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wilcze-kudly · 1 month

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I really want to see your post about how Katara is forcefully matured by the fandom, please!

Ok, while I wasn't ready to make that post in earnest, and frankly never might be, here's some of my cursory thoughts on the topic. I'd gladly talk about it in detail more but also ✨️fear✨️

So, let's get the obvious out of the way. Katara is a 14 year old. A child, barely a teen. In fact, the entirety of the gaang is made up of children.

Now, I haven't been fully active in the atla fandom in quite some time, mostly lurking on the peripheries, because the fandom is a shitshow. One of the reasons being the fact that most fans cannot, for the life of them handle the Gaang's inherent childishness.

This isn't just a Katara problem. Other than her, Aang suffers the most for the egregious crime of being a 12 year old survivor of a genocide. Suki is, of course, mainly ignored. The interpretations of Toph can vary wildly, from her being horrifically matured to being dissmissed as a chaotic, rude child. Zuko and Sokka's immature moments are looked at more permissively, being an angsty boi™️ and a goofy goober respectively.

I do find it odd that Aang doesn't get the "boys will be boys" pass, but ok, we'll blame it on him being... bald? a nice boy? not concerned with his own masculinity?

As for Katara, her maturity is treated like... a given. She's the mom of the group, the proverbial love interest, the feminist icon, the badass fighter, the trailblazer filled with feminine rage. The trophy wife to Aang, the (Lore Olympus style) Persephone to Zuko's Hades.

And true, she is, or at least can be, a lot of these things.

However she is, first and foremost, a child. This fact is presented to us on a silver platter in the first episode, when her and Aang are penguin sledding.

Katara : I haven't done this since I was a kid!

Aang: You still are a kid!

Katara is a child forced to mature. Her circumstances forced her to try to fill her mother's place and to fight for those who couldn't do so themselves. The fandom brands her as a mom friend. Sees her purely as an icon of empowerment. Or worse, degrades her character to being a love interest.

(im talking about both sides of the kataang/zutara debate. I have my biases, but I'm sure there are kataangers who treat her like this as well. I simply have encountered very few of them.)

Her story, while yes, has many themes of female empowerment is in huge part, a tragedy. The tragedy of a young girl forced to grow up much too soon.

Sadly, this is rarely spoken about. It's not spoken about directly and therefore a lot of the fandom doesn't see this. (Or simply doesn't want to see it)

This is not to say that Katara's more mature aspects should be dismissed or buried. She displays a lot of maturity for her age, to the point of being able to go toe to toe both intellectually and physically with the (admittedly usually incompetent) adults of the show. Additionally, she evolves as a character through the durtation of the show.

But a huge chunk of her maturity being forced and therefore unhealthy is a key aspect of her character.

I think what upsets me the most is that while the critiquing the idea of Katara being treated as the mom of the group in fanon is becoming more and more common, the treatment of her as something akin to a YA protagonist is on the rise.

Both these interpretations are so insulting to the character of Katara, what is wrong with you people?

I'm currently rewatching atla with a focus on Katara as a character (while also trying to give zutara a chance I am doing my best guys) and her childishness is an integral part of her. It's sad to see her treated as an adult by the fandom. And honestly unsettling, especially with how much of like a child she acts.

I wanna finish my rewatch before I give my full ramble on the topic. I also wanna look more into the many different opinions people in the atla fandom have on Katara's treatment by the show. Though even trying to skim the surfce was like injecting lemon juice directly into my tear ducts. Also I really, really don't wanna get sent death threats again.

I want to give the topic of Katara my full attention. However I don't think I'll ever make this post, actually. The atla fandom is a rabid horrid pack of creatures and I'm not sure if I wanna engage with all that.The post would probably bash a lot of things considered key arguments for Zutara, since, looking at Zutara through a child's doesn't exactly scream 'romance' and do I really want that on my blog?

Katara's role as a child isn't valued as much as her role as a woman and I just don't want to deal with people calling me mean names for talking about a little girl being traumatised.

