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#Obviously it has to be way different because the characters are adults not children
I kind of want to inject some Lord of the Flies vibes into Blood Sacrifices. Not explicitly, just some subtle references and inspiration.
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I’m not trying to attack you, but do you know that proshipper means someone who supports and romanticizes pedophilia, incest, and abuse? Your reblog on that post seems to read that you think antis just hate on people for having ships they don’t like. But it’s completely different than that. Just looking on the proshipper side of Tumblr and the internet and you can see people happily shipping children and adults and making nsfw content of such things.
i appreciate that you're not being outright hostile, but i have to say, that on its own put you above basically every anti i've interacted with.
i understand where antis are coming from, i really do. there are a lot of things on the internet that make me deeply uncomfortable, including the minor/adult ships that you mention. i don't want to anything to do with those kinds of ships and i would be happiest if i never saw them again. which is why i'm proship.
nine times out of ten, if i see that kind of ship brought up on my dash, it's because i was following an anti without realizing it, and they brought it up unprompted and untagged, to talk about how bad it is that they exist. they are the ones putting that kind of content in front of my face and making it harder to avoid.
the thing about people who ship those ships is that they're generally very aware that not everyone wants to see that kind of content, and so they tag it. they make sideblogs to talk about it. they don't go out of their way to shove it in people's faces. that means i, and everyone else who doesn't like it, can avoid it.
what antis want is for it to not exist at all. they want the tags to be purged and blocked, and for anyone who uses those tags to have their accounts deleted. and sure, that might get rid of some of it, but do you know what would happen to the rest? it would stop being tagged. people who don't want to see it wouldn't have the tools to avoid it. this isn't just a hypothetical, that's what's happened any time a fan space has tried to do that.
that's not even getting into the rabbit hole of what should be banned and what shouldn't. obviously any content that depicts real children or real life abuse shouldn't exist and shouldn't be allowed to be posted, but basically any platform that people use already enforces those policies, and there's not much of a slippery slope to go down there. if it involves real living breathing people being abused, it's bad. end of discussion.
but the same can't be said for fiction. ask ten antis for a specific list of all the content that should be banned, and you'll get ten different answers. what about kink? what about roleplay? what about horror and murder and anything that involves fictional characters being graphically tortured? what about people using art to process terrible things that have happened to them? what about art that uses dark themes as a horror element? if you just want to ban anything questionable to anyone, that's the line of thinking that gets any mention of lgbt existence banned. and again, this isn't just a hypothetical, this has happened before, and that's generally where it leads.
i know, from personal experience, that antis do, in fact, send harassment to people just for shipping things they don't like. i've gotten accused of absolutely vile shit for shipping two fictional characters who were both consenting adults. i've seen ship wars turn into moral battlegrounds, over ships that an average person wouldn't bat an eye at.
the thing about "romanticization" is a whole other can of worms. the anti logic goes like this: if someone sees something (even if it's very obviously fictional) in a positive light enough times, they will start thinking it's okay in real life, and go on to hurt real people. the problem with that is that it's just. blatantly untrue.
if it were true every horror movie fan would be a serial killer, every person that studies dark media would be an unhinged psychopath, and everyone who is into ddlg would be a pedophile. but they're not. they just aren't. people have directed movies just as fucked up as the darkest shit on ao3, and are still capable of being normal human beings who know right from wrong in real life.
even if someone is that impressionable, scrubbing away the existence of every piece of questionable content isn't going to solve their problem, because they're still going to be vulnerable to con men, scams, and cultists. the only thing that would actually materially help someone like that is developing their own morals and critical thinking.
children are also more impressionable, and there's a lot of content that's not suitable for them, but that doesn't mean that content shouldn't exist. it just means that they should stick to spaces designed for them (which most social media sites, tumblr included, are not) or, if they're old enough to be responsible for their experience online, they, or a trusted adult in their lives, should block and filter out things that they aren't comfortable with.
which is what everyone on the internet should be doing. it's what i do, and it's made the internet a much more pleasant place to be. and it's why i sometimes worry for antis mental health, especially teenagers, because they're being told it's right and moral to seek out content that makes them uncomfortable and to engage with the people making it. and that's just. really bad. it's not good for the creators that they're harassing obviously, but it's also really bad for them! it's not healthy to seek out things that make you feel bad, and it's a terrible internet safety lesson to teach minors that it's okay for them to seek out and engage with people making adult content.
individual harassment and crusading is never going to succeed at removing dark content from the internet. it just isn't. at best you might get a small percentage of people who create that content to stop sharing it, at worst you're just going to make people stop tagging it, and either way, you're exposing yourself to things that make you feel bad, when you don't have to.
if you want to materially change the type of content you see, you can. the block button is your friend, use it liberally. same with content filtering and tag blocking.
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loriache · 2 months
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Thistle & Senshi: Missed Connections
continuing my thistleposting... here is my manifesto for thistle and senshi: friends. In another life 😥
For one thing, they've been unknowing cohabitants for most of senshi's life. thistle doesn't think much of the non-golden kingdom residents of the dungeon, of course - he considers them trespassers and thieves! but there is a difference between trespassers and thieves who mind their own business, and even help keep other adventurers out (he obviously knew about and tolerated the orcs), and trespassers and thieves who make a mess of his dungeon (hateful, to be killed).
which I can't blame him for!
Based on what it looks like when marcille became the dungeon lord, we could assume that creating a dungeon is super easy - just rely on the winged lion for everything! But we see in thistle's flashbacks, that isn't how he did it.
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Thistle did a lot of the work of building the dungeon manually. Perhaps because he was trying to build a sustainable dungeon, that could support a large population of living people - who he was invested in surviving themselves, not being replaced by puppets by the demon. They need a functioning ecosystem!
Of course, this is all pragmatic. After working on it for so long, I am sure Thistle is attached to the dungeon and its ecosystem, but more as a means to an end than for its own sake. As we see from the way that Laois defeats him, Thistle isn't really interested in monsters, and doesn't really understand the value of food...
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Though I think he once did, and the fact he doesn't anymore is more down to the lion's interference than anything.
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Senshi is attached to the dungeon's ecosystem. It's his home, even though he lost his family there, and he's come to care about it in its own right.
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There are aspects of it he finds distasteful or dislikes, such as the immortality spell. But overall, if he had a chance to talk to Thistle about his hard work building up and maintaining the dungeon, he'd be greatly appreciative of it - this is his home, and it's a place that Thistle made to be a home.
In fact, Senshi (and the orcs) have been willingly living in the dungeon. Whereas the people that Thistle created the dungeon for have to be kept there by force. I doubt it's something he'd be easily appreciative of, but it's something, isn't it?
I also think it's incredibly cute that they both keep diaries.
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Senshi's diaries have drawing, Thistle's have poems... they're both artists! Thistle with his music & Senshi with his cooking, they both have arts that they share with others to make them happy, and art that they keep to themselves.
Based on the diaries, including the ones in the complete Adventurers Bible..... it doesn't seem like Senshi ever learned Thistle's name! This makes sense since they really don't have much interaction - mostly Thistle talks to Laios or Marcille.
I don't think it should have gone any other way, since they're the protagonists and foils, but I do think in a more chilled out setting, Senshi and Thistle could get on.
Like Izutsumi, Thistle's a bit of a brat.
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(I love him)
He probably had good table manners once upon a time, but I reckon he is very out of practice.
And we see he isn't in the habit of sharing:
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Senshi would disapprove!
Senshi's desire to get everyone living well can be a bit overbearing. He already cleaned Thistle's kitchen for him!
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But like Izutsumi, Thistle is another character that Senshi's habit of assuming non-dwarves to be children would be appropriate for. He's much older than Senshi, yeah, but his maturity levels seem to have stagnated along with his physical form in some ways. I doubt that anyone has treated him like a kid since way before he became a dungeon lord. The humans around him didn't understand his age, we can see that from the responsibility Delgal puts on him!
I think it would be good for him to have a person in his life who treats him like a kid, after he's had to be an adult so early and have so much responsibility for so long. And I'd like him to sit down and eat a delicious meal.
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Sometimes that does happen! But Senshi would have done better </3
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Thistle's ending is sad, but it's cathartic and makes sense. After being consumed by the winged lion, I doubt he'd be able to persist for a little longer, like Yaad - why would he even want to?
But I do think it would be nice if he could have met new people, formed new desires outside of his codependency with Delgal, and eaten a meal together with new people. Senshi could have helped him with that, if he had had the opportunity.
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prince-liest · 10 months
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was recently talking to a friend about qi rong which then lead to me going on a reread of my favorite qi rong fic EVER, and now I’m in my feels about him, his relationship with his family, and his relationship with xie lian and guzi.
