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earaercircular · 10 months

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China's new metal threat stresses EU: "Critical"

In Lundin Mining's zinc mine, there are minor findings of the critical elements gallium and germanium.

Two small metals of which few have heard, have suddenly become part of a big political game as China restricts exports.

“This can mean problems for many companies”, says Jörgen Kennemar at Swedbank[1]. It sounds like something out of Asterix and Obelix, and if you're reading this on your phone, you're probably holding both germanium[2] and gallium[3] right now. The two elements are used in everything from screens to LED lights, semiconductors, car batteries and solar panels. “There are lots of uses for them. They are everywhere but they are not visible”, says Kaj Lax, head of the Swedish Geological Survey's (SGU)[4] department for mineral resources. They are classified by the EU as critical. But the mining of it is minimal in Europe.

A moment of concern

Instead, China accounts for a majority of all production globally, for 97 percent of gallium and 64 percent of germanium, according to a report from Nordic Innovation, which is an organization under the Nordic Council of Ministers. Starting on August 1, China has decided to severely limit exports of the two commodities. “It is not good for our industry”, says Kaj Lax.

Jörgen Kennemar, commodity analyst at Swedbank, calls the decision "a moment of concern". “This could mean problems for many companies, although it is too early to draw too high consequences from it. On the other hand, it shows the vulnerability that exists in the trade in these raw materials”, he says.

Within the EU, feverish efforts are underway to become less dependent on China when it comes to various critical raw materials, such as rare earth metals. In a bill from last spring, among other things, an updated list of critical substances and shorter permit processes for their extraction, handling and recycling are proposed. “These are raw materials that are central to the green transition. They are needed in everything from wind turbines to electric cars. It is important to have a safe delivery flow and not to sit in China's lap”, says Jörgen Kennemar.

Dependent on trade

While similar threats have come from China in the past, it's more of an eye-opener, especially for Europe, this time, according to Kennemar. “It is a means of pressure from China and the situation in the world makes it a little more awkward, and maybe also serious, this time. At the same time, China is also dependent on trade with the outside world and cannot completely isolate itself. There is a lot of politics in this”, he says.

According to Kaj Lax, most of the critical substances on the EU's list are already in European bedrock. The fact that they are not mined has often been a question of profitability. In Sweden there are several deposits of rare earth metals. Both germanium and gallium are also likely to be found here. But according to Kaj Lax, the interest in looking for them has not been that great. “Most often they can be found together with zinc in zinc ores, but it is not something that has been tested that closely. But we think there is a small potential.”

Small sensitive metals

Deposits have been found in Lundin Mining's zinc mine, Zinkgruvan Mining[5], in Askersund municipality[6]. In a survey conducted in 2016, however, they were judged to be too small for it to be worthwhile to begin any extraction. According to the mine's spokesperson, it is still not relevant because it concerns "incredibly small" assets.

The answer does not surprise Kaj Lax. “Getting a process started for a mine takes several years, and a process to extract in an existing mine can take almost as long”, he says and continues: “These are small metals that are sensitive to overproduction. If too much is produced, there is no profitability.”

Facts

This is germanium and gallium:

Germanium: Used in, among other things, semiconductors, fibre optics and solar cells. Only 12 percent of the world's germanium is mined outside China or Russia, with China accounting for the majority. In 2020, the total global production of germanium was 130 tonnes.

Gallium: Gallium is mined only as a by-product and is therefore considered a critical commodity by the EU, although the substance itself is not uncommon. Needed for, among other things, semiconductors in industry. A total of 300 tons are produced per year, and China accounts for 97 percent of that.

Source: The report "The Nordic Supply Potential of Critical Metals and Minerals for a Green Energy Transition" from Nordic Innovation, as well as Sweden's Geological Survey.

Source

Johanna Ekström/TT, Kinas nya metallhot stressar EU: "Allvarligt", in Aftonbladet, 8-7-23, https://www.aftonbladet.se/minekonomi/a/vedjEj/kinas-nya-metallhot-stressar-eu-allvarligt

[1] Swedbank is a modern bank with its roots firmly planted in the history of Sweden’s savings banks and the cooperative agricultural bank tradition. They have relationships with 7 million private customers and 553 000 corporate customers. https://www.swedbank.com/

[2] Germanium is a chemical element with the symbol Ge and atomic number 32. It is lustrous, hard-brittle, grayish-white and similar in appearance to silicon. It is a metalloid in the carbon group that is chemically similar to its group neighbours silicon and tin. Like silicon, germanium naturally reacts and forms complexes with oxygen in nature.

[3] Gallium is a chemical element with the symbol Ga and atomic number 31. Discovered by the French chemist Paul-Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1875, gallium is in group 13 of the periodic table and is similar to the other metals of the group (aluminium, indium, and thallium).

[4] Sveriges geologiska undersökning (SGU) (in English; Swedish Geological Survey) is the authority for questions about rocks, soil and groundwater in Sweden. They are the authority whose task is to provide geological information for society's needs in the short and long term.

[5] Zinkgruvan Mining operates Sweden's southernmost mine. It is located in the community Zinkgruvan, which is located two kilometers from the harbor town of Askersund and five kilometres south of Örebro. Here, it is close to both nature and the big city. https://www.zinkgruvanmining.com/

[6] Askersund is a locality and the seat of Askersund Municipality, Örebro County, Sweden with a population census of 3,887 inhabitants in 2010

#rare earth #critical raw materials

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an-apocalypse-of-magpies · 3 years

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Asterix and the Legacy of the Original Authors

So I finally saw Asterix and the Secret of the Magic Potion (2018). Significantly, this is the first Asterix story I’ve experienced since the retirement of Albert Uderzo, the original co-creator of the characters and creative lead follower the death of Rene Goscinny.

And it was brilliant.

The plot, simply summarised, is that Getafix (Panoramix in the original French), venerable and wise village druid, slips and falls out of a tree for the first time in his long career. He begins to worry that he’s getting too old for this (indeed, Getafix’s age has always been ambiguous, but he’s easily the oldest recurring character after the appropiately named Geriatrix/Agecanonix, who’s certainly over 80), and that he needs to find a successor, not least of which because only he knows the formula for his legendary magic potion that gives the Gauls the super strength needed to hold off the Roman invasion (the film makes a running joke that druids never write things down). While on the search, an old rival of Getafix’s, Sulfurix (dubbed Demonix in the Canadian English dub, in case it wasn’t clear that he’s evil) is desperately trying to steal the formula, seeking to liberate the Gaulish lands from the Romans and not merely one village. Along with Asterix, Obelix and tagalong kid Pectin(/e), the heroes must find a successor, but is there a Gaulish druid worthy of this most sacred knowledge?

The animation is excellent, as it was in the previous animated outing Asterix and the Mansions of the Gods (2014), really capturing the look and feel of the comic albums. I feel like too much cartoon media these days is afraid to really exploit squash-and-stretch for expressive and dynamic purposes, and with Asterix’s trademark slapstick being Roman soldiers clobbered so hard their torsos sail off into the air before their feet have entirely realised what happened, it was necessary for this. The film is bright and crisp, and the light effects suitably dramatic (and with many a magical zip and zap, it’s crucial to have good lighting).