I'd be glad to have a discussion but I made this blog mainly to have fun and enjoy a piece of media I like. I met some truly amazing people whom I can have really great discussions with, even if we don't agree. I don't want to jeopardise that by being a pretentious dick on a soapbox.

Call this and the last few posts I made on Katara me testing the waters.

#am i still choosing violence and gonna regret this later #probably #pro katara #<this hashtag is ridiculous btw. we are forcefully climbing the mountain of moral highground huh #katara #atla #avatar: the last airbender #the last airbender #avatar the last airbender #avatar #zuko #toph #aang #sokka #suki #pro aang

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etrevil · 6 months

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Do you mind if I ask your top 10 favorite characters (can be male or female) from all of the media that you loved (can be anime/manga, books, movies or tv series)? And why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before.....Thanks....

So sorry for the late answer!

1. Athanasia de Alger Obelia (Who Made Me A Princess)

First hyperfixation, the manhwa I saw from start to finish. Art is just absolutely beautiful and I've been attached from the very start. Her character arc surrounding her father, Claude, had me clutching my pearls and sobbing my eyes out.

2. Dazai Osamu (Bungou Stray Dogs)

Strongest hyperfixation on the series yet. There's a certain feel I get whenever I see or read content about him. Do I relate to him? Concerningly. But it's the sort of connectedness I feel when reading what Odasaku thinks of Dazai and me agreeing and being called out half of the time lol. Lastly, he's just so pretty.

3. Chuuya Nakahara (Bungou Stray Dogs)

This man's backstory has me in a chokehold. He's gone through so much shit but, compared to other characters, he remains a "good" man. Such a complex character I can't get enough of tbh. Asagiri really paired the donut man and one of the most beautiful written characters together and I love it/pos. Lastly, also very pretty. Imagining him together with Dazai, whether platonic or romantic, is also a treat.

4. Wilbur Soot (dsmp, qsmp, general yt)

His content just, helped me get through quarantine. Also his songs are just bangers, and Lovejoy is one of my top favorite bands next to The Neighborhood.

5. Kim Dokja (Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint)

One of the first Korean novels I've ever read and finished. He is just such a well-done character, and ORV as a story in general should become a literary classic (in my humble opinion). The way he seeks comfort in a story and is willing to stay until its very end, I relate to that so much, and I just feel for this tragedy-surrounded man. I wish only the best for him and his company.

6. Cale Henituse (Trash of the Count's Family)

I remember reading the novel in its early stages and waking up for school, to then eat cereal and slowly finish reading what's been published in the dim light. Haven't touched the second book yet, but the first book was just, woah. Amazing. Rollercoaster ride. Our young lord really should start looking out for his health more, everyone's so worried.

7. Han Sooyoung (Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint)

Her story arc of being an antagonist, to the third member of their trio, and [spoiler], was an absolute blast. Her character was written with such a personality she touched my heart with her spunk and gentle care towards her friends. What she's done for KDJ is absolutely what tore my heart out. She deserves so much. They all do. Speaks even more to me since I'm a writer. Love her with all my heart <3.

8. Achilles (Greek Mythos, the Song of Achilles)

He amuses me. His rage, his reactions, the slaughter he made across the battlefield, and the way he eventually died. The fact we have historical evidence from a vase that people back then saw him rolled up into a blanket burrito during his sulking period. That he sent out one of his "closest" men in his own armory and grew enraged (understatement) when he returned as a corpse. I just, love him. Words cannot explain how I hold him, and Patroclus, to a high regard in my heart.

9. Tallulah (qsmp)

Best egg child to ever exist. Second is Chayanne. The admin for this character just stole us from the very start. Deserves a thousand bamboo flutes.

10. Ayna and Ranonthean (Secret Lady)

Might be considered cheating but these two are a couple and the toxicity cannot exist without the other. The slow unfurling of how their love story that led to the actual FL and ML's current predicament (read the story it's so good) absolutely rocked my shit. Like, omfg their children. Her family. Fate itself. I wanna sock Fate in the face. They're in love, but their love cannot thrive in a place like that. At least not for long. And it shows; the chapter this image is from, side story 11, has me by the throat. Banana-nim's art just makes everything better. They're relatively good for each other, but because of the situations forced on them, shit happens. Doomed by the narrative indeed.

