfully the core I used was advanced enough to play the game without issues (the same cannot be said for Tooie), as other alternatives were expensive or hard to get a hold of. While the slightly-mean humor and talking animate objects took a bit of getting used to, I get it now. I get the children’s show aesthetic they were aiming for, and I appreciate the feel of the physics and control of the interspecies friendship of the protagonists working in tandem with each other, even if the game is at times quite difficult.

Dragon Quest I, II, & III (SNES):

Yes, I did play through three JRPGs in a row! And yes, you might notice that the hero of Dragon Quest XI (and VIII, and IV, and III) was also announced for Smash Ultimate. They recently released, as of this writing! A lot of what I’ve been playing has been influenced by outside forces, whether it be Nintendo news or friends, but I’m not bothered at all when otherwise I might not have the energy to play anything. The games I’ve been playing are also ones I’ve intended to play for a while, so the excuses have been convenient for me. Though, actually, this decision had less to do with the Smash announcement and more to do with the upcoming re-release of DQXI, which seems to be related to the original three games, known as The Erdrick Trilogy. I had heard that you can play XI on its own, but that there is an extra layer of appreciation to be had if you’ve played the original trilogy. Me being me, I naturally queued them up. I chose the older fan translations of the SNES remakes, and though I did finish them, I can tell you that they have their fair share of bugs (DQII even has a game breaking glitch I had to finagle through using save states across multiple versions, phew). Besides that, those old translations lack the modern localizations of the games, so if they namedrop something in XI, there’s a chance it’ll go over my head. Oops! If you want to play these games, the best versions are currently on mobile phones.

Around a decade ago I was in early college, with no friends except for those still in high school or at another university. I was very lonely and nervous. I started playing Dragon Quest V purely by chance, and it served as the perfect salve for that loneliness, with its lonely child protagonist traveling around the world accumulating found family. It’s one of the more poignant and cathartic JRPGs I’ve ever played, and for the next decade I would actually be bothered that the rest of the games didn’t live up to the catharsis of DQV.

In revisiting the roots of the series, and playing it through to see how it develops from title to title, it finally clicked with me, and continues to click with me, as I keep learning more about the series. Rather than comparing every entry to DQV, I should have been comparing them in order. This might sound obvious, but it really did make a world of difference to see that V’s narrative is placed on top of the foundation the previous games set, rather than a singular case of lightning in a bottle. And the games have always featured loneliness, but in differing contexts, and to different degrees. The hero of DQI is almost entirely alone through the full game. In DQII, the princess comes from lonely circumstances, and one of the princes comes down with a sickness that leaves him temporarily unable to help his friends. In DQIII you can make as many team members as you want, but you grow up with an absent father, and your own good deeds receive bittersweet resolution. They are all games built on simple settings and followed through with empathy. The series is at times disarmingly heavy, which is part of what makes the games as memorable as they are. You’re never quite as prepared for Dragon Quest as you think you are.

As of this writing I’m currently half-way through a replay of Dragon Quest IV, and I’m enjoying it a lot more. I’m looking forward to replaying V. I have no idea what VI will be like. I’ve heard it’s a lower point in the series, but that’s what I heard about II as well, and I ended up loving it, so who knows. Dragon Quest is good.

---

Well, I managed to catch up. I didn’t get into the finer details of the DQ playthroughs, but DQIII is honestly so good I don’t want to spoil it for anyone (you should play these games). Maybe in August I’ll actually get back to watching and reading things. Maybe I’ll try to keep these things to a single paragraph per item, to make it more manageable to read. Let me know what you think, if you think.

#monthly post #curry plays games #dragon quest #banjo kazooie #little nightmares #ocarina of time #dragon quest ii #dragon quest iii

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docholligay · 5 years

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Revue Starlight

Hello! Here is a very very long post about my impressions of Revue Starlight Thus far. Please note I have only seen to episode 8 and please don’t spoil me! We are finishing the show tonight, February 20th, at 7 pm Mountain time. THis entire thing has been sponsored by @moonlight1130 and @sailorsunspot, so please thank them if you’re enjoying or have enjoyed!