I just love qi rong a lot. to be clear, he’s a horrible little gremlin and that is a lot of WHY I love him - but I also think that fundamentally qi rong is a character who is super traumatized but does not receive sympathy for that trauma because he is not traumatized in a “palatable” way which is a trend that starts when he is young and just never ends, canonically, at any point in his life
right from the bat: the first 5 years of his life, he's being physically and emotionally abused, he's cast out to live in a shed, his mom is forgotten by her family. by the time she finally escapes his abusive father and goes back to the palace, her elopement with him has been swept under the rug and most people don't actually know what happened - and are then weirded out by her and qi rong, causing all the children and even most adults around qi rong to basically refuse to interact with him. so he's abused and hated, then isolated to the point where nobody talks to him, nobody plays with him. the one time he thinks he succeeded at attempting to make some friends, it turns out that they tricked him into writing a death wish for himself and his mother on his lantern.
and all the while, he's watching xie lian and the adulation he receives, not understanding why xie lian gets those things and he does not. everyone always says he looks like xie lian. he’s even called xiao jing, like he’s a mirror of the crown prince. what’s the difference?
and then xie lian himself is the only person aside from his own mother to be genuinely kind to qi rong. qi rong is desperately lonely, envious and fixated on the cousin that nobody will stop comparing him to, and then said cousin is the only person to reach out to him with kindness. of course he wants to attach himself to xie lian and emulate him.
unfortunately for both of them, then his mother dies - not just randomly, but specifically in defense of xie lian’s mother, and having extracted a promise for xie lian’s parents to care for qi rong. however, things don’t actually change at that point. sure, they take him in and buy him whatever he wants, but as far as love and care are concerned, xie lian is really the only potential source of those things left for qi rong. xie lian is also a teenager with a lot of pressure on his shoulders and a lack of understanding of difficult situations. of course he doesn’t know how to raise his traumatized, misbehaving cousin! and nobody else bothers to. it’s deeply unfair for xie lian to be used as the singular tool to discipline and direct qi rong, and that directly contributes to their extremely soured relationship.
now that qi rong’s mother is dead, there is nobody left around that actually wants him or is willing to put effort into properly raising him. when a kid turns out as wild as qi rong - that's not just random happenstance, that happens because they weren't parented right (or at all). he acts out in increasingly insane ways for the attention everyone hates to give him - anyone's, but especially xie lian's, which sucks for xie lian because it should have been his parents providing qi rong with an authority figure and source of love, not xie lian's teenage self. and people respond by waving him off, giving him whatever he wants just to make him go away, and ignoring him, because he has a deeply off-putting personality.
and it causes everyone around qi rong to resent him in this vicious cycle that escalates his behavior because he doesn't know what else to do - until eventually even xie lian, the one person that he really looked up to, hates him too.
obviously qi rong is an awful person by the point we reach in canon, but I also think that if he had received regular hugs as a child and maybe some actual parenting from someone who didn’t beat him, instead of just being given a bunch of money and being told to fuck off
specifically because he was weird and traumatized and unlikeable
things would have turned out very different for him. because he very clearly tries - that’s one thing that’s very clear in the flashbacks and even continues to modern canon: qi rong really tries to get love and attention, and when that doesn’t work, he just escalates to “any attention, bad attention, attention that proves I’m worth something, proves wrong all the people saying the supposedly-amazing cousin that took away my only source of kindness when he started hating me, is so much better than me”. he starts out an awkward, off-putting kid and ends up the night-touring green lantern. of course he holds enough resentment to end up a calamity. his cannibalism shtick doesn’t even read as genuine to me, it just seems like he picked out “what’s the worst, most attention-grabbing thing I can possibly be to pre-emptively justify everyone’s disgust in me” and landed on that.
(see also: I think it’s hysterical that he has very strong opinions and abilities as pertains to gourmet cooking, and then just uses them to lure in victims so that he can have his meal of Raw Unseasoned Human Flesh. you can’t tell me he’s doing it for anything other than the bit at this point.)
and that’s also why I think his weirdly wholesome relationship with guzi also makes a lot of sense. qi rong is a shockingly decent father to him (eventually), probably in part because he overidentifies with guzi also being abused by his father, but also, because guzi is literally just a kid and therefore is not someone that yet has the capacity to have all these preconceptions about qi rong, nor for qi rong to read into his words and be insulted, because. that's just a kid. there’s nothing to read into.
I think his treatment of guzi (eventually) shows that he's capable of being at least kind of decent (or at least functional), he's just never been in a circumstance where his trauma and relationships let it happen. his material life was always supplied for, but his emotional and familial environment in xianle was invariably toxic for him.
anyway, I think qi rong needs a shower and a hug, in that order, and then to be forced to learn to interact with people who don't immediately assume the worst of him. thanks for coming to my TED talk, I know it was long as hell.
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stardustizuku · 3 months
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I’ve recently been thinking on why there’s people who interpret Kuro in such a drastically different way.
And something I notice is that you can easily tell how someone experiences the series, based on what they think of the GWA.
The way you interpret the Green Witch Arc is indicative of of how you have been interpreting the story so far, and how you’ll interpret it going forward
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Generally, there’s two interpretations:
1.- The Reaction Ciel had to the mustard gas, are his true feelings coming afloat
2.- The Reaction Ciel had to the mustard gas, isn’t how he feels.
The first interpretation (and I’m really not trying to be mean about it this time) comes from a very, uhm, shall I call it Teenage-Like? mindset of how pain and trauma works.
I call it Teenage-Like, because I’ve seen it in mostly literature aimed at teenagers, be it fanfics or YA. It comes from an inability for teenagers to actually voice how they feel towards their parents. A helpless feeling of being ignored.
I don’t wanna point fingers but this is the basis of a lot of Self Harm tendencies (physical, emotional, psychological, or others like EDs or digital self harm) come from. A need for people to notice you are in pain. But because you feel like you cannot voice it yourself (or don’t deserve it, it can vary) you start to lash out. Put yourself in higher risks, to have someone find out there is something wrong with you.
So the moment the main character finally breaks down, or has a moment of weakness, it’s interpreted as someone finally being truthful.
This is how Ciel’s reaction is interpreted by the first half.
The mustard gas is simply a trigger of pain, that causes all of Ciel to unravel. He’s in pain right now, cause he’s always in pain. He’s avoidant to Sebastian, cause he’s always been scared of him. He doesn’t trust him. He doesn’t trust adults. Finny is the only one who actually cares.
This makes the fact that Sebastian ,essentially, slapped him to get him to react, come off as cruel.
The boy is finally being honest, and you just tell him he’s being childish? Horrible.
Obviously, that’s not my interpretation.
Okay so, what happens once you’re not a teenager? Once you don’t have an adult figure to take care of you? What happens once you start avoiding telling your parents the pain you’re in, not because you think they won’t care, but because they’ll care too much and get worried and you don’t want them to get worried?
You start to realize pain is not the end of the world.
While, when being a teenager, getting sick meant someone gets to take care of you and maybe notice you aren’t okay, as an adult getting sick potentially means - not going to work. Which means your won’t have money to buy food, which means you’ll probably go hungry.
So getting sick becomes less of a way to get away from the responsibilities you have, and more of a burden.
That’s why you’ll see, in media aimed at adults,mental breakdown less depicted as an opportunity to be honest, and more of a sickness that needs to be healed.
You can have a more honest and truthful conversation, while you are sound of mind. There’s no power dynamic between friends, like it would with adult figures and children. So this song and dance, isn’t necessary.
You don’t have to be sick to be understood. And your friends will rather try to help you, than understand you when you’re suffering. That’s the nature of adult relationships.
This is more or less the framing that comes from Ciel’s breakdown (in the second interpretation).
The Mustard Gas isn’t showing Ciel’s true nature - it’s showing Ciel at his most vulnerable. This means, not in his sound mind.
Saying things he normally wouldn’t, hurting people he normally would hold close, and clinging to people he generally would never try to get close to.
Simply put, it isn’t just “a bit of pain to make him unravel” but a “Ciel is getting psychologically tortured by a weapon used for chemical warfare”.
He’s past being honest. He’s having such a severe reaction, that he cannot function. He’s being tortured and broken, to the point he is no longer himself.
He isn’t being “truthful” he’s scared.
And fear can make you do things that, in your sound mind, you would never do.
The point is that, Ciel isn’t saying what he truly feels or being “honest”. It’s him scared out of his mind, saying everything and anything to make the fear stop.
And the biggest proof is how he treats Sebastian.
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The fact that Ciel asks Sebastian to “go away” or “not come near” is perhaps the most glaring reason as to how badly this Gas messed with him.
I’ve said this before but to Ciel, Sebastian is a lifeline. He’s the only tool he has for his revenge. The thing that, even after he lost r!Ciel, he was willing to sacrifice it all to achieve.
And at this point in time, Sebastian is also the only emotional anchor Ciel has.
As far back as the second episode, Ciel has asked Sebastian to stay. Even when he’s having flashbacks, even when he’s having an episode. In fact, Sebastian leaving him is a great source of anxiety - since as seen in BoC in the Asthma Scene, without him Ciel feels powerless enough to die.
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He feels more protected with him, because he KNOWS Sebastian will protect him and that Sebastian will follow his orders.
Again going with the analogy of a dog - He feels more comfortable having the chained beast by his bed, simply bcs others are trying to hurt him and the beast won’t eat him right now.
So him asking Sebastian to go away, is throwing away his biggest safety net for a surrogate for r!Ciel, just means he’s reverting to the mentality he had during the cult.
If Sebastian is constantly telling him “it’s okay, they can’t hurt you anymore, you’re outside the cage, you can do what you WANT”
Ciel clinging to Finny is him going “no, im staying in the cage bcs at least the cage is familiar”
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And no matter what the first camp tells you, staying in the cage, trapped inside your pain ISNT the healthy option.