Special manhwa couple mentions:

Angela and Rayburn, "I Stan the Prince"

Penelope and Callisto, "Death is The Only Ending for the Villainess"

Ines and Carcel, "This Marriage was Bound to Fail Anyway"

Shuri and Nora, "Stepmother's Marchen"

Eris and Anakin, "Kill The Villainess"

Raeliana and Noah, "Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke's Manor"

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hopefull-mindset · 2 months

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Lately I've been thinking about the current progression of the story, obviously we are nowhere near the ending, however, what are your thoughts towards how the main story is going to end?

Based on what we know so far how do you think what do you think the climax and the resolution the story is going to be? Because so far it seems like it's going to be something related to the book, but there's so many plot points and characters that we haven't even really touched on yet and I'm wondering if we ever will (for example the order of the clock tower was this just a one and done thing or are we getting more on that Asagiri????)

I am SO sorry. I got sick on the weekend I was thinking of answering this. Then I got completely stuck on what I wanted to say because honestly I have no idea where this series is going besides a few things I know Kafka Asagiri wouldn't leave behind. I have faith in him and I feel like him pulling along Nathaniel Hawthorn for this long into the story and knowing when Fitzgerald would have involvement proves he doesn't forget about his previous storylines.

I see complaints sometimes about how Steinback’s side plot with the Guild is never touched on again and it's like?? Because there's already so much going on already?? I'm personally impressed with how Asagiri handles this bunch of characters and that's why I'm not impressed with complaints about the female characters getting “no” screentime. I think some of you really need to reread the manga because, of course, it would feel that way if you needed to split it between all these characters and have a smaller amount of female characters compared to guys.

It's an ongoing story so treat it like an ongoing story. Some criticisms I see of BSD really feel like they're in bad faith and don't give it any grace. To me, that's really depressing. I don't know what some of you even want from him. I'll move on now to your actual question.

This is a character-driven story with hmm, well I shouldn't say it doesn’t have a clear plotline because the antagonists have a clear goal for The Book, but it's not a story where the protagonist is driven to do anything besides overcome himself. I have ideas on what future plotlines would look like, but not all of them.

There are things that are absolutely going to be followed up on. Like how 55 Minutes’s story was left on a mystery to be explored in a future arc. 55 Minutes was very involved in the Great War and Europe, so I’m guessing some of that will be explored in due time. I’m not very good at guessing so I’m not the best to be asked on theorizing that far into the future.

How about I just speak on the present arc? I think that will be easier and it's good to work with the pieces we have. The ending is much too far into the future for me to come up with anything, really. This series is much too technical with its reference and motivations to say anything other than, “We should expect this stuff in the light novels to play into the story later.”

Since I gave myself some time to think this over, there are some things I am completely sure of having a critical role in the present and future of this story—besides the obvious lasting effects of the Great War and the storm Verlaine mentioned waiting for very much having to do with the Clock Tower’s eventual involvement.

I’ve been thinking about them a lot and I hadn’t realized this was my chance until now! So exciting! I mean these two tend to cross over for me.

55 Minutes is the 4th light novel in this series. Anyone who has read it loves it because of the focus on world building and getting to follow Atsushi for once in novel form. I went into it thinking that it was going to be a quick, self-contained story that happens a bit after the guild arc, but I was shocked to see that there were so many questions unanswered! On purpose obviously to set up a plot line for the future, but man.

While I am excited for many things from the light novels to be answered in the main story, I want to bring attention to the main antagonist. The living ability of Jules Gabriel Verne AKA Gab. Verne was a part of The Seven Traitors, a group that committed itself to stopping the war by any means necessary. They were what the Armed Detective Agency is to Atsushi for him. His ability (The Mysterious Island) absorbed other users’ abilities, so long as they were on an island he claimed as his domain.

