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variousqueerthings · 5 months

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SOOOooooo Time Of Angels/Flesh And Stone

these episodes are great set-pieces with a lot of fun twists and turns, such as the Angel coming out of the screen, and the gun from the trailer being used not in violence but to save them with the gravity, and the trees in the ship, good fun, good fun

of course it also completely obliterates a bunch of its own Angel concepts by showing them moving, and by undoing the idea that if they see each other, they are trapped forever

and then there is The Problem Of River Song. I really think I should listen to some of her audio dramas where she's not hanging out with the Doctor, because my goodness... anyway all in the Score!

a criteria will be rated 0-10, with 10 being best score:

sexism rank objectification (female character is ogled/harassed/turned into a sex joke by the doctor and/or a lead we’re supposed to root for and/or the camera): 5/10

sexism rank plot-point (lead female character is only there to serve plot, not to have her emotional interiority explored): 7/10

interesting complex or pointlessly complex (does the complexity serve the narrative or does it just serve to be confusing as a stand-in for smart, this includes visually): 7/10

furthers character and/or lore and/or plot development (broader question that ties into the previous ones, at least two of these, ideally three should be fulfilled): 7/10

companion matters (the companion doesn’t always have to be there, but if the companion is there, can they function without the doctor– and overall per season how often is the companion the focus or POV of the story): 6/10

the doctor is more than just “godlike” (examines the doctor’s flaws and limitations, doesn’t solve a plot by having it revolve entirely around the doctor’s existence): 7/10

doesn’t look down on previous doctor who (by erasing or mocking its importance, by redoing and “bettering” previous beloved plotpoints or characters, etc.): 6/10

isn't trying to insert hamfisted sexiness (m*ffat famously talked a lot about how dw should be sexier multiple times, he sucks at writing it): 2/10

internal world has consistency (characters have backgrounds, feel rooted in a place with other people, generally feel like they have Lives): 7/10

Politics (how conservative is the story): 7/10

FULL RATING: 61/100 (if I can count….)

I do think this is the first episode to showcase Karen Gillen's potential, and I think it's also the episode to show that she's not... quite as good as some previous leads on this show. she just doesn't emote very well. her fear in both the first episode when she sees the Angel to her terror when she's told there's an Angel in her eye is barely anything -- I don't know if this is Karen Gillen (who I thought did very well in M*rvel!) or a direction problem (my favourite Karen Gillen moment was early in the first episode, when she squeaked excitedly about going on the planet surface, which was very cute)

if I were prone to blaming everything on M*ffat, I'd say that he talked about how he cast Gillen because she was hot. so how does that map onto having Amy Pond be a rounded character? some actresses have risen above this kind of casting in the past, but it's an extra hurdle for sure, and one that I don't think Karen Gillen at this point could do much against, especially considering the episodes don't let the character properly have a feeling about being abandoned for 14 years (she will later on in the show, I remember, but right now nada)

on the flipside, the Doctor babbling for 30 seconds to land on "there's an Angel in her eye" and then grabbing his mouth in shock, is one of my favourite eleven moments generally!

OBJECTIFICATION: OKAY. okayokay. okay. like. Amy is wearing her third miniskirt of the season, because Amy wears them as a Choice (because she's not a character I guess, she has agency, it's nothing to do with Karen Gillen's legs), and River Song is introduced in heels and a sexy dress, because she's a sexually liberated woman, but actually one we get past that it's not so bad. River Song is actually wearing very practical clothes of the same shape and make as the army dudes

the real issue is going to come in the sexiness bracket, so it's hard to say where the objectification ends and the "sexiness" begins...

PLOT-POINT: Amy is all-emotion arguably, while River furthers a lot of plot, and gets some backstory. the frustrating thing is that Amy is still oddly... distant from her own history with the Doctor

he leaves her again, and then asks her to walk with her eyes closed through a forest of Angels. the Doctor tells her to shut up, yells at her, and she's very helpless and while this is technically compelling, Amy doesn't... have much of a reaction to it. to much of any of it. the music is doing the emotional heavy-lifting here more than the writing

BUT all in all, both Amy and River get some interesting stuff to read into!

COMPLEXITY: It’s a good plot, the crashed ship, the running, the forest full of angels, and I think it works because fundamentally it's not actually that complex at all. it's got a fair few set-pieces and plot points happening, so it's good that the central plot is essentially "get away from Angels before they catch us."

and it all comes back to the gravity of the ship several times, fun set-up and payoff

CHARACTERS/LORE/PLOT: so technically there's a lot happening here -- the crack in the wall, the Angels, River Song, the Doctor putting Amy in a precarious situation...

I'm not sure that it all comes together completely, the weak point is... Amy and the Doctor, to me. and there's a lot of quite subjective feelings within that, especially related to casting and writing of their relationship. oh dear that ending.... and the "it's all about you" as a symptom of things to come

and of course the Angels are kind of... cool and then a bit eh (but not as much as they're going to be)

"The Pandorica opens" is mentioned again and it's kind of cool

knowing that River knows that Amy is her mother... I am not sure that this was established as plot yet or not or if Alex Kingston knew, but watching it that way is interesting (even if I'm not a fan of it)

"Time can be rewritten" I remember that from Ten...

COMPANIONS MATTER: Amy is kind of damseling. she damsels. that's her role. Damseling sometimes is not a crime, but anyway. she does what the Doctor says (as a symptom of writing to come)

and the "if I always told you the truth, I wouldn't need you to trust me," as a symptom of writing to come..... the Doctor used to trust Companions -- generally the power imbalance between the Doctor and Amy, where she has to blindly trust someone she barely knows who has abandoned her several times... unclear if this belongs in this bracket or the sexism plot-point one, but it certainly belongs somewhere, because it's not really a thing that I believe is done on purpose... it's because the Doctor is so Interesting, and Amy is right to hang onto his every word, even when the Doctor hasn't earned it

I note also the "oh she's good," thing which River says about Amy this time, and Churchill said in the last episode, and is another symptom. lot of symptoms in this episode

“GODLIKE” DOCTOR: The Doctor says shut up a loooot in the second half of this one, and yells when frustrated, which I wasn't a fan of -- this isn't really "godlike" Doctor as such, but it very much is the "I'm so smart and you're so useless in this situation," Thing, which after Sherlock makes your eyes twitch...

but overall the Doctor is just a guy in a situation that they're trying to solve, same as everyone else

PREVIOUS DOCTOR WHO: soooo it's a couple of smallish? things, but it's part of the River Song problem as a whole, which is that she knows so much more and is much better at things than everyone else, because she knows the Doctor and the future etcetc. and she's more important than all past companions and emotional connections the Doctor has had

so you've got these bits early on - River tells the Doctor how to steer the Tardis using the "blue stabilisers" which stabilise the Tardis. rather than what was established end s4, which was that the Tardis needs more than one pilot, it's just that the Doctor never... stabilises it

And then she lands the Tardis and it doesn't make the familiar sound, and she says, “it’s not supposed to make that noise, you leave the brakes on." sigh. fuck the beloved noise I guess, it's just a stupid thing that the Doctor could change at any time

“SEXINESS”: And Now! To the Crux!

HOW MANY ONE LINERS CAN YOU FIT INTO AN EPISODE??? I wrote this when watching the first 4 minutes:

Sexy shoes

Sexy lipstick

Hello sweetie

Sexy wink

Amy doing a sexy “it’s how you keep score”

Sexy speech pattern

Sexy innuendo

then I had the: “he thinks he’s so hot when he does that” and “ooh, you sonicked her"

and ends on a handcuffs joke

poor River Song, there's this moment when the Cleric has threatened to tell the Doctor about her Past, and then later she makes a joke, and the guy does and the way her face twists!! Kingston is a good actress!!

and then for Amy there is... the ending......

INTERNAL WORLD: it's not really too important for this episode, but it all works

POLITICS: also not so important for this one, but there's nothing egregious going on in it

One thing I've noted that I'm not sure where to put is that at this point in proceedings lives still tend to matter -- some people die in various episodes and it's a tragedy. I don't know if this is politics, or Godlike Doctor or Companions matter, but it's a good thing overall

FULL RATING: 61/100 (if I can count….)

I'm surprised this has a lower rating than the beast below, it's overall a stronger (double) episode. Perhaps it's that several pieces are coming together (for example Amy not having opinions on her relationship with the Doctor rankles more now than previously), perhaps it's that I'm harsher now than then

overall it has a fair few high rankings through being relatively inoffensive, with lower points being granted because of how River Song affects the structure of Doctor Who as a whole, and because I need Amy to feel some kinda way. and the longer it takes without that, the more it becomes obvious

the high notes of the episode are the plot itself and that Amy and River balance a certain amount of Doing Plot to Things Happening To Them

Amy kissing the Doctor at the end is so... I mean it leads into Vampires of Venice, but really Amy is so... aggressive. and intense. and does not take in any cues. and it doesn't help that I know the deleted scene after this is even moreso Like That

#im watching eleven who #im watching dw #the measurement #flesh and stone #the time of angels

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xenonmoon · 1 year

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Ok, brief thoughts on the infamous Bendis run (warning: it's heavily subjective)

... I didn't mind it honestly. But it's more complex than that

Yeah it was a bad Moon Knight run alright, but it wasn't a horrible read.

Pros:

I really enjoyed how the dialogues were written

all characters (except Marc) are fairly solid and with their own role and agency in the story

The overarching story is nice honestly? Not exactly top tier but it has its own consistency over the whole run

Despite being called "crazy" a number of times from different characters, Marc uses his uhhhh condition at his own advantage in the plot, it's not portrayed as some sort of throwaway quirk with no relevancy or worse, something to hide / be ashamed of / a deterrent / that makes him dangerous (If we ignore the later issues at least. My mind keeps refusing to acknowledge those). Hits a bit closer to the original concept on this point (but on this alone, and only a bit. Honestly it felt like fresh air after that amount of issues in which he exhibited nothing out of ordinary but they kept referring him as crazy / psychopath / psycho / whatever). It's not exactly a point since it's still bad rep (even for schizospec), let's just say 0.25.

Art is good honestly I liked that

Cons:

The dialogue is very dense and it slows the pacing A LOT. It's like as if the plot couldn't go forward if there were no characters around discussing it. Banters are funny alright but the plot could've gone on even without them sometimes. Reading it as it came out must've been a torture

Characters (included but not limited to the avengers- I don't think they can be called as alters at this point? But Them) chew away a lot from Moon Knight, basically having a ton of charisma and relevancy on the plot while he comes off as some sort of empty shell or, at best, white glue keeping all of them together but basically being nothing on his own. In a story full of decent and solid characters, Marc is barely one.

I think Bendis wanted each of the avengers be some sort of metaphor for different points of view or approaches but being pre-established and very famous characters they are pretty hard if not almost impossible to identify with what they're supposed to represent in the narrative and not as... well, themselves - making the radical change in his disorder a disastrous one for (ironically) Moon Knight's identity as a character, as now depends on a mosaic of characteristics borrowed from other characters with their own identities (narratively speaking) and autonomy rather than its own, or with very very little of its own to make up for it.

(ok last two points are kinda related I admit it)

I don't think there really was any need to change how his condition worked? The only thing I can think of is trying to make him "conform" to forms of "being crazy" considered more acceptable, sort of like as if DID was too weird to be believed as true? But this is something only the author himself can confirm / deny to be his original intent, if it's true - dude that'd be ableist as hell

This is what I could come up on the spot at least. I still think Kavanagh is truly the king of the bottom list so far and most of Twitter fans complaining about this run being a horrible abomination are overreacting a weee bit.

Still bad, but... not the worst thing MK writers have cooked for this character.

#moon knight #moon knight comics #moon knight 2011 #bendis run #xenon reacts #final review #q tag

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leportraitducadavre · 2 years

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Another example of Jiraiya’s hypocrisy is that he talks about peace, but he still actively supports the Shinobi system and has major Pro Konoha mentality.

It's true that what he defends contradicts our own definition of peace (non-armed conflict alongside equal treatment of all parties), but he doesn't contradict his own definition nor the one the Narutoverse settles on. Peace to him is Konoha’s prosperity and the balance between the Five Great Nations; wars, killings, and genocides are tools at his (and the system) disposal in order to achieve the ultimate goal. We can’t separate his characterization from the universe he was created for (which is not to say we can’t judge him based on our own standards, but calling him a hypocrite would only be factual if he counters his own definition of peace, which he doesn’t).

Who is he killing? People that aren’t from Konoha nor loyal to it, which instantly justify his actions. Why is he killing? Because it will benefit his village in the short and/or long term. Separate his conduct from his ultimate goals won’t function nor will allow us to understand his character. The problem in itself isn’t Jiraiya not aligning with our views -he doesn’t have to (furthermore, the narrative doesn’t have to either, which is the apparatus that validates him inside the story, specifically), is the fandom that puts him as a paragon of morality -using him to put other character views/behaviors down, Naruto is okay with having Jiraiya as the epitome of integrity because he was raised and grew up to share his standards (and here is where the manga, with Sasuke’s involvement, allows the reader to have agency from what we are told is right, should the reader want it), and that doesn’t change one bit the more we dive in into the story.

How come Jiraiya is singled out as the hypocrite when the system he defends and which based his entire views is nothing but hypocritical? You can’t take any other Will of Fire believer/Shinobi system supporter and spare them from the same criticism. If the system he aligns with is nothing but paradoxical (state-sanctioned genocide to “maintain peace” -rather, keep specific people in power- is only one of the most notorious actions perceived narratively as necessary), he has no other choice but to become paradoxical as well -otherwise, he’ll become a traitor.

The “peace” mantra he lives for is nothing but a mask to justify actions that only benefits his nationalistic setting (again, peace=greater good=Konoha’s prosperity), he is aware that he isn’t helping smaller villages/countries, he is aware that his teachings to the Ame orphans are nothing but a nice facade to make himself feel better to what him (and his kind) put them through. Hiruzen (his mentor and leader), started the war that ultimately put Yahiko, Nagato, and Konan in the position of begging for food; he’s not better than Orochimaru whose act of kindness would have been to kill them and spare them from future suffering, nor Tsunade who only left Konoha when the war personally affected her. Seeing three children alone in a war zone did nothing for her.

There’s no no-hypocritical character that aligns with “the good guys” (and again, good by the narrative’s -meaning Naruto’s- standards), Jiraiya is no different from Kakashi, Itachi, Sakura, Tsunade, Shikamaru, Hiruzen, and so on, he’s barely more involved in Naruto’s life which is why the MC takes him as a moral parameter to shape his views, but it’s not a mentality he wouldn’t have reached should he had stayed in Konoha.

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Edit to add: Let's be honest, Jiraiya gets all the hate he does (at least on Tumblr) because the fandom puts his spying on naked women on the same level as the rest of his crimes. If he had never spied on any female, he wouldn't be as criticized as he is; most of the fandom's criticism of him branches off into his "perversion" and the fact that he isn't attractive enough to be shipped with their self-inserts. Otherwise, characters like Itachi would be equally condemned -yet they aren't.