The story has many of the familiar beats. Alexandre Astier is clearly playing it a little bit safe, but considering he’s writing his own Asterix story, it’s safer to stick with that than to try and push it too far and risk alienating the audience. A crisis emerges, Asterix and Obelix and miscellaneous tagalongs leave the village, shenanigans happen, Asterix and Obelix have a falling out and become separated temporarily, there’s an ominous moment when the magic potion runs out, Romans attack the village, everyone gets back in time to save the day, Romans get punched a bit, big feast under the stars. What I liked, though, is how this story tried to do something interesting with the side characters. While Getafix is a very important character for the story, he rarely gets involved in the actual plot, so it’s nice to see more of him and in particular his character flaws - namely his stubbornness and attempts to do everything himself, even to the detriment of those around him. Even being confined to a primitive wheelchair for a lot of the film due to an injured ankle doesn’t stop him from taking a part, and it’s nice to see more of him than merely ‘wise wizardly old man, keeps calm and lectures people’. Unhygenix the fishmonger (Ordralfabetix) gets an amusing background arc where he believes that he could be Getafix’s successor and tries dabbling with druidcraft in the background, with amusing results. For once, his role isn’t just ‘gets in a fight with Fulliautomatix the blacksmith (Cetautomatix)’, and we get to see that he’s an interesting combination of surprisingly intelligent and thick as two short rocks. Fulliautomatix himself gets to have some humorous musing at his alchemical antics, and at one point the requisite Unhygenix/Fulliautomatix fight is successfully quelled, with Fulliautomatix admitting that he has a short temper and that this was unnecessary aggression on his part. Vitalstatistix (Abraracourcix) leads the village men (apart from the perennially unpopular bard Cacofonix (Assurancetourix)) to accompany Getafix halfway through, leaving the womenfolk to defend the village with a backup supply of potion. Happily, this means we also get to see more of the village women - headed up by Impedimenta (Bonnemine), Mrs Geriatrix (Geriatrix’s unnamed but incredibly young wife) and Bacteria (Ielosubmarine) - than just ‘being someone’s wife’ - Impedimenta plays a vital role in corralling the women for war and appears to be keeper of the potion reserves, while the others get more speaking roles and are able to participate in fights. It’s not much, but in a world of Gaulish men, the women tend to fall by the wayside unless they get to be a sex symbol or someone’s harridan wife. Cacofonix himself gets to play at being a chief, where his cowardly nature makes for an amusing contrast Impedimenta’s more no-nonsense practicality. We also get to see some of the Gaulish children for once! They make fun of their elders and play around with stolen Roman warrior stuff. When the going gets tough, though, the first thing the village defence team do is make sure the kids get somewhere safe, and Cacofonix gets a slightly tender moment where he tries to assure them that he’s going to be okay ... with a long winded speech rather than just getting on with it.

The real star of the film (well, alongside Asterix, Obelix and Getafix) is Pectin. Pectin is a scrappy little girl from the village who’s into inventing and engineering, and her establishing scene is ignoring the other kids playfighting so that she can finishing what seems to bee some kind of automatic watering machine. She’s smart, creative, appropriately afraid of the dangers that crop up but wants to do right by Getafix, whose wisdom she deeply admires. It’s fairly clear even from the outset what her role will be. Eventually, in the darkest moments, Getafix teaches Pectin the secret recipe - including Getafix’s secret ingredient - in order to save the village. She assures Getafix later that she will try to forget the recipe, so that she won’t accidentally reveal it to the wrong sort, but just as the credits roll, Getafix muses what we’re all thinking - that this girl might be worthy to be his successor. Pectin’s important because of the series’ ... shaky history with feminism. The film sets out that only men can become druids, and women are even forbidden from the woods where they meet. When taking Getafix to the meet, Pectin has to wear a hood and hike her dress up to look more like a boy appropriately. To allow Pectin to become a druid would defy ... well, some lofty ideal that only men can become druids. Like so many old sexist tropes, the reason has become ‘... well, they just don’t’. So it’s good that this is addressing that, as well as forcing more female characters into the limelight. The most prominent female character in all of Asterix is Impedimenta, followed maybe by the heartthrob and Obelix’s crush Panacea. I’ve elaborated above the problems there. In Asterix classic, women are to be desired or to be overbearing wives to henpecked husbands. It’s likely that Goscinny and Uderzo meant no malice by this writing; they were two French men writing a humour comic, and played on the popular tropes accordingly. But they (or rather, Uderzo) did attempt to tackle feminism in this comic before. It was ... well, it was a bit clunky.

Asterix and the Secret Weapon (1991) was a rather dated and fearmonger-y take on feminism, having a feminist activist outsider called Bravura comes to the village, encourages the women to rise up against their husbands (the men, out of chivalry and hen-peckedness, do not resist), seizing control of the village. Asterix, being both a bachelor and bit of a firebrand at perceived injustice, confronts Bravura, whereupon she flirts with him to try and seduce him into marrying her, whereupon he (shock horror) strikes her out of reflex. But Gaulish men do not hit women! Asterix is banished to the nearby forest for his insolence, eventually joined by the other men, fed up with the overbearing women. When the Romans (knowing that Gaulish men will not attack a women) send a detachment of female soldiers to the village, the women have turned it into a primitive shopping centre, where the female soldiers can shop and get their hair and make up done and forget all about attacking the village. Yeah. Feminists are salacious witches who would enthrall men and subjugate them, women love nothing more than shopping and beauty, it’s ... it’s bad. Secrot of the Magic Potion at least attempts to fix this by questioning male dominance in a role without being so weird about it, and having the women be just as much proud, organised village defenders as the men, arguably more so, given they lacked the weapons or numbers they normally had with the men around. (I know that the most recent album, Asterix and the Chieftain’s Daughter (2019), kinda deals with this too, but I haven’t yet read that one)

Putting aside the feminist rant, the key theme of this film seems to be the passing of the torch, clinging to past glory, and stepping up to take responsibility. Getafix isn’t getting any younger, and as much as might hurt his pride, he needs to train someone to take his place. The other elder druids, it transpires, are foolish, complacent and irresponsible, getting too used to just messing around and partying. They’re getting senile too, shamefully admitting to keeping crib sheets to remember which apprentice druids are any good. Druids not writing things down seems to be a metaphor for old masters, well versed in their craft, who know it all so well that they don’t need notes ... and then struggle to teach others, so they keep doing it all themselves. Sulfurix is bitter that, despite his magic fire being useful, Getafix is held up as the better druid. Way back when, they were finallists in a druidcraft competition, and being able to conjure flame from nothing is certainly a useful talent that won out over Getafix’s useless but dramatic and very complex magic. Getafix is implied never to have held a grudge over this, especially given that he would eventually develop the magic potion that makes his people so formidable. Sulfurix, meanwhile, found his ‘useful’ parlour trick get weaker and less reliable over time, and he seems to have very few tricks under his belt by the present, so fixated was he on this one thing. His Villain Rant at Getafix at the end is pure projection - he’s become irrelevant, because his one thing became all he was known for. Finally, with Cacofonix being acting Chief, the women defending the village, and Cholerix (Teleferix) the apprentice druid and later Pectin striving to create the magic potion and fill Getafix’s footsteps, there is a theme of people, even wildly unprepared people, stepping up to take responsibility because it’s what needs to be done, be it for the sake of a legacy or simply because this operation won’t run itself. Such a theme rings loud in, I remind you, the first original Asterix story on film since the death or retirement of both of the original creators. They’re on their own now, with a great and beloved legacy to continue, and I think they’ve done a wonderful job. The film was not perfect by any means - the English dub lip-flaps weren’t that well aligned (my DVD didn’t have French language options), the story’s quite formulaic if you’re a fan of the series, and Sulfurix is ... not subtle as the villain - but if you like Asterix, you’ll like this. And if you don’t care for Asterix, it’s still enjoyable.