By the time the war had ended, he was alone again and the rest of the members were either dead and disappeared. Verne decided to stay and maintain the Standard Island so his friends had a place to come back to. Fourteen years pass and a deadly weapon called Annihilation and it's maker, H.G. Wells, came onto the island. Annihilation had been stolen from her and Verne agreed to help her get it back from the terrorists under the name “Gab”. The terrorist in question being the colonel, not to be confused with the character of the same title who was an executive to the Port Mafia.

This colonel had actually been the former leader of the group who had called themselves Mimic after being abandoned by their country and had heard his men drifted to Yokohama, only to die there in vain. I wonder if that connects to anything that happened in another light novel, wink wink.

It wasn’t hard for Verne to find where it was hidden, but next he had to come up with a way to get it back without using his ability. He decided to join the thieves that had snuck onto the island by turning himself into a teenager and asking to be the pupil of the boss so he could borrow his ability to go through walls. It had worked as planned, until Wells was hit by a stray bullet and died. He was devastated that he couldn't save this one woman.

His solution to save her was to absorb her ability (Time Machine) to go back 55 minutes in time to reverse what had happened. That worked, but then he thought of another thing: if he absorbed her ability again, couldn't he go further back in time to get a better result? Wells’s ability has the condition that it could only send a person back in time once, but by absorbing it again, he can ignore it as if he were using it for the first time. He regretted how many of the colonel's soldiers had died and he never learned his motivations in the end.

He was right, but creating the perfect future is almost impossible because of how someone always gets hurt in the process. Every time he succeeded, there was only the “what if?” hanging over him that this wasn't enough. The more he used the ability, the further he could go into the past. Even larger ideas had come into his head. What if he could reunite with his friends? What if he could prevent the entire war from happening? He hadn't realized just as Wells's ability evolved, something else would too: Gab, the island and the boy he posed as.

It overtook him and left to reside inside his own flesh as an echo of his own self, at the very corner of his mind. He died and Gab had been birthed from it. Gab is an unstable creation and even so, his humanity still urges him to keep living no matter what. So instead of being motivated to repeat time to save others, he keeps living to save himself so he doesn't fall back into the darkness of an unknown waiting for him.

I could keep going and talk about how he's pretty much the embodiment of the themes present in BSD, his resemblance to Atsushi that the narrative points out so graciously, and the nature of what he is supposed to be in the grand scheme of BSD, but this isn't why I brought him up.

55 Minutes has aspects that have appeared in the main story ever since the Decay of Angels have taken their place in the manga as antagonists. Dazai’s ability to control his heartbeat, time travel, Akutagawa calling Atsushi his “trial” and fighting out at sea, and the Great War being the source of the conflict. Now what if I propose my idea of what had happened to Fukuchi to be similar to what had happened to Verne when he had used Wells’s ability?

This is Fukuchi’s corpse reanimated, I think we all know it. While it’s possible Fyodor must've put a safeguard to put the condition for this to have happened or that this is a Fukuchi from another universe, I think what had happened altogether, in the end, was the consequence of using Amenogozen so freely to the point he was messing with the state of the timeline and creating paradoxes. The backlash of this divine blade had either created a divine being or let one reside in him.

It's not only 55 Minutes that has parallels/foreshadows what's to come, but Untold Origins as well. I do like noticing how Kafka Asagiri adds things so they fit more snuggly into what's to come later in the season or make the connection more obvious, like Fukuchi having a feature when Fukuzawa is visiting Oda behind bars and Fyodor appearing on the roof when Fukuzawa monologues about “V”.

I think I've been seeing some people notice this too, but I think the play featured is incredibly important. Like really, really important. I mean beyond any resemblance people saw in the visuals used in the anime background that looked like Fyodor being crucified. I feel unprepared to talk about it, so I hope I make some sort of sense.

“The Living World Is a Dream. The Nocturnal Dream is Reality” is a real quote from Ranpo Edogawa and is used as the name for this play. Twelve fallen angels gather in an old theater to earn god’s forgiveness. They had disobeyed god in the past by wanting to coexist with human beings and were shunned after the fact. During this, they are killed off one by one without the killer ever being seen. The killer, as the script follows, is a supposed angel of judgment, but it's hard to tell for the others if it really was an angel imparting their judgment or a serial killer because of how common the methods seemed to be. That is their mystery to be solved.