#anti jiraiya #anti naruto uzumaki #anti uzumaki naruto #anti naruto #anti naruto fandom #anti konoha #anti shinobi system #anti sakura #anti tsunade #anti itachi uchiha #anti kakashi #anti shikamaru #anti hiruzen #anti hiruzen sarutobi

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blackstarising · 3 years

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coming back to this post i made again to elaborate - especially as the ted lasso fandom is discussing sam/rebecca and fandom racism in general. there are takes that are important to make that i had failed to previously, but there's also a growing amount of takes that i have to, As A Black Person™, respectfully disagree with.

tl;dr for the essay below sam being infantilized and the sam/rebecca relationship are not the same issue and discussing the former one doesn't mean excusing the latter. and we've reached the glen of the Dark Forest where we sit down and talk about fandom racism.

i should have elaborated this in my last post about sam/rebecca, but i didn't. i'll say it now - i personally don't support sam and rebecca getting together for real. i believe what people are saying is entirely correct, even though sam is an adult legally, he and rebecca are, at the very least, two wildly different stages of life. for americans, he's at the equivalent of being a junior in college. there are things he hasn't gotten the chance to experience and there are areas he needs to grow in. when i was younger, i didn't understand the significance of these age gaps, i just thought it would be fine if it was legal, but as someone who is now a little older than sam in universe, i understand fully. we can't downplay this. whether or not you think sam works for rebecca or not, even despite the gender inversion of the Older Man Younger Woman trope, whether or not he is a legal adult, i don't think at this point in time, their relationship would work. i think it's an interesting narrative device, but i don't want to see it play out in reality.

that being said!

what's worrying me is that two discussions are being conflated here that shouldn't be. sam having agency and being a little more grown™ than he's perceived to be does not suddenly make his relationship with rebecca justified. i had decided to bring it up because sam was being brought into the spotlight again and i was starting to realizing that his infantilization was more common than i felt comfortable with.

sam's infantilization (and i will continue to call it that), is a microaggression. it's is in the range of microaggressions that i would categorize as 'fandom overcompensation'. we have a prominent character of color that exhibits traits that aren't stereotypical, and we don't want to appear racist or stereotypical, so we lean hard in the other direction. they're not aggressive, they're a Sweet Baby, they're not world weary, they're now a little naive. they're not cold and distant, they're so nice and sweet that there's no one that wouldn't want approach them, and yeah, on their face, these new traits are a departure and, on their face, they seem they look really good.

but at a certain point, it reaches an inflection point, and, like the aftertaste of a diet coke, that alleged sweetness veers into something a lot less sweet. it veers into a lack of agency for the character. it veers into an innocence that appears to indicate that the person can't even take care of themselves. it veers into a one-dimensional characterization that doesn't allow for any depth or negative emotion.

it's not kind anymore. it's not a nice departure from negative stereotypes. it's not compensating for anything.

it's patronizing.

it is important that we emphasize that characters of color are more than the toxic stereotypes we lay on them, yes, but we make a mistake in thinking that the solution is overcorrection. for one thing, people of color can usually tell. don't get it twisted, it's actually pretty obvious. for another, it just shifts from one dimension to another. people of color are still supposed to be Only One Character Trait while white people can contain multitudes. ted, who is pretty much as pollyanna as they come, can be at once innocent and naive and deep and troubled and funny and scared. jamie can be a prick and sexy and also lonely and also a victim of abuse. sam, however, even though he was bullied (by jamie, no less), is thousands of miles away from home, and has led a protest on his team, is usually just characterized as human sunshine with much less acknowledgement of any other traits beyond that.

and that's why i cringe when fandom calls sam a Sweet Baby Boy without any sense of irony. is that all we're taking away? after all this time? even for a comedy, sam has received a substantive of screen time over two whole seasons, and we've seen a range of emotions from him. so as a black person it's hurtful that it's boiled down to Sweet Baby Boy.

that's the problem. we need to subvert stereotypes, but more importantly, we need to understand that people of color are not props, or pieces of cardboard for their white counterparts. they are full and actualized and have agency in their own right and they can have other emotions than Angry and Mean or Sweet and Bubbly without any nuance between the two. i think the show actually does a relatively good job of giving sam depth (relatively, always room for improvement, mind you), especially holding it in tension with his youth, but the fandom, i worry, does not.

it's the same reason why finn from star wars started out as the next male protagonist in the sequel trilogy but by the third movie was just running around yelling for REY!! it's the same reason why when people make Phase 4 Is the Phase For Therapy gifsets for the mcu and show wanda maximoff, loki, and bucky barnes crying and being sad but purposefully exclude sam wilson who had an entire show to tell us how difficult his life is, because people find out if pee oh sees are also complex, they'll tell the church.

and the reason why i picked up on this very early on is because i am an organic, certified fresh, 100% homegrown, non-gmo, a little ashy, indigenous sub saharan African black person. the ghanaian tribes i'm descended from have told me so, my black ass parents have told me so, and the nurses at the hospital in [insert asian country here] that started freaking out about how curly my hair was as my mother was mid pushing me out told me so!

and this stuff has real life implications. listen: being patronized as a black person sucks. do you know how many times i was patted on the back for doing quite honestly, the bare minimum in school? do you know how many times i was told how 'well spoken' or 'eloquent' i was because i just happen to have a white accent or use three syllable words? do you know how many times i've been cooed over by white women who couldn't get over how sweet i was just because i wasn't confrontational or rude like they wrongly expected me to be?

that's why they're called microaggressions. it's not a cross on your lawn or having the n-word spat in your face, but it cuts you down little by little until you're completely drained.

so that's the nuance. that's the subversion. the overcompensation is not a good thing. and people of color (and i suspect, even white people) have picked up on, in general, the different ways fandom treats sam and dani and even nate. what all of these discussions are converging on is fandom racism, which is not the diet form of racism, but another place for racism to reveal itself. and yeah, it's uncomfortable. it can seem out of left field. you may want to defend yourself. you may want to explain it away. but let me tap the sign on the proverbial bus:

if you are a white person, or a person of color who is not part of that racial group, even, you do not get to decide what is not racist for someone. full stop. there are no exceptions. there is no exit clause for you. there is no 'but, actually-'. that right wasn't even yours to cede or waive.

(it's also important to note that people of color also have the right to disagree on whether something is racist, but that doesn't necessarily negate the racism - it just means there's more to discuss and they can still leave with different interpretations)

people don't just whip out accusations of racism like a blue eyes white dragon in a yu-gi-oh duel. it's not fun for us. it's not something we like to do to muzzle people we don't want to engage with. and we're not concerned with making someone feel bad or ashamed. we're exposing something painful that we have to live with and, even worse, process literally everything we experience through. we can't turn it off. we can't be 'less sensitive' or 'less nitpicky'. we are literally the primary resources, we are the proverbial wikipedia articles with 3,000 sources when it comes to racism. who else would know more than us?

what 2020 has shown us very clearly is that racism is systemic. it's not always a bunch of Evil White Men rubbing their hands together in a dark room wondering how they're going to use the 'n-word' today. it's systemic. it's the way you call that one neighborhood 'sketchy'. it's how you use 'ratchet' and 'ghetto' when describing something bad. it's how you implicitly the assume the intelligence of your friend of color. it's the way you turned up your nose and your friend's food and bullied them for it in middle school but go to restaurants run by white people who have 'uplifted' it with inauthentic ingredients. it's telling someone how Well Spoken and Eloquent they are even though you've both gone to the same schools and work at the same workplace. it's the way you look down at some people of color for having a different body type than you because they've been redlined to neighborhoods where certain foods and resources are inaccessible, and yet mock up the racial features that appeal to you either through makeup or plastic surgery.

it's how when a person of color behaves badly, they're irredeemable, but a white person performing the same act or something similar is 'having a bad day' or 'isn't normally like this' or 'has room to grow' and we can't 'wait for their redemption arc', and yes, i'm not going to cover it in detail in this post but yes this is very much about nate. other people have also brought up the nuances in his arc and compared them to other white characters so i won't do it here.

these behaviors and reactions aren't planned. they aren't orchestrated. they're quite literally unconscious because they've been lovingly baked into western society for centuries. you can't wake up and be rid of it. whether you intended it or not, it can still be racist.

and it's actually quite hurtful and unfair to imply that concerns about racism in the TL fandom are unfounded or lacking any depth or simply meant to be sensational because you simply don't agree with it. i wish it was different, but it doesn't work that way. i'm not raising this up to 'call out' or shame people, but i'm adding to this discussion because, through how we talk about sam, and even dani and nate, i'm yet again seeing a pattern that has shortchanged people of color and made them feel unwelcome in fandom for far too long.

coach beard said it best: we need to do better.

#ted lasso #sam obisanya #ted lasso spoilers #fandom racism

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thinkingisadangerouspastime · 3 years

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hi! i really like your posts and recently i came across some anti kataang arguments and i would like to see your opinion on that (if you want to answer because you must be very tired of answering those lol)

“i remember perfectly aang forcing himself into katara. not only once, but a lot of times. in that talk they were having during the play it was one of the moments aang was intrusive”

“i saw people saying that katara was jealous of aang with that kids in kyoshi island, which she obviously was not. she was annoyed at them”

“kataang had no development. it feels like a ship made out of nowhere”

“aang is completely obsessed with the idea of katara being his. proof is that episode were the guru tells him he has to let go of her and he choses to break the connection. it’s like: look what i did for you, you should stay with me. aang learning to let go would have been a evolution for his character”

“making them stay together in the end just because aang is the protagonist and has to stay with the girl is boring and adds nothing to the plot”

“he spend years after a girl that never felt the same for him”

hi anon! im very flattered you like my posts 🥰💛 and you’re not wrong that sometimes it gets a lil tiring addressing anti kataang arguments, but that’s because 90% of them are the same foolish rhetoric dressed up in a different costume, lol. i finally have some free time, so i’ll take a stab at these for you!

“i remember perfectly aang forcing himself into katara. not only once, but a lot of times. in that talk they were having during the play it was one of the moments aang was intrusive”

not gonna lie, this particular “argument” made me crack up laughing because they “remember perfectly… lots of times” but can only name one instance 😂 like i am on the floor, because trying to get away with that in a formal essay would earn them nothing more than a goose egg. you need evidence to support a claim, which this “claim” has none of. i mean,, when does aang force himself onto katara?? when katara initiates every cheek kiss they share?? when they are mutual participants in several shared hugs?? don’t get me started on DOBS - the Now or Never Kiss that falls under literally requires reciprocation from both parties, lol. but regarding the ever-so-infamous EIP episode they bring up:

This post talks specifically about EIP and the play’s portrayal of Aang and Katara (and how it cannot be used to define their relationship). This post explains the true source of Katara’s conflict in turning down Aang (i.e. the war itself and the risks the war presents for both of them) and why the EIP kiss did not “ruin” Kataang’s relationship. This post explains how the EIP kiss was resolved through narrative parallels. This post explains how the EIP kiss is so often blown out of proportion. This post explains how Aang did not “threaten” Katara in EIP (with some excellent commentary in the notes, too).

the fact of the matter is that yes, aang overstepped a boundary with katara there. no one has ever contested that because to do so would be to disregard canon, and here’s the thing about kataang shippers: we love atla canon. it gave us everything we wanted and more. (imo, that’s what anti kataangers don’t understand.) the EIP episode can be interpreted as a “low point” for many reasons, but the primary “takeaway” is that the play performed was imperialist propaganda that preyed on the gaang’s insecurities and demeaned them (much to the pleasure of the Fire Nation audience), which had negative consequences, one of which was aang kissing katara largely out of desperation. no one has ever excused that! thus, what i think isn’t clicking with anti kataangers is that aang and katara’s miscommunication in EIP is not a representation of their relationship being doomed to fail. aang made a mistake and immediately backed off without question or hesitation. katara has time to make her own decision and chooses to forgive him. doesn’t it strip more of katara’s agency away to conclude that katara could never ever ever forgive her best friend for a single mistake that - comparatively - could have been a whole lot worse?

(im just saying.)

“i saw people saying that katara was jealous of aang with that kids in kyoshi island, which she obviously was not. she was annoyed at them”

honestly, i have a question for whoever came up with this jfksjdasks. okay, yes, she was annoyed. that’s a given based on her exasperated eye rolls and sighs. but why was katara annoyed with them, hmm?

here’s my thing about katara’s feelings in this ep: jealousy and annoyance are not inherently the same, it’s true. a person can be annoyed without being jealous (obviously). as such, there are essentially two possible interpretations that have validity, although one in my opinion has greater weight in canon:

1. yes, it is possible to interpret katara’s annoyance that episode as being solely related to their delays on kyoshi island. one can reasonably argue that katara’s romantic feelings for aang were not as strong so early in the series (it’s only episode 4, after all, although lbr - she was Looking at aang’s tattoos in episode 1 lmao), and therefore the primary reason she was annoyed at the fangirls is because they were one of the causes extending their stay on the island when katara felt they needed to leave. it’s a fair interpretation.

2. a different and stronger interpretation, in my opinion, is that katara’s irritation was a product of both annoyance at their extended stay and jealousy of the fangirls’ obsession with aang. because here’s the thing about jealousy: it doesn’t have to be some extreme, exaggerated emotion/reaction! when katara gets jealous of on ji in book 3, she makes a single comment about aang and on ji dancing together. when aang gets jealous of jet in book 2 (because of sokka’s teasing), he, too, makes a single comment (i.e. that it would be a bad idea for katara to kiss jet). i bring these two moments up because they explicitly demonstrate within atla canon that reactions of jealousy do not have to be dramatique and outrageous, à la zuko throwing ruon-jian across the room in book 3, lmao. jealousy can be simple! kept to oneself! as such, katara’s disgruntled manner in that episode - which, might i add, is largely if not only shown in reaction to aang with the fangirls - can certainly be interpreted as a quieter form of jealousy akin to several other moments within canon.

more than that, however, if the writers did not at all want jealousy to be an interpretation on the table… why on earth would they have bothered to mention jealousy as a possibility? here’s the relevant excerpt from the episode transcript:

Koko: [Stomps her foot in annoyance and puts her hands on her hips, while another girl happily waves at Aang; irritated.] What’s taking you so long, Aangy?

Cut back to Aang and Katara; the former enthusiastically waves back at his awaiting fangirls, while the latter raises an eyebrow at the scene.

Katara: [Slightly mocking.] Aangy…

Aang: [Enthusiastically.] Just a second, Koko!

Katara: [Sarcastic.] “Simple monk,” huh? [Annoyed.] I thought you promised me that this Avatar stuff wouldn’t go to your head.

Aang: It didn’t. You know what I think? You just don’t want to come because you’re jealous.

Katara: [Close-up; angrily.] Jealous? [More high pitched voice.] Of what?

Cut to a broader shot. Aang moves back slightly, when an irritated Katara resumes to ferociously stuff the basket with more fruits.

Aang: Jealous that we’re having so much fun without you.

Katara: [Irritated.] That’s ridiculous.