(We could argue Ciel’s need for revenge rather than healing is also unhealthy, but no one in the second camp would even call Ciel anything other than a villain in someone else’s story)
So, Sebastian slapping him and going “no, that’s not what you want”, isn’t as cruel as it would be in the first interpretation. Because as we see, he’s right. That’s not what Ciel wants. And it’s proved by the next scene where Sebastian talks to Ciel about what he truly wants.
Rather than Sebastian telling Ciel to “get over it”, it’s closest to a “snap out of it, something’s wrong”
This is further proved by the fact that, Sebastian first instinct isn’t to scare him. He does back away, he does try to wait and gently coax him. But Ciel literally cannot reason with him.
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That small but significant difference in interpretation has wildly different outcomes in how you perceive both, the characters and the story.
If you pick the first, you’re reading Sebastian as an enemy. Someone who does not respect Ciel. You see his attempt to eat Ciel’s soul as a breach of trust, and proof that he doesn’t care for him.
But if you pick the second option, you see Sebastian as an ally. Someone who’s running out of time and ways to save Ciel. His actions, while crass, ultimately help Ciel. What he was trying to do, was help.
Yana, very clearly, wanted the second interpretation. However, I cannot, in good conscience, tell you it’s the only interpretation. People are free to pick and chose how they read the text, irrelevant of how little of the actual text they’re reading.
But I will say, picking the first is symbolic of a less mature way of thinking. Common on those who like to infantilize trauma and trauma responses. It’s the easy, safe and comforting way of reading the text. As I said, it’s common in those who want their pain to be acknowledged.
That reading of Kuro is one that speak to me, that you’re not really ready to confront pain. And someone with that mentality, is not someone who’s reading of the text I find particularly interesting. Sure, you can share it, I’ll never stop you, but know you’re speaking to me in an entirely different language. You’re interpreting the text so differently, that I don’t think it’s even the same text anymore.
Again, you’re essentially writing analysis on fanfiction. And I’m not all too interested in dissecting your own trauma sloppily painted over British Aesthetic.
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briarmoon1015 · 3 months
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I think I’ve already confessed that I’m not a big birdflash fan, but there is something I really gotta point out because it’s bothering me.
I see a lot of people use specific comic panels to try and show how close these two characters are, but completely miss the whole point of the comic itself.
For example, I’ve seen a lot of people use panels from The Flash 1987 210, in which Wally reflects on his relationship with dick.
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The problem with this is they are literally cutting out the next part of the page that explains that they have drifted apart
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Wally is extremely different from dick, and once he takes up the flash mantle, it becomes clear that these two characters are on different paths. Wally wants to uphold the legacy of the flash, dick desperately wants to escape the legacy of Batman. Wally has a wife, three children, and a stable job. Dicks life changes at a moments notice, one minute he’s broke, one minute he’s rich, sometimes he has a job as a police officer, sometimes he’s dating one of his many red headed girlfriends, he’s the opposite of stable.
And that’s not to say the different characters can’t be friends or be together, but as this same comic shows, these two often struggle to understand one another once adults
Wally, after zoom caused his wife Linda to have a miscarriage, went to Hal as the spectre for help, which no one liked, including Dick. He is somewhat miffed Wally didn’t come to him, be he also sides with Bruce about how reckless and stupid the action was
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He definitely empathizes with Wally’s situation, but he’s not really there to give support. Later on, dick does start to get the point, and the two take down gorilla grod. Dick apologies for his actions and both agree to stay in touch more. Obviously every good friendship is going to have some moments of tension and disagreement, but I think this really shows why Wally and Dick fell apart as adults.
And this really is the crux of why I’m personally not a big fan or birdflash. These two characters are inherently different and it’s so rare for me to see any birdflash content that acknowledges this. They can be together in a way that acknowledges and builds off of this, but it really hasn’t been done.
More importantly, I’ve noticed that to make burdflash work, a lot of fans completely erase Wally’s character to ignore these differences. His own goals, his own backstory, his own relationships, are just gone so he can be with dick. There is never any acknowledgment of the canon of Wally’s own motivations, such as living up to the flash mantle, or any mention of his connections to characters outside of Dick.
Even more so, I think erasing the presence of his wife and kids from his life so he can be with dick is really hard on the character. Linda is so essential in Wally’s life. She is the character in which speedsters learn the importance of having a lightning rod. She is the one to often push Wally to keep going. His kids redefined his life. He literally broke the source wall in order to keep them in his life. These are essential relationships that are just erased from Wally’s life.
As someone who truly prefers Wally over Dick, it hurts to see a potentially good pairing erase the good aspects of Wally like this. There is plenty of erasure done to other dc characters because of how popular the Bats are, and this ship, at least to me, is one of the worst examples. These characters are different, and often times it makes it hard for them to understand each other. Ignoring that issue doesn’t make the ship good in my eyes.
Anyways, I really don’t want to poop on birdflash as a whole. It is by no means a bad ship, I personally just don’t really like it. It has a lot of qualities that bother me. Despite all of this though, I do love seeing people’s art of it and I actually do think it can work a bit better when they are young and apart of the teen titans. I also know as a halbarry shipper I’m throwing rocks in a glass house lmao. But please ship what you like, I really don’t care, I just needed to shout into the void about my feelings around it :)
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ok so here is how i personally would fix barbie movie. disclaimer i am NOT fixing the politics of barbie movie bc i don’t care. the problem with barbie movie as like a piece of screenwriting is that it’s actually a vision board of like seven different movies and no one ever went back to figure out which of the various things it’s trying to say is the thing they want to make sure it’s actually saying. i am fixing barbie to be a more cohesive toy commercial for children and nostalgic adults with milquetoast normie lib politics like god and feminism intended. also disclaimer because as i said barbie movie is a whole bunch of half-movies in a trench coat i don’t think this is the only way to fix barbie movie. there are i am sure many options depending on which barbie movie you would like barbie movie to be.
me personally i would like to see the barbie movie that focuses more deliberately on the america ferreira character. one of my favorite lines in the movie was when america ferreira’s kid asks her why she’s going into barbieland and she’s like “because i’m a boring mom and i never do anything!” i found that really charming and funny but also resonant as a perspective many women can relate to either personally or by thinking about their own moms. (i know i always say relatability is for babies but guess what! so’s the fucking barbie movie!) i think we can keep the broad set up of margot robbie barbie waking up to a wrinkle in her seamless universe, but i would introduce us to america ferreira in the real world more thoroughly before the two of them collide. (goes without saying but i personally am dropping the mattel execs plot entirely. i will put it back in my improved barbie script for the low low price of 8 million dollars.)
this does not have to be a huge investment in terms of screentime! the magic of film is it’s a visual and highly visceral medium and a few well selected moments can tell us everything we need to know in less than five minutes! but the goal here is to take america ferreira’s purpose in the movie, which is to Say Feminism by Naming Impossible Standards Of Womanhood, and dramatize it by showing (not telling!) us america ferriera in her day to day life struggling with impossible standards of womanhood. she’s weighed down by trying to be the perfect mom and the perfect wife and the perfect corporate employee. i think the mom-daughter stuff can be standard “my sweet little girl who loved hanging out with me is now an angsty tween who thinks i breathe wrong” fare but if you want a little more (pin this for later) i think you can have her be stressed that her daughter is a tiny hyper rationalist who likes doing math and reading books about evolutionary biology and resists her mom’s efforts to get her to do their nails together or decorate her notebooks for school or whatever. she’s proud of how smart her daughter is but she’s worried her kid is growing up too fast and losing the precious window of opportunity she has to be carefree and creative and full of wonder.
so now we still have the situation where barbie has to leave barbieland to find her human and the human world is scary and the kid is mean to her and then she finds america ferreira and realizes, omg it’s you. and they wind up in barbieland because obviously i want to keep “i’m a boring mom and never do anything” but this time instead of fleeing mattel it’s for uh…. reasons. weird barbie explains it. to fix the fabric of barbieland barbie has to bring back her human and they have to mumblemumble. again mattel i will happily work out the details for a mere 8 million dollars. but the key idea is that in this version the notion of what barbie stands for is clear: she stands for creativity and childlike wonder. and the lesson america ferreira has to learn… somehow… is that even though she’s a grown-up and a mom,  she’s also still a person and she’s allowed to carve out room in her boring mom life to ways to be creative and seek out the beauty in life. (please do observe that What If A Mom Was A Whole Human Being is in fact a longstanding concern of feminist thought. #girlpower) and if we’re doing the advanced daughter option described above, she reconciles with her daughter by recognizing that actually her daughter isn’t growing up too fast; she just finds wonder and joy and beauty in different things than her mom does, and that’s ok. she’s been pushing her own vision of joy on her kid because she’s been denying it to herself, and now that she can see herself more clearly she can also really hear what her daughter’s been telling her. (maybe the daughter somehow inspires her mom to figure out how to save barbieland? maybe we have one of gerwig’s beloved meta branding jokes about the time they made a barbie that said math is hard and letting me put that in the movie is actually amazing PR for mattel as a corporation? all this and more for 8 million dollars payable to me.)