One of the fallen angels claims that an angel would use a divine blade to purge them and not methods like these, while another begs the question of why a fellow sinner would go after them and that an angel would have a real motive to have them killed. Their reason to going to this old theater is because they were searching for an ability user. In this fictionalized story, ability users are angels who had fallen but were able to atone and given a portion of their power back. Their hope is that when they encounter the ability user, they will gain atonement as well.

Suddenly, Murakami (the lead performer) is stabbed by a blade that came from nowhere. Completing the promised threat of an organization named “V”:

“An angel shall bring death, in the truest sense of the word, to the performer.”

So, what happened?

As he takes his newfound identity as an “ability user” in pride on stage and claims himself to be the savior of all, Ranpo explains that the angel that the play refers to is the audience watching it. A metaphor to how the audience is invisible to the characters on stage and knew almost every that had happened, but Ranpo also says that because the audience couldn't have laid a finger on the them, it means the angel couldn't have been the killer.

The “angel” was more the victim than anything and the so-called judgment imposed was the show of what was originally regarded as another victim. The switching of roles. The same thing has also applied to this murder. While Murakami was regarded the victim, the accused killer the police suspected was a man under a fake name who has randomly disappeared. Tied up behind the currents, the man had been here all along. The true victim of this case.

Which makes Murakami the real culprit of his own “murder”, but he's only a piece of the picture. After getting arrested, he speaks about how he had planned with the playwright about this but has no clue what capturing the older man was for. Not even after saying this, a detective rushes in saying that the playwright had been impaled with no weapon to be found.

Again, after an officer who had worked for the mysterious group “V” and tried to kill Ranpo after refusing to join them had been arrested, he was also killed the same way as the playwright. I feel like I don't even need to say that this “V” group is obviously the Decay of Angels after laying that out. The same motivations as Fyodor (”rid all evil of this world”) and the sword business is Fukuchi silencing people.

What was the purpose of the play though?

Besides capturing Natsume Soseki (if you haven't read it), it was foreshadowing for what was to come. Let's abandon the idea that skill users are redeemed angels for a second. Just a second, I promise. Have you ever looked up what Kaumi (神威) even means?

While one of the first results you get will refer you to gods themselves, you should be focusing on a more literal translation. That being “God’s Authority” or greater divine power, making Fukuchi function basically as Fyodor’s own angel of judgment. Let's say that ability users are the sinners and Fukuchi (or Fyodor) is the one imposing their judgment, even if they should've been in the same boat.

Just like the play, they swap the victim (Armed Detective Agency) and the killer (The Decay of Angels) for the public‘s unknowing view. This play is filled with Fyodor’s personal bias and I think the irony of their searching for the “ability user” in the play is that to Fyodor, there's no such thing as a redeemed ability user. There is only salvation of death for this great evil and that is exactly what happens to the characters from the play.

Ranpo filps this narrative on its head and forcefully changes the ending of the fallen angel. He wasn't a part of the story, he forcefully shoved through its bullcrap to create something much more ideal. Something much less miserable. It's a little fun that two people he goes out of his way to help out (Yosano & Mushitaro) both have the title of “angel of death/murder” as that's how the angel of the play is also referred to. Save the killer that was actually a victim…

With that, I really shouldn't abandon how ability users get referred to with titles like angel and demon right? Chuuya had an angelic allusion in Storm Bringer when he activated corruption for the first time, and hell, look at my buddy Gab and his mechanical wings. The further they transcend themselves of their humanity, the more angelic or demonic they become. There really is no true difference between them though.

This should've been about the trajectory of bsd…. Then it became me wanting to talk about DOA crap….

Well, I really don't know much. I connected dots that were there for me, but nothing to say for the future of BSD. I understand what is happening, but not enough to be psychic haha. I mostly went on about that because I didn't want our conversation about what is currently happening to be pushed aside because there's always more to say. Maybe if I read more of the authors involved, maybe I'd know.

If this is disappointing, oh well! It has taken me so long to think of something to say that the new chapter has already come out. Kafka Assgiri always leaves me with more questions than answers.