#asterix #asterix and the secret of the magic potion #not often a film makes me want to immediately write a review

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years

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Anonymous asked: I noticed you did post to acknowledge the death of Uderzo, the co-creator of the Asterix comics. I have to ask Tintin or Asterix? Which one do you prefer?

It’s like asking Stones or Beatles? I love both but for different reasons. I would hate to choose between the two.

Both Tintin and Asterix were the two halves of a comic dyad of my childhood. Whether it was India, China, Hong Kong, Japan, or the Middle East the one thing that threads my childhood experience of living in these countries was finding a quiet place in the home to get lost reading Asterix and Tintin.

Even when I was eventually carted off to boarding school back in England I took as many of my Tintin and Asterix comics books with me as I could. They became like underground black market currency to exchange with other girls for other things like food or chocolates sent by parents and other illicit things like alcohol. Having them and reading them was like having familiar friends close by to make you feel less lonely in new surroundings and survive the bear pit of other girls living together.

If you asked my parents - especially my father - he would say Tintin hands down. He has - and continues to have in his library at home - a huge collection of Tintin comic books in as many different language translations as possible. He’s still collecting translations of each of the Tintin books in the most obscure languages he can find. I have both all the Tintin comic books - but only in English and French translations, and the odd Norwegian one - as well as all the Asterix comic books (only in English and French).

Speaking for myself I would be torn to decide between the two. Each have their virtues and I appreciate them for different reasons.

Tintin was truly about adventure that spoke deeply to me. Tintin was always a good detective story that soon turned to a travel adventure. It has it all: technology, politics, science and history. Of course the art is more simpler, but it is also cleaner and translates the wondrous far-off locations beautifully and with a sense of awe that you don’t see in the Asterix books. Indeed Hergé was into film-noir and thriller movies, and the panels are almost like storyboards for The Maltese Falcon or African Queen.

The plot lines of Tintin are intriguing rather than overly clever but the gallery of characters are much deeper, more flawed and morally ambiguous. Take Captain Haddock I loved his pullover, his strangely large feet, his endless swearing and his inability to pass a bottle without emptying it. He combined bravery and helplessness in a manner I found irresistible.

I’ve read that there is a deeply Freudian reading to the Tintin books. I think there is a good case for it. The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham's Treasure are both about Captain Haddock's family. Haddock's ancestor, Sir Francis Haddock, is the illegitimate son of the French Sun King – and this mirrors what happened in Hergé's family, who liked to believe that his father was the illegitimate son of the Belgian king. This theme played out in so many of the books. In The Castafiore Emerald, the opera singer sings the jewel song from Faust, which is about a lowly woman banged up by a nobleman – and she sings it right in front of Sir Francis Haddock, with the captain blocking his ears. It's like the Finnegans Wake of the cartoon. Nothing happens - but everything happens.

Another great part is that the storylines continue on for several albums, allowing them to be more complex, instead of the more simplistic Asterix plot lines which are always wrapped up nicely at the end of each book.

Overall I felt a great affinity with Tintin - his youthful innocence, wanting to solve problems, always resourceful, optimistic, and brave. Above all Tintin gave me wanderlust. Was there a place he and Milou (Snowy) didn’t go to? When they had covered the four corners of the world Tintin and Milou went to the moon for heaven’s sake!

What I loved about Asterix was the style, specifically Uderzo’s visual style. I liked Hergé’s clean style, the ligne claire of his pen, but Asterix was drawn as caricature: the big noses, the huge bellies, often being prodded by sausage-like fingers. This was more appealing to little children because they were more fun to marvel at.

In particular I liked was the way Uderzo’s style progressed with each comic book. The panels of Asterix the Gaul felt rudimentary compared to the later works and by the time Asterix and Cleopatra, the sixth book to be published, came out, you finally felt that this was what they ought to look like. It was an important lesson for a child to learn: that you could get better at what you did over time. Each book seemed to have its own palette and perhaps Uderzo’s best work is in Asterix in Spain.

I also feel Asterix doesn’t get enough credit for being more complex. Once you peel back the initial layers, Asterix has some great literal depth going on - puns and word play, the English translation names are all extremely clever, there are many hidden details in the superb art to explore that you will quite often miss when you initially read it and in a lot of the truly classic albums they are satirising a real life country/group/person/political system, usually in an incredibly clever and humorous way.

What I found especially appealing was that it was also a brilliant microcosm of many classical studies subjects - ancient Egypt, the Romans and Greek art - and is a good first step for young children wanting to explore that stuff before studying it at school.

What I discovered recently was that Uderzo was colour blind which explains why he much preferred the clear line to any hint of shade, and it was that that enabled his drawings to redefine antiquity so distinctively in his own terms. For decades after the death of René Goscinny in 1977, Uderzo provided a living link to the golden age of the greatest series of comic books ever written: Paul McCartney to Goscinny’s John Lennon. Uderzo, as the Asterix illustrator, was better able to continue the series after Goscinny’s death than Goscinny would have been had Uderzo had died first, and yet the later books were, so almost every fan agrees, not a patch on the originals: very much Wings to the Beatles. What elevated the cartoons, brilliant though they were, to the level of genius was the quality of the scripts that inspired them. Again and again, in illustration after illustration, the visual humour depends for its full force on the accompaniment provided by Goscinny’s jokes.

Here below is a great example:

There’s a lot of genius in this. Uderzo copied Theodore Géricault’s iconic ‘Raft of the Medusa’ 1818 painting in ‘Asterix The Legionary’. The painting is generally regarded as an icon of Romanticism. It depicts an event whose human and political aspects greatly interested Géricault: the wreck of a French frigate, Medusa, off the coast of Senegal in 1816, with over 150 soldiers on board. But Anthea Bell’s translation of Goscinny’s text (including the pictorial and verbal pun ‘we’ve been framed, by Jericho’) is really extraordinary and captures the spirit of the Asterix cartoons perfectly.

This captures perfectly my sense of humour as it acknowledges the seriousness of life but finds humour in them through a sly cleverness and always with a open hearted joy. There is no question that if humour was the measuring yard stick then Asterix and not Tintin would win hands down.

It’s also a mistake to think that the world of Asterix was insular in comparison to the amazing countries Tintin had adventures. Asterix’s world is very much Europe.