(sidebar, but can i just say that seeing “ferociously stuff” to describe putting fruits away is arguably the funniest thing i’ve ever read sjkdhsjalks)

to me, this excerpt alone all but proves katara’s irritation is a mixture of annoyance at the girls’ (and aang’s) behavior/their delayed departure and jealousy regarding how the fangirls’ fawn over aang. katara clearly demonstrates frustration at aang’s seeming lack of concern for their time crunch and how he’s letting his status get to his head (and remember, y’all: this is very early book 1 aang, he’s barely begun to truly reconcile what it means to be the avatar and the last airbender, which is understandable and a-okay! can’t have growth if he doesn’t start somewhere!). that checks out. but next thing you know, katara’s reaction proceeds to dramatically heighten when aang teases the idea of jealousy to her. again: why include this moment if jealousy was never on the table whatsoever as an interpretation for her feelings of irritation? why make katara’s response intensify so strongly if she’s not jealous even a little bit?

in sum, while i don’t think katara’s aggravation is solely fueled by jealousy, the episode itself points to jealousy as at least a part of it. simple!

“kataang had no development. it feels like a ship made out of nowhere”

this take screams willful ignorance, like did they even watch the whole show?? it’s not worth addressing over and over, ngl.

This post and this post explain how Katara’s feelings for Aang develop throughout the series. This post explains how Aang consistently supported Katara throughout the series. This post demonstrates how Kataang is literally ingrained in every episode.

“aang is completely obsessed with the idea of katara being his. proof is that episode were [sic] the guru tells him he has to let go of her and he choses [sic] to break the connection. it’s like: look what i did for you, you should stay with me. aang learning to let go would have been a evolution for his character”

“completely obsessed” h e l p i weep for the lack of brain cells 😭 it is so hard to just say “kataang isn’t my cup of tea” and go?? seriously?? i thought we were past making stuff up to support shipping agendas. lord help us. real quick:

This post explains how Aang never acted like he was “entitled” to Katara’s affections. This post explains how Katara and Aang do not “idolize” each other. This post and this post talk about Aang’s chakra being blocked and unblocked, and how it had to do with fear, not attachment. This post talks about Aang and the Avatar State, explicitly discussing “The Crossroads of Destiny” and the notion of attachment/letting Katara go.

okay, let’s take this claim one sentence at a time:

“the guru tells him [aang] he has to let go of her [katara] and he choses [sic] to break the connection.”

first of all. FIRST OF ALL. can you imagine the hellfire that would have rained down if aang hadn’t chosen to go rescue katara? here is a piece of the episode transcript:

… Right before he is able to completely open the final chakra and master the Avatar State, however, he hears a shriek from Katara and sees a vision of her in chains. At this, he jumps out of the energy sphere and runs away from the Avatar Spirit. The energy bridge that leads him there slowly vanishes behind him until it catches up and falls from underneath him, causing his image to plummet toward Earth. This cuts his connection to the Avatar State, which forces him back to reality.

Aang: Katara’s in danger! I have to go! [Prepares to exit.]

Pathik: No, Aang! By choosing attachment, you have locked the chakra! If you leave now, you won’t be able to go into the Avatar State at all!

Aang hesitates but leaves anyway, leaving Pathik concerned and disappointed.

aang chose to leave because katara was in danger. if he had chosen to stay,, dear god. the vitriol that would have been thrown around. “aang doesn’t really love katara! he chose not to save her!” “aang is so selfish and greedy! he chose power over love!” it’s literally a catch-22. damned if he does leave, damned if he doesn’t leave. #fandomlogic

anyways, yes, sure, aang chose to leave, which at the time broke the connection. he was indeed in avatar state limbo for a Hot Minute. whoop de do.

“it’s like: look what i did for you, you should stay with me.”

logical fallacy: ad hominem, hasty generalization, ∴ not worth our time 💛

“aang learning to let go would have been a [sic] evolution for his character”

i have amazing news for those who perpetuate this take. aang did let her go! he would not have been able to enter the avatar state in COD if he hadn’t! point blank, it is utterly untrue to pretend aang did not “let go” of his attachment to katara. now, im not going to get into the concept of “attachment” here and what it truly meant for aang to have “let katara go” in the book 2 finale (if it was good, bad, etc. etc.). there is a lot of material to work with there that would require like,, an entire post to dig into, if not more. the fact of the matter is that aang did let katara go, and the proof is that he successfully entered the avatar state before azula killed him. the above claim thus sits in complete contradiction to canon and is a moot point.

“making them stay together in the end just because aang is the protagonist and has to stay with the girl is boring and adds nothing to the plot”

“making them stay together” again, is it so hard for someone to just say “kataang isn’t my thing, im gonna stick to fanon pairings, but y’all have fun” i mean that really, really does not seem so difficult to me! also, “making” is a hilarious word to use just because,, atla is a work of fiction. in that respect, the writers “made” everything happen. you cannot escape their sphere of control.

anyways. that’s just funny to me lmao

but no, aang and katara did not get together in a romantic fashion just because aang was the lead male protagonist and katara was the lead female protagonist. i refer back to these posts from earlier:

aang and katara got together because their relationship had been developed since episode 1, duh. reducing their relationship to “lead guy + lead girl” completely disregards the legwork done and the foundation laid for their romantic partnership. like, all someone has to do is rewatch the show 😂 and i hate to break it to whoever created that take, but to say kataang “adds nothing to the plot” again ignores how their relationship is one of the two most important in the show (the other being aang and zuko’s relationship as narrative foils). it is not a cheap coincidence that kataang embodies multiple complementary themes/motifs of atla: push and pull, yin and yang, air and water, oma and shu, etc. etc. their relationship adds emotional depth! how is that not relevant to the plot! atla is a show where just about every relationship is important in some regard (this post touches upon how aang alone transforms all of his friends - think of the bigger picture, then, and how every other dynamic weaves in a crucial thread to create the beautiful tapestry we call atla!).

my point is that kataang is relevant to the plot the way every relationship in atla is, whether or not someone ships/enjoys them. you cannot have a good show without having intimate relationships (emotionally, i mean). can you imagine if someone said zuko and iroh’s relationship wasn’t relevant to the plot?? there is a reason it is such a powerful moment when iroh and zuko reunite in the finale. similarly, there is a reason yue’s sacrifice and sokka’s consequential (and lasting) grief is so poignant. there is a reason it is so heartbreaking when katara and sokka have to leave behind their father at the beginning of tsr. to tie back to kataang, there is a reason it is so hard to watch katara dismiss aang in that same episode. there is a reason so many people are moved when katara pulls aang out of the avatar state when appa is stolen. there is a reason emotional reactions are incited during atla and it is because these relationships are so important!! i don’t care if someone thinks kataang is “boring” - that’s their opinion, they have a right to it. but to insist their relationship wasn’t relevant to the plot? to the story? when in fact it was a key component from episode 1?

are you kidding me?

“he spend years after a girl that never felt the same for him”

“years” lol doesn’t atla take place over the course of a year at most? pretty sure this person didn’t even watch the show 😂 for a third time, i refer to these posts:

i hope i addressed these (nonsensical) arguments to your satisfaction, anon! a lot of them are the same tried-and-failed anti kataang arguments, smh. not to incite new discourse lmao, but it’d be nice if there was at least some variety 😂 thank you again for your kind words, my friend! 💛

#kataang #aang #katara #aanglove #atla #avatar the last airbender #atla analysis #kataangtag #amy answers #anon #amy analyzes

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shadowed-dancer · 3 years

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My Thoughts on the New MHA Opening and Ending

I have thoughts, and I will share them because oh boy if I don’t get this out I’m gonna explode

Vague Spoilers for the manga (up to chapter 258 and vigilantes) because I discuss the upcoming arcs, but I don’t discuss any major plot points in detail. Still, proceed with caution if you’re anime only

Keep in mind, this OP and ED will cover the Endeavour Agency Arc and the MVA Arc, so I will be judging them accordingly.

First, the OP

This is a good OP... in theory (that’s going to become my catchphrase for this post). It’s nice to look at and flows pretty well, but my biggest problem is that it doesn’t do it’s job. An OP is supposed to be a sort of... summary (?) of the Cour it plays for. That means any cool plot points, emotional beats, and important characters should be featured in some way, shape, or form. We’ll talk about that more later, but first let’s discuss the music.

The song is really good. I have a feeling it will continue to grow on me as I listen to it more often, but yeah my first impression is that the song sounds great. My only complaint about the music itself is that it ends kind of abruptly (I noticed this is the JT opening too). The previous openings used to have a bit of instrumental to “play us out” and lead us to the end card, but this one feels like it ends very suddenly and unnaturally.

As for the visuals...

Yeah alright I’ll admit, the visuals are stunning... in theory. I appreciate the variety in backgrounds and colours, it makes the OP really interesting to look at. This was actually one of my biggest problems with the JT Opening, it all took place on the training grounds, so there was no variety (everything was metal tubes with a blue sky, with only 3 shots set somewhere different). I appreciate the style of this OP.

But like I said, that’s only in theory, as in, through screenshots these are all pleasing to look at. The pacing of this OP is wild, and I truly don’t know who to blame for this.

That sunset shot above? It lasts approximately 12 seconds, zooming in every few to make it seem like something is happening (when in reality it’s still the same poses, angles, etc). While there’s nothing wrong with a nice, drawn out shot, it becomes irritating when compared to the pacing of the rest of this op.

At the 41 second mark, we are given the shot above. It has flowed directly from the previous sunset scene. We still have not moved away from the image of the trio (aside from the opening shot and the title card) yet we’re approaching the halfway mark of the OP.

The next shot is the MLA, which lasts about 5 seconds. Ok, perfect. Not too long, but also not short enough to be confusing. It cuts away a little fast once the dude on the far left appears, but does anyone actually know who that is? No, seriously, I’m asking. I don’t remember his name and he’s not on the wiki, so I can only assume he’s not important. Therefore, it’s not all that bad if the shot cuts away shortly after he comes into frame. The audience is able to take in the scene without having to pause...

... And then the problems start

While this shot is fine in theory, it pans up fast and cuts away quickly. You know how hard it was for me to get this screenshot? Really hard. You want to know why I struggled so much? Because, due to the timing of the cut and the way it pans upwards, it’s almost impossible to pause on Dabi’s face. I literally had to go frame by frame to get it, because he’s in shot for so little time that naturally pausing is guaranteed to miss him.

When watching this in real time (without pausing) the cut away makes you feel as if you missed something because “something was there, I just couldn’t register what because now it’s gone”. Unlike Compress, who wears a very colourful coat you can recognize the entire time, Dabi’s pants are more blended into the background.

It also doesn’t help that this shot is literally composed to draw your attention away from Dabi until the last possible second. Due to framing, your eye is naturally drawn to the brightly coloured Toga in the foreground, making it super easy to miss Dabi in the back (until, of course, his bright face appears and contrasts against the background, drawing your eye just in time for the scene to change, leaving you to wonder who or what you missed).

I know this sounds like nitpicking, but this shot is the only group shot we get of the League, and is also the start of a seriously weird trend for the villains in this OP getting the short end of the stick.

Anyways, then we get what I’ll call “The Carousel Shot” in which every Class 1A kid shows up and poses dramatically, as if they were on a carousel. It’s a lovely sequence and I really enjoy watching it but... why is it in this OP?

Seriously, this is a genuine question. Class 1A barely shows up in the Endeavour Agency Arc, and NONE of the students are in MVA. This sequence (not counting the three boys at the end) lasts 8 seconds. Why is this much time dedicated to characters who are barely in the arc? (Unless Studio Bones extends their work studies into fuller plot lines which oh my gosh please don’t do that, or if they do, do it quick).

We then get what I call the “Oh God I Blinked And Missed Everything” sequence, which lasts 3 seconds (not including the longer, moving shot of Shigaraki at the end) and features NINE INDIVIDUAL IMAGES, none of which are related to each other. Not only is this 3 images per second, but the fact that they are all unrelated means you can’t even use previous information to fill in the blanks.

What do I mean by that? Well, imagine if I show you 9 images of various pro heroes posing. If I play that in 3 seconds you’ll absolutely miss some of them, but as long as you catch some you’ll still get an idea of what I’m trying to show to you. Your brain is able to fill in the gaps that “I recognized 4 pro heroes, therefore the rest must have also been pros” even if you didn’t register every single frame.

That doesn’t work if every frame features a completely different subject. The shots in this sequence vary so widely that it’s impossible to find a through line. Some feature multiple characters, some feature one, some are closeups, some are super far away, some are character’s we know, others are characters we don’t. It’s impossible to get a solid read on what you’re being shown.

Now, again, there’s nothing wrong with these super quick shots... in theory. The problem comes from the fact that these shots are the only indicators for some of the major themes that will be explored during this Cour (like Twice’s growth and young Shigaraki).

That being said, let’s move away from criticism and talk about speculation, because hidden amongst this sequence are two... interesting images.

This All Might one is very reminiscent of the shot in Chapter 257, where Aizawa and All Might have a conversation while staring up at the stars. However, this is technically the start of the “War Arc” (or the “prologue”, if that’s what you want to call it), so this might indicate that we’re going to get farther into the series than a lot of us guessed.

(Many people suspected we’d get to that cliffhanger at the start of the season (if you read the manga you know the one), but after seeing the pacing for JT a lot of us assumed we’d be lucky to even finish Endeavour Agency. It seems we’re back to the cliffhanger now though lol).

This is another really interesting shot because it’s indicative of Shirakumo, meaning we might get to see Aizawa and Mic confront him some time this Cour (this also makes sense, since this confrontation technically happens before that All Might scene I mentioned in the previous paragraph).

But the cat specifically is a really strange addition. That cat is named Sushi and, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think Sushi is ever mentioned in the main series. I think he’s only in Vigilantes.

This might just be a little Easter Egg for Vigilante readers, but I’m personally hoping that they’ll add at least a few Vigilante shots in there to really tug at the heart strings. I’d say I want a whole Vigilante episode but I don’t think they have the time (unless they really cram MVA, which I do NOT want).

I don’t have much to say about the last bit of the OP. The action shot between the 3 boys was nice, and it follows the sort of narrative through line they established from the early shot of them sitting at the sunset. I also like the shot of Endeavour fading in to replace All Might, even if it’s very simple.

But I want to talk about an overarching problem I touched upon earlier in that villain shot: the way the villains are handled in this OP.

This is a good OP... in theory. The problem is, it doesn’t represent half the arcs in the cour! Every shot of the League is so rushed that you can barely register that they were on screen before they’re gone.

I have no idea how many Episodes Endeavour Agency will take, but I’d assume 3 (4 if you count the Christmas episode). 12 episodes for this Cour minus 3 for Endeavour Agency = 9 episodes left. If we truly do get the prologue for the War Arc (and if we assume it’s only 1 episode) that leaves us with 8 villains episodes.

8/12 episodes (aka two thirds of the Cour) will likely be about the villains. And yet they’re pushed to the background so hard in this OP.

I want to dream, and I want to believe that this OP is going to magically change when MVA starts. The song fits super well, and I can imagine like an inversion of the OP but from the Villain side! Wouldn’t that be neat? Imagine right after the “it’s alright” part Shigaraki just freaking decays the title card... oh man that would be so cool. But, alas, I highly doubt they’d do that.

Side rant, but you know what was so fun about MVA in the manga? It’s that, for 21 chapters, we leave the kids behind and the villains become our protagonists. Suddenly Shigaraki is the one we’re rooting for, suddenly we’re learning backstories for everyone, and suddenly we find ourselves just as attached to the villains as we are to the kids. It’s an inversion that’s SO RARE to find, and I think many people (myself included) were hoping it would be reflected in the OP.