What even are abilities anyway?

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd meta #bsd analysis #fukuchi ouchi #bsd fukuchi #bsd 55 minutes #bsd untold origins #ranpo edogawa #bsd fyodor #the decay of angels #i should stop narrating the stories of the novels #i was going to say more #but I'm tired #the best I can say is to think of the questions bsd offers you and reread the series at any chance #you'll get more information each time and come up with more ideas for the future of BSD

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waheelawhisperer · 1 month

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ok let's get spicy with the ship asks

fiaexu

nearldoc

lapptex

gavitomi

not sorry

FiaExu

What I like the most about it: The potential for the two of them to bond over their mistreatment at the hands of Laterano. Being unable to connect with the Sankta empathy means both of them get the short end of the stick from their countrymen, whether it be in the form of active bullying or simply having their concerns and feelings and opinions dismissed. Between that and their love of intricate firearms, there's a lot of common ground for them to build a relationship on.

Also there's this really great fic called Night Running that really put this pairing on the map. You should read it sometime.

What I like the least about it: The color scheme. Red/black/white is a fine color palette in and of itself, but it's applied to both characters in very similar ways and makes their designs feel kind of same-y in a manner I don't feel is the case for some of their more popular ships.

NearlDoc

What I like the most about it: Probably the depth and intensity of their care and regard for each other, as evidenced by Nearl's talk lines, as well as the way they play so readily into a knight/lord-or-lady dynamic that doc puts their own spin on by being a sneaky devious little gremlin. They serve as great foils for each other - both are deeply compassionate and intelligent people who devote themselves to making the world a better place for those it treats least kindly and serve to inspire those around them, but Nearl is very forthright and direct, preferring to confront problems head-on and ideally on the field of battle, relying on her combat prowess and the strength of her convictions more so than craftiness and guile to carry the day, whereas Doc is frail and limited in a direct physical confrontation, but is adept at long-term planning and political maneuvering. They compliment each other's strengths and cover each other's weaknesses very well.

What I like the least about it: It hasn't been officially confirmed canon yet I'll actually give you a few answers.

First off, I haven't exactly been reticent about expressing my displeasure at the handling of Nearl's storyline, especially the way the writers chose to have her stay in Kazimierz. Sure, it gives us the opportunity for some Hopelessly Romantic Pining, but I still don't much care for it, and it feels like a bit of a step backward after all the other work done with her character and the Kazimierz storyline. I'll be honest, Arknights didn't really stick the landing with the Kazimierz stories in general, given the way the writers screwed over both Margaret and Maria at the conclusion of their events.

Second off, it falls prey to the same meta issues of every other Doc x Female Operator ship, namely that on one side you have a bunch of stupid chodes who throw Korean-incel-level tantrums if Nearl is portrayed as literally anything other than GigaChad Doctor's one-note cocksleeve whose one or two personality traits besides being Horny For Doctor's Big Manly Penis come from shitty memes the fandom ran into the ground years ago, and on the other side you have a bunch of equally-stupid chodes who get their panties in a twist if you ship her with anything other than her Fandom-Approved Lesbian Lover. At no point will either group pay any attention to her actual textual characterization or relationships or contribute anything of value to the fandom besides porn.

Third off, I think that Nearl simply doesn't fit within the kind of topics that Arknights likes using the Doctor to explore or mesh well with the storylines that Arknights wants its core cast to participate in. She's too ideologically pure for the sort of morally gray horrors of war story Arknights wants the second arc of the main story to be, and while there's certainly a lot to explore within the context if a character like that being placed within that sort of scenario, it feels redundant when they're already doing something similar with multiple other characters, and not succeeding overly well in my opinion.

TexLapp

What I like the most about it: The complicated nature of their relationship and what they represent to each other. It's not just Cool Girl And Yandere, there's actually a lot of exploration of how Siracusa and its culture has affected both of them and how they deal with the lasting scars. It's fucked up and messy and there's so much to sink your teeth into - trauma, obsession, power, freedom, obligation, and so on, all wrapped up in an extremely homoerotic rivalry.