Every nationality that Asterix encounters is gently satirised. No other post-war artistic duo offered Europeans a more universally popular portrait of themselves, perhaps, than did Goscinny and Uderzo. The stereotypes with which he made such affectionate play in his cartoons – the haughty Spaniard, the chocolate-loving Belgian, the stiff-upper-lipped Briton – seemed to be just what a continent left prostrate by war and nationalism were secretly craving. Many shrewd commentators believe that during the golden age when Goscinny was still alive to pen the scripts, that it was a fantasy on French resistance during occupation by Nazi Germany. Uderzo lived through the occupation and so there is truth in that. Perhaps this is why the Germans are the exceptions as they are treated unsympathetically in Asterix and the Goths, and why quite a few of the books turn on questions of loyalty and treachery.

Even the British are satirised with an affection that borders on love: the worst of the digs are about our appalling cuisine (everything is boiled, and served with mint sauce, and the beer is warm), but everything points to the Gauls’ and the Britons’ closeness. They have the same social structure, even down to having one village still holding out against the Romans; the crucial and extremely generous difference being that the Britons do not have a magic potion to help them fight. Instead they have tea, introduced to them by Getafix, via Asterix, which gives them so much of a psychological boost that it may as well have been the magic potion.

I re-read ‘Asterix in Britain’ (Astérix chez les Bretons) in the light of the 2016 Brexit referendum result and felt despaired that such a playful and respectful portrayal of this country was not reciprocated. Don’t get me wrong I voted for Brexit but I remain a staunch Europhile. It made me violently irritated to see many historically illiterate pro-Brexit oiks who mistakenly believed the EU and Europe were the same thing. They are not. One was originally a sincere band aid to heal and bring together two of the greatest warring powers in continental Europe that grotesquely grew into an unaccountable bureaucratic manager’s utopian wet dream, and the other is a cradle of Western achievement in culture, sciences and the arts that we are all heirs to.

What I loved about Asterix was that it cut across generations. As a young girl I often retreated into my imaginary world of Asterix where our family home had an imaginary timber fence and a dry moat to keep the world (or the Romans) out. I think this was partly because my parents were so busy as many friends and outsiders made demands on their time and they couldn’t say no or they were throwing lavish parties for their guests. Family time was sacred to us all but I felt especially miffed if our time got eaten away. Then, as I grew up, different levels of reading opened up to me apart from the humour in the names, the plays on words, and the illustrations. There is something about the notion of one tiny little village, where everybody knows each other, trying to hold off the dark forces of the rest of the world. Being the underdog, up against everyone, but with a sense of humour and having fun, really resonated with my child's eye view of the world.

The thing about both Asterix and Tintin books is that they are at heart adventure comics with many layers of detail and themes built into them. For children, Asterix books are the clear winner, as they have much better art and are more fantastical. Most of the bad characters in the books are not truly evil either and no-one ever dies, which appeals hugely to children. For older readers, Tintin has danger, deeper characters with deep political themes, bad guys with truly evil motives, and even deaths. It’s more rooted in the real world, so a young reader can visualise themselves as Tintin, travelling to these real life places and being a hero.

As I get older and re-read Asterix and Tintin from time to time I discover new things.

From Asterix, there is something about the notion of one tiny little village, where everybody knows each other, trying to hold off the dark forces of the rest of the world. Being the underdog, up against everyone, but with a sense of humour and having fun, really resonated with my child's eye view of the world. In my adult world it now makes me appreciate the value of family, friends, and community and even national identity. Even as globalisation and the rise of homogenous consumerism threatens to envelope the unique diversity of our cultures, like Asterix, we can defend to the death the cultural values that define us but not through isolation or by diminishing the respect due to other cultures and their cultural achievements.

From Tintin I got wanderlust. This fierce even urgent need to travel and explore the world was in part due to reading the adventures of Tintin. It was by living in such diverse cultures overseas and trying to get under the skin of those cultures by learning their languages and respecting their customs that I realised how much I valued my own heritage and traditions without diminishing anyone else.

So I’m sorry but I can’t choose one over the other, I need both Asterix and Tintin as a dyad to remind me that the importance of home and heritage is best done through travel and adventure elsewhere.

Thanks for your question.

#question #ask #comics #tintin #asterix #personal #arts #culture

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margridarnauds · 4 years

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I have an Irish ask! How did the regional kings hierarchy work - was there a high king irl? How did you rule, and what over, and how did you get to be high king, if so? (From - a descendant of the Kings of Desmond, but very confused about what's shit, and what's legit, in Irish History?

Kingship in an Irish context is an endlessly complicated topic, and it seems like for every question we get, someone’s written or plans to write a dissertation on it. You accidentally tripped over a landmine when asking me this one. Which is DEFINITELY not your fault, I don’t resent you for it, it just means you are getting a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGG answer.

But. Anyway. Kingship. I will preface anything I say with the acknowledgment that I am a mythological literature person, not necessarily a law/contracts/history person. Also that, tragically, there are a LOT of law tracts that remain untranslated. (And a lot of things. In general.)

So, this is…complicated, since a LOT of the work in the legal tradition revolves around the notion of kingship (seriously, my closest friend in the department is a legal scholar and we have had some long bitchfests about how much attention is paid to kingship VS the common people, simply because…..guess who was paying for these manuscripts to be made? Yep, it ain’t Farmer Cormac. The single most important thing you can ever remember about these texts is that they were made by and for an elite audience); you have a lot of kings in a fairly condensed space, and it gets to the point of whether we should even really properly translate rí as “king” or whether a more generic term like “leader” is actually more accurate, though it IS cognate with Latin “Rex” and Gaulish “Rix.” (Aka “Vercingetorix”, “Cunorix”, “Asterix”…all the most important “Rix”s of the ancient world.) So. Kings. Definitely kings. But not really in any way we would generally consider “kings” to be. Fergus Kelly estimated that there could be as many as 150 KINGS throughout Ireland between the 5th-12th centuries (17), which….on a relatively small island that holds only about 5 million people in the present….**150**.

Traditionally, the idea of a singular high king of Ireland was….okay, so you have a LOT of guys who claim to be “King of Ireland,” but there’s a question of how real that power actually was, how much power they ACTUALLY wielded, and how stable they actually were. And, on one hand “King of Tara” is generally taken to be synonymous with “king of Ireland”, (hence the Uí Néill’s LONG claim to power), but there are a lot of issues with that one, and it’s something that’s a matter of debate, not the least because it seems like the Uí Néill…..might have influenced the literature ever so slightly as a way of bolstering their own claims (Jaski, Early Irish Kingship and Succession, 215). Basically, no evidence that the kings of Munster paid tribute to the kings of Tara before the 9th century, making the claim that the King of Tara = King of ALL Ireland doubtful.

And….well, I’ll let Bart Jaski explain the title of ardrí (high king), since he’s the man with the big book on it: “To keep up with [the political developments of Brían Boru’s victory at the Battle of Clontarf], the annalists of the tenth century introduce the title ‘high-king’ (ardri) as a title of recognition or flattery to denote a powerful king who achieved a remarkable domination over others. In later historiography, the old kingship of Tara came to be regarded as the ‘high-kingship’ of Ireland, which is both an anachronism and an inaccurate estimation of what the kingship of Tara meant, both in pre-historic times as in the documentary period. The title of rex Hiberniae given to the kings of Tara Domnall of Cenél Conaill and his grandson Loingsech does not lend support to the existence of a ‘high kingship’. as they were apparently subjectively awarded by partisan annalists and others.”