the big takeaway about barbie is now less what if there was normal barbie(?) and more, normal vs. barbie is actually a false dichotomy! it’s possible to be a rich and complex enough person to be a stressed frumpy boring mom and also a sparkly creative dreamer! there are always ways to add sparkle to your life, and if you go on mattel’s website after the movie comes out you can buy some for as low as $19.99! (i said i wasn’t going to fix the politics of the toy commercial and by god i won’t!) there is no wrong way to barbie. you are already barbie if you only want to be. montage of america ferreira looking amazing in barbie-style bright clothes and idk signing up for an art class she clipped a flier to in her notebook to sigh sadly over earlier in the movie. this is actually better not only as a movie but also as a toy commercial and PR for the barbie product which this movie brands as maximally inclusive while retaining its aspirational glamor. literally where is my money mattel.
i think this version can even include gerwig’s nod towards her key theme of Woman As Artist only without coming completely out of fucking nowhere this time, because now after her adventures in barbieland reawakened america ferreira’s creative passion, we can say that barbie is inspired by her own adventure with this woman who after all filled her life all these years with so much beauty. barbie now aspires to that. she wants to pay it forward and find ways to fill the world with beauty too. the human world is scary and will change her, but she knows that holding on to her essential barbie essence is a choice she is strong enough to make! mattel barbie be the dreamer®️ art kits starting at $34.99! these would literally print money mattel at this point it’s more expensive NOT to give me 8 million dollars.
you will notice i have not said anything about ken. this is because i simply don’t believe we need to be asked to care about ken in the barbie movie. on the rewatchables podcast episode about mean girls even bill simmons agreed one of the charms of the movie is that none of the guys in it matter at all and i confess this is my vision for barbie. but mattel once my check clears if you feel strongly about this i actually think we can keep the idea of barbie and ken’s somewhat one sided relationship that he wants to escalate but she doesn’t, but make her reluctance to be upfront about what she wants less about she just wants to be nice and more about the idea that ken offers her a sense of safety and she wants things to say the same forever. when she recognizes that she’s ready for change she can also realize that the reason she wasn’t ready for change with ken was because deep down she knew she didn’t want her relationship to change the way he was envisioning. so she has a little more actual agency in the idea of having led him on because she was using him for something that he no longer wanted to provide. ooh maybe actually you could have him make a move AFTER things have started going awry and she actually thinks this is part of what’s broken in barbieland… and so barbie’s arc really is about going from someone who wants things to stay the same forever to someone who’s ready to change and grow, which involves overlap with america ferreira’s deal because they’re both moving beyond a dichotomy of barbieland/childhood (static and beautiful and fun) vs. the human world/adulthood (dynamic and exhausting and dull). notice how we are making a movie about barbie growing up that also reinforces the idea that barbie is for all ages, which is something your first attempt at the toy commercial didn’t do.
change can be beautiful! growing up can sparkle! storylines in a movie can complement each other thematically to create a satisfying sense of cohesion! you can still make the i am kenough hoodie because as barbie is letting go of ken she helps him believe in himself not just by telling him to because the script says that’s what happens now but by sincerely expressing her appreciation for all he’s given her in the time they had together! see how if you put just a little more thought into it all the parts of a movie can actually work together instead of feeling like they come from a bunch of different movies? i am happy to explain this at greater length once my check clears. for a lousy 8 million dollars i will even bother to think of a plan for how the integration of weird barbie into barbieland can actually serve as another button on the idea that change and self-expression are good and go together and are actually what barbie is all about, which is an amazing concept to put in your toy commercial for a toy who has so many outfits. i look forward to discussing this with you further.
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randybutternubber · 2 months
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BABY HUNTER @local-gemstone-lover @teastarfall since I know you’ll want to see this and @keikoyume since my design was inspired from yours. He’s supposed to be wearing his raccoon skin cap but I FORGORRR
Basically, the hunter was a child soldier. This was inspired from a few theories that the hunter was a war veteran, the much older theory that LN is a post WWII world, and an old piece of fan art of six hiding beneath a trench wall with a soldier right above her. Outside of LN, he’s also inspired by the boy from a manwha called The Horizion and Atari from Isle Of Dogs
Most stories and characters in LN tend to involve themes of things that scare children. I chose war- it’s indiscriminately violent, near impossible to control, and often impacts children.
Edit: I forgot to mention, there is also a song that plays from the TVs in the pale city called “scout whistle” which has a very military march type vibe while also still having a very playful like tune to it, which was also an inspiration- plus the raccoon skin cap is referred to as the “scout cap”
(Note: none of this is intended to demonize amputees or people with facial disfigurements. It’s inspired off of WWII facial prosthetics and limbs which were very unique and a huge step in helping veterans)
Basically, the hunter was taken to the nowhere at a young age. He spent a few years at a military training school. Older children at the school tended to have a lot of mannequin and porcelain doll/bully like parts, basically they were being slowly replaced.
He tried to escape with a few other kids. While running through a field, the child next to him stepped on a land mine, instantly killing them and severely injuring the hunter, who’s left side was basically screwed. He was taken back to the school after. (let’s just pretend it lines up with his burlap eye hole, I forgot what side it was on 😭)
He got a prosthetic arm, although it was quite uncomfortable and pretty stiff along with being very heavy (very different from actual prosthetics as he can actually control quite a bit of it since it’s more similar to whatever animates the mannequins)
Once he recovered somewhat, he escaped and ended up in the wilderness where he kind of went a bit nutty because of the lack of people and used taxidermy and alcohol as a way to cope. Imagine waking up every day to noise and other people next to you, not having a moment to yourself for YEARS and then all the sudden, that’s all gone. It’s so quiet you can hear your own heartbeat when before you could barely hear yourself talk. That was incredibly hard for him to adjust to, although he grew to prefer solitude and sees things like TVS and most other people as intruders who are encroaching onto his home.
Years later, the doctor would give him a new prosthetic arm (since the old one would obviously be too small) and do facial reconstruction surgery on him as the initial treatment and the way that the hunter was taking care of that side of his face wasn’t a long term solution. Without the mask, he basically looks like Keikoyume’s hunter.
As an adult, quite a few parts of him are taxidermy. He only started wearing the bag over his head once he started to make his… “family” out of people he shot and stuffed.
Poor guy
I wrote this on mobile multiple times because of accidentally deleted it so that’s why the grammar is ass
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noonblight · 1 year
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Nemona, Female Neurodivergence, and Good Representation
Spoilers for the plot of ScarVi ahead, but here’s my full analysis and breakdown of Nemona!
So, I know what you’re thinking, ‘Game Freak making an autistic female main character? You must be out of your mind. This is clearly projecting!’
I’d like to preface this gently by saying that this is obviously just my personal conclusion based on subtextual analysis, but also, I’d like to call attention to the fact that Japan isn’t like the west when it comes to neurodiverse representation, and there isn’t a lot of Japanese media that explicitly uses the word autism. It’s a little unrealistic to expect Game Freak to call it by name, especially considering they make games for children and topics such as neurodiversity are often viewed as a more ‘adult’ thing to discuss. You are free to disagree with me, but please be polite in the replies of this post, as I only wish to have a constructive conversation about a writing decision that has been made.
Anyway, on to the good stuff and I must apologise in advance for this post being long, but I wanted to be thorough!
I played through all of ScarVi and I’m actually very pleased with Nemona as a character. I feel like despite the game’s technical quality, there was a real effort made this time around to flesh out the named characters. Nemona is one of my favourite examples of this, because her arc isn’t solely about being autistic, but it’s clearly a large part of her character and affects her life in a lot of ways.
Nemona is a battle fanatic, and it’s very likely one of her special interests. It’s how she connects with other people such as the main character, and it’s something she devotes her entire being and effort to. She never says she does so in order to impress others, but rather because it’s something she heavily enjoys.
Right from the start, Nemona is a successful champion rank trainer and wants you to become a trainer who can rival her in skill, and feels like it would lead to a better friendship if you could do that. Nemona’s priorities always centre around battling, and doing as much of it as possible. She’s the one who asks Geeta for permission to bestow a Tera orb upon your player. She gives you tips about the battle courts at different gyms. She even raises a new team of Pokémon throughout the game just to have an excuse to battle you at your level and watch you improve.
Nemona even loves battling so much that she finds it a little strange when others aren’t as enthusiastic about battling as she is, below is a quote I found particularly interesting because it really does show that she can be socially oblivious at times when it comes to societal expectations about what is an appropriate place or time to have a Pokémon battle.
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Accompanying this, multiple times throughout the game she exhibits impulsive or oblivious behaviour and asks you to have another battle with her straight after another battle you’ve just had, usually due to being excited. Sometimes other characters will need to remind her that your Pokémon require healing first, or that there are other things that need doing. She doesn’t always understand how things should be handled in a conventional manner, despite being an expert on the topic of battling! (Or, she gets too excited and can’t help herself.)
In post-game, there’s even a scene where she doesn’t seem to understand that another student is reluctant to battle her and makes an excuse to leave early because she’s so far from being a casual trainer that it intimidates him. This is, in my opinion, actually quite a sad scene. She genuinely continues to think that he will challenge her to a battle at a different time, not realising that her ‘unusual’ enthusiasm and skill has scared him away, and that he has no intention of returning. A situation I’m sure a lot of neurodiverse children would connect with because it so accurately depicts what it’s like when others don’t share your interests to the degree that you hoped they would. This scene also hints at Nemona’s trouble with reading the emotions and intentions of others.
