amyltia

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and then romeo-kun and juliet-chan inevitably committed the seppuku

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what are their names please ? they look sooo cool

#the real jedi way: dramatic af entrances and mid-battle cool poses

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What happened to cynical and funny adult sidekick in Disney movies ?! THEY WERE THE BEST

Where are the Mushu, Sebastian, Phil, Genie, Lumiere !!, Iago ??

Recently we only had not talking sidekicks (Pascal, Sven) or ones assimilated to kids (Olaf). I like them too (especially Olaf in Frozen II) but I muuuch prefer the Mushu type !!

Those cynical sidekicks where the best part of Disney movies, they were why adults loved them so much too, they were meant for them. I tend to feel (but I hope I’m wrong) that Disney movies tend to separate Princesses movies that have much less adult vibes, from Pixar and others movies that still keep adults in mind.

Tangled, The Princess and the Frog, Frozen : they don’t have those sidekicks cyncial adults.

NB. I’m not talking about villains because they are still cynical : not much of a difference between Mother Gothel and Jafar, they still got it

EDIT: Wish seems to FINALLY be bringing it back!

#disney #sidekick #companion

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Consider Cinderella (the story, not the person) from the Prince’s perspective. There’s a ball at which he is supposed to identify his wife-to-be. It’s jam packed with young women wearing their fanciest dress and doing and saying whatever they think will get him to choose them. There is absolutely no way to tell what they would be like every day, as a figurehead, as a mother, as someone fulfilling the job of princess or queen. There’s also no way to tell what the in-laws would be like. He’s had many charming conversations with beautiful women. But then, one of them does something spectacular! She runs away, leaving behind only a shoe. It’s a nice shoe, unique enough to stand out but no makers mark to make it easy to track. This is perfect.

He declares that he has fallen in love with the woman this shoe belongs to, and that he must, therefore, travel the kingdom, meeting every woman that it could possibly be in their own household, seeing who they are at home, having conversations with them and their parents, with his entourage speaking with the servants. And absolutely everyone knows that the actual fit of the shoe doesn’t matter. It’s one of those unspoken open-secrets of society: after all, he’s only bringing one shoe and no one would expect to be able to walk out with only one shoe, so they’ll have to leave the house wearing their own shoes anyway.

It’s only the particularly idiotic (ie, the evil step-sisters) who think mutilating their own feet would do anything other than put the prince off.

In the end, the prince finds Cinderella: she’s beautiful, she’s kind, and she’s managed her household for years despite having to manage up to some very stupid relatives. She’s perfect.

Was Cinderella the same person at the ball who ran away and left the shoe? Did she even have a fairy godmother to make it possible for her to attend the ball? Did the original woman at the ball run away to live happily ever after with her unsuitable lover? Does it matter?

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[source]

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My heart aches for stories

stories old stories unknown

wandering in the memory

long lost

wandering in the memory of stories

architecture of love loss sorrow

enduring only on its ravishing

ravishing memory

i cannot forget what i don’t know

enchanted i am

to find you after all this time

in the smallest painting

in the smallest poem

in the longest idea

dating from collective memory

to me

for this longing

makes my heart aches for stories

#poem #i do mean it tho i #i want stories #i want those emotion I never experienced but already know already feel #they've hurt me before in a time long past #for it wouldn t make any sens for them to hurt me so now #therefore they can only be a scar #a scar on collective memory that we all share but awake from time to time #and it hurts just like the first time #we know how to rub it since we all know it #remind me of this past i lived #those emotions we felt #but say #when was the first time again ?

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Can you developp on how the others superheroes don’t display the same reflexion on that please ? I agree but I get how those you mentionned do, but I can’t explain how the others don’t.