Fergus Kelly was more to the point, “The king of Ireland (rí Érenn), who figures so prominently in the sagas, is rarely mentioned in the law-texts. Though the idea of a kingship of the whole isalnd had already gained currency by the 7th century, no Irish king ever managed to make it a reality, and most law-texts do not even provide for such a possibility” (18).

Charles-Edwards disputed this conclusion in Early Christian Ireland (okay, technically, he disputed Binchy’s conclusions, but this line of thinking), discussing some further references to a single king of Ireland binding the other kings of Ireland to him, as Conchobar was said to have done with the men of Ulster, as well as the legal term tríath, with a line from an 8th century law text being “He is a burdensome tríath who penetrates Ireland of peoples from sea to sea” (519). Liam Bhreatnach suggested in his article ‘Ardrí as an old compound,” as the name suggests, that the term itself, while little used, is old. I can’t get ahold of it at present, but I’m going to presume he did make a solid case, given that Carey, Jaski, and Charles-Edwards all cite him, and they are all careful, respectable scholars. What John Carey would point out in “From David to Labraid” is that actually, several of those early references were in fact to the Christian as opposed to an earthly deity. AKA “The ULTIMATE high king, the highest of kings” (pg. 21-23). Something suggested by Carey in that same article is that the Church MIGHT have promoted the idea of high kingship as a way of appealing to kings who would be interested in it in exchange for their support of Christianity; a quid pro quo.

Basically, the question of the extent of the high king’s power, both in a Christian and pre-Christian context, is HIGHLY controversial and something I reckon will never fully be satisfactorily resolved, not the least because it also has the misfortune of featuring two favorite, perennial topics of many Celticists: Etymological arguments and kingship. What I think we CAN gather from the debate is that it was very far from a SOLID title, more a matter of individual monarchs as opposed to stable dynasties. Medieval Ireland did not have a Versailles and a Louis XIV, there was not a singular sun king who decided their fates.

Now, in general, kingship was not necessarily held with the same iron grip that you would see with, say, the Plantagenets in England. Primogeniture was not necessarily a thing here. You did have to be a nobleman to be king (Sorry, Farmer Cormac, you’re out, get back to your field, peasant), and you had to be descended from a king in either the first or the second degree to be king, but you did NOT have to be the firstborn son. If you have seven kids and the youngest is the only one who is qualified to lead….yep, Junior takes the lot. So, that’s the first thing. There’s a section of Mac Firbis’ Great Book of Genealogies (which is a LATE text, but includes basically a scrapbook of older material) that references that exact scenario. Youngest can take it, eldest can take it, eldest PROBABLY has a higher shot of it because…older, more time to be groomed for the kingship, more time to gather people loyal to him, etc. But. Like. All of the kids have a shot, and depending on where they’re fostered off to, their foster families will very likely support them if they want to make a bid for the kingship. (Irish dynastic politics were VERY turbulent.)

A king is elected to the tribe through the popular acclamation of their major clients/family members; their power, while it is something that is expected to some extent, is not a GIVEN to the same extent. (Jaski 212). Which. Is where the role of tánaiste comes in, which is a late development, but it irons things out so it’s like “Okay, when the old fuck dies, this dude is king.” In a literary context, this is also why Bres’ kingship is kind of doomed from the beginning. Because it’s the WOMEN of the Tuatha dé who support his kingship, not the men.

And, of course, even if Junior does take the throne, that does NOT mean that his brother’s kids are out of the running when Junior dies (or, more to the point, they might try to speed things along and arrange for a “hunting accident” to happen.) Because of the three generation requirement to maintain noble status, there was quite a bit of infighting (Jaski 197), as different offshoots of a given high king will want the throne in order to maintain their noble rank. Knives Out: The Medieval Ireland edition.

One story that deals with this is Echtra mac nEchdach Mugmedóin (Adventures of the Sons of Eochaid Mugmedóin), which discusses how the future Niall of the Nine Hostages, born the son of a Saxon slave and the king of Ireland, hated by his stepmother, and the youngest of the lot of the sons ends up taking the kingship anyway. (Answer: He’s down to sleep with an old hag. Who is also the sovereignty of Ireland. And is like “Okay, that was some good D, here’s how you get the kingship now.”) Now, this is primarily a literary as opposed to a historical story, but…..well….that’s where a lot of our stuff for this. Does come from. For better or worse. And I’m not just saying that because I’m currently procrastinating on working on an edition of that very text.

So, on the question of “How to rule.” The main relationship was between an overking-client king. So, let’s say that I am an underking in….IDK. Munster. What can I say? I like Munster. I’m not even a pronvincial king, but I’ve got my tuath, I’m chilling out, I’ve got my cattle, I’ve got some Nemed-class people with me, I’ve got a bit of land, and a couple of those people we don’t really talk about because they’re not important (Aka “Commoners, slaves, etc.” The people who do the work that the more privileged classes CANNOT do, like chop wood.)

Now, let’s say that you’re a provincial king, King of Munster. Your father’s just died, you’ve become king, or, alternatively, you’ve beaten the shit out of the other candidates, and you roll up to my people. Now, I could probably fight, but like. That’s a way to. Die. And maybe I do want the protection that comes from a Lord-Client relationship, since, hey, that DOES mean that you’re responsible for me. And if the King of Connacht rolls up and is like “Hey, I want to attack you and steal your cattle” you can roll up and be like “Hey, want to die?” Also, if one of your OTHER subjects kills a man in my tuath, you are expected to mediate, with me taking a hostage from your court until everything’s resolved, and you and I both getting a part of the resulting settlement (Kelly 23). And, of course, I’ll support you as well. It’s a mutual client relationship, just….an inherently uneven one. Most of the powerful subject kings, who were free but still subject to an overking were related to that king by a shared kinship, but there was a double edged sword: I support you, and then your brother Eochaid comes to the throne, I’m up Shit River with no paddle (Jaski 206). If I’m particularly useful/powerful to you, you might even foster one of your kids with me, so I can support him politically later down the line. (And also strengthen the relationship between our two peoples; that kid is going to be more mine than yours by the time that his fosterage is over, he will call you athair and me datai; one is a more formal term meaning “father,” [cognate with Latin pater and English father] one is more like “dad” and is cognate with the Welsh dat. Which seems to be related to….yep, the English diminutive dad.) Peter Parkes rather magnificently talks about this system as: “Clientage dressed in a false plumage of kinship: Cuckold consanguinity.” (”When Milk Was Thicker Than Water?”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 6.3, pg. 606)

So, what would happen there? Well, the system of overking-client king was held together much in the same way as the relationship between individuals would be, ie through hostages. The giving of hostages is something that was EMBEDDED in the legal system. So, you and I would proceed to haggle over who I have to hand over. Now, I don’t want you to take someone too important, you will want to take the most important person you can. I’ll try to get you to take my third cousin twice removed who I might see once every few years, Conall, you’ll try to get one of my kids. And, let’s be real, since you have the most power in this situation, you’ll probably fucking win. “He who has the sword makes the rules”- NOT an official medieval Irish legal statement, but it might as well be. Now, it should be emphasized that hostages were HIGHLY respected and treated well, there was no particular stigma against someone who was a hostage at some point, and you do have accounts of hostages eating at the king’s table, in a position that denotes a degree of intimacy and companionship. And a couple who are brutally executed or maimed when their kings broke the terms of the agreement, but, hey, only a 2% murder rate or so; very good for the times. It could be that the king’s son had a role when it came to making sure the hostages were cared for. But there’s not been all that much work done on it and a lot of this is being remembered second hand from a PhD student in our department who did a STELLAR lecture on the topic; if and when he decides to formally publish it, I’ll probably make a big deal over it. Because….this shit is IMPORTANT.