A big part of being the protagonist means featuring heavily in the OP, and a lot of us just wanted the villains to get that honour, even if only once. As is, the OP still treats them as the antagonists when... really they aren’t. Not right now, at least.

So yeah, final thoughts on the OP are that it’s good, it’s just not very representative of the arcs it’s supposed to cover. If this was just for Endeavour Agency, I’d say it’s actually really cool, but if we assume that this is what will play for the Villain Arc, then it simply doesn’t do it’s job. And it makes me sad to say that because, again, this OP is really well done.

If I had to rate it? Hmmm

If Studio Bones actually grants my wish and creates a different visual for the Villain Arc (while using the same song) and then this version only plays for the Endeavour Agency Arc and the War Prologue? I’d give it an 8/10. It’s really good, but it could use a few more elements that are clearly derived from the Agency Arc (ahem, Todoroki siblings).

But if this is the OP that will play for the entire Cour? a 6.5/10. It’s nice, but it’s not representative of one of the arcs it’s going to cover. And, unlike other arcs like Pro Hero or Summer Exams, the villain Arc is so important and takes up so much time that it honestly feels like a bit of a disservice.

Now for the Ending

I want to say that I appreciate how soft this ending starts. This cour will likely feature a lot of episodes that end on... heavier themes, and I think the sight of peaceful, falling raindrops is the perfect way to let the audience process their emotions before starting the ending in earnest.

The song itself is very nice, and I like that it’s a bit slower than the more recent endings.

(Side note, but the FUNNIEST moment in the entire series is when Sir Nighteye dies because it’s so emotional and everyone is standing around his bed in his heartwrentching silence, only for the ending to come BLARING IN out of no where. If you forgot how jarringly hilarious it was, go listen to the Eri ending and tell me that’s not the funniest thing this series ever did. Anyways yeah I’m glad that’s not gonna happen this Cour).

This ending is a bit all over the place in terms of it’s visuals, but honestly I think it works. Most endings usually have a theme tying them together (all the Class 1A girls, a fantasy AU, old photographs, planning a party, etc) but this ending’s theme is a bit harder to identify.

That being said, I think it’s just supposed to show everyone going about their day. It’s calm, it’s peaceful, and it’s just very sweet to think about

I like this shot. Actually, scratch that, I like this whole sequence. I enjoy anything that allows Class 1A to chill and have fun.

Hawks is featured quite heavily in this ending which, fair. He’s pretty important in this arc.

I really love the shot where Endeavour immediately switches to Hawks, I thought that was a lot of fun, and very good symbolism on how Hawks wants to be like Endeavour. I also love all the shots of Baby Hawks, because it’s adorable.

Something about this shot is just so cute. It’s the little domestic things like waiting for a bus that make this ending feel... idk the word, real? It shows a side of the characters that we’ll never see in the episodes, but we know have to exist.

Like yes, of course the kids have to wait for the bus. We never see it, but of course there are those moments of quiet. Agh, I love it.

The villains also make an appearance and I’m very happy about that (I’d love to see more of the villains just chilling around, I think they deserve it). I kind of wish they weren’t sitting in a dark room for the sake of being edgy, since I think it would be nice to see the villains just... sort of existing, but honestly it’s still a nice shot. I also like how this shot sort of mirrors the first one with Class 1A (someone coming in while everyone else is sitting and waiting for them).

That being said, as much as I love looking at Dabi and his stupid face (affectionate)... why is Dabi the one getting the closeup?

Mind you, endings don’t need to be connected to their Cours (they can be, like the Eri one, but they don’t have to be). But this ending does seem to be connected to the arcs it intends to cover, given all the Hawks appearances, the boys wearing their work study scarves, etc.

So, I ask again, why Dabi? Out of the six League members, we learn the backstory for four of them in this arc (Shigaraki, Toga, Twice, and we very briefly learn about Spinner). The only two left out are Dabi and Compress.

I can only assume they chose Dabi because he’s constantly in contact with Hawks, and therefore that makes him important? If the OP told us anything, it’s that Bones values the Endeavour Agency Arc over the Villain Arc lol...

... Oh my gosh please tell me that’s not actually the reason Dabi is focused on here BONES WAI-

Anyways, the ending comes to a close with Hawks watching over the kids and Endeavour. The relaxing time is done, it’s time for work studies.

Overall impression? It’s great. It’s hard to screw up an ending, so as long as you have something pretty on screen, it’s wonderful.

I’ll give this a 9/10

#bnha #bnha season 5 #dabi #keigo takami #bnha season five #katsuki bakugo #shoto todoroki #mha season 5 #mha season five #bnha op #bnha opinions #izuku midoriya #bnha hawks #ok to reblog #actually yes please do reblog if you found this interesting #I worked hard on it

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galladerocksgamer · 3 years

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Okay so I love the Paranormal Liberation War arc, it does so much fantastic stuff, dang near perfect across the board. But I think it’s pretty widely felt that the pacing got a bit off the rails near the end, we had big reveals and character moments stacking up and half of them barely even felt relevant. And me being the person who just thinks about things in depth and for long periods, I’ve still been dwelling on it for months. And now as the manga has continued, I’m finally seeing how some of the aforementioned War moments could have been better executed in different situations, because honestly this latest arc seems like it would have been tailor-made to address them all. So lemme take a closer look at three different components here: Mirio/Eri, Bakugo, and Hawks.

1. Mirio and Eri

Probably the most random moment from the war’s climax, don’t think anyone was predicting the sudden return of Mirio to battle. I love Mirio, he’s one of my favorite characters, but it was a pretty anticlimactic way to bring him back into the fold. He doesn’t even really bring anything special to the battle, nothing uniquely Mirio. His role is just backing up Best Jeanist against the Nomu, and anyone could have done that. Burnin could’ve arrived sooner, or Manual and Rock Lock could’ve come back after getting the injured heroes to safety. Heck, if you still wanted the Nighteye agency to be involved, then Bubble Girl and Centipeder could’ve been the cavalry to help Jeanist. But instead Mirio returns unexpectedly and none too remarkably.

And on top of that, we’re basically just told “oh by the way Eri has some control of her power now.” Something that the series had been building up toward for awhile just … occurs off-screen with no forewarning. Really feels like a disservice to Eri and her development to not give that intense moment any real spotlight.

It felt extremely weird for me at the time, but I also kinda wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt. Maybe the coming arcs just couldn’t afford to place focus on Eri and Mirio, so their respective developments were tied together to lend an extra surprise to the war’s final bout. But instead this most recent arc has gone the opposite route … through the return of Chisaki.

The man once known as Overhaul, now thoroughly broken and wanting nothing more than to fix his one great regret. With Nagant’s defeat, he winds up back in custody, but having now once again met with Midoriya and made his wish known. So indeed, the opportunity arises for Eri and Mirio to be brought back to the forefront. I don’t doubt that we will indeed have at least a brief glimpse at Eri healing Chisaki’s boss as Midoriya promised, but the potential for that scene could really have been through the roof if it was the impetus for Eri to willingly use her power on a person for the first time.

Imagine Midoriya coming to Eri with that heavy request, of Eri deciding to offer this kindness toward Chisaki of all people, using her power to heal before the man who always told her that she could only destroy. Because really, I don’t think there’d be a question of that, we know the kind of kid Eri is, and she won’t let anyone suffer if there’s any way she could prevent it. Even if Chisaki was the person asking, there might be hesitation and fear, but is there any doubt she’d offer what aid she could in the end? And for Pops to be the first person she helps, to undo the harm carelessly inflicted by Chisaki … well, it’d certainly be poetic.

As for Mirio in this scenario, that could go a couple ways. Route 1: Eri is hesitant to help Chisaki with Pops because she would rather help Mirio get his Quirk back, and we know that her power seems to have a bit of a limit on it via the energy stored in her horn. So what if it did work, but she ran out of juice healing Pops and then made Mirio wait even longer? Well, of course that’s exactly what he’d insist on, he wouldn’t let himself take priority over another person in need of Eri’s help. And he’d take it all in good spirits as always. Or Route 2, if there was concern that Eri’s power could run wild while trying to help Pops, then they could go the complete opposite direction and have Mirio offer to go first, to be the guinea pig for Eri in case of emergency. But of course, he’d have full faith in her all along and coax her through, ensuring her of just how helpful and brave she always is.

So yes, can see how Eri and Mirio’s development could have taken a more satisfying route, and cap us off with some good ole Chisaki angst to boot (though at least we’ve still got a decent serving of that). Now moving on …

2. Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight

So Bakugo’s long and arduous journey of personal growth reached a new peak during the battle with Shigaraki, where his body moved without thinking and he underwent his true heroic awakening to protect Midoriya. Such a sacrifice seems like a perfect cap for his development for the War arc … and then a couple chapters later he forces himself right back into action to back up Best Jeanist, and as promised he reveals his over-the-top hero name to his mentor. In this case I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with the reveal, but in light of his preceding big heroic action, it really feels like a hat on a hat.

It’s not like Bakugo’s hero name heralded some major turning point for the battle; Jeanist’s arrival (and subsequently Mirio’s) had already assured that. And like Mirio, there wasn’t any real special reason for Bakugo to rejoin the fight with the Nomu, especially with Iida and Hado on the scene. After getting skewered by Shigaraki, it would have been pretty simple for Bakugo to just spend the rest of the fight bleeding unconscious on the ground, rather than complicating matters by shoving him back into the fray. And ultimately, the moment feels a bit anticlimactic. All the suspense waiting for Bakugo’s hero name, and then it’s revealed at a time where he barely even has the spotlight.

Of course, such a bombastic name as “Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight” doesn’t particularly lend itself to a quiet or emotional scene, so it wouldn’t be thematically fitting to move that revelation to Bakugo’s hospital bed or his somber apology to Midoriya. That said, given his decision to announce the name first to Jeanist, there would at least be precedent for him to have a “Dabi says secrets in a black speech bubble” moment in the hospital in which he talks to Jeanist but leaves the readers in the dark, before coming back to the actual audience reveal later on.

And there must certainly be other opportunities to present the name appropriately. Bakugo is a master of making an explosive entrance, after all. And when Class 1-A finally catches up to Midoriya, if Bakugo really wanted to make a big impact on his friend/rival before getting into the sentimental stuff, then it would be a prime chance to reveal his hero name in grandiose fashion, both to Midoriya and the audience.

Or if his hero name had been Kacchan, then that reveal would have fit right in with his apology to Midoriya, but that’s neither here nor there

This could be one scenario, of course, but it hardly feels like that would’ve been the only option. And compared to the crammed-in reveal in the final fight with the League, it’s easy to say that there could have been plenty of smoother roads to take. But setting that aside, moving onto the final touch:

3. Hawks

The long-awaited Hawks backstory doesn’t really disappoint. Admittedly, there weren’t really a lot of holes necessary to fill in there; we’d had enough bits and pieces provided before this point to pretty much put together the whole picture of his crummy childhood. But even without any really surprising turns, the flashback is welcome and hits some good emotional beats. But really, the glaring issue in this area is the timing.

We’re presented this backstory at an instance where Hawks is hardly the most relevant character. Shigaraki is undergoing a personal crisis as All For One seizes the reigns of his own body, Endeavor’s dark history has been exposed and the Todoroki family is in turmoil, escapees from Tartarus roam the streets, and Midoriya consults internally with the vestiges of One For All ... and the narrative decides to take a chapter to look at Hawks. Practically nothing from his flashback directly relates to present events, serving only to further emphasize his already well-established devotion to Endeavor and his (misguided) understanding of Twice’s feelings. The timing is just kind of baffling, especially with some other more appropriate places being readily apparent.

For instance, only a dozen chapters later, we’re properly introduced to Lady Nagant. As Hawks’s predecessor within the Hero Commission, the two have a lot in common, and the similarities and differences between the two could set up some interesting comparisons if Hawks’s backstory was saved to follow up Nagant’s. Two idealistic young children, handpicked by the Commission and groomed into assassins, yet whose outlooks in the present day are starkly opposed? Nagant's guilt driving her to turn on the Commission, while Hawks holds few regrets despite the blood on his hands, longing for freedom from the Commission’s grasp? That kind of parallel could really have built a more solid foundation for Hawks’s past to be laid upon.

That could be an effective setup, but there’s another approach I’d actually much rather have seen, one that brings Hawks’s backstory not later, but earlier: during the dramatic confrontation between Hawks and Dabi. The instant that Dabi reveals he knows Hawks’s real name, the story opens itself up perfectly to dive into his past. And the timing would be superb, showing Hawks at his worst as he murders Twice, then turning back the clock to look at the innocent child who just wants to save people. A little boy whose feathers tingle with the need to rescue those in need, superimposed against the man whose same feathers are used to deliver the killing blow to a victim of hero society’s ills. You want angst? Now that’s how you do angst. Placing the backstory there would play up the tragedy of both Hawks and Twice simultaneously: a “hero” raised by the Commission to cut threats to their control short at the root, and a “villain” who could have been a kindred spirit but instead suffers for their would-be friendship.

And that’s not even the icing on the cake. The real matter of interest here comes in Hawks’s view of Endeavor. By the time we get to Hawks’s backstory, all of Japan has already learned of Endeavor’s history from Dabi, and the result of the timing feels a smidge tone-deaf, and fails to realize the full potential resonance of the situation. The flashback to young Hawks as a victim of child abuse, who is rescued (unwittingly) when Endeavor arrests his father, is presented to us as the moment when Hawks realized that heroes are real, not merely a fantasy. We see why he developed such an ideal view of heroes, and why he is so specifically loyal to Endeavor ... so just imagine if all that was presented during his showdown with Dabi. Imagine if all that came before the tragic revelation of Toya Todoroki. The true terrible irony, that Hawks was rescued from his abusive father by someone secretly guilty of the same crimes, that Hawks’s whole epiphany of “real heroism” was founded upon one of the most corrupt enforcers of all.

The end result would be the same, I’m sure. After all, this is certainly the same thought process Hawks was going through all along, and his decision to maintain his faith in Endeavor’s personal growth would presumably remain unchanged. But presenting Hawks’s backstory before Dabi’s would have opened up a lot more room for us as the audience to actually see Hawks’s views be challenged. If there’s one real complaint I’ve got about Hawks’s character, it’s that we don’t really tend to see him questioning himself or his actions; whatever happens, he rolls with it and presses on, no matter how his ideals are brought into question. But this simple matter of timing could go a long ways to remedying that, granting the audience the chance to watch Hawks grapple with his personal image of and approach to heroism, and his relationship with Endeavor, rather than allowing most of that to pass unseen in the wake of the war’s end. Even if he would ultimately come to the same conclusion, at least such a narrative structure would provide a much more satisfying presentation of his struggle up to that point.