What I like the least about it: The way people reduce it to one-dimensional uwu toxic yuri without acknowledging the complexities or selling points of either character or treating them like actual individuals instead of components of a ship.

Gavial x Tomimi

What I like most about it: They're so fucking funny together. Neither of them is stupid, they're both very capable and intelligent women, but whenever the stakes are sufficiently low, they turn off their brains and solve all problems with the power of Looney Toons shenanigans. Inam has the one brain cell in the entire Sargonian rainforest and it's working overtime to keep all the other residents out of trouble.

Idk, I just really appreciate the lighthearted aspects of the Gavial events and their cast in a story that tends to be very dark and heavy.

What I like the least about it: Besides the fandom obsession with treating them as the funny lesbian crocs and reducing them to the components of the ship instead of actual characters (are you sensing a theme here?), I'd have to say it's that I find it physically impossible to be horny for Tomimi. I don't know how you're supposed to have sex with her. Her tail just gets in the way in every position. You can't even do her doggy because you smack her ass and she knocks you out cold with the big slappy. One moment you're finally all the way inside her and the next you're in the med wing undergoing concussion protocol administered by a very disappointed Kal'tsit and a Gavial who can barely control her laughter.

(I guess you can try to have Tomimi top, but I'm pretty sure she'd have a mental breakdown if anyone asked her to strap them)

#arknights #ask game #fiammetta #exusiai #nearl #margaret nearl #texas #lappland #gavial #tomimi

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arktaisch · 5 months

Text

Bring on the mutant clones!

So apparently, the way to get a good, 'proper' wuxia drama these days that isn't yet another Jin Yong or Gu Long adaptation is to make a well-constructed fanfiction-style re-imagination of a JY or GL classic. That way it can be simultaneously fresh and familiar. And if the writing, acting, action sequences, etc. are good, it's so much fun and I love it. These past few years, I really enjoyed watching "Word of Honor" and "Mysterious Lotus Casebook", both of which are clear cases of this. (Note: I haven't read the books for WoH or MLC, so this is based on the dramas only.)

"Word of Honor" is obviously heavily inspired by Jin Yong's "Smiling Proud Wanderer" (Xiao Ao Jiang Hu), except redone as a BL/danmei. It even keeps the various orthodox sects from XAJH (the Five Mountains Sword Schools Alliance! plus the Shaolin, Wudang, Beggars, etc.) as part of the setting, features a hunt for a MacGuffin (key to some ultimate power or other), and is full of that flavor of treachery and scheming for power reminiscent of XAJH. It's been a while since I watched WOH, so I've forgotten most of the details, but I remember getting a strong XAJH vibe from it.

"Mysterious Lotus Casebook", which I just finished watching and loved even more than "Word of Honor", has more of the feel of Gu Long's "Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword" (Xiaoli Feidao series, book 1). Come on, the protagonists even have the same surname: Lotus Li (Xiangyi/Lianhua) vs Flying Dagger Li (Xunhuan)!

Both of them can pass as scholarly types (though Gu Long's Mr. "Number Three in the Exams" Li more so) and went from a high status position to retiring from the jianghu for ten years. Both are clever, tricky types who live by their wits.

Both of them pushed their female love interests (and deceived them) onto their 'friend' who actually hated/plotted against them. The protagonist comes off better (as in, I don't want to punch him in the face quite as much) in MLC than in "Sentimental Swordsman" --- he doesn't treat her as his property to be traded away. And in theory the female character had more agency in MLC, though I felt let down by the actor here. I think she was supposed to be more driven by guilt (because she broke up with the male lead right before his supposed death) rather than sadly pining after and still in love with him. It would have worked better if she came off as being genuinely in love with the other character, but on screen it feels like she was just worn down and never liked him that much. So as a 'fix-it' to that aspect of "Sentimental Swordsman"… maybe. In theory.

They both get the "enemy is someone you thought you had good relations with" trope (admittedly a common one in wuxia)…

…While their real friend is called "A-Fei" and is a top-notch swordsman. And both A-Fei's are plagued by a professional seductress (who uses drugs and poisons) who clings to/falls in love with them!