About Spiderman and the interrogation of “what values do I want to defend, what kind of person do I want to be”, I have a little analysis of the Raimi’s movie on how the way he designs his costume is actually more about the values he wants to be driven by, than obviously the costume itself.  https://amyltia.tumblr.com/post/624022567200620544/the-costume-desing-scene-in-spiderman-sam-raimi

edit : now that I think about it, maybe the others superheros are more on the fantasy side, like of course Hulk, Thor but even Ironman is the embodiement of the magic of technology, his ennemies are political, not reflexives ideas. Batman’s ennemes are the most evidently embodiement of ideas, Spiderman actually comes close second I think. I wonder about Superman ? Are the ennemies a efficient way to analyse the values superheros display ? Efficient until what point ?

The most powerful superheroes culturally are the big three of DC and Spider-Man I think and it’s because they are all concerned with fundamental values of how do you live

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I watched too much amazing movies in a short amount of a time.

Joker, Tenet, Knives out, all for the first time in one month

I’m overly excited and enthusiastic again about cinema, I wanna read essays and essays about each aspect of each of these movies - each idea in each essay already activating too much in my mind

i can’t handle so much genius in those movies

#joker #tenet #knives out

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My issue with Moana is that she doesn’t meet people. Sure she meets Maui, but that’s it. By not confronting her to people, to others, it limitates her growth and my connection to her, in the sense that I don’t feel like I really know her character. The way characters interacts with each others tells a lot about their own character, but Moana meets big entities like Te fiki, Tamatoa, they don’t really talk, discuss their point of views.

Which is sad because Moana is about discovering the world, leaving your confort zone : by the end her world is as limited as it was, she only saw the ocean, and learned about herself. Yes that’s the ultimate point of a journey story, to learn about yourself through discovering the world, but then the middle part of discovering the world is missing here. Her views are shattered when she meets Maui which is great but I wish we had seen her meeting more people.

Unlike Anna or Elsa who meet a lot of people, thanks to that I get their character, they feel fleshed out, I could imagine stories about them since I know them, how they would react in their specific ways. Same with Belle, Rapunzel, Ariel, Mulan. But Moana I have no idea how she reacts and interacts, how she thinks. Heros and heroines need sidekicks, talking secondary character to give them layers, they are essentiel and I think Moana terribly lacks it.

When I compare Moana and Tangled who are about discovering the world, the difference is huge : Rapunzel feels much more fleshed out, rich and characterized. Coincidence or note, she meets people more than the discorvers places.

Belle meets the furniture, Rapunzel the tavern’s dudes, those ensemble characters that give ground to the personnality of the heroine. Moana meets pirates who do not even speak... Even the villain is amazing character to talk to for the hero, Moana’s villain once again does not speak. The more I think about those choices of making the others characters not talking I think there muse be an artistic reason but I fail to see what it is, if you have ideas I’m really interested. Even Tamatoa she doesn’t talk to she uses cunning to defeat him. The only characters she does connect verbally with are Maui and her family, for a story about journeying I expected more but I know it’s because my expectations were wrong I didn’t understand the point of the movie at first. But still...

Now of course Moana doesn’t have the same journey as Rapunzel, the stories don’t have the same themes or objectives, which is great. Moana is more about regaining your own lineage, you true self as she helps Te fiki do, so she doesn’t need as much to discover others as she needs to discover herself. Still had they not added that scene with the mute pirates I may not have been bothered by the isolation of Moana, I just would have thought that for some reason I didn’t get her or connect with her. But they really added a groupe of people for her to meet and chose to make them this : moving toys, a complete and affirmed refusal of making her meet people as in talking to them. Why ?!

#moana

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There IS a similarity ! From Jo and Laurie to Rey and Ben : a story of heroines in denial (link), a meta I wrote inspired by a discussion with @fairychamber. Tries to show how both characters are actively trying to not face love. 1. “if you don’t acknoweldge it, it won’t happen”. 2. Facing love is scary 3. Denial as the non-magical form of the sleep in fairy tales which those heroines are deprived of.

Romanticizing your own loneliness and turning it into a cool girl thing only works for like a few months and then it just becomes a throbbing black hole i think. Not that ive ever experienced anything like that

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I just rewatched TFA and TLJ and selected fragments of TROS, after Ben’s now I wanna rewatch Anakin’s story

TROS’s Ben as a mirror to Anakin’s arc or what is a Skywalker ?