So, I’m not great at endings, but that brings us to the conclusion of my rambling though process here. To recap, the more I’ve thought about it, the more obvious it is that the backloaded War arc could be remedied, and the following arc only made that more obvious. Why force Mirio’s return so soon when he could be tied in later with Eri mastering her powers and the desperate pleas of Chisaki? Why shove in Bakugo’s hero name when the boy has already made a tremendous impact on the arc, and will be more open to further focus during the conflict with Deku in the next? And why throw in Hawks’s backstory as a standalone chapter at a time when it’s largely irrelevant, when there was such great potential to emotionally contrast him with the backstory of Nagant or Dabi? These are the kinds of things I think about. Little things, really, and honestly the whole reason they stand out to me is just that the rest of the arc around them is so dang fantastic. So … yes. This is the testament to my love for this manga, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk, byeeeeee

#mha #bnha #mha manga spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #paranormal liberation war

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arrestmebobbygoren · 3 years

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Queer Theory Song Analysis: 'Tim McGraw' by Taylor Swift

[Verse 1]

He said the way my blue eyes shined

Put those Georgia stars to shame that night

I said, "That's a lie"

Just a boy in a Chevy truck

That had a tendency of gettin' stuck

On backroads at night

And I was right there beside him all summer long

And then the time we woke up to find that summer gone

Since her first single, Taylor has always shown us her world through the queer female gaze. Even when she is describing herself, she writes women in much more vivid detail than she writes her male characters. In Taylor’s sparkling blue eyes, we can see the infinite possibilities of first love. In her voice, we get a sense of her personality – witty, sarcastic, wise beyond her years, sardonic, maybe a little insecure.

The other person, in contrast, who she characterizes as ‘just a boy’, has even less agency than a broken-down truck. The truck, which gets a personality and a brand name, is something we can picture; the boy, however, is notably absent from the verse.

It is worth noting that this song is entirely existing in the head of the narrator, and therefore the truth of most of this narrative cannot be independently confirmed; in fact, the only think we know to be true is that the narrator said out loud “That’s a lie.” We will come back to this later.

[Chorus]

But when you think Tim McGraw

I hope you think my favorite song

The one we danced to all night long

The moon like a spotlight on the lake

When you think happiness

I hope you think that little black dress

Think of my head on your chest

And my old faded blue jeans

When you think Tim McGraw

I hope you think of me

Taylor will often use male placeholders for female-centric experiences. It is interesting that Tim McGraw does not invoke in Taylor any visions or memories of a male lover. What we see, instead, are snapshots of a woman – in a little black dress, in faded blue jeans – and symbolic representations of womanhood – the moon and water are associated with femininity, fertility and female energy.

Also notable here is Taylor’s pronoun usage, and the way she will purposefully muddy the picture that she painted for us. We see the female narrator in blue jeans; but the boy we were introduced to in the first verse is notably absent. Instead, we are given one old character (“I”; the narrator), and one new character (“you”). Though it is possible to infer that the “you” from the chorus and the “he” from the first verse are the same person, the text is not explicit about this. Rather, it obfuscates, changing the point of view. The narrator is no longer describing someone; she is now in dialogue with them.

We are again missing any glimpse of a male lover. Instead, we are given imagery of the narrator’s blue jeans, and a black dress without a wearer. One queer reading of this is that the narrator is picturing two women – herself in jeans (the pronoun associated with the jeans is ‘my’) and her lover in a black dress (the pronoun associated with the dress is ‘you’). Of course, these could both be the narrator’s clothes -- her lover picturing her in a little black dress, and also in her old faded blue jeans; but this interpretation does not take away from the inherent queerness of the chorus, because we are again only seeing depictions of what a woman is wearing, as told by a female narrator. If there is a man in this story, he is not the subject, nor the object of interest.

[Verse 2]

September saw a month of tears

And thankin' God that you weren't here

To see me like that

But in a box beneath my bed

Is a letter that you never read

From three summers back

It's hard not to find it all a little bittersweet

And lookin' back on all of that, it's nice to believe

We could assume that verse two would take us back to “I” and “he”, but instead, the camera stays on the narrator and “you”. (“He” actually never returns, except in the outro, which is a repeat of the start of the first verse). Here, we see the narrator crying (“you” is unaware); and referencing a letter that she wrote three years prior to when this song takes place (“you” is again unaware).

The contents of the letter are never specified, though we can infer that ‘you’ is the subject of the letter; and that, since it is hidden under the narrator’s bed, it’s contents are personal and private – perhaps feelings that the narrator feels that she has to hide -- from others, from ‘you’, and perhaps even from herself.

It is clear is that the narrator has been thinking about ‘you’ for at least three years now, that ‘you’ is now gone, and that their absence has left the narrator bereft. But the last line of the verse again calls the premise of the song into question, when the narrator reflets “it’s nice to believe.”

It may be that the narrator wants to believe that when ‘you’ hears the narrator’s favorite song, ‘you’ will think of her. Or it may be that the narrator wants to believe that the summer she spent with ‘you’, the long-term object of her affections, was real.

It is possible that the summer that the narrator spent with ‘you’ never happened – that the entire thing played out only in the narrator’s dreams and fantasies. It is also possible that the summer did happen, but not as the narrator wishes. Perhaps ‘you’ is a close friend – someone who the narrator had grown up with and who, over the years, the narrator had developed feelings for, though she could barely admit that to herself, let alone speak those feelings aloud. Now, three years later, ‘you’ has left the picture; and the narrator finds it bittersweet that just as she has come to accept herself for who she is and who she loves, her chance to tell ‘you’ how she feels has passed her by.

[Chorus]

When you think Tim McGraw

I hope you think my favorite song

The one we danced to all night long

The moon like a spotlight on the lake

When you think happiness

I hope you think that little black dress

Think of my head on your chest

And my old faded blue jeans

When you think Tim McGraw

I hope you think of me

This chorus reads differently when seen through the lens of fantasy rather than memory. The narrator hopes that the person who has occupied her thoughts for the past three years will remember her when they are gone. And if they do think of her, she hopes they might see her as she had always wanted them to see her – as someone they could fall in love with. The chorus is romanticized and full of longing; it seems that the narrator is now only in dialogue with herself, and it is unclear if she is remembering a dialogue she had with a lover, or creating a dialogue she wishes she could have had with the person she secretly loves.

[Bridge]

And I'm back for the first time since then

I'm standin' on your street

And there's a letter left on your doorstep

And the first thing that you'll read is:

"When you think Tim McGraw

I hope you think my favorite song

Someday you'll turn your radio on

I hope it takes you back to that place"

At last, the narrator has resolved to let ‘you’ know her feelings. Whether she has decided to tell a former lover that she still thinks of them and hopes they still think of her; or whether she has decided to let someone know for the first time the depth of her feelings; or whether she wishes she had the courage or the right set of circumstances to come clean, is up for interpretation. What is clear is that the narrator has had to work to get herself to the place where she can figuratively or literally unbox her feelings – and that she has no idea how her feelings will be received. We are left on the doorstep where the narrator has laid her heart bare, and we are completely in the dark as to how our coming out will be received.

[Chorus]

When you think happiness

I hope you think that little black dress

Think of my head on your chest

And my old faded blue jeans

When you think Tim McGraw

I hope you think of me

Oh, think of me

Mmmm

[Outro]

He said the way my blue eyes shine

Put those Georgia stars to shame that night

I said, "That's a lie"

We are left with the only thing we know to be true about this story – the fact that the narrator declared out loud that something was a lie. It is curious that the only time the narrator calls out something as being a lie is in the first verse and the outro -- the only parts of the song that reference the mysterious and devoid ‘he’.

Perhaps we are to believe that this is a tell -- and the use of the pronoun ‘he’ is a bait-and-switch, intended to wrap the song and the songwriter in a cloak of heteronormativity. It could also be that the entire song is a lie – a creation, a fantasy.

But whether the narrator is reminiscing or dreaming, the one thing that is clear is that the world that Taylor has built for us is female – that the people who are active in this world are women, the people who are doing the gazing are women, the people being gazed at are women; and that any men who inhabit this world are hinted at, but never seen and never heard.

#taylor swift #song analysis #sapphic #wlw #queer #lgbtq #lesbian #music #original content #tim mcgraw #queer theory #gaylor

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korranguyen · 4 years

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I finished She-Ra

and let me start off by clarifying that I thought this was a good show. It contains such a poignant, hopeful, yet still tangible narrative about cycles of abuse, about agency and the invisible hand, about the nature of true improvement in everyday life, the complexity of relationships and their difficulties and the interdependency we nonetheless embrace. Not to mention the diverse portrayal of a whole host of sexualities and identities. All wrapped up in a cast of multidimensional characters from the get-go.

But what’s missing? Oh, right! The narrative of war. Which leads me into the point of my post.

It’s glaringly obvious to me that the creator is white.

One of the first things that struck me during the show’s pilot was its use of this seemingly Native-inspired motif. I was immediately drawn to it, expecting, with the consciousness of that parallel, that the show would draw upon the memories and scars still present in forthcoming generations, ongoing environmental and societal destruction, and how displaced, disillusioned, yet powerful young people might struggle but eventually reign triumphant over the trauma they have inherited.

But as the series progresses outside of its first season, the story warps into something quite different. Getting to grow up on the victim’s side of the war seems like a good fate— one with little to no emotional baggage, at least in comparison to their counterparts. Outside of Glimmer, we barely see any common or chronic legacy of trauma or anger towards war-related loss (unless it’s directed towards Entrapta). The problem with recognizing Adora’s Horde jacket disappears within the first three episodes. Being a member of the Rebellion (literally consigning to being a soldier) isn’t portrayed as a tragic fate anywhere past their initial defeat and disbanding: they all just tend to hang out in little camps together, bonded by love and the power of friendship, mostly dissociated and unmarred by whatever tragedy might belie their hypothetical people. The whole war and sides thing functions more as a plot driver and frame for the intimate conflicts the show is actually concerned with, whether it be Adora’s shifting sense of identity, her Messiah complex and never-ending assumption of responsibility, her conflicting feelings towards Catra, or the strained friendships between her, Bow, and Glimmer. Even when a character (Mermista) does suffer a significant loss, the sense of loss and distress she faces resolves in... what? Two episodes? And trivialized to getting over it with a bubble bath and ice cream?

(Compare this to ATLA, where the Gaang was constantly connecting with others through their shared and ever-present generational pain: Haru, Jet, Lee and his family, Suki, Hama, Baby Hope and her family, the entire populace of every town we see in the show... Yes, I know both of the creators there were white too, but my point still stands)

The princess’s temporary losses and friendship struggles pale in comparison to the suffering of the two most sympathetic characters in the show: Catra and Hordak. The trauma they bear from their unique personal histories overwhelms any kind of baggage (or lack thereof) their victims ever have to cope with. Which I don’t have any problem with, per sé— I loved all of these arcs and found our two antiheros such tragic and fascinating characters constructed uniquely by their war-related situations, posing so many fantastic philosophical and moral questions I can and will dissect and analyze with vigor and enthusiasm and appreciation— I just mean to point out that it speaks for the creator’s understanding of war and its true ramifications to use it as a framing device, only to largely abandon it in preference of a different type of story.

She-Ra was never a show about the victims of war. It was never intended to deliberate upon the trauma of civilian warfare, and it was never meant to represent the victims of conquest the Rebellion actually paralleled.

It's not a problem to convey sympathy and cycles of abuse in a much less global sense and focus your narrative on that! It’s not a problem to just have a cheerful kid’s show about friendship and love and hanging out in big castles having sleepovers and proms! I’m just pointing out that the way the whole war and conquest narrative was shoved aside this easily speaks for the background of the writers and the priorities they had coming into the drawing board.

#she ra #spop #spop critical #writing/criticism

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linkspooky · 4 years

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The Fall of Hawks and Twice.

Hawks choosing to sacrifice Twice is not purely for the greater good. In effect it’s Twice repeating what he always does, choosing to sacrifice himself. Twice essentially is twice, they’re both two-faced, they both experienced a fall, they both long for an easy life. Hawks choice to attack his foil, his shadow in Twice, says a lot about his own character. Hawks and Twice are so close it’s essentially an act of self harm. He’s beating up, and threatening to stab a person who looks like himself. Hawks is a character defined by his self destruction. Icarus is a famous story and metaphor for self-destruction, Icarus chooses to fly too close to the sun. Hawks is an icarus who wants to let himself fall, and because of that he deliberately chooses to push people like Twice who are so much like himself over the edge. Hawks and Twice are two characters who fall into conflict not because of their differences, but because of how similiar they are. More on their foiling underneath the cut:

1. Hawks Destroys Himself.

When Hawks said “You’re a very kind-hearted person” what he meant was “This is what makes you an easy target.” There’s an expression of remorse with those words as well, but you have to remember the lessons that Hawks’ learned through life. His first major action was saving a bus-load of children from an accdient as a child, and his reward for that “kind-hearted” action was to immediately get taken advantage of by every adult in his life.

Hawks has been taught over and over again by life that his good nature, the part of him that wants to save other people is something that makes him usable. To the point where saving people is no longer something he consciously chooses to do, it’s a function of who he is. The same way a robot programmed to save someone from a burning building would carry that job out without fail.

The one image we see of Hawks’ childhood with the public safety bureau he’s blindfolded. This is an important symbol for a character whose name is literally “Taka” Hawk and “Mi” See, visible, idea. Raptors in particular are known for their eyesight. Being able to see everything is important to Hawks, because seeing everything, knowing everything, visibility, and knowledge are both things that give him agency.

But as a child Hawks’ agency is completely stripped from him. He is literally blindfolded. He treasures it so much now because there was a time in the past where it was completely taken from him.

As a person Hawks is very self aware. He knows on some level that his dedication to saving others is what allows other people to use him so much. His way of regaining control of that has always been to just let himself be used, and say it was for a good cause.

Hawks’ tendency is towards self destruction. It’s the same as All Might saving people until all of his internal organs are irrepariably damaged and he is going to barely live past forty. Hawks was never treated as an individual in his life, and therefore he has almost no individual self-worth. He will always view himself as expendable, and always choose the option that damages him the most. However, this is a learned behavior. This is literally what Hawks’ was taught to do by the hero commission. Sacrifice yourself to save people, they’ve put this idea in his head since he was a literal child. The hero commission views him as someone without agency, without someone who has a choice in his own actions. Hawks as a person does not really exist outside of what the hero commission tells him to do. His value and worth as a person is entirely determined by how useful he is to others.

Hawks knows that he doesn’t really have a choice. That they’re taking advantage of the little boy inside of him that still genuinely does want to save people. However, he deludes himself and pretends that he is going along with this, that he does have a choice in order to reclaim what little agency he has left. Hawks chooses to self destruct. He flies towards the sun deliberately.

2. Hawks and Dissociation Disorders

So earlier I made the claim that both Twice and Hawks suffer from dissociation, it’s just that Hawks doesn’t really show his symptoms on the surface, and Twice is very obvious about it.

Now I don’t think there’s a like textbook diagnosis for Twice, but he displays a lot of symptoms for dissociation in his writing. Let’s do a quick review for Dissocation Disorders in general, I’m not talking about DID so much as the general category grouped together.

Dissociative disorders (DD) are conditions that involve disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity, or perception. People with dissociative disorders use dissociation as a defense mechanism, pathologically and involuntarily.

Under this branch term there are four general types:

Dissocative Amnesia:

The Sudden inability to recall information of a personal nature due to forgetfulness or other organic conditions (We see Shigaraki do this).