Nemona’s final post-game scene (which please, I BEG of you to go watch, it’s so good) confirms this outright, and also gives one of the most relatable lines in media about what it’s like to be neurodivergent in any way, especially as somebody who is younger:
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Something I like about Nemona is that despite being socially oblivious and pushy with her interests, she is still a very sympathetic and friendly character. Not only does she cheer you on throughout the game, but she doesn’t only do it for the sake of serving only her own interests! She’s genuinely caring about others around her too.
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(Nemona, congratulating the player when they beat her at the end of her storyline after she goes full-out. She is thrilled that you beat her! I love this moment.)
Throughout the last chapter in the game, there’s a lot of great moments with Nemona that show how caring she is. I think the best moments however, are where she tries to understand and support a scared Miraidon, and where she tries to help Arven.
Initially, she is misunderstanding and expects that the second Miraidon will be friendly and that it will be a family reunion, but once she realises this is not the case, she immediately switches to trying to support your Miraidon in any way she can. Despite not understanding why Miraidon is so afraid of returning to the Crater and facing the other Miraidon, she can be observed multiple times attempting to encourage it during the final battle, and can be seen in the final cutscene of the game with her arm around it as the group walks back to the academy.
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(Nemona, displaying an implied struggle with visually judging the emotions of others.)
Nemona is also the one who suggests after a very heavy story ending that everyone goes home, and that they take the scenic route back to town. She clearly doesn’t know what to say to Arven about what he’s just been through, but she attempts to make him feel a bit better regardless.
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I think this makes for particularly good representation, because not only is she less feminine than previous female rivals with her more sporty style and interests (something very common with autistic women) it also shows depth. I’ve seen autistic characters before that fall into the stereotype of coming across as emotionally detached or cold, or far too over-reactive. But I think Nemona strikes a lovely balance of caring, emotional, and socially lacking.
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Now, on to a smaller detail that I want to point out that I really like the inclusion of is that glove. I could talk about how Nemona displays memory issues at times or other smaller symptoms of autism, but I really want to talk about the glove. I made a post on this subject the moment Nemona’s design was revealed on the official website, but I like that the game content openly confirmed that Nemona has motor issues with her dominant hand.
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(Nemona, needing to support her arm when about to throw a Pokéball, or when she is about to terastalise her Pokémon. The burst of energy from the tera orb must make things a bit more difficult for her. A lovely small detail in her battles.)
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(Nemona, confirming that she has trouble with Pokéballs. Something her website entry also stated.)
Now I’ve saved this until last because this is, in my opinion, a smaller detail that they didn’t need to include to make Nemona read as neurodiverse, but I’m thrilled they did. Nemona is the only character who wears an arm brace, something I picked up on immediately in the trailers before the games released. No other trainers wear one for the terastalisation mechanic, unlike the Z-bands from Alola. And even though Pokémon battling is her bread and butter, she still struggles with certain aspects of it! Not only is this trouble with motor skills realistic, but it’s also a very accurate portrayal of motor dysfunction that a lot of neurodiverse people experience in their day to day lives.
To bring this all to a close, I think that even though it isn’t stated outright, I believe Nemona isn’t just representation of neurodiversity in women, but I think that she is also GREAT representation. She knows that she has problems, and tries her best regardless! She is kind, and caring, even though she has difficulties with reading the emotions of others and understanding social expectations. Her entire story may be about making friends with you through the medium of battling, but it’s also a story about how she’s struggled in the past to connect with others because of her love of that medium.
I truely do feel like she’s a lovely depiction to be in a children’s game, because she is a very positive depiction of something that a lot of kids go through, and in the end, she gets to be herself and she gets to be happy by being true to that self. She is never forced to change to make friends, and instead befriends you and the other characters simply by remaining as she is.
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I know I’ve spoken about my issues with ‘Peter Pan and Wendy’ (2023) before, both in my initial thoughts post about the film after it released and a couple of smaller comments since, but I’ve realised something this past week after rewatching the original Disney cartoon and the 2003 non-Disney live-action while sick, and I feel I need to talk about it.
It’s about Wendy Moira Angela Darling.
While I stand by that Ever Anderson was one of the highlights of the film and that she did a great job as Wendy, the Wendy in the film is not really the Wendy seen in Barrie’s book, nor the one in the play and other films adaptations. It’s a very different character in a lot of ways, and while it’s normal for characters to differ from adaption to adaptation - especially over the course of 70+ years - I feel like the Wendy seen in the 2023 is more like Jane, Wendy’s daughter, from Disney’s Return to Neverland sequel in 2002.
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Let me preface by saying that I actually love Jane in the sequel as a character - I see a lot of myself in her, and while the sequel in itself is not really my favourite, I do have some nostalgia for it because I grew up with it and it’s a cute little story. I like that Jane is actually different from Wendy in a lot of ways; she’s a lot more headstrong and more of a tomboy, and while she’s also a storyteller at times like her mother (mostly to her brother Danny), she is a lot more practical I think and seems to be opposite to Wendy in that she’s trying to grow up too fast. Wendy believes in Peter Pan and doesn’t want to grow up, meanwhile Jane believes Peter Pan to be silly childish nonsense, that she has to grow up quickly and be more adult due to the war/her father being away - Wendy says to her, “you think you’re very grown up - but you have a great deal to learn”.
Obviously the 2023 Wendy doesn’t want to grow up, that’s still the same, but in terms of personality, temperament and the way she treats her brothers after the broken mirror incident (blaming John for it), she reminds me more of Jane than Wendy. Like Jane, she also doesn’t seem to have a good time going to Neverland (at least not at first?) and she seems to take on a lot more action than Wendy did in the animated film.
Of course, it’s not the first time that we’ve seen Wendy wielding a sword and fighting pirates - the 2003 Wendy was shown to play with wooden swords and use real ones, even remarking, “who are you to call me ‘girlie’?!”. I’m not saying that Wendy can’t be a sword wielding girl and fight because she can, it’s one of the additions I love the most about the 2003 film.
The problem with the 2023 version of Wendy is not her being a main character (she has always been a main character), nor her sword fighting and being generally bad-ass - it’s the erasure of the other qualities that make her Wendy Darling.
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One of Wendy’s primary character traits is her mothering nature - she is very motherly to her brothers, and when she hears that the Lost Boys don’t have a mother, she’s aghast and agrees to be their mother. The whole “Peter is father, Wendy is mother” idea is clearly a reference to how kids in the playground will play games like “mummies and daddies” - kids imitating what they see around them. It’s all a big pretend game in Neverland for fun. It’s also undeniable that Wendy pretending to be the Lost Boys’ mother is clearly reflective of her own mother, who she adores and is portrayed as the loveliest lady ever, and how she’s imitating Mrs Darling in a lot of ways during this “game” - singing to them, telling them stories, medicine etc.
Some would argue that Wendy is “forced” into being the “mother” and that while all the boys are off having fun, she’s left playing house, which I understand. But what a lot of modern audiences and filmmakers don’t understand these days is that motherhood is NOT an anti-feminist idea - there seems to be this view that portraying a girl wanting to be a mother or expressing the wish to be married/have children is some old-fashioned misogynistic notion, which is absolutely bizarre to me.
As a feminist myself, I believe that there is no clear cut definition of “womanhood” or what it means to be a strong woman with autonomy. Some women want to have careers and not have children, and that’s fine; some women want to have children, that’s fine; some women want both, and that’s fine. What matters is that it’s the woman who is deciding what she wants.
For me, Wendy has always been this remarkable and extraordinary character to look up to because she chooses to grow up - and for her, that means having her own children to tell her stories to. That’s what she wanted, that’s why she went back to England, and that’s part of her character arc, realising that by growing up she has things to look forward to.
For some reason, when 2023!Wendy thinks “happy thoughts” to make herself fly when being walked off the plank, her vision for the future that she looks forward to involves piloting automobiles that haven’t even been invented yet and then dying alone? Which… I mean, if that’s how someone wants to live then fair enough but that’s not Wendy. That’s not the Wendy Darling I grew up loving.
A lot of my issues with the 2023 version of Wendy do in fact link with other issues of the film in general: the Lost Boys including girls, for example. Like I get wanting to be inclusive, and I 100% wanted to be a Lost Girl growing up, but the Lost Boys are boys for a reason (“girls are much too clever to fall out of their prams”), and when Wendy arrives it’s a huge deal because they’ve never actually lived with girls before, and the only concept of girls they have is their memories of “mother”, which is why Wendy becomes their mother figure - because they literally don’t have any other female figures in their lives to compare her to other than the tiny scraps they remember of their mothers.
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There’s also the issue of the thing prompting Wendy not wanting to grow up being changed; in the original, it’s because it’s her last night in the nursery and moving from the nursery - aka the room she has spent her entire life thus far in - to her own room is a HUGE transitional worry that a lot of kids probably go through (usually it’s in the form of moving from toddler beds to big kid beds but still). In the 2023 version, she’s being sent off to boarding school for some reason which doesn’t really make sense to me because the Darling parents a) are so poor they have to have a dog as a nursemaid and b) love their children so much that they would never do that to them. I’m not saying that being shipped off to boarding school ISN’T a worry for a young girl or a huge deal, but it isn’t one that I think necessarily fits with the story.