This is going to be a serie of meta about “Why the ST does the job as a conclusion”. This is number 1 about Ben and Anakin.

I think Ben embodies the good and the bad of Anakin. The bad by being Kylo Ren and the good because in TROS everything about Ben (exept the Solo moves) reminds of Anakin’s arc.

1. Echoing Anakin’s arc

Kylo’s redemption takes place at the same place Vader’s did

and their big shift echoe each other in reverse : while Anakin falls surrounded by lava and fire, Ben rises surrounded by water.

his big gesture is to save the one he loved only unlike Anakin he succeeds. 

I really thought the filmmakers had some heavy reasons for chosing in the very same scene : water + death star 2 + rey/kylo fight + Ben’s redemption, but I couldn’t get it. Now I think they actually made Ben’s redemption mirror (1) Vader’s redemption in ep 6 (2) Anakin’s fall in ep 3 = those two absolutely opposite scenes and two pivot moments of Anakin’s arc both condensed in the one scene of Ben’s redemption.

In that Ben holds the WHOLE symbolism of Vader. Ben’s redemption mirrors both the redemption AND the fall of Vader, complete the circle. It makes Ben the core and the knot of all Vador and Anakin’s symbolism (going way deeper than just Vador’s symbolism with just the mask or the fall to the dark side or having a dark mentor). Ben is the bearer of this symbolism showing that he is the legacy of Anakin and mirrors him.

2. Fixing Anakin’s arc

The great thing about Ben when he is Ben Solo is that he carries all Anakin’s arc symbolism and repairs it, he succeeds where Anakin failed.

Anakin has two faults/made two mistakes : (1) he turned to the dark side (as Vader he repairs it with the help of Luke) (2) “love won’t save [Padme] only [his] new power can” : he failed to save Padme by chosing power over love to do it (I read in a youtube comment that he chose love untiil he had power, while Ben chose power until he had love, I think that’s very true - I’ll add the name of the one said that I). This second mistake is also repaired by Vader when he chooses his love for his son over the power of Palpatine, but while it satisfiying, it actually can get even more satisfying, and that is what TROS did.

While the character of Kylo longed to connect with Vader, in this redemption scene he is absolutely connected to him, if not narratively, at least symbolicaly (and we know how heavy the symbolism is on Star Wars). Sure we knew that Kylo mirrored Vader but I didn’t realize how deep it went, until I realized this redemption scene in TROS is more than nostalgia, it’s a knot to the story of the Skywalker.

The ST belongs truly to the saga because it ANSWERS to it, it replays the OT and repairs the PT. The ST make the saga complete by forming an actual synthesis. Ben reunites the whole story of Anakin and replays it but this time he repairs it because in the end he succeeds where Anakin failed, he saved Rey.

3. Fixing the Skywalker’s lineage : saving the one they love as a trial

With Ben fixing Anakin’s arc, the Skywalker’s story comes full circle : Luke saved Vador (and Anakin) but it was Ben who repaired Anakin’s faults, who made amends for him. By going the same way but chosing a different path, suffering similar pains but overcoming them the right way.

The fall of the Skywalker that was caused by Anakin’s desire to save the loved one from death is balanced by Ben’s success in the same project and that led to the rise of the Skywalker. Meaning that it is the same desire that led to the fall of the Skywalker (the “start” by Anakin’s failure) and their rise (the “finish” by Ben’s success).

It’s not relevant because the quote didn’t mean that at first but I think it’s sweet to consider Kylo’s “I will finish what you started” as putting and end to the Skywalkers miseries as well, miseries Anakin started (Padme died of sadness, Vador destroyed Leia’s planet, he cut Luke’s hand, almost killed Han and deprived Luke and Leia of their parents, adding to the fact that Vader wasn’t such a nice guy on his free time).