They are also sponsoring a full day of questions/prompts/etc about Revue Starlight next week!

Please know also that you can hit me up to analyze the things you love! I have liveblogs on my Patreon, but I also do one off things, like watch a movie and write a post about it, or do anime streams like this one. Contact me for commission prices and information!

I have seen plenty of anime cross my dash over the years,and most times they aren’t something I’ll take to, even if I give an episode or two a try. It is, by and large, not a format for me,especially Magical Girl Shows, which, stripped of the nostalgia and history Sailor Moon has for me, don’t tend to work for me by way of their conventions.

If I hadn’t been sponsored to watch Revue Starlight, I probably never would have seen it, and this would have been a shame. Because every so often, an anime can be something I really enjoy.

I think the best part about it is, it’s enjoyable before it ever gets into the twist. Long before. I enjoyed my first chunk of watching episodes 1-4 without having the slightest clue that I should even be looking for any sort of twist, though the exchange student thing really should have tipped me off more than it did--even I can forget the most common anime conventions. But I don’t think knowing about the twist,or that there’s something else going on, is necessary to enjoy what the anime is up front.

I found it delightfully written, with an understand of what young teenagers are like that far surpasses any anime i can remember watching. It’s the first anime in memory where I’m not thinking “anime ages are so fake” the whole time. They essentially act like fifteen year olds, with not much more drama or more war-weary knowledge than any other fifteen year old I know. I also intensely appreciate the show’s commitment to not showing panty shots, and while that sounds like a joke, it is not. There are moments they literally forget about gravity to avoid it, and I genuinely appreciate the lack of fanservice so much.

And the costumes! I love the girls’ outfits for the duels, the dramatic cape and the Utena-like construction of having to knock the cape off instead of stabbing someone. The henshin is really fun to watch, and I like how there’s so much emphasis on the construction of the costume itself, not only because it helps avoid too much naked young girl screen time, but also because I think it ties back into what I THINK is one of the underlying themes of the show (More general themes I see below)

The songs are fantastic even just to listen to, and seem to make way more sense than the Utena ones. I could be talked into go back over the songs after I’ve finished the show and doing some real analysis of them, but I think they’d be enjoyable even without.

The girls themselves I think are largely well-written and individual, with a personality of all types of people who need a character to love and hate. And it’s FLATASS WILD. I think one of the best ways it keeps you watching is the way that it has this ridiculous premise with the goddamn giraffe, and to a point you’re watching out of out extreme curiousity. By the time you’re like “This is just weird, I guess.” the personalities of the characters have sucked you in, and it holds you until you hit episode 7 and the twist.

But WHAT a twist. You’d think I’d be more or less used to “It was time bullshit the whole time” as I have watched an anime, but apparently I did not learn my lesson, because I was totally shocked. Completely taken by surprise in episode 7, had no idea that I should be looking for it or even thinking about it. AND WHAT A CHARACTER TO DO IT WITH, and I think it speaks to the writing of the show that I didn’t roll my eyes and go “Oh, the nice character turned out to be the villain” because I think the show doesn’t try to work in absolutes. One thing I like about it is a feel very free to like or dislike any of the characters. I DID (and do) like Nana, I thought she was a precious bean to be cherished, but I think part of the reason I could indulge in that is she wasn’t written as innocent and woobie and shy like a lot of times those characters are--she was fucking around with scripts and roles, and while she was very kind none of it was obsequious or pathetic. ALSO I don’t feel they really consider her a villain (I don’t,) but a girl who got caught up in the idea of things never getting better than they are now. Two of her friends left school because they couldn’t take the heat. She didn’t want that again, and what better way than to keep everyone safe, under glass?