Dissociative Fugue

Inability to recall personal identity and past with confusion about personal identity or assumption of new identity. (We see Shigaraki and Dabi both do this. Twice too doesn’t know if he’s the original or the real Twice or just a copy)

Depersonalization

Persistent symptoms involving changing in perception, and being detached from one’s own thoughts and body. May feel things are unreal or have a sense of being in a dreamlike state.

Dissociative Identity

Existence of two or more distinct alters, each with its own memories, attitudes, and perceptions. (Twice suffers from some form of this he at least hears two distinct voices in his head that argue with each other, but diagnosis is a very messy thing and he could overlap with a few other categories. IDK if Hori intended to show he has two distinct alters or just that he hears voices).

Hawks mostly shows signs of depersonalization, but I would argue just like Dabi, Shigaraki and Twice he also has his moments of clear dissociative fuge from his own thoughts, and intentions. Remember Hawks is incredibly high functioning a lot of the signs he shows of his mental illness are very subtle but let’s go over them quickly.

Its mentioned several times that the expression on Hawks’ face almost never matches what he’s feeling inside. He’s completely inscrutable to other people.

Even if they want to, literally no one in his social circle can understand him. How much of this is really Hawks being the best spy ever, and how much is Hawks literally not being able to show it or communicate properly. A severely depersonalized Hawks would be so detached from his own emotions he would essentially be unaware what he is feeling as well.

I can imagine Hawks smiling in a mirror for hours so he knows when to smile at the right time, and knows when to make the right faces to react to things so he doesn’t intentionally set everybody off. If Hawks has to make all of those reactions intentionally as part of an act, if he doesn’t intuit those things naturally there’s a serious disconnect betweehn what he is feeling and how he’s able to display and communicate those feelings. It’s kind of like how autistic people don’t always react “appropriately” or at least what everybody else considers to be appropraite. (There’s a lot of overlap in these mental illness symptoms).

If Hawks has to continually at all times act like he’s reading off of a script when he’s interacting with other people, even just having normal conversations than that means there’s serious unreality he’s experiencing.

Hawks also expresses guilt in relatively the same way that Dabi does. The scene itself is even paralelled. Hawks says I’m sorry in his internal narration, but does not show it in his face, or even communicate those feelings.

Dabi then literally in the next panel when asked if he feels guilt for the people he’s killed, says that he spent so much time thinking about it he went crazy. Dabi and Hawks are foiling here to show that they suffer from the same symptoms. Both of them have to continually dissociate themselves from their own emotions in order to deal with the guilt that piiles up. Dissocation, above everything else is a way to relieve stress by separating you from yourself, your own body, the pain you feel, etc. Hawks just like Dabi thinks about these things to the point where he goes crazy.

The connetion betwen Dabi and Hawks is just like that of Twice and Hawks, what Dabi expresses, Hawks conceals. Hawks interanlizes all of his damage and destroys himself, Dabi externalizes all of his damage and lashes out at the world around him but the result is the same, internalizing, externalizing, its still exteremly unhealthy behavior.

Tumblr user @katsubf made a post about this here.

If you compare Shigaraki, Dabi, Hawks and the way they’re drawn Hawks almost always is covering his mouth, whereas Dabi and Shigaraki have their mouth open.

In the same post katsubf points out one of the few times that Hawks has his mouth open is right before he’s made the decision to kill Jeanist.

Once again in a narrative of dissociation this is once again used to illustrate the disconnect between Hawks and his own emotions. Despite the fact that Hawks is doing this for what he considers to be good reasons, we also see him smile inappropriately like a villain right before deciding to stab Jeanist. Hawks can’t make his face match his true emotions. He smiles at this time because his long repressed emotions are coming to the surface.

That’s why Dabi and Shigaraki are maniacally laughing, and Hawks has to cover his mouth. That’s the difference between the repressed and the expressed. Shigaraki and Dabi make the decision to show how damaged they are and wear their scars on the surface. Shigaraki has his wrinkled up and scarred face, Dabi proudly wears his burn scars. When Dabi and Shigaraki feel something, everybody else knows about it. They’re way of dealing with their emotions has always been to express them. Whereas Hawks is such a considerably repressed individual that he’s never once expressed his true emotions in front of others. Shigaraki and Dabi have to express themselves, they find their identity in rebelling against everything that tells them to suppress themselves.

For Dabi and Shigaraki the bad feelings must always be expressed on the surface, even if it becomes someone else’s problem. Hawks response has always been the opposite, he always pushes the bad feelings deep inside himself and lies about them in hopes that if he represses himself perfectly the bad feelings will go away.

Hawks literally represses himself to such an extreme extent that literally nobody around him understands what his true feelings are, and Hawks is so dissociated from himself he probably does not have that good of an idea either. And this is what Hawks wants. This is what Hawks thinks he has to be in order to help others. Hawks has to distance himself from his own emotions, enver let his feelings get in the way, and do as he’s told.

However, the thing about repression is it doesn’t work. It doesn’t hold. His true feelings are going to come to the surface eventually, hence why we see Hawks smiling when he’s about to cut apart Jeanist, not because he feels happy about it in the moment but because Hawks is so insanely disconnected from his own emotions that he doesn’t know what he feels.

In summary, Hawks is mentally ill. He doesn’t cope with those feelings of mental illness in a good way either. There’s something very sinister about the people who Hawks chooses to target. This shouldn’t be a surprise there’s always been a dark edge to his character.

3. Hawks and Twice

If I were to characterize Hawks in a word I would say he’s avoidant. Hawks can’t let his emotions conflict with what he has to do, he doesn’t really know who he is, he can’t know who he is, so rather than dealing with those emotions he avoids them.

So, why target Twice? It’s because of all the people that Hawks has interacted with, Twice is the person who got the closest to Hawks’ true self.

It’s important to remember that concealment isn’t just something that Hawks does for the sake of his hero work, it’s also literally a survival mechanism to him. Hawks has to know everything and see everything, but nobody is allowed to get close to him, or know anything about him because just like the hero commission if they have that information they will use it against him.

Hawks has literally never even been taught to communicate in a healthy and open manner, he’s been taught “negotiation skills.” Hawks just isn’t a person, and Hawks just doesn’t allow himself to be a person either. Twice is someone who shares several parallels with Hawks. Both of them didn’t really have any agency in their situations. They both lost their agency due to poverty, Hawks lived in a terrible home before the heroes took him in, Twice had no relatives to take him in, lost his job, and became homeless.

However, unlike Hawks, Twice is someone very honest about himself and his desires. Hawks does not trust a single person, whereas what Twice desires the most is people he can trust and be trusted by.

Hawks and Twice both experienced a fall through no fault of their own, to the point where they lost agency and control over their own lives. They were both isolated from the rest of the world and only had themselves to count on, they were also both minors at the time.

However, they were taken in by different people. This is what the police and hero society as a whole say to people who’s fallen.

This is what Giran says to Twice who had taken a similiar fall. Even though by the time Twice lost his mind it was his fault a little bit, for deciding to rob, and try to live the easy life of crime.

The response of hero society is “Let them fall” whereas Twice was told that there are people in the world who are like him and suffering the same way, and he can trust them.

So in these opposite environments Hawks and Twice have internalized very different ideas. Those Hawks and Twice are people who have fallen, they came to the opposite conclusion. Hawks believes I should fall. Twice believes no one like me should fall.

When Twice encounters someone like him, he tries to reach out and accept them because he was saved by that same acceptance.

If you compare both characters the idea of self destruction runs rampant in them. Twice evens says several times, his greatest enemy is himself, he can’t trust himself anymore, he is symbolically beaten up by mulitple versions of himself. He has let himself fall again and again.

Twice also says as much, the choice to fall is also the choice to run away. Hawks avoids, Twice has already directly confronted who he is. He’s felt his pain while Hawks literally spends every second of his day not feeling his pain.

So you have Twice who believes the exact opposite of what Hawks does. Hawks wants to disappear and to make all of his personal feelings vanish underneath being a hero, whereas Twice is someone who states outright that the most important thing is understanding who you are.

What we see in Hawks and Twice’s confrontration is the culmination of an idea set up by Twice ever since chapter 115. Heroes only exist to save virtuous people and no one else. They exist to maintain a status quo that will always intentionally let people like Twice fall because dealing with them would be an inconvenience on everybody else.

Twice is Hawks’ literal opposite. He’s very aware of what Hawks is in denial about over himself. Hawks believes that he is on the side of heroes, on the side of saving people, but Hawks himself is someone who is not going to be saved by the current hero society, he’ll be used up and thrown out. Hawks is someone known for cheekily expressing his true feelings, but he actually always wears a mask at all times. Whereas Twice is someone who becomes his real self, when he puts a mask on, and Twice having no filter at all means he’s always expressing what he clearly thinks.

So what does Hawks do when he’s confronted with such a person? When he’s confronted with someone who wants what he wants, but is honest about it rather than lying to himself like Hawks always does.

Remember Hawks copes poorly. If I were to say his coping mechanism, I would say it’s “Do everything you can to maintain the lie.” Hawks is in spy mode 24/7 to the point where he not only has to convince everybody else around him, he must also take steps to convince himself.

Look at the way Hawks interacts with Endeavor. Endeavor is almost always threatening him, being angry and irritable, and he always suspects something. Even though Hawks deeply respects Endeavor and does things to help him, he’s treated poorly by the other, and it mirrors the way the hero system treats him as well. Even though Hawks is essentially a good person always sacrificing himself for others, he’s treated with suspicion, derision and forced to do thankless dirty work.

Twice from the start always treated Hawks the exact opposite. He treated Hawks as a person. He immediately saw who Hawks was as a person, and every time Hawks helped him out he thanked him for it. Twice is an unbelievably honest person in front of Hawks, and not only that unlike Edneavor and the commission he actually cares about what Hawks’ true feelings are and asks him about them.

We see as Hawks gets closer to Twice, in his mind Endeavor starts to turn away from him. Twice wants Hawks to meet Shigaraki because he knows Shigaraki would accept him and give him a place for belong. When Hawks is around Twice, there is someone who would accept his true self, and try to support him.

And Hawks hates that.

Hawks entire world view is built around always repressing himself, concealing himself, he can’t have his true face ever show. If you analyze the two people who Hawks has targeted so far there’s a common thread between them.

Jeanist, physically missing a lung and injured.

Twice, a dropout from society, quite literally insane and violent.

Hawks considers himself expendable. Damaged Goods. Someone who is eventually going to take a fall. Hawks ackonwledges that he’s going to be thrown out one day, but propels himself forward telling himself he needs to accomplish saving all the people he needs to save before that point.

It’s because Hawks has internalized the idea that he’s expendable, that he willingly sacrifices people like Jeanist and Hawks who are also expendable in the same way he is. He goes out of his way to target them and kill them to achieve his goals.

Hawks isn’t doing this for strictly good or evil reasons. There’s a deeply personal element to this for Hawks, and he’s essentially proving his own world view. This is a world where damaged people like Hawks have to get sacrificed for the sake of everybdyo else’s peace and well being.

Because Twice is so much like Hawks, it’s an act of self destruction. What Hawks really wants is to destroy the part of himself that Twice represents, the part that wants to trust others, to be accepted for who he is. Hawks believes if he permanently kills this part of himself he’ll finally be able to do what he needs to do.

It’s not really some great act of heroism, it’s incredibly unhealthy. Hawks is stabbing himself over and over because that’s what the hero commission has taught him to do.

However, there is still hope for Hawks. Twice has said he wants Hawks to meet Shigaraki.

Hawks has been set up to meet Shigaraki for a long time in the story. I doubt either of them will die before this meeting gets to take place just because it’s been brought up so many times. When Shigaraki finally does meet Hawks maybe there will be hope for him yet, because unlike Twice who was told that there are people like him in the world, and that damaged people can have friends too Hawks has still not been told these things. Hawks needs someone to tell him that he can’t let others trample on his feelings even for the greater good.

#mha meta #my hero academia meta #lov meta #twice #hawks #jin bubaigawara #takami keigo #dissociation #hawks meta #league of villains meta

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conspirwbytheorist-inactive · 4 years

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Some Cinder Thoughts

So I saw this post from @hoepunkausta a while back and was going to reply. Then I realized that this was the first time I’d actually sat down and taken a good look at Cinder and holy cow is there a lot to this character. Anyways, it got me thinking about Cinder's potential background and, while I've always seen her as a foil and tied to Ruby, I never realized how she could potentially tie in to ALL of team RWBY. Which is. . .pretty awesome from not only a narrative point of view but in regards to character redemption as well. Full take under the cut.

TLDR: If we assume Cinder’s backstory is in keeping with the popular version of the Cinderella tale, it ties-in to a lot of the our heroes’ traumas, giving each of them a reason to relate to her. Currently, Salem maintains control over Cinder by presenting herself as the fairy godmother, because were Cinder to see her as the stepmother she was, she would potentially leave. Were she to break away from Salem, recognizing her shared traumas with the members of Team RWBY could provide her with the connection needed to grow and heal as a person.

***Content Warning: Mentions of abuse/abuser tactics***

Intro

The post itself is pretty simple. Do we think Cinder came from an abusive background or do we think she came from a normal family that died under tragic circumstances before she met Salem? I’d always gotten the vibe that Cinder came to Salem searching for power after a life of rather horrific abuse similar to a more traditional Cinderella story.

The way she craves power, not just as a resource but as something she desperately needs for her own survival (her line about Pyrrha “taking her fate into her own hands” in V2 and the “I refuse to starve” of V7 come to mind), leads to believe that she came from a home that didn’t allow her much freedom or agency. She seems to know exactly what it feels like to not be in control of her own life and, now that she has found her escape from it (Salem), refuses to ever go back.

But how does this translate into ties to Team RWBY? She obviously has been foiled with Ruby, but the other 3? Kind of a big leap to make. Well, stick with me. Naturally, when thinking of a Cinder backstory, it makes sense to look at her main allusion, the Cinderella fairy tale.

A Cinder Story

Cinderella doesn’t start her story with an evil stepmother and step sisters. By most accounts she started out fairly privileged. With that in mind, imagine this woman, who we have come to know as a murdering power-driven villain, as a small child with seemingly everything she needed. A loving family, relative financial stability, decent social standing, etc. until one day, out of nowhere. Her mother dies. And suddenly she finds her world turned upside down. Her father remarries to a woman who loathes her and, who, after his death, does her best to control her, isolate her. Everyday she is told she is lesser than her sisters, meant to act as a servant. To cope with the difficult circumstances, she daydreams about a perfect place (in the main story, the ball/landed nobility but in Cinder’s case perhaps the opulence of Atlas) where if she can just prove herself good enough, endure enough pain, she can finally earn a happy ever after.

Now, what’s interesting here is that in just this bare bones outline of the Cinderella story, we touch on the key traumas of each of our four protagonists. Ruby and Summer’s death, Weiss’s isolation and molding under Jacques, Blake’s experience of racism as a faunus and abuse under Adam and Yang’s attempting to live up to Summer’s ideal to cope with abandonment. Which is really fricking cool because it means if ANY of this hypothetical backstory were to come to light, at least SOMEONE if not EVERYONE from the team has a potential point of empathy for where Cinder is coming from.