There’s the fact that Wendy is no longer the storyteller; in most versions, the reason Peter visits the nursery is because he likes her stories. Instead, the reason he comes to the nursery is not because he likes her stories but because he used to live in the house? And instead of bringing her to Neverland to tell stories, he comes to take Wendy away as he apparently heard her saying she didn’t want to grow up? It just doesn’t sit right with me, but maybe that’s just my opinion.
Also, for some reason, Wendy and Peter don’t actually seem to like each other at all in the 2023 version - I’m not saying there should have been romantic hints or whatever, but even just in a friendship way they really don’t seem to care in any way about each other. They just seemed rather indifferent towards each other, and it’s kind of jarring to see.
In some ways, I feel like 2023 Wendy was made a little too bad ass and on the nose super feminist: “this magic belongs to no boy!”, slapping Peter across the face (which was just…??? Why?!?!), constantly criticising Peter/Neverland, having WAY more action and heroic moments than Peter Pan himself… maybe in a different story it could have worked but for this one, it came across forced at times, like they were intentionally trying to show “look! Look how badass she is! She can fight off grown men all by herself! She doesn’t need a boy to help her! She can do everything by herself!”
This is why I feel like the 2003 version of Wendy is the best one (so far): while they modernised her slightly by making her sword fight and express an ambition to write novels about her adventures, she was still a storyteller and motherly figure to the Lost Boys/her brothers. For me as a child, seeing Wendy be the storyteller and her journey of acceptance about having the grow up was really important to me because I could completely relate to it.
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Of course, I recognize I’m very biased because this is the one I grew up with (along with the animated Wendy of course) so I’d be interested to hear other people’s thoughts!
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daisyychainssj · 9 months
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I know the whole Richas and Tallulah conflict happened hours ago and it reached a resolution and stuff but I'm just now catching up with it so I'm gonna write out my feelings about it because I think the whole thing and the way everyone is interpreting it differently is really interesting. I'm probably going to end up saying things that people said like hours ago so sorry if it's a bit repetitive to read!
!THIS IS ALL ABOUT THE CHARACTERS NOT THE CCS!
Richas POV - Okay so firstly, Richas' pov is probably the most complicated because he (obviously) has a much more complex relationship and understanding of the paintings. Not only do they cause him to be distressed because of how they're created but seeing it up on Philza's wall has just shown him that his pai Cellbit betrayed his trust. He didn't get rid of the paintings and instead has been just handing them out behind his back and I can't imagine how gut wrenching that must've been. Tallulah get's defensive about the painting and so she becomes the target of all of his hurt, frustration and fear. He is so worked up over this (understandably) and is getting increasingly frustrated because nobody is listening to him. He didn't agree to the "not be siblings anymore" ultimatum because he truly felt that way, I think he was just blinded by pure desperation. This poor kid NEEDS to be given the opportunity to sit down with someone and open up about this whole Romero Richas situation and he needs to be listened to and his fears taken seriously.
Tallulah POV - Now onto Tallulah's pov. For Tallulah this painting is a cute art piece of her papa phil and her brother Chayanne and suddenly her other brother is demanding that he take it back. Yes it's his painting but also she's a kid, in her eyes this painting was given to them and it's theirs now why would she give it back just so it can be destroyed? Also, Tallulah is the sweet egg! the kind egg! oh she's just so lovely and that's all there is to her!!!!! (sense my sarcasm here) sometimes when that is the way that someone presents themselves it's because they're scared that if they aren't that way they won't be liked/loved and people will leave if they're not prefect. This girl has abandonment issues on top of abandonment issues and Richas agreed to not be her sibling anymore over a painting. So this impacted her HARD. (we ofc know Richas didn't mean it but her character didn't) Tallulah acts out and (from her pov) stands her ground for once and now her brother doesn't want to be her brother anymore. I also think her throwing a tantrum and being a bratty made some of the audience even more shocked and dare I say frustrated at Tallulah behaving like this during this situation because that's not how they're used to her being. She was being stubborn and giving these intense ultimatums but she can be like this I think people just don't see it often because she only really lets her guards down in that way infront of Phil and Chayanne.
So now you have two extremely worked up kids who won't really listen to each other because their emotions are so heightened and that's to be expected! Children can not and should not be expected to regulate their emotions in the same way adults can.
Forever POV - His entire pov of the situation is very interesting to me. I see a lot of people criticising the way he handled this and to a certain extent I do agree. However, I think something that is being overlooked is that Forever perhaps wanting to make sure Tallulah was okay is because that is not his child. He only got permission literally yesterday to look after her after being previously denied. With Richas he can sit with him for HOURS afterwards if needed to try and talk through things. He has to drop Tallulah home in like an hour. It's very obvious to everyone on the island how close she is with Phil, she will tell him everything that happened during her time with the other parents. It makes sense, to me, for Forever to want to try and smooth the situation out as fast as he can and make everything okay. Do I think that makes the way he acted completely fine. No. but I don't think it makes zero sense for him to have acted that way. Also, him being Richas' pai means he's seen Richas have tantrums and be dramatic and bratty, he's never ever seen Tallulah do that so yeah he's going to panic and be like "oh shit I need to calm her down/make sure she's okay because this is unusual". I really do wish he had taken Richas' feelings and concerns more more seriously and hadn't just left him for a bit hopefully in the future he makes sure that he does that. It's a learning curve and he's learning to parent as he goes! He crash landed on an island and then got a child dropped into his lap to take care of so he's kinda just learning on the job.
BBH POV - I don't really have much to say here, I think bad handled the situation well given what he canonically knows about the Romero Richas situation (which is basically nothing) He encouraged Tallulah to talk things through with Richas and kept explaining how important their bond is and idk I just think BBH did a really good job.
Overall, I LOVE that the eggs are getting storylines with each other and are learning and growing. I'm so glad that Richas and Tallulah made up, they both need a warm hug and some hot chocolate or something after that whole ordeal. Little kids feeling big emotions for the first time is tough! but they did great <3
(I apologise if I missed anything important that happened between Richas and Forever when they were alone, I don't speak Portuguese but I tried my best based on the bits and pieces that the wonderful Portuguese speakers on here have translated!)
Anyway that's my long ass essay done! <3
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earlgraytay · 1 year
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I'm having a certain amount of weird cognitive dissonance about partycoffin's Welcome Home (not tagging them because this is kinda speculation...)
I normally absolutely loathe the "the cute thing was EVIL ALL ALONG" genre, especially with Muppety puppets. I have a very strong squick about it. The Henson Workshop was one of baby's first hyperfixations, and The Dark Crystal is so important to me that it's hard to describe how without invoking religion.
... It's important to me, for these reasons, that the Muppets, especially the Sesame Street crew, are... innocent. Not in a Calvinist way, in an ... autistic hippie way. They're joyfully weird. They're not cruel for cruelty's sake. Some of the Muppets are grumpy and mean because it's what they were made to be, but they're not...
Look, it's hard to explain, but there's a very specific kind of Mean Comedy that, before Henson's death, the Muppets just did not do. Even Statler and Waldorf's heckling doesn't push that button for me. The Muppets shouldn't be capable of that kind of interpersonal cruelty. And that's important enough to me that I can't watch something like Avenue Q (much less Actual Puppet Horror) without getting sick to my stomach.
But *thus far*, the horror elements of Welcome Home haven't gotten to me in the same way. And I think it's because... Clown respects that aspect of the children's puppet genre?
Like, I know we're still in early days, and That One Fucking Picture Of Maisie freaks me the fuck out (for, uh, different reasons). But so far, it seems like at least part of the horror aspect... Is that innocence, and how it can't survive contact with humanity.
So far, at least in the newest version of WH, we've seen very little to indicate that the Home crew's joy and innocence aren't genuine. Everyone has Depths to their character, obviously, that can't be plumbed without going into the Gruesome Shit. But like.... with the possible exception of Wally, they don't seem Cruel. Fuck, even Wally seems Oblivious and Earnest, just... willing to do horrible things for the sake of Keeping Home Intact.
And that LACK of malice is ironically where the horror comes in! Because the sunny days of a kids' puppet show can't survive contact with a reality where people are cruel and ableist and homophobic, and once the show ends, there's nothing left but that reality... and everything falls apart.
Agh, I don't know. I might have to drop this fandom if I get that button pushed too many times. But for now, it's interesting to see an adult take on the genre that isn't gleefully mean and disrespectful towards one of the things I love about puppets.
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1bringthesun · 1 year
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what a lot of bsd fans, especially the younger ones, don’t understand is why or under what circumstances characters are described as “childish.”
it’s always a slap in the face when i see someone say, “oh, Oda called Dazai a ‘crying child,’ and people still ship them? obviously he’s his father figure!”
i’m not gonna argue against the fact Oda could have been some sort of authoritative, caring, older, responsible guy to Dazai, but under no circumstances do i think Oda saw Dazai as a kid.
as far as BSD goes, Oda is one of the most respectful characters to other people’s perceptions of themselves. hell, he didn’t even see his orphans as children. he had a convo with one of the em in dark era that went something like this:
“It’s always so upsetting when Pops treats us like children. We’re not kids, y’know? We’re adults. Is the fact that we grew up so fast an issue for the grown-ups?”