The Skywalker destiny would be tied and defined by this desire. To go further, it would be a trial that this time by choosing self giving and not power, Ben succeeded. This trial, like in a fairy tale, twice passed by the Skywalkers, finaly get the correct answer in TROS. In that manner Ben allowed the Skywalker name to RISE.

4. The Rise of Skywalker : yes but which Skywalker ?

I like to think that the tilte The Rise of Skywalker is, according to Ben’s arc  :

Ben reparing Kylo and emerging as Ben Solo Skywalker (with the legacy saber) -> from the sequel trilogy point of view it is Kylo rising as Ben aka if we say rise = repair (which is parlty my point) than Ben repairing Kylo Ren

But also, Ben repairing Anakin, first representative of the Skywalker and the one who failed and caused all their following misery (Leia had difficulties to forgive Vador) -> on the scale of the saga I like to think it could be Anakin rising as Ben aka (and more correclty) Ben repairing Anakin.

Note : I don’t forget Rey, she makes the Skywalker name rise too but differently, by inverting the Palpatine curse of turning Skywalker to the dark side : link)

(Extended version of something I replied on tumblr about Ben and Anakin, with a comment I made on youtube)

Other main meta

Force jump/flying (TROS meets The Rise of Kylo Ren or Kylo Ren finally meets his peer in Rey)

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I’ve just read a beautiful sentence :

I’ve read books no one will ever talk about.

Is it because the book is a hidden treasure ? Or simply a guilty pleasure ? For some mysterious reasons, it’s for sure a secret between me and the book

#random

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Sacrifice in fiction

Hey there ! Is there a trope or a scpecific scnario or a something that you can’t really point out but that ALWAYS makes you cry or tear up or to which you are very sensible for no apparent reason?

I Vampire kight anime

Cause when I was in middle school I watched the anime Vampire knight and the relation between Zero and his twin brother Ichiru always made me very sensitive, especially SPOIL how it ends SPOIL (you’ve been warned) the fact that they’ve hated each other for YEARS but that in the end, in the very end Ichiru was willing to fully sacrifice himself for his brother because with all this hate there was deep love and caring too. Their final scene if I remember always killed me, maybe because I cried but mainly because it really hurted

So I thought that I was very sensitive to characters who sacrifice themselves (and I am, I HATE it - well  I love it because it makes me feel the show strongly but I hate it because it really hurts for no reason it’s a show !) and especially when you thought they hated each others and they thought so themselves, maybe it was the choc of the revelation

II Video game DMC 5

Then yeaaars later I played a game DMC 5 with someone who had already played it. The game is about (it’s a very reduced explanation of the plot) the heros Dante and his twin brother Vergil who hates him and has always been jalous of him and want nothing but power, and for that betrays endlessly his broher. That’s on the 1 2 3 DMC. Now I was playing the 5 and SPOIL as the game advanced we realized that the relation betwween the two brothers was having a lot of importance in the plot and that Vergil is betraying Dante and that Dante is pretty much aware of it but lets it go. So the climax was approching and the tension was being build, and then it hit me that it was most probable that as things were presented, maybe in the end, one of the brother (I assumed Vergil because Dante is the heros and Vergil is the one who needs a redemption) would choose to sacrifice himself for the other. Just the thought of it and picturing in my head the way the scenario would go if so, the emotional impact it would have on the characters, etc I was doing that for a good 20 minutes and when I was sure it was what was gonna happen I was almost crying (nothing HAD HAPPENED IN the game), hurt and willing to stop playing now just so I would not witness it ! Because I remembered that it clearly was the same pattern as the Zero and Ichiru’s one and how much it did made me feel sad, but I loved the DMC characters more so it would hurt even more.

But then I was told that it was not at all where the game was going, and that I had put myself throught all that for nothing

But still at least I had really understood that this sort of trope was my weakness. What was it : two brothers who hate each other and hurt each other their whole lives, but in the end when a true choice has to be made, one of them is fully willing to sacrifice himself for the other, and has been his whole life, the other one having been fully unaware of it. Usualy this trope whould be seen from the perspective of the good one who we know doesn’t truly hate his brother and is mostly reacting to attacks but still has not so much of a remorses when they are in conflict, and fights for real too.