I know I’m really caught up in Utena shit right now, and so I’m sure that’s why my mind is leaning this way, but it really echoes that to me, the idea of not going forward but being trapped in cycle after cycle. That she’s stagnant, refusing to grow or change. What would happen to Nana if she never broke it? The giraffe brought Hikari forward, I think to some extent, because he was fucking bored with the same “show” over and over again. But I love it, I love that she keeps winning because no one really wants it bad enough. No one wants to be a star as badly as Nana wants things to never change, and I think that there’s something so beautifully human in that, to cling to an enjoyable moment we had and keep trying to recreate it. But it’s never enough, it’s never really recreated, it’s just a hollow shell of its own self.

It’s really interesting to me that we harp so much on the idea of Hikari and Karen, and the show they saw together when they were children, and how this is all of Karen and Hikari’s motivations, when I feel like we’re being warned against the same thing with Nana. That to tie your life to a single moment is a mistake. It might just be me taking the story in a way that maybe the writers didn’t intend, or maybe it’s Not That Deep and I’m just trying to make it that deep.

WHILE WE’RE ON THE SUBJECT, The play within the show, Starlight, I assume is sort of about the girls themselves, being that I only know it as a story about eight women (Now nine, since Hikari fucked up the numbers) and I assume if and when we discover anything about the play itself, that plot points are going to be revealed, or plot points we haven’t even seen will be shown. THey keep coming back to it in the same way that we kept coming back to Utena’s story about the prince, so either the play has relevance beyond ‘the play they are currently doing’ or I’m going to beat the writers over the head with Chekov’s Gun. I also assume that Hikari and Karen are going to be our leads for it, in whatever way we end up reaching it--I have, in fact, seen an anime, and I do know how endings tend to go in them.

MY THEORY ON THE SHOW IS THAT IT IS ABOUT THEATER AND CELEBRITY.

So what I was talking about earlier regarding the transformation and how I love that it focuses so much on the costume. Part of what I think the show is trying to talk about is this idea that when we are on stage, we are someone different entirely. Who “we” are ceases to matter when we put on the costume, when we step onto the stage. And so it makes sense that more attention would be paid to the role Karen and the other girls are taking on when they steps into the Revues, than we would to Karen herself.

I’ve thought a lot about this show as I’ve been watching it, even though I didn’t have a chance to rewatch it before tonight’s conclusion (I will rewatch the whole series before next week’s Revue Starday) And the giraffe is such a weird thing, but it’s a weird thing among weird things. So I thought about it for awhile, especially after Episode 7, where the giraffe tells her he does this because he loves the spectacle, because he loves the shine of stage girls.

The giraffe is the audience. When we watch all of this with great interest, when we cheer and we boo, we are enjoying the stage that has been set for us just as much as the giraffe. It is the audience who set stage girls against each other and only allows for one top star. What got me thinking about this and on these lines, is the way that the giraffe always looks directly at us, and tells us “I understand.” I’ve thought a lot about that, and I think what that’s meant to say is that the giraffe knows what we want as an audience and is giving it to us. The audience wanted Karen to win in the beginning, and we were given it. The audience didn’t want Kaoruku to leave, so she didn’t. The audience cheered for Nana, and the giraffe said, “Oh yes, we do love her, don’t we?” ANd THAT is why I think we will get a happy asspull of an ending, and I think I MIGHT be okay with that in the context of this understanding that the giraffe is meant to stand for the audience. (Obviously not all audiences want the same things I never asked for some of this, BUT A GENERAL AUDIENCE)

Which is, like I said above, why the giraffe tries to find a way to change up the Revues. No matter how dazzling and sparkling Nana’s revue is, and it is, I laughed my ass off about the goddamn Nana fight, after awhile an audience gets bored. The audience wants something new. You can watch a spectacle 87 times and then want literally anything else, even if its just as amazing as before, it will no longer catch your heart in that exact same way.

My endgame theory is that they will find some end-around way to make it so Hikari and Karen can stand on the stage together, and I would GUESS that Karen is going to wish for the stage of life or something, so they can escape from the loop they’re in. Because remember, we want a happy ending.