This is also why it’s Niall of the Nine Hostages. Because that’s how many peoples he extracted hostages from, that is a sign of his power as a king. You could NOT be king of Ireland without hostages. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Like, how are you going to be sure that your supporters are going to stick with you? And even if they do, where’s the signs of your authority? Why do you expect anyone to take you seriously?

So, a king of Ireland’s reign would be held together by a similar system, whether it’s provincial or the famous ardri. A high king would take hostages from their client kings as a way of showing off their power and authority, and they would probably show them off when making a circuit of their territory. Your ancestor would definitely have had a group of hostages taken from the athech-thúatha, or client peoples. The Triads put it slightly more succinctly: “[220] Three things that constitute a king: a contract with other kings, the feast of Tara, abundance during his reign.”

Now, again, this is an idealized literary context, but we’ve discussed the first one, the contractural nature. The feis Temro, or the Feast of Tara, was something that a High King of Ireland HAD to do as a way of securing his reign, and in the early days at least it seemed to involve some sort of marriage/sexual ritual with a representative of the goddess of sovereignty, a living embodiment of the land, and it would involve imbibing some sort of drink offered to him by her as well. (This is why Eochaid Airem HAS to marry Étain, because he needs a queen to have his feis Temro and become a king. This is also why Niall of the Nine Hostages secured his reign via sleeping with aforementioned hag.)

And there were a number of different taboos and responsibilities tied to said kingship. For example, in The Tidings of Conchobar Mac Nessa, it is said that “Now Conchobar himself used to give them the (the feast of) Samaim because of the assembly of the great host. It was needful to provide for the great multitude, because everyone of the Ulstermen who would not come to Emain in Samain lost his senses, and on the morrow his barrow and his grave and his tombstone were placed.” The Adventures of Nera also features Medb and Aillil throwing a feast on the day of Samain for the entirety of the province. Baile in Scáil features Conn rising every day so that he can go onto the ramparts of Tara with his druids and poets to defend it from the possibility of otherworldly attack. Another obligation was “the Prince’s truth,” the idea that the king, when giving out judgements, should be able to INTUIT the true answer. Giving a false judgement = ruin for the land, everything goes to shit, the harvests fails, cattle die, aliens invade (okay….maybe not, but like. it would be cool if they did), the king of Leinster steals your wife, etc. until the bad king is replaced. (It has been SUGGESTED that that might be the reason for some of the bog bodies. Possibly.) He also HAD to go out with a retinue when he was out hunting, a king who didn’t lost his honor price, same as if he’d used an instrument of MANUAL LABOR (the horror, the shock) (Kelly 19). For what it’s worth, I do know of at least one case in….I believe the 16th century where a woman claimed that the king was the father of her child, there was no one who could dispute it since he was alone, he took a shine to the child anyway, and BOOM heir. Which further shows one of the social dangers of a king on his own.

More specific ones to each province are laid out in the Book of Rights, which Myles Dillon did an edition of in “Taboos of the Kings of Ireland”. An example (chosen at random) includes, “The five prohibitions of the king of Munster: to hold a court before celebrating the feast of Loch Lern from one Monday to the next; to spend a wet autumn night before winter in Letrecha, to camp for nine days on the Suir, to hold a meeting at the boundary near Gabruan ; to hear the groans of the women of Mag Feimin in their oppression. And his five prescriptions : to despoil Cruachain at the call of the cuckoo; to burn the Laigin to the north of Gabair; to chant the Passion in Lent at Cashel; to travel over Sliab Cua with a company of fifty after pacifying the south of Ireland; to go with a dark grey army on Tuesday across Mag nAlbe.”

Either way, in Ye Olde Days, there was definitely an element of protecting the people of the region from the possibility of supernatural attack. That would obviously die down a little with the coming of Christianity, I don’t know whether a king in the 15th century, for example, would be expected to keep to it that rigorously, I lean towards “no” personally since this is generally talked about as an outdated custom, but it remained a popular trope in medieval literature. Dillon himself points out that, given that many of the taboos mentioned in here were only recorded in the 14th century, they were likely considered to be an odd, antiquarian quirk. That being said…..it’s ALL tied into the kingship, the idea of the king being tied to a certain series of obligations, the mutual relationship between king and people.

Now, if a king failed in his duties and taboos, he could be ousted. Like “you fucked up, buster, get packing.” Some examples of kings who lost their sovereignty include Bres mac Elatha (my BOY, my SON, my ANGEL, my…..little piece of shit), who was satirized by a bard (this is why people REALLY tend to underline the power of bards, because like. This was an ACKNOWLEDGED power of theirs. They were held in a heady mix of respect and fear for this one), Fergus mac Roiche (didn’t lose it because of incompetence per se, but did hand it over to Conchobar, and the men of Ulster, inexplicably, liked Conchobar more, which….their mistake but.), and Congal Cáech (whose bid for king of Tara was, according to legend at least, ruined by an unfortunate bee sting. In his eye. Whether he was actually king of Tara is something that seems to be slightly disputed.) People often will ask me, when I mention how much I love Bres, why I love him so much, and I feel like the answer to that….there are a hundred answers, depending on my mood, and this is NOT a Bres post, but the one most relevant to the overall topic at hand is that he really experienced the full kingship experience: The rise, the fall, the absolute tumultuous political reality of a 9th century king, albeit a fictionalized one.

Bibliography:

Carey, John, ‘From David to Labraid: Sacral Kingship and the Emergence of Monotheism in Israel and Ireland’, Approaches to Religion and Mythology in Celtic Studies

Charles-Edwards, T.M., Early Christian Ireland, Cambridge University Press

Dillon, Myles, “Taboos of the Kings of Ireland,” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History,Literature, Vol. 54

Jaski, Early Irish Kingship and Succession, Four Courts Press

Kelly, Fergus, A Guide To Early Irish Law, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies

Mac Cana, Proinsias, Celtic Mythology, Littlehampton Book Services

Parkes, Peter, ”When Milk Was Thicker Than Water?”, Comparative Studies in Society and History 6.3

#celtic studies #irish mythology #celtic mythology #Anonymous

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tinkerd · 5 years

Text

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO ASTERIX’ BY DAVID LITCHFIELD

(This post was originally written for the website nerdybookclub.com on April 3rd 2019)

One Saturday afternoon, many, many years ago, my nan bought home a book called ‘The Complete Guide To Asterix’. She picked the book up from Kempston Library thinking it was another narrative adventure in the series of books she knew I loved so much. The book was in fact a detailed text book written by Peter Kessler which offers a thorough behind the scenes breakdown of every Asterix book that had been created up to that point. There was also a number of features in the book that looked at the creators of these great characters- the writer René Goscinny and the illustrator Albert Uderzo.