Something I love about RWBY is how it (for the most part) does its best to show how people are not inherently good or evil, but rather products of their circumstances and environment. So imagine the narrative and thematic potential of a villain for whom each of our cast could theoretically look at and think “Wow. That really could have been me” instead of “look at this monster”. A moment where they realize that, had things gone a bit differently, had they not been a position to cope with their traumas and actively choose to love instead of being engulfed by their pain and anger, they very much could have been this story’s villains rather than its heroes. A moment where, through Cinder, they concretely realize themselves as products of choice rather than destiny and, in that same vein, perhaps Cinder can see the same for herself.

Okay, but what about the Salem part? If we reduce “badness” all to a matter of choice ignores another key theme of RWBY: the importance of an awesome support network and team to back you up. At every point of the series our heroes have had someone to help them. Ruby had Yang and Qrow growing up before her team and JNR after Beacon, Weiss had Winter and Klein, Blake Ilia and Sun, and Yang had Ruby growing up and Tai after Beacon. But who did Cinder have to help her through her darkest times? No one. Except Salem.

The Case of the Fairy Stepmother

That brings me to the second part of the question: Is Salem the stepmother or Fairy Godmother? Honestly I think it’s both. The real question (and what I think will be the biggest obstacle for Cinder growing as a character) is how does Cinder see it?

In the Cinderella story, the Fairy Godmother and Evil Stepmother play opposing roles. Stepmother does all that she can to keep Cinderella underfoot and away from realizing her full potential as a person while the Fairy Godmother steps in when Cindy is at her lowest and uses her magic to give her all that she needs to get that “Happily Ever After”. In theory it should be impossible for one person to be both at the same time, but turns out it’s a matter of perspective.

Imagine Cinder at her lowest point. Maybe she was a no-name seamstress in Argus who daydreamed about being swept up into the glamour of the Atlas elite. Maybe she was a scared kid who saw becoming a huntress as her ticket out of poverty and into a life of adventure. Imagine her getting that wish of her own accord. Playing the game, doing everything right, biding her time until finally, she escapes - only to find herself trapped in a new way. (a Prince Charming who controls her as a plaything, a student not willing to be a child soldier, there are so many possibilities here). Only to see that the system was stacked against her in way where she could never escape it under her own power. That’s. . . a lot to process and a feeling of hopelessness that I think a lot of us can relate to (especially in our current world-state).

Then Salem comes in and not only promises Cinder the power to create her own destiny, but delivers it. Cinder goes from having almost nothing to magically receiving the means to accomplish anything she desired. All because of Salem. I see a lot of people question why Cinder is so loyal to Salem, but given this view, it’d be very difficult for her not to feel indebted to her savior in some regard.

Furthermore, Salem seems relatively fond of Cinder. She defends her from ridicule in Volume 4, goes out of her way to praise her strengths and, honestly, seems to have more patience with her than the rest of WTCH. Given her backstory, I wouldn’t even be remotely surprised if what drew Salem to Cinder was the chance to give this angry young woman the power she wished that she had had prior to her curse. It’s almost. . . motherly. In a way I would expect a millennia old woman driven mad by isolation and Grimm Lakes and a very traumatized Cinder to view motherhood.

But, that doesn’t mean that the two have a healthy relationship. We as the audience see how Salem’s “love” comes at a price. She never hesitates to keep Cinder underfoot: oscillating between praise and threats of punishment, criticizing Cinder’s discomfort in Volume 4 as weakness, and making it clear that Cinder is only important to her insofar as her usefulness. The whole “Without you I am nothing” really illustrates how far out of her way Salem goes to make Cinder painfully aware that all that she has, all that she has accomplished is because of Salem’s magic. Salem hasn’t helped Cinder as a benefactor. A benefactor would let Cinder proceed to live her own life. Salem has instead taken advantage of Cinder’s lack of any support network and feelings of isolation to establish herself as Cinder’s sole source of support.

While we as an audience can see how abusive this dynamic is, Cinder can’t. Right now, she’s more or less fully embedded in Salem’s manipulation tactics - Salem’s narrative is her truth. And, even if she does come to see it (don’t think I missed the hints of resentment in the trailer), there’s nowhere for her to go. What can she do? Go rogue? The woman has an entire Grimm army! Turn to Emerald, Mercury, or Neo? They’re all either children or also in on all this! Just like the Stepmother, so long as Salem keeps Cinder feeling isolated, the chances of her escaping or changing remain slim.

Seeds of Support and Redemption

So, that leaves us with two things Cinder needs in order to break away from Salem:

Recognizing Salem as a controlling/toxic “Stepmother” figure instead of a “Fairy Grimm-Mother” and that this is NOT what she wants out of life.

Finding connections/a support network she can go to after leaving

This is why Cinder having parallels to all of Team RWBY is so frickin cool. I’m still not 100% certain of a full Cinder redemption. Like, I love her as a character. But part of the reason I love her is that she is a hot mess who will go full ride or die no matter the situation. So getting her to even pause and go “is this what I want out of my life?” is probably going to take something pretty drastic to rattle her current convictions.

However, that being said, I find it really suspicious that the team would take a character that could be used to parallel the traumas of all four main heroes and just hang her out to dry. In a different show, I might think they could set her up with a death as a warning for our protagonists. But, that doesn’t make sense. Every possible warning I can think of motivating Cinder’s death is already being conveyed by another character. The dangers of falling to spite? Adam. Isolation causes only weakness and pain? Raven. Sacrificing humanity for the sake of power is a crap idea? Ironwood.

Instead, these seems like a great way to set up a situation where Cinder can find connection. After all, if our team could potentially look at Cinder and go “This could have been me”, what’s to stop Cinder from looking at them, seeing their pain and how they support each other, and going “Huh. Maybe this could be me?”. Especially if something radical has just happened to get her to want to break away from Salem for whatever reason. Maybe I’m just crazy, maybe I’ve been sitting on this too long, but I think that that would be really cool for a show about the power of love and connection to have its longest-term “villain” illustrate how, given support and humanity, victims of abuse can grow and find genuine connection with people.

#cinder fall #rwby #rwby analysis #rwby theory #cw abuse #cw mentions of abuse #This thing took me over a month to write #but i regret nothing #all of this is speculation btw #feel free to comment thoughts!#salem #salem rwby #long post

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vaguely-concerned · 3 years

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I've been reading through your very very good mando meta (A+ stuff) and I got to the post about how the sensory experience of the show is so tactile and weighty and real and it's such a great point - and it hit me that that's also part of why luke felt so wrong to me. The cg luke is so... detached from the world of the show bc otherwise so much care was put in to make things feel so real and he just didn't feel real at all? It's like a videogame cutscene was spliced into the footage

Yeah that’s a really good call, anon! luke’s arrival fucks with the narrative in so many ways for me, and that is definitely one of them; he just visually looks like this stiff strange weightless thing apart from everything else and grogu’s meant to go from the sensory grounded, real, loving presence of din that’s been established and developed for two seasons to THAT and I’m supposed to think that’s a good thing because hey look it’s the mirage of luke skywalker aren’t you feeling nostalgic??? (hilariously that uncanny valley effect is often deliberately used in horror media, which is definitely more what it evoked for me lol. POV Bad Wrong Digital Fae Mark Hamill turns up and fuckn takes your baby, and thus one half of the main emotional through line of this entire goddamn show, away to potentially be in the middle of a second jedi youngling massacre unless you’ll get him back in time, and the narrative sincerely expects you to thank him. if they at least had the balls to intentionally present luke as a threatening figure because that’s what he is in this story, to this character, I might still buy that they had some interesting metanarrative stuff going on with this and give it some benefit of the doubt, but I Do Not)

and it’s so odd b/c if I still believed they knew what they were doing with pacing and act structure and character arcs I’d say this is meant to be din’s Darkest Moment point, ala what ESB did for the original trilogy. no baby (also established as his link to love and healing and hope :) ), no ship and thus no way to even go back to how he used to live, no real community, no agency, just this fucking sword he doesn’t want shoving him into a Destiny that doesn’t matter to him or to the audience. y’know what luke represents to din, within the logic of the show itself and not the larger star wars canon? a threat. a harbinger of separation and emotional annihilation, a complete breakdown of self. and that is precisely what he felt like to me, being introduced mainly as committing stunning, almost otherworldly violence, and then taking away not only everything that is important and soft and resonant on this show, but taking the visual language of din’s past, trauma and love away from him with the way the baby looking back over his shoulder is shot. I’d say this is more of an insult to luke as a character than tlj could ever be, straight up coming in to separate a child from a father, and without even a promise they could still see each other sometimes. why are luke and din basically enacting their own traumas on this baby and it’s like. at worst neutrally coded??? (sidenote: have we gotten any, really ANY actually new biographical information about din in this entire season lol? it feels so weird to have to be like ‘actually I’m... I’m sort of invested in your main character, may I please have some proper time with him?’ for a whole season)

and if -- IF -- I still believed they would honor the basic fucking tenets of storytelling and the storyteller/audience contract of trust, I’d sort of be exited for that, because there can -- there should! -- be a darkest moment, as long as you can trust that the writer knows why it’s the darkest moment and what’s needed to get you out of that dark tunnel and back to the light shining stronger and wiser than before on the other side. like okay maybe it’s good the separation happens at the end of a season, that means we can have a time skip and get to the reunion quicker instead of suffering through the loneliness in real time! that might mean just sending the baby off to someone else is not actually the end thematic goal here, and we’ve gotten that failed option out of the way relatively early! what’s been broken can heal. but the amount of trust you have to reestablish with me as a viewer when you relegate one of the most important emotional beats of your entire story to a hurried 5 minute thing that’s completely overshadowed by an uncanny CGI CAMEO that turns your main character into a side thing people barely mention after the episode, with no conflict, the baby seemingly doesn’t even want to stay that much, it’s solved within minutes? immense. near impossible. it’s basically admitting that the writer was less invested in din, in the very soul the show, than I was as an audience, it’s such a lazy thoughtless breach of trust. if you want access to break my heart again you better do it a h e l l of a lot more skillfully than that, mr favreau, I don’t let amateur narrative heart surgeons in there to just fumble around as they please lol

(also star wars is so obsessed with this theme of selflessness vs. selfishness and that being the only way to conceive of morality that it presents din having to let his self be completely destroyed as a noble selfless thing to do l m a o I just want to reiterate once more: asking a parent to completely give up their TODDLER CHILD for good when that really shouldn’t be necessary isn’t about selflessness, it’s just cruel. if I dare hope for anything truly good in this show anymore it’s future seasons examining why in the goddamn world anyone thought this was the only possible way to do things when the galaxy is so endlessly huge and diverse and unexpected, but with how they’ve been shrinking the world more and more this season... yeah I’m not holding my breath.)

#IT'S SO LAZY! IT'S SUCH LAZY FUCKING WRITING AND I AM STILL I R A T E #(thank you so much for your kind words tho <3)#the mandalorian #the mandalorian spoilers #star wars #I think some of that focus on grounded sensory details fell away in all the cameos and ~*excitement*~ this season #which makes me sad b/c presumably that's how they'll be going forward too #Anonymous #...i'm so sorry I went on a rant on you there but clearly this has been building up for me huh hahaha #your ask was very lovely and insightful I am simply filled to the brink with wrath #if you liked this episode I'm happy for you! don't come to me to convince me that how I feel about it is wrong thank you #I will not be able to be reasonable in response yet (or possibly ever lol)

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theprologues · 3 years

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A lot, A LOT, of kaylors still believe (or at least believe in the possibility) but they have decided to no longer post publicly about it. I’ve talked to people privately who simply don’t want to be embarrassed anymore, don’t want to be like larries (widely ridiculed), and some who simply think that the addition of the baby makes it unethical or unseemly to talk about it it publicly. Some because the baby has no say in this and will one day read all of this. Some are no longer rooting for them because wealthy people who choose to bring a kushner baby into the world rather than live bravely, is unethical so they don’t care anymore. On the other hand we have Kaylors like you and the few remaining here on tumblr who believe Taylor and Karlie want to see us talking about it because they’re sending signals and why would they bother with those signals if not for fans to pick up on them? And how would they know if we’re picking up on them if we don’t talk about it publicly? If it’s real, they want it. If it’s fake, they wouldn’t care.

Personally, I do think it’s best at this point to keep the conversations to a minimum and be careful about how we talk about it. I know you already do this. I think Taylor moved out of the “spread the message to as many people as possible so either I don’t have to actually come out or it won’t be a surprise when I do, because it will just be generally accepted by most” phase into a “let’s keep this on the downlow” phase, because let’s be real, a secret baby is a big deal and the secret has to be believable, hence heavy toe stunting and escalation of the feud. I think the few who still talk about it is just about the right amount. To keep it alive (barely) without having it be prominent like it was a year+ ago. And I assume the longer josh sticks around, the fewer it will be.

All that being said, speculating about what they’re going to to do next, especially with any sort of authority, is silly at this point. They’ve proven us wrong so many times, it’s time to just observe without making predictions. Also, with hindsight, to reevaluate everything we thought was true and rethink in case our impressions about certain things were wrong. One incorrect detail in how we think things are/were can change the entire narrative of this story. And it’s also time to accept that it could be this way for a long time. Time will tell how things go and who is right I think, but we need to accept we have absolutely no agency in this. Most won’t stick around or they’ll just hang back and check back in when things change. And that’s fine. No one has any obligation to be some sort of kaylor warrior.

I don’t mean this as a policing of your blog. I’m just stating my opinion.

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graphicabyss · 4 years

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Avalanche and the Fallout

So, last time I commented on Tegoshi’s tell-all book and now it’s released and the damage is done. Such an appropriate name seeing as avalanches are sudden and destroy everything in their path. As I read the book and the related news, I struggled with both the need to convey how I felt and stop giving him so much time and attention. Sure enough, I ended up with a long review/analysis/bitching post. It's rough and mean and very long so please read at your own risk.

Facts first. The book released on Aug 5 was originally supposed to run 10,000 copies but they reportedly increased it to 50,000 due to high demand. Tegoshi also held a press-conference to talk about it on release day. It ended up being one of the best-selling books on Amazon and top seller in Entertainment.

It’s hard to talk about the book briefly. It’s 270 pages long and I had absolutely no intention to read it all but still ended up reading a good deal and words just kept pouring out of me. I could not imagine how much this book would fuck me up. I knew it would be bad but honestly I was shocked about the publication because it’s both incredibly cruel to so many people and incredibly stupid as it’s going to severely damage his reputation and future career.

I won’t even try to pretend to be objective because there’s nothing objective about the book itself. It’s a book of unsolicited opinions. If there’s one word I’d to describe it it’s ‘delusional’. Every chapter reeks of vanity and a sense of superiority as he judges every single celebrity he came in contact with and gives plenty of advice. It's a mess of careless words hastily and haphazardly thrown together in an attempt to let the world know the Real Tegoshi.

Of course, that's not how he sees it. He mentions the likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates saying their books give people motivation and inspiration and he wanted to do the same. Bitch, you haven't done anything to get you on that level yet.