A RANKING OF THE GIRLS, FROM LEAST FAVORITE TO FAVORITE (YOur mileage may vary, offer void where prohibited)

Kaoroku: I REALLY do not like her. She’s all of Usagi’s selfish baby nonsense with none of the genuine kindness. She treats Futaba horrifically, and I think this is part of the reason I buck up against her so hard, is that I HAVE KNOWN THESE GIRLS. I have seen little butch girls like Futaba being treated so badly by their significant other, and it’s so hard to try and be like, “You know she’s not allowed to treat you that way, right?” And there’s a lot of stuff that goes into that which can be another conversation for another time. So there’s extra-universe stuff that makes it really hard for me to tolerate her. Can’t do it. Would say she’s the only one of the girls I actively do not like.

These next three could leapfrog each other pretty consistently:

Karen: I like Karen plenty, but it’s a tight race between the girls and I’d say Karen is a little “anime protag” for my own personal tastes, so she gets quite a bit lower on the list. I do really like how she’s written as a classic anime protagonist in a much more real and relatable way though, and I think this is why I actually quite like her, even when she’s being an idiot.

Hikari: I actually didn’t realize how difficult this ranking thing was going to be until I’m sitting here staring at the faces of all the girls, who all have different things going on. Hikari hasn’t quite connected with me, I think between her “distant studied duelist” thing and the fact that everything centers around her and Karen I haven’t gotten to find an appreciation for her beyond broad strokes. EXCEPT THAT SMILING BEAR WITH KNIFE IS THE ONLY EMOJI WE NEED. I never love the main characters, it’s fine ahaha.

Mahiru: I would have put her lower in the first four episode chunk I watched. I have a quite good memory for names and could only really call her “friend-chan” after the first bit. Her main purpose seemed to be getting trampled by Karen when Hikari showed up. But she’s a farm girl! And she’s precious! And she shares her potat! So she’s bumped up for me in the last watching.

The next three are ALSO in a hot heat with each other:

Junna: I really, really love Junna’s whole thing, THe idea that she works her ass off, so very hard, but she doesn’t have the natural talent to carry it, and she knows that, and it kills her. But it doesn’t stop her from trying, not with everything she has inside of her, and I think that’s really lovely and I want the best for her.

Nana: I actually would have ranked her lower before the big reveal, but now she has such an interesting tragedy that I find her fucking fascinating. She’s the reason that all of these girls have to keep fighting each other, in this way, she is trying to save her friends by setting them up for combat over and over again. The idea of her having to live with that and her struggle to carry on when she’s forced to move forward make her so much more interesting than I was assuming.

Maya: One half of the femme betta fish, and the one that plays slightly less to my personal loves, but I do love her snobbiness, her complete fucking assurance that she is better than anyone in the room, and the body language to carry it off. She’s great.

MY TOP TWO GIRLS:

Futaba: I want to gently hold Futaba to my chest like a resisting cat and find her a nice girlfriend who treats her with respect. Like yes honey, protect and serve is the butch motto, but the femme motto should also be protect and cherish. She’s such a cute and kind little thing, my heart melted when she gave Claudine all the snacks for helping her out, I love her.

Claudine: Claudine was written for me. High femme, half-French, talented and snobby, annoyed when she is not the princess of all things, it’s all my favorite fucking anime girl tropes packaged into one. I love every moment that she is on screen, I think she is brilliant perfection. I am not super given to shipping in this show but if I were, it would be Claudine and Futaba.

Rin: This is cheating because I basically came up with Rin but lbr she’s great.

PLease join me tonight for the finale! Also, my ko-fi and my Patreon are what allow me to keep doing this! I judge a lot of what people are interested in by those two metrics. (COming up on Patreon: Jillybug’s corner, a non-fiction piece, and fresh recipes)

#Doc watches Revue Starlight

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