The Asterix books were a big deal for me growing up. They are essentially comedy books but there is something very emotive about them. Asterix and his fellow villagers have so much heart and soul and the companionship between Asterix and his best friend Obelix was a beautiful thing. This may sound odd but carrying an Asterix book around with me at school gave me a sort of weird confidence that is hard to explain.

The exquisite artwork made it very easy for me to escape into this different time and place and visit ancient Gaul.

Growing up in a small town in Bedfordshire, England, there was something magical about reading books that were written and drawn in a different country that- at the time- seemed so far away. This was in the late 80s/early 90’s, before the internet. In a funny way reading Asterix made me feel more connected to the world. I consumed as many of the stories as I could. The artwork was always what drew me in. I still find the Asterix books a real source of inspiration in terms of Uderzo’s drawing style

In fact, I think it is fair to say that I learnt to draw by copying the illustrations in the Asterix books and spent hours trying to capture Uderzo’s distinctive style. I love how beautifully ‘French’ a lot of the gestures and mannerisms his characters have.

When my nan bought home ‘The Complete Guide To Asterix’ that Saturday I remember being initially disappointed that it wasn’t a new adventure to get lost in. However, I soon forgot this disappointment and read the whole book that afternoon. I reveled in the background information it offered on how these fantastic, beautifully exotic and hilariously funny comic books were bought to life.

The reason that the moment my Nan bought this book home is so important to me is that I am pretty sure that this is the precise moment that I realized that an ‘Illustrator’ was an actual job that people did.

The book told me that the illustrator and co-creator of Asterix: Albert Uderzo got paid to draw everyday and create characters and worlds and come up with adventures. I found out that Uderzo didn’t have to go to school, or go to work- (or at least the type of ‘work’ that I was getting accustomed to through my parents moaning about their own jobs) – Uderzo went to an art studio everyday. In this studio he was surrounded by pens, paint, paper and inspirational books and colorful posters. And he got to create new things every day.

There were photographs of Uderzo in the book. One was of him in his studio at his drawing desk staring up at us smiling. Another was of him working, totally focused on the page he was drawing and the new adventure he was creating. These photos were captivating. Uderzo was an actual illustrator. And he did get to do this every single day.

The thought that it was someone’s job to come up with these characters and spend their days drawing them was hugely exciting. When I realised that I could possibly do something similar and that could be my job …well, that thought blew my mind.

The life of Albert Uderzo sounded like a really happy and wonderful life to lead.

We didn’t have a great deal of money when I was growing up and we didn’t have computer games or satellite TV anything like that. But a library card was a very important object indeed and the library was a very important place. One of the most important places in the world in fact. It was there after-all that, aged 5, I found my first Asterix book. ‘Asterix & Cleopatra’.

Every weekend my brother, sister and I along with my mum or my nan would head to Kempston library and I would grab me some more Asterix.

Another thing we did seem to have a lot of back then was paper. My mum was able to get hold of lots of blank paper from her workplace. And I just drew all of the time.

With that paper I made my very own Asterix books. There was ‘Asterix & The Giant’ ‘Asterix In Space’ ‘Asterix Back From the Future’ All these self-made books were around 4 pages in length and written and drawn by me, inspired by the creations of Goscinny and (especially) Uderzo. This soon developed into me coming up with my own characters and brand-new stories not associated with Asterix. I started to make comics for my brother and sister and my friends. I remember, when I was around 7 or 8, that we had a comic club where me and a few other kids would create comics together in my friends shed. It was a really great time and further sparked the creative fire inside me. There was- and still is- a magic to creating an image or a whole story from nothing. Something that didn’t exist before and now it does. Although, I have no idea where most of these comics are now. There are probably some remnants of them in various attics, garden sheds and birds’ nests around the Bedfordshire area.

When I did grow up and I really committed to becoming a full-time illustrator I thought about what area I wanted to focus on. I kept thinking back to the joy I felt getting lost in the artwork of, not just Asterix, but ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ by Maurice Sendak and ‘The Moomins’ by Tove Jansen. I thought about how much these books inspired me when I was young.

I thought about how great it would be to be given the opportunity to create my very own, real life picture books.

It is obviously a joy to be able to do what I do and I am incredibly lucky. Illustrating books for children is one of the greatest jobs in the world. But, this job does also comes with a lot of negative factors. The hours are long, the deadlines come around too quickly, being sensible with money is hard, there is no paid holiday leave or health insurance. Sometimes these things can make you feel overwhelmed and down into the dumps.

But when I do feel like that, I think back to those photographs of Uderzo looking happy and content, lost in a zen like state whilst drawing in his studio. I remember how those photos made me aspire to want to live that creative life and how his art made me feel.

I still can’t quite believe that I get to do that now. I draw giants, bears and aliens all day, every day in my very own art studio. Just like Uderzo. That is obviously incredible thing.

I have only been doing this full time for just over 4 years and I still feel very humbled by it all. I feel humbled when someone says that they enjoyed my book, when someone wants me to draw their book or when someone asks to buy some of my drawings.

One of the most humbling and rewarding aspects of this job however is talking to kids at signings or reading the letters they send me about how much they have enjoyed my book and that they read it every night. That is seriously one of the greatest feelings ever. It really does make me feel very honored. It’s such a privilege to have my books be- maybe just in a small, fleeting kind of way- a very small part of someone’s childhood.

I hope that I never lose that feeling of being humble. I hope that I feel humble forever.

Those Asterix books and Albert Uderzo’s illustrations meant so much to me when I was a child. The thought that maybe my own illustrations will maybe do the same and inspire a child today is one of the main reasons of why I do what I do.

David Litchfield is the creator of the award-winning The Bear and the Piano, as well as the illustrator of Miss Muffet, Or What Came After by Marilyn Singer and many other picture books. He lives with his family in Bedfordshire in the United Kingdom. Visit him online at davidlitchfieldillustration.com, on Twitter @dc_litchfield, and on Instagram @david_c_litchfield.

#Illustration #Asterix #Kidlitart #albert uderzo

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takaraphoenix · 7 years

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Two things. One, where did you watch Crazy Ex-Girlfriend? Two, Miraculous Ladybug?

Oooh. Oh, I have a very odd relationship to that one.

I definitely like it but I wanna strangle the people who were responsible for airing it? Like? The order doesn’t even make sense? And I had to consult three independent fanpages and their suggestions at viewing order to find one that suited me personally the best? And I hate that.

In today’s time and age, shows already have a hard enough time surviving. Why would you sabotage yourself by airing them in an order that doesn’t fit the timeline? It’s good that it were only minor things that messed it up, but if they had major plotline events out of synch, this could really hurt the show and I hope that they can get their act straight.

I was really very skeptical at first about this. I mean, a French-Korean cartoon? Whut? That is such an odd combination and I’ve never seen a cartoon from either country - well, French yeah, Asterix, of course.

But there was a cute guy in a literal cat-suit? So I had to at least try it.

Let me start this off with the love-square. (This show is a mess, really. Like, “Oh, love-triangles are sooo last year. Let’s mess it up even more!”)

Adrien is Chat Noir. Marinette is Ladybug. Neither knows the other’s identity.