“Mhm, it probably is.”
so, if Oda doesn’t see a literal eight-year-old as a child simply because he knows how mature he is, what makes people think he’d see Dazai of all people as one…?
the reason Oda described Dazai as wearing the expression of “a child about to cry” has nothing to do with his age or his maturity- it’s because there’s a distinct difference in the way adults and children cry.
when adults cry, it’s with the knowledge that they’re not the only one suffering. that the world isn’t against them, but instead, they probably got themselves into a bad situation. when children cry, it’s free from rationalization and logic, just pure unadulterated agony at something that may not even matter in the grand scheme of things.
it’s not that Dazai is dumb, can’t understand that the world doesn’t revolve around him, or seems like a kid to Oda, it’s that the chasm in his heart transcends the normal despair of what you’d expect to see in a grown-up. it’s the same flavor of raw pain that you can see a child display when something doesn’t go their way, the same blindness to anything outside of their own point of view.
Dazai looked like “a child on the brink of tears” because while walking into the outstretched gun of a sniper, he could only see his own abysmal emptiness.
Oda also described Mori as having a child-like grin or something of the sort, so if he sees Dazai as a kid because of that, i’m going to claim he saw the boss of the mafia who happens to be double his age as a kid, too.
this is just something that has been on my mind, especially since i’ve been seeing an influx of Oda dad content. everyone’s entitled to their own opinions and headcanons, of course, but it admittedly grates on me when people get attacked for something stupid like this, and since the tumblr bsd community seems to be forgiving, i’m talking about it here.
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The thing is they’re all foils of each other, you’re supposed to see each of them in everyone, Katniss and Peeta and Gale (though nobody really cares about him, sorry dude) in Sejanus and Lucy Gray and Coryo. There’s Katniss in Lucy Gray’s singing and the mockingjays, in the curtsy, in their similar looks; in Sejanus’s ‘act first think later’ reaction, in the way they honor the dead and how they want to protect the innocent; in Coryo’s distrust of people’s motivations, the way he second guesses everything, in their survival being the first thing in their mind in dangerous situations, in their food insecurity, there’s a reason that Katniss says the two of them have always understood each other. There’s Sejanus in Gale’s righteous fury, the fire he has, the fierce morality, there’s Lucy Gray in his loyalty and honesty, there’s Coryo in the way he gets taken under the wing of a powerful and prominent adult (Dr Gaul for Coryo, Coin and Beetee for Gale) as a teenager, manipulated and offered power and used to create atrocities in the name of a greater good. You see Peeta and Lucy Gray paralleled as performers in a hunt, using their charm rather than physical ability; Sejanus shown in Peeta’s compassion for others and in the symbol of bread, given to save Katniss for starvation, sprinkled over the bodies of the dead tributes; you see Coryo in Peeta’s determination to save his girl, to get her out of the games, the way he manipulates a crowd for his own gain, in their blonde hair.
And the thing is it’s absolutely brilliant because it only furthers the notion that none of them are set in stone.
Peeta is unfailingly good, even though his survival is predominantly thanks to those manipulation tactics. He uses them to sway the opinions of those in power without them noticing it, he even makes THE CAPITOL hate the games prior to the Quarter Quell. In the beginning of Mockingjay he uses it to sway Capitol favor towards Katniss in case the rebellion fails, at this point he is not focused on what the ‘right thing’ to do is, he’s looking to keep her alive at any cost. Katniss frequently describes Peeta as ‘playing the game’ even when they arguably aren’t in the Games, he knows what he’s doing, yet we never doubt in his goodness. The ability to manipulate people like that is pretty much never seen as a positive trait in any form of media, but we never doubt him, not when we’ve witnessed his compassion, his empathy.
Gale and Sejanus are both fiercely for the rebel cause from the beginning, even when they have no chance, the idealist, tho one who doesn’t care whether they get hurt to do the right thing, the paragon of morality, the ideal hero type. And yet still, by the end of the series, we cannot describe Gale as good anymore, even if what he did was for the right reasons. The power of taking the typical type of main character and showing how their ideals can be used against them, how they can get too caught up in the cause and fail to see the consequences piling up is fantastic, because there’s a certain point before Snow becomes an absolutely irredeemable monster where the two have a lot of similarities in their arcs, even though personality wise they couldn’t be more different. Snow is a fantastic villain because, in the end that cognitive dissonance overpowers the part of him that has misgivings, he is entirely convinced he is doing the right thing no matter the cost, a path we see Gale head down in Mockingjay. We even start to see Gale considering the Capitol citizens, including children and other innocents who played no part as ‘other’ and inherently monstrous. Coin and others in 13 wanting to do a Capitol Hunger Games illustrates that point as well, the escalation of it, the end result, when a revolution ceases to be a revolution and simply becomes a change in oppressors, but Gale is integral to that point because he is the early stages of it. Coryo is in the early stages of it for a large portion of his book. Obviously the difference is that Snow has 65 years to become very comfortable with this in his fascism and increasingly monstrous tendencies, but it’s the same beginning stage, and it’s incredible how Collins shows that a revolutionary type can quickly become something bad if they aren’t careful.
For Katniss as the reluctant hero type to never really willingly step up to the role, only be strong armed into it, is brilliantly done. Most ‘chosen one’ types don’t want to be, but eventually they do take it up with some willingness, but the Hunger Games is above all about using children in immoral ways whether for ‘good’ reasons or bad. Katniss only chooses to be their hero in the face of direct threat to herself or her loved ones, but that doesn’t undermine her actions. Even though she is supposed to be their tool, she exercises her free will time and time again, she makes calls that she know place her and her loved ones in political danger with 13, she makes herself their symbol on her terms. For someone who’s first thought is how to keep herself and the people she cares about alive, this defiance means a lot, particularly because she doesn’t trust people, she genuinely isn’t sure if there is going to be someone in her corner standing up for her, protecting her from the consequences of her actions, and most of the time when there is someone she’s surprised. She fully expects the worst case scenario, the worst in others, but unlike Snow she doesn’t hesitate to offer the best of herself in spite of having everything to lose and nothing to gain. Even though she fully expects everyone to have an ulterior motive, everyone to be lying, she cannot help but be anything but genuine, anything but true to herself. She doesn’t necessarily believe in any inherent goodness in others, oftentimes the opposite, but she still offers kindness rather than violence and that is all the more powerful.
In the frame of the Hobbes/Locke duality that TBOSAS really leans into, Peeta believes in an essential goodness in people, Gale sees it as us versus them, with his side as naturally ‘good’ and the other side as inherently bad, but Katniss by default thinks of people as self serving, something she still struggles with in the epilogue, having to remind herself of evidence to the contrary, she is consistently fighting that idea, disproving it with every action, at every turn, which is much more powerful than her just seeing the world in a positive light.
The thing is Suzanne Collins has them all start out as kids, each with a personality type, Katniss most like Coryo, Gale most like Sejanus, and a melange of other characteristics and traits—Peeta and Coryo most similar in their way of dealing with people, for instance—and through the choices they make she shows that they’re not set in stone. That it’s not some inherent goodness or badness in them from birth, it’s not just the way they behave around their peers. Every choice they make, every situation out of their control sets each of them on a path. Time and time again Coryo is only protected or assisted by the corrupt adults around him, he’s shown that only a very specific type of person will protect him, and they will always have something in it for them, and they will not tolerate him being anything less than like them, and in the end he chooses to have security in his survival, to have control, over everything else, and he lets that warp him into an atrocious human being. He takes the easy way in life, in contrast to Katniss and her uphill battle for the goodness in human nature.
Collins didn’t even try to be subtle about it, it’s very deliberate in the book in the way that he narrates as Coriolanus through the entire thing, but narrates the final chapter as Snow. It’s as clear as a marker flag, the way she says, ‘this is him crossing the line of no return’. Your sympathy for him in the book doesn’t come from him being sexy or charismatic, because you’re in his head and he’s an absolute disaster honestly. His internal monologue is basically just panicked screaming. The urge to root for him comes from the fact that Collins introduces him to us as a scared teenager, a kid. He’s not necessarily a great person, but it’s not yet in a ‘set to become a fascist dictator way’ it’s just in the way that a great deal of seventeen year olds are. There were so many times in reading the book that I laughed a loud because he was SUCH a teenager in his reaction to things. There isn’t any point to having a book with a character who was poised to be evil from the start, the whole point is watching what he becomes, it’s ‘be careful how you treat the children of the world now, they grow up to run the world, and who they are is shaped by who is kind to them and who isn’t’. Casca Highbottom didn’t see Coriolanus Snow for who he was from the start, he saw an adult who had wronged people in a child and mistreated the child according to his beliefs, and in doing so opened the doors for that child to become exactly what he feared and worse.