Bonus Star Wars 9 Ben’s death

Of course Ben’s death hit me hard, but for far too many reasons and I still now can’t really say which reason is the biggest one : I won’t name them all but they’re not that hard to guess, but one of them can be that’s it’s because he is willingly choosing to sacrifice himself after a whole trilogy of fighting, and that it’s a huge proof of love for Rey. So it does follow the pattern of my others exemples, but in Ben’s death case I can’t say if it’s the main reason, cause the other are so strong too.

III Tv show The Middle

BUT ! This month I found a clip of a show I liked a few years ago, The Middle. So I rewatched a few episodes in no specific order and at some point I watched SPOIL a scene from the final episode. The show is about a family, the mother the father and the three kids the boy Axl, his sister Sue and their younger brother. Due to the proximity of age, Axl and Sue are often shown fighting during the show and as teenagers it’s very rare to see any love between them, so when those scene happen it’s sweet. SPOIL During 9 seasons, they go from fighting teens who prank eachother and fight, to young adults in college with the sister openly saying she loves her brother but the brother showing it sometimes but still never truly saying it and showing it as much. So the relation is from Sue’s perspective somehow. But in the final episode, Axl is about to leave to another state and Sue is asking him for a moment together to say goodbye but he keeps joking and avoiding it, but in the end Sue reproches to him that he from himself went to have a goodbye moment with their younger brother who didn’t ask for anything, but that he still refuses one with her. And that’s when let go of a “because it’s harder to say goodbye to her!” ....and that’s where I lost it and started to ugly cry, and wonder WHY ?!

There is no sacrifice here, so it goes beyond the sacrifice trope (I could be moved by 2 different tropes, sacrifice and the one in the final scene of the Middle, but I really felt the same way and it’s hard to say but I know that those scenes act in a similar way on me). I think what touched my in that final scene is : 1) the restrain of feeling that finally go out and the fact that the deeper hidden they where, probably the stronger 2) the fact that Sue (let’s say the reciever) had no idea it was this deep, and had lived thinking she was the only one who loved in the relation 3) the fact that the one who thought he/she was the one who loved more, is eventually proven wrong and the one who was hiding it, the one the audience doesn’t an access to his feelings, is the one who loved the most ALL this time. As an audience it also makes you see every past scene differently and to me that’s very moving

Conclusion

Thank you for taking this trip with me, it had always intrigued my to understand why some scenes, some tropes move us so much sometimes and how it is all subjective. In the end, I think I finally understand those exemples show two of my weaknesses in fiction :

2) the willing sacrifice trope : they choose to sacrifice themselves. It does move me a lot and is propably my second weakness

1) but the very first one is - I don’t know how to call it actually - the one shown in the Middle and that is also present in the other exemples : they don’t know themselves that the other loves them and the first character can’t show it because he hids it, and the most restrained the stronger. This trope could be described as the revelation that a character (the giver) has actually loved another character more that he could show, in other word the switch between apperance (they fight, A doesn’t like B as much) and truth (actually B, FOR ALL THIS TIME, loved A as much or much more, because in the case of Vampire knight and DMC 5, the proof of this is SPOIL the final sacrifice).

That’s how my two weaknesses are connected and why for all those years it seems so confused to me => the sacrifice trope kills me when it’s the proof of my weakness unamed trope

So I do hope it was a funny ride for you too, and if it was please think about you own weaknesses in fiction, those scene that really got you, a very distinct feeling that crush you and you can’t stand. If you find those pleease tell me I’d love to talk about it !

Honorable mentions

The 100 Season 1 SPOIL When I thought Jaha or Kane were about to sacrifice themselves, and especially when we really thought Jaha was dead.

Captain America 1 SPOIL : Bucky... why did he have to sacrifice himself... and it gets sadder with the movie Civil war SPOIL because we see Steve not giving up on him !! But in vain...