Adrien loves Ladybug in a ridiculously adorable blushy fanboy way.(Approve. Adore. Ridiculously cute)

Chat Noir flirts with Ladybug in what would really earn him a sexual harrassment complaint if they were co-workers at literally any other job aside from superheroing. (Do not approve, because it’s highly unprofessional and no means no, Chat, get your act together, kitten)

Adrien sees Marinette as a non-sexual, non-threatening creature and a friend. (Understandable)

Marinette is... absolutely useless when she’s around Adrien because she’s hopelessly in love with him. (Nope. That girl behaves in exactly the way I hate girls acting when in love)

Ladybug ain’t having any of Chat’s silly flirting and is being professional and putting her foot down because they have better things to do. (Approve)

It’s a mess. A real mess. And when I started watching the show, I was really very annoyed by the love-story and wanted to stop watching because it was mainly Marinette making a fool of herself - I hate when girls are portrayed as those brainless morons who stutter and blush and can’t even when around the boy they like.

But then we got to see more of the love-square and I found the dynamics interesting and really adored Adrien.

And ths is why this show is a mess and why my relationship to it is so complicated. There are two characters, but four ship-possibilities between them and one of them is a NOTP while another is an OTP and something feels enherently wrong about that being A Thing That Exists.

So, my hopes for this show is that once the identities are revealed, they’ll even out into normal behavior on both sides - that is to say, Chat tunes down the aggressive flirting and Marinette tunes down the dumbness.

Though I have to admit, a huge part of why Marinette/Adrien is the angle of the square that bugs me the most lies in the flashback episode where we learn how she fell in love with him.

Until that point, I had assumed that she had been a fangirl way before they started attending school together. But to reveal in that flashback that when she first met him, they were behaving like normal human beings around each other and that she was Not Impressed by the pretty boy and had no idea that he was even a model - which, if that had stayed the angle and she had fallen in love with him in a normal way, I would have liked. But no. Instead out of some bogus little interaction, she suddenly falls head over heels in love with him and turns into a stalker.

I mean. Seriously. If he had been a celebrity she had been fawning over before meeting him, that would be a different story. But if you start putting posters up of your classmate and collecting photos of them, that is stalker-behavior. If you know that person personally, that kind of action gets insanely creepy.

Which brings me to another point where I’m confused about what this show does to me. I love Ladybug, but I really dislike all of Marinette. And, lemme repeat this just one more time, they’re the same person.

Ladybug is confident, brave, strong, even when faced with Adrien she behaves like the hero she is. She has that sense of duty that she puts even before that.

Marinette is... hopeless. She can’t even function like a normal human being around Adrien, she does ridiculous and very pathetic stuff due to her feelings for him. She’s so desperate but if she’d just act normal around him, she could already be so close to him. She also occasionally does things that I don’t approve of morally just for the sake of Adrien and wanting him.

It makes me feel weird to like half the main character? And I am really hoping that once she realizes the obnoxious kitten flirting with her is actually Adrien, she’ll callm the fuck down and start behaving normal.

Moving on from the love-square and the main character.

I like the side-characters. They’Re all ridiculously individual and the fact that the first season takes it slow enough to properly introduce all of them and give them all not just small roles but actual roles to shine and show what they’re worth and what they stand for is amazing in a world where TV is currently dominated by shows that are far too fast-paced and uses secondary characters more as props than real, fleshed out characters.

I particularly like Alya. She’s that sassy friend that just can’t be missed. I think that Marinette should have trusted her earlier to tell her about being Ladybug, because she’d have been an amazing sidekick and supporter and I feel like... this very long on-going lie between them should cause quite a rift once it’s revealed. I’m very upset about the spoiler for the coming season because it’s definitely not the direction where I wanted Alya to be taken. (If you know the spoiler, you know what I’m talking about. I don’t wanna spoiler those who managed to avoid it so far. Kudos to you)

I also like Chloé, not in the sense that she’s a good person, but she’s a good character. That bitchy antagonist at school who’s after the lead’s crush is... a very overused cliche, yes, but it’s that for a reason. Because it works in high school shows and movies. I’m curious to see where they take her character, because the best part about the antagonistic bitch is always her redemption arc where she ends up becoming the lead’s friend.

I really love the anime-feel of this show. It sets up those heroes in a way American heroes - DC and Marvel - would be set up, but it brings in all those anime-elements and I love magical girl animes to death and back. The adorable talking sidekick animals in Plagg and Tikki are so Artemis and Luna and I adore them. We got the costume change - but thankfully not as slow as in anime. The powers and color-coded different types of heroes.

And the fact that there are more. Honestly, what I particularly love about this cartoon is the big pay-off two-parter at the end of season 1 when we actually learn some about how and what is even going on here.

That there is the potential for a six-characters strong hero team is the most exciting for me. What I love about superheroes is not one hero heroing around on his own. I love the team-dynamics.

I mean, I definitely don’t want this to turn full Sailor Moon where there’s only good girls and then there’s Tuxedo Mask. Adrien can’t stay the only boy. My personal hope had been for a male fox, because Adrien is a bit of a mischievous trickster and to have a buddy who’d also fit that description would be great (yeah, I wanted to ship them, leave me alone, I’m addicted I know I have a problem).

Taking the bee out too, the only ones remaining would be the turtle and the peacock. The peacock being in Adrien’s house, I’ll get into that later on, doesn’t mean it will never be used. And the turtle belonging to the master, well, the guy’s old and I could see him die just as he reveals something potentially very important - because it’d up the stakes if the newly introduced potential mentor dies. So yeah, that could be passed on too.

Not that we’re limited to the seven Miraculouses in Master Fu’s box, of course.

After all, when he introduces the Miraculouses to us, we see this compiliation that includes Heracles with the lion fur and that stag dude. So there’s two animals already that aren’t covered in this box. Implying there are more boxes with more Miraculouses out there, so potentially we could very well encounter an entire team of male-only heroes, a mixed team, a total cliche magical girl team. I love that they opened the world in such a subtle way, like “For now, let’s focus on what we have, but seven are quite a limit so let’s keep the option for if this show takes off well to include more potential heroes”. It’s clever. I like clever in my cartoons.

Now, circling back to the peacock in Adrien’s house.

My personal headcanon slash theory about this is that Adrien’s mom used to be the peacock and his dad is the hawk moth. They used to be a hero duo just like Ladybug and Chat Noir. But then she died. And he became... corrupted. Angry, desperate, something in between.

Maybe he just wants to watch the world and the heroes using the Miraculouses burn to pay for it.

Maybe... there’s a special kind of magic linked to possessing all Miraculouses. Maybe Hawk Moth is trying to steal Ladybug’s and Chat’s Miraculouses because he thinks that if he has them all, he can use their magic to bring back his wife. And that one would be my personal theory.

So yeah, at first glance this looked like a very simple hero show, but I love the detail that went into it and the world-building and I am definitely very excited about what the coming seasons will hold.

Though it is a little ironic that I came for the cute catboy in hopes of finding a hot guy to ship him with because gays are what I watch and read and write for, but ended up actually liking the straight main pairing.

#ask me a show and I shall rant #TV Rants #Fandom Rants #Miraculous Ladybug #that love square though #such a headache #elements1999

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