The whole point is that they’re kids, the whole point of all four books, they were all just children to begin with, some more similar than others but they all ended up in completely different places and who they ended up with wasn’t the same as the people they had been most alike when they were young. The point is that you can’t look at a child and decide they are more or less likely to be the world’s next great monster just because of their personality traits or how they see the world or who they’re friends with. Children are blank slates for adults to write on, and then they have to take all that writing and make a book of who they are out of it someday, and they might be the ones to make that book in the end, but it matters what you write. It matters when you give them kindness, or when you hurt them, it matters when you leave them to fend for themselves too young, it matters when you give them everything they could ever want and teach them that it’s not precious to have things and that they should always get them and that others shouldn’t and that it’s nothing less than what they deserve, it matters whether you starve them, or you bomb them, because whatever they make of themselves they make with the words that you write on that slate, and even though they might be able to turn it into anything if they want to, it’s far easier to write a horror story with violence than it is to write a gentle poem.
So they are all meant to mirror each other, every one of them, to show different roads taken with circumstances similar and different.
To show you two blonde boys who could part seas with the way their words affect people, and ask you to look at them when they are five years old, or ten, or fifteen, nameless, without context, just pretty boys with prettier words in their mouths, and ask you: which one will be the monster?
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just-antithings · 8 months
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proshippers r funny to me because of the degree to which yall just lie. "we always tag our content correctly" no the fuck you dont ive been in the world you cannot trick me, trying to filter out all the ""shotacon"" when i still used ao3 was a nightmare because even when it wasnt split between 2293809 different euphemisms which changed frequently as everyone else started realizing "old man/younger man" was being used for like a 6 year old kid instead of age gaps between adults which outside of your roleplay most people do have a different stance on than pedophilia, and people constantly just posting 5 yr old/20 yr old porn ageddown porn of canon adults with zero relevant tags. this has been my experience in all of fandom, telling a proshipper that they need to avoid posting untagged graphic rape porn in tags for shounen is apparently as painful as having your leg sawed off from how people react to it. you have posts insisting that it is at all reasonable for an ao3 user who doesnt want to see pedophilia should simply filter out every possible shotacon ship which is what i did so i can tell you thats incredibly unreasonable because that number is generally in the thousands, doesn't count as "tagging correctly", and also DOESN'T WORK because again people will just not tag shit or do agedown porn without tagging it so you can be in the tag of a ship for characters who are 50 and 60 in canon when lo and behold AU porn where the older one is babysitting the younger one and theyre 20 and 10, no tags except "Au - babysitter". like tbc i do think that even if you have the minimum balls to tag your adult raping a kid porn "pedophilia" you should still be criticized for that which i know the main conceit of the anti anti movement is pretending is worse than murder, but its wild how often people let yall just lie that tagging correctly is the universal or even a common standard. thats not even getting into the fact that ao3 doesn't let you select tags to automatically filter so you have to type in every individual tag you want out every single time you do a search. but no everyone should have to spend 4 hours theorizing every possible way you could weasel words your way around describing an adult having sexual intercourse with a child and then individually type em all in just so they can see read old men fucking without one of them being turned into a middle schooler. like with every other anit anti talking point it runs into the ultimate problem that yall are lazy assholes who are in this community in the first place because youre so allergic to compassion you can only tolerate people esp children if youre jacking off to them and so any measure yall claim you take for the good of others is ultimately a lie. also i still havent forgotten all those times you defended irl pedophilia or that one time you said you had a kneejerk reaction to discredit someone talking about a case study of irl csa by defending the pedophile and blamed "antis" instead of the fact that you spend all day every day defending being attracting to children. which is much worse, obviously
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soullessjack · 8 months
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listen i get your frustration about how people treat jack, i hate when people reducd him down to just a destiel baby too. but as an autistic person myself, i really disagree with you calling people that like baby jack ableist. he's canonically 4 years old and had to have his childhood basically stripped away from him due to how dangerous it was. i don't think people enjoying the thought of him getting to have that chance at a happy childhood is as cruel and evil as you seem to think.
hi, I’m actually going to answer this differently than I did at first, because I feel like I missed the point and spent way too much time on the canon logistics of “giving Jack a childhood that he chose to skip and is never shown to want,” or that he’s actually pretty obviously portrayed as a teenager in the show, or that his character fundamentally revolves around autonomy & the struggle to have it, and not enough on the actual ableism. I’m also going to be a lot meaner this time, sorry.
honestly, you don’t get my frustrations. you don’t get that this isn’t some petty fandom drama about “muh fav being misunderstood” or “grr this content bad.” you don’t get my frustration if you think that’s all there is to any of this. this is something with an actual bearing on reality and the entire topic of representation in general, which you’d get if you took your head out of your ass and looked around for once. autistic people are still immensely underrepresented and misrepresented in most mainstream media. we are still seen and treated as circus animals, as punchlines, as lesser humans if not subhumans, and we have to face that alongside navigating a world that is wholly and systemically unnavigable to us. fiction and fandoms are an escape for many people, but especially marginalized people who long for community and representation.
the autistic community has a pretty long history of resonating with nonhuman characters in fiction over time, from robots to aliens to monsters in horror movies. because whether it’s their mannerisms or specific struggles or even narrative experiences, they resonate with us. jack resonates with us. he’s important to us as autistic people—and namely, as autistic adults who very rarely see ourselves represented in ways that don’t depict us as gross man-children, infantilized precious beans or emotionless geniuses. in fact, the very notion that autistic people are inherently childlike or mentally children directly leads into our sole representation being children, and even more into the treatment of us as “precious small beans.” does that ring any fucking bells to you yet?
jack might not have been intentionally written with autism or representation on mind, but this fandom literally builds itself up on coding and unintentional implications. he was also confirmed to be autistic anyways, so anyone still whining should just grow the fuck up about it. also, ironically, most accidentally autistic characters end up being the best kind lmao. but these discussions? these analyses by autistic fans —and even just fans who actually care about his complexities — only exist within our own little circles, and the idea of baby!jack is very much the fandom’s steadfastly going mainstream version of him—so much so that people are convinced it’s actually canon, they die on that hill like it’s some obligation to uphold. and any viewing of his canon character with nuance or complexity, or even his basic personality, is left to gather dust. it stops becoming people having fun when it’s over-saturating and supersedes actual canon. it stops becoming people having fun when it’s actually fucking harmful.
it’s frustrating as a general fan, but downright upsetting as an autistic fan who sees themself in him and has to witness every fucking day — in a community that prides itself on being a big found family no less — the infantilization of traits I and other autistic people express, and the stubborn justification of him being “actually a toddler” with even more autistic traits. There are literal scraps of canon adult Jack content to engage with; of any semi-intelligent thoughts on him to indulge in.
what you don’t get (or you refuse to get) that there is a direct correlation between all of this, the way jack is treated (ie ‘reduced to a destiel baby’) and the ableist infantilization surrounding his character. as in, this content directly feeds into his treatment, which then feeds back into the content made of him, which then feeds back again into his treatment in a horrible and exhausting cycle.
what you don’t get is that constantly regurgitating content where the baseline is jack being actively stripped of his identity and autonomy for the sake of becoming an accessory to Destiel/Sastiel/the Domestic Winchester Family is inherently rooted in layers of deep ableist rhetoric, and you can perpetuate all of that even without any intent for it. I’m not a fucking moron, and I’m not the big bad guy you’re talking to me like. I don’t think anyone who enjoys baby!jack is inherently “cruel” or “evil,” or turning jack into a baby while thinking “this’ll stick one to those retards,” and twirling their moustache, okay? and it’s really so funny to me that you’re trying to point the finger back at me. at least you tried.
what you don’t get is that whenever autistic fans voice our perspective on baby!jack, we’re fucking ignored. we’re fed the same rotten slop over and over and over again. “But we want him to be happy!” “But it’s an AU, it’s not canon!” “But he actually is a baby because XYZ!” “But, but!” Buts are not an argument, they’re the thing you still haven’t found a way to pull your heads out of. maybe the lack of oxygen from so many people in one small dark space is why you’re so fucking stubborn to understand this.
you wanna know what is cruel? being told that you are doing something hurtful, something harmful and something that painfully reflects real life struggles a real community goes through, and shrugging it off. being aware of the value something brings to someone else, and stripping it away simply because it doesn’t matter to you personally. finding another But or a corner-cut to excuse yourself from blame. you didn’t have the decency to listen when general fans said “hey this is kind of annoying can we treat him like an actual person,” and you don’t even have the decency to concede when autistic people are saying this is a deeply wrong thing to do.
if you have to ignore an entire community’s voice to feel better about the content you’re making that directly hurts them, if you don’t personally think it’s harmful or even real because autistic struggles are never real, then I am well within reason to assume you’re not a good person. it’s one thing to do something wrong because you’re uninformed, and it’s another thing entirely to continue to do that when you’ve been informed, and simply decided that it wasn’t worth changing or stopping.
believe me, as an autistic person I am well used to being isolated, to not being anyone’s priority in this capitalistic circle of hell. I am ready to expect my struggles and existence to be tokenized for somebody else to feel good, or squeeze money from. Im used to seeing movies portray my experience as some Manic Pixie Star-seed or creepy overgrown child. I know the world doesn’t care about me. But I don’t think I’m asking too much for this, the big found family fandom that’s been shown to care so much about every other problem, to care about me. To listen when it’s hurting me, or uplift something I care about.
I don’t think I’m asking for anything less than this family to actually treat me like I am part of it. But can you even do that?
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