There’s a video on his channel where he goes to the publisher to talk about the book and while he says about sending an inspirational message, the publisher only wants him to talk about Yukirin and other juicy gossip. And it’s not like poor Tegoshi was tricked into it, he readily agreed to it and he knew full well what he was doing. The book’s cover does not advertise life advice, it advertises celebrity gossip. Also nudes, which by the way, turned out to be mere topless shots. Add false advertising to the list of offenses. He really gave Bunsun a run for their money discussing half his scandals and even adding some extra. He keeps saying he only wants to clear up the rumours but somehow ends up saying things that make absolutely no difference or even make him look worse. It's like if Bunshun said "Tegoshi was partying with 5 younger women, ran around naked and then passed out drunk" and Tegoshi would be like "That's not true! There were 4 women!"

He also said he absolutely could not hide how he truly felt. And that seems to make sense except it’s one thing to just be honest and reveal some of your relevant thoughts in a carefully worded manner. But this is another thing entirely. It’s some kind of emotional exhibitionism, a compulsory desire to share his every thought and opinion on everything and everyone. Dear, there is middle ground between hiding how you really feel and giving your every single opinion. That doesn't make you honest. It makes you an asshole.

The book is divided into small chapters and most are about NEWS, past and present members and related topics, as well as most other JE artists. Some chapters are about the women he had or did not have relations with. Some are about the people he admires and his delusional plans for the future. Only a small number of chapters do not mention any names and talk about his personal experiences and thoughts.

At this point, I do not even have all the scans but I have more than enough to go off the parts I read. First off, I am now allergic to the word ‘positive’ and the phrase ‘as a man’. What the fuck does that even mean? Also, a lot of the stuff he says in the book is not new in any way and was either said before or known through other sources or rumours. There are hardly any shocking revelations anywhere, at least if you were following him as closely as I have. But hearing all these terrible opinions at once is sure a treat.

Actually, he himself described it as whining and that seems accurate because he does that for a good portion of the book, explaining how unfairly he (and other people) was treated by the industry and the press. There are many stories of hardship and resilience. There’s the good old "I suffered so much when I wasn’t the center of attention for the first time in my life”. There’s the classic “The media spreads lies about me” and other familiar narratives. Also a few tragic stories of unfulfilled love.

And not all of it is horrible. In fact, there are a few parts that I could relate to, such as the terrible way Koyama had been treated when he had to resign from ‘every’, the strange limitations for idols and how excessively strict the rules of Japanese showbiz are. But by telling those stories and complaining about JE and Japan’s entertainment industry, he is not going to make a change. All he accomplished is make things harder for himself. Bringing up the names of many artists, especially those he doesn’t even know personally, and discussing their problems is incredibly rude, intrusive and potentially damaging. Yes, the rules of Japanese entertainment suck but see how much you can achieve going against them.

And I don't like JE and not going to defend it but bitching about JE in particular is unwise for two reasons: One - not only does he owe everything to it, NEWS is still in it and what’s bad for JE is bad for NEWS. Two - JE is very powerful and has immense influence in the industry so making them your enemy when your career barely started may lead to it ending prematurely. In the end, Tegoshi Yuya’s biggest obstacle to fame isn’t JE or media. It’s Tegoshi Yuya.

It is not an autobiography book so it doesn't start with childhood. Which is a pity because I was hoping to get a glimpse of how we got to this point. There are a few clues though.

I can tell.

Perhaps the most important chapters are those connected to his leaving the band, his reasons and motivations and that shit made me livid. He basically says that one day he imagined how awesome his solo career would be and decided he was too good to be in NEWS and the world will fall at his feet at soon as he lets it. He literally says that when he had to stay home because of the Covid-19 pandemic, he realized that God sent him a sign saying “Quickly, leave the agency!”. The pandemic is serendipity. Fuck me.

I honestly expected that the part about NEWS members at least would be nothing but praise but it also left me with very mixed feelings. First, there's a chapter "What I Told the NEWS Members" and it sounds so solemn and inspirational like "Are you sure you didn't copy that from some drama or anime? Because people do not talk like that, especially after being hit with such news." I'd love to hear their side of the story. There's also a chapter calling the members his comrades and expressing his eternal gratitude. But it's pretty clear that's not really for the members, it's to appease the fans.

There are several more chapters about the members specifically. Tegoshi has to be perfectly honest so there’s evaluation of every member, as he positions himself as the best performer by default and tells some stories that he apparently seems to think necessary to share.

For instance, there’s his story of choosing to stay in NEWS in 2011 as he told Koyashige they were miles behind Tegomass and needed to improve their singing and dancing to not drag the band down. Wait, since when can Tegoshi dance? Also the time Massu could not get a certain song right and got unresponsive as Tegoshi kept poking his mistake, so Tegoshi went berserk and thrashed Massu's things.

There is also a whole chapter about Shige and it's so weird as a former biggest Tegoshige shipper. Before I'd be happy for all the praise. Sadly, at this point if Tegoshi praises you too much it's almost a little suspicious. The whole thing is basically Tegoshi deciding that Shige is his top choice as... a man? deciding he makes the best leader and entrusting him the band. "Take care of my NEWS, Kato!" he says at the end. Fuck this shit!

Also, whatever happened to “Shige-chan?” He has made no effort to spend time with Shige out of work. And you know, they used to hang out and go on trips together when they were younger but not in recent years as Tegoshi got 'cooler' friends. I mean, his and Shige's friends probably have a 20+ difference in IQ level but still... He also only read a few of his books and unlike Massu, he does read. Mostly shitty 'how to succeed' types. All of that speaks of remarkable disinterest in Shige's actual life and thoughts.

There are several more chapters regarding NEWS as a band and what he thinks they should do and it makes me furious just talking about it. You lost any right to decide the band's future when you left them high and dry, asshole. He also claims he loves NEWS so so much and even wears the tour T-shirts (impressive!) and sings their songs in karaoke and cries! (poor thing!) On top of that he can't wait to see the STORY tour and go to see it and also broadcast it on his Youtube and do a review.......... I can't with this shit. Let's move on.

He also analyzed former members, basically calling Ryo spineless and saying he and Pi should have left sooner if they had no interest being in the band. And that’s coming from someone who tried to leave what? 4 times at least? Yes. It turns out he wanted to leave the band in 2017, in addition to 2011 and 2013. The way I see it now, 4nin NEWS was a hostage situation where Tegoshi constantly threatened to leave and other members trying to keep him happy and make him stay. He knew he was important and he got away with all kind of shit, both within the band and the agency.

In a similar manner, he takes each JE group and artist and evaluates them - what's good about it and what’s not, who’s popular and capable, what the group needs to do and so on. It’s amazingly condescending. There’s even a whole part about wanting to unite NEWS and KAT-TUN. What the fuck? Who asked you? Go film your ugly wardrobe or something.

I bet Tegoshi is so obsessed with popularity and rankings that he sees numbers over every person's and groups’ heads. Not everything in the world can be ranked and measured in numbers. He also says there are many celebrities who fucked up and acted like divas but are still popular. Way to go! Except it seems you have mistaken the order. You should succeed first, then be a dick. Also bitch, you're not Lady Gaga.

One of the biggest reasons for the anger of fans, at least the Western ones, was the way he talked about the mental issues of the former King & Prince member Iwahashi Genki and SEXY ZONE member Matsushima Sou both of whom had to step back from the industry because of their panic attacks. Even though he intended to encourage them, he expressed a fundamental misunderstanding of how panic attacks work suggesting they just had to cheer up and stay positive.

There's a whole section where he talks about a dozen female celebrities, mostly idols and actresses, dedicating a whole chapter to each. Of course, only to ‘set the record straight’. Because that’s exactly how the rumours work, you know. Particularly old ones. You tell the whole story and they go away. It's disgusting. Female artists' whole careers depend on their pure image and being associated with him can easily end it.

He also speaks of the first three girls he dated, which all sound like huge and tragic love stories as he said he loved them so much he considered marrying them but they all actually happened when he was about 16 to 20 years and after turning 20 he hasn't had a single woman that he loved that much.

And then some parts are only about himself and they are things that one should really, really keep to oneself. Nobody needs to know you drink so hard you can’t get it up. The chapter's called "I have no interest in sex" but it should really be called "I have a drinking problem". I couldn’t help but remember the scandalous article that came out in 2017 where one of his 'girl friends' sold the story of their relationship with all unsightly intimate details. I chose to defend him at the time but now I’m not even sure I can blame her. Perhaps it should be viewed as whistle-blower insider info as she warned others of what they may expect. The chapter "I have easily over a 1000 female friends" says he has this many girl contacts all over Japan and overseas but they aren't what you think they are. He only had 10 girls who he considered girlfriends, those he met 1 on 1 with. I guess the rest he just fucked so that doesn't count. Now that I think about it, I feel like 99% of all the Bunshun articles were mostly accurate.

Speaking of which... There's also a chapter where he explains why he cried during Neverland tour and he explains it by the photo with the two cons from 2011. We all know that was just a small part of it and the far bigger reason was people exposing his private messages and leaking intimate photos and stories. So much for the whole truth. Also, he whines about his reputation being hurt by the photo but has a whole chapter praising the man called Horiemon who was imprisoned for securities fraud.

There's another major revelation that shows his character. He mentions several cases where he had hissy fits in the dressing rooms, actually throwing chairs and things. Of course, for important reasons - being frustrated and angry at terrible injustices. Such as Koyama being fired from ‘every’ or him losing some parts in ChumChum after his scandal. Also the fight with Massu back in 2010 when he threw Massu’s things on the floor... It’s horrible as it is but for Massu, knowing he freaks out if you so much as breathe on his things... What a bitch.

There are also some chapters about his delusions of becoming a worldwide phenomenon but he doesn't seem to have a real plan how to achieve it. There are his ideas that are all over the place. There's the bold "Creating a new mold of entertainment" so that's producing. There's Youtube stuff. There's creating a "Tegoshi village" with ex-TOKIO Yamaguchi. He just had to pick the most problematic of his senpai. And there's an actual chapter called "Expanding to China and US Simultaneously”? Also English lessons? That all sounds very impressive, hon, but all you did so far was piggybacking on other people's fame and work. His book sold largely due to scandals and other people's names. He had a solo concert with just his NEWS solos and cover versions. And he just released a video that is an exact replica of his ItteQ segment.

One question is: how is he so confident he'll succeed fast? Well, apart form the usual delusions of grandeur. One reason for his excessive confidence is having friends in high places. At one point he's casually namedropping Abe Shinzo and the First Lady who was supposedly expected to come to the Story tour. Tegoshi said he would invite both of them to his solo concert. Yeah, I'm sure they'll come, nothing controversial about that.

I can’t imagine how it’s going to go from here but I don’t know how anyone would still want to work with him. He fucked over people he worked with for 18 years, people he claims to love, in a heartbeat so what can a new partner expect?

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As expected by literally everyone but Tegoshi, the book made an uproar and not in a good way, with fans and agencies enraged over his words about the artists. There were many articles calling this book 'exposé book', especially focusing on him using the real names of female celebrities. Some newspapers followed up with petty articles. My favourite is an article from Tokyo Sports that specifically dug up a story that was not in the book about the way he adamantly pursued a certain female idol trying to conquer her and culminating in doing a dogeza in front of her but she still rejected him saying "Zettai yada! I will be your girlfriend number what?". Her name is not revealed, which is unfortunate, I'd like to know who that queen is.

Not all feedback was bad, of course. According to this article, many men brought it and enjoyed it. I'm sure they did. Plenty of aspirational douchebags out there. Anyway. Many fans wrote to him long angry and very detailed letters. His social media accounts have been losing followers for the past several weeks.

Perhaps the strangest thing is that he seemed genuinely surprised that instead of praise for his courage and honesty he got anger and disapproval. It wouldn't happen if he got his head out of his ass and literally asked a single one of the people he wrote about what they thought of it.

The feedback must have been very focused as the very next day he wrote a few posts on his Twitter and Instagram indicating his concern over the feedback. On Twitter, he used the word “yacchimatta ka” as in “I messed up, didn’t I?” though stylistically I read it as “whoopsie”. Then there were two Insta stories.

2020/08/06 Ah, I'm a little tired. I'm also human. (sometimes I whine)

2020/08/06 I don't bother with those who criticize me in whatever they do. But I can't stand to see my fans, whom I treasure like my life, leave. I'm sorry. From now on, I won't whine anymore.

"I whine sometimes?" Really? that's what you call a 272 pages tell-all book? Also "I won't whine anymore"?? You think pulling off shit like that and then saying "whoopsie" is enough? It got quiet for a few days and on Aug 10 there was the apology video, which was named "This is my first and last whining". Doubt it. He uses the word ‘弱音’ which has a somewhat vague meaning, using it in an apology video in that context is confusing. Why not call apology as it is? That seems like another politician’s technique.

The apology was impressive in a way. At least it was not a blanket apology, he (or his employees) correctly identified what exactly people were mad about. He said he was really sorry for hurting his fans and causing trouble to people he wrote about. He said he understood that he doesn't have to reveal everything. He also said that he felt the love behind the anger, that fans wrote to him because they cared and were disappointed. Also said he realized that he was protected till now. It was all pretty good right until the very end when he gave a loud 'TEI!' effectively ruining the effect.

Of course, it was good that he did that but I still don't think it even began to make up for all the shit he wrote. The apology would be an adequate step after a shitty Tweet, not a fucking book. Also, I feel like more than anything he just got scared of losing his fans, maybe even sorry for hurting their feelings but not really sorry for what he did. He has no plans to change his behaviour. He wants to be at his 100% assholeness and still be adored.

Of course thousands of merciful women turned to his defence because he looked 'so sad' and even 'thinner'. That's right! He's the real victim here. Must be terrible to hear such hard criticism for the things you actually said and did.

By now I'm barely even angry anymore and a part of me feels sorry for Tegoshi. He's like a dumb spoiled child who wreaks havoc. But I have to remind myself I should not feel sorry. He is in fact an adult man of 32 who is so used he always gets his way that even a minor opposition is viewed by him as a violation of his freedom. And his charm is the very reason he always got away with all the shit he did in life up to this point. I bet he is getting a lot of hate mail and I hope his positivity prepared him for it. I remember him calling Koyama in the middle of the night to come and comfort him while he cried. Also calling Shige to come only to fall asleep in his lap. Now he's on his own. God, right now I just really wish Tegoshi would send himself to the corner and thought about what he's done. Just step aside and shut up for 5 minutes.

But he isn't gonna do it. Of course not. He had a solo concert today and is doing Youtube videos and moving even faster so that people forget about the book.

But fans never will. I can't even say if the book changed my perception or just unveiled what I knew was there all along. For years I've been discarding and questioning all the bad rumours and stories telling myself "He didn't mean it" or "That can't be true" but now it all comes together like pieces of a puzzle, and there's no need to guess anymore because he's shouting "Oh yes I fucking did and I'll do it again!"

All in all, the book paints a picture of a man who is anything but Prince Charming. It chips away any remaining illusions of a 'perfect idol' showing someone who is vain, petty, and chauvinistic. Someone who is obsessed with status and popularity so much that he is willing to sacrifice everything for it and thinks it doesn't matter how bad your reputation is as long as you succeed. Someone who is the very epitome of toxic masculinity, drinks himself to oblivion and treats women like toys. And yet, somehow, I still find myself having to fight the strong urge deep inside of me that makes me want to like him.

#Tegoshi Yuya #musings #it's nearly 4k fuck me #I'm exhausted but it had to be done

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