They both meet their number one fans. Dagger Li actually marries his in the end, but in MLC that only happens in the eyes of the real life fans (the subtext is definitely there, though I prefer to read it as platonic bromance). The whole thing is funnier in MLC, with Fang Duobing starting out as a naive doofus who claims to everyone he's a disciple of (supposedly dead) Li Xiangyi, including to the man himself and to A-Fei who knows the truth. Then he feels so betrayed when he finds out the truth, and that was all done really well in the show. Another similarity: the girl in "Sentimental Swordsman" has a kick-ass granddad, while Fang Duobing has his mom (another great character), the leader of Tianji Hall (I love a good mechanism specialist).

There's an actual book in-world that lists the top-ranked martial artists! The MLC one seems to be updated regularly, even. That was also a thing in "Sentimental Swordsman", with characters constantly citing the book at each other, and some were completely obsessed. It's kind of a running joke in both.

Solving all the mysteries (and the tomb raiding!) was reminiscent of Chu Liuxiang, another Gu Long protagonist (my childhood favorite). And for non-wuxia influences, Li Lianhua reminded me of Howl from "Howl's Moving Castle" with the lying and slithering out of situations, not to mention the cool-looking mobile home!

So yeah, instead of trying to get a fresh take on adapting a book that's already been adapted like twenty times and offending the purists if you make too many weird changes, file off the serial numbers and take a few steps to the side for a more interesting and coherent re-mix! And set it in a fictional dynasty so you can use fake historical figures and kingdoms to suit your plot without worrying about slandering real people (while I love Jin Yong's use of actual history, even he ended up changing some characters in later revisions because of that) or how much the characters are allowed to affect things on a bigger scale. Plus you can update and improve on the things that were annoying or outdated in the "classics". You're free to change the meaning of the tale to suit yourself without any need to distort the intentions of the original writer.

That's not to say it's impossible to come up with completely new wuxia stories, but building new variations on old stories is worthwhile, too. And beneath any surface similarities, each version has its own story to tell. That said, ninety percent of everything is crap… so besides these two shows I liked, there were a bunch of ones I didn't, whether an adaptation of an old wuxia classic or something newer. (Some of those may improve in later episodes, but I guess I'll never know…)

Long live the mutant clones!

#wuxia #mysterious lotus casebook #sentimental swordsman #word of honor #meta

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darerendevil · 4 months

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For archive purposes: November, 2005

Breakfast on Pluto:

What was it that inspired you to take on this role?

Cillian Murphy: I had read the book before I was ever an actor. I think actors talk about the role of the lifetime and I would very happily say that applied to this role. Neil Jordan is one of my favorite directors.

Not just because he's Irish and I'm Irish. In the world of directors he's one of those guys. So it was all of those things and also the fear that I couldn't possibly do that. If you come to a character and say 'yeah I can do this' then you're in trouble.

Did you spend a lot of time practicing to get the voice of the character right?

CM: I wanted to approach it very earlier on, like Neil said to me, to treat my self like a lady. My wife was very supportive of that. Then I wanted the character to be feminine as opposed to effeminate. Because it's easy to be camp or queen. Anyone can do that. What's difficult is to play feminine.

What else did you do psychologically to get into the character?

CM: You watch women. I spent time at a transvestites club in London and hung out there. I spent a lot of time on my own just being the character.

Did you have any experiences with men coming up to you and thinking that you're female?

CM: No because its not the crying game. That character is never trying to convince people that she is a she. It's just the way she is. But what you do learn from being with transvestites in London is their acerbic whit is a direct result of people shouting at you on the street. I had that all the time. You have people shouting at you all the time. That's why they're so amazing and so protective.

Is that part of your process to develop characters is to experience what they experience?

CM: If you read the character and you see that it’s just a slight adjustment to who you are, that doesn't represent a challenge to me. It's obvious that if your going to play a character you need to amass information about that person and about their environment or their era that they're in and use as little or as much as necessary. That seems obvious to me. What we do as actors is we go through phases where you superficially learn all this information. At the moment I'm doing this space movie, so I'm obsessed with physics and space travel. I know three months down