Rose of Versailles : SPOIL Oscar’s death and sacrifice has killed me since I was propably a kid and has for many years. I think it’s actually from this scene that I realized sacrifice in fiction was my weakness

NB. Well I guess now I have to find out why those trope get to me so much...but I guess I’m a bit afraid of the answer lol Anyway it already was a good digging in my psyche, I’ll leave it for later - and besides, I actually have no clue about the “why”

tl;dr : I am very sensitive to tropes that involve sacrifice (Vampire knight, DMC, TROS) and two close characters who don’t know how much the other loves them until one brutally breaks down. Those trope make me cry hard. I would love to know what are the tropes that make you incredibly sad, that you feel far too strongly, please let me know !

#fiction #thoughts #trope

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Hi I saw your last two posts on my dashboard, it’s really nice to see you here again, hope you’re having a nice day 💕✨

Hi ooh thanks that's really nice :D Yeah I'm reading a lot at the moment and it made wanna come back to post stuff haha

A great day to you too !!

[amyltia]

#palpatoast

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Reading journal #2

The cruel prince, Holly black, YA fantasy, t.1

I am in the middle of the book. I starting hating it and being very disappointed because SPOIL the school setup comes out of nowhere !! WHY in a fatnasy world, among the nobility and the Court, choosing to install a sort of school, why reminding us that is it a YA novel that follows codes ?

This part really reminded me of Boys over flowers (a manga, anime, drama jap and korean) about a girl bullied in school by a group of elite guys, including the cruel leader but handsome and his friend who is much more tender but still mysterious. I won’t spoil how it ends. Anyway I couldn’t read the beginning of the book seriously because the school setting was so out of place. It wasn’t a school like Harry potter which is great, no it was really just a setting. But why ! Why not make the character meet during balls, during visit at the palace, something truly related to nobility ESPECIALLY since the middle of the book gets so MUCH better !! THe political aspects are great and you can see the description of the codes of the court are important, the life of the nobility too, so why putting something so dissonant like a semi-school setting ? (Semi because we hear some classes true, but we don’t know who attends except the group lead, and it feels out of place to me).

Now tho, maybe it has a symbolic role : since the heroine is taken away from the real wordl into a magical one, the scholl allows a transition for the reader from codes he is familiar with (school) to the heart of palace intrigues and magic (because the book seems to get deeper into the magical world and the court), so maybe a form of progression ?

anyway if you’ve read it is there later in the books a reason why the school was used in the beginning?

#reading journal #cruel prince #fantasy

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Harper - The 100 season 5

The 100 - Season 5 !!! SPOILERS !!!

Harper is perfectly useless. No huge action, strategy, backstory, who is she for the show exept Monty’s girlfriend ?

As S5 went on this really hit me, compared to other couples, Monty and Harper seems less endearing because only Monty is a main character, Harper is more like his extension, and her presence doesn’t bring much to the show, she just highlights Monty and acts like a confident for him, allowing the viewer to know his inner thoughts, which is nice but this role, compared to other character, doesn’t even stand a chance.

It made me even more aware of it because of her clothes : on the war episode by the end, while everyone is dressed in black, with war or grounder style of clothing, she is the only one with a casual light blue jean jacket ! She doesn’t even try to fit in and she has nothing to do there - there on the batteflied, there on this show about war and death and strategy.

BUT then at the very end of the last episode I understood : indeed, she HAS nothing to do on the show or on the battlefield. Because if she started during earlier seasons as a semi-useless character and Monty’s girlfriend, during season 5 she served a very different purpose. She has nothing to do on the battefield, because she symbolizes life. She is, with Monty, the one by who life continues : because she wants a peaceful life with Monty, because in the end she has a child, Jordan. She is the character that chooses life and who symbolizes it. Indeed Harper/life dissonates on a battlefield...

It may be good for her, but what does it mean for the others? those who fit maybe far too much for their own good...

#the 100 meta #the 100 #harper monty #meta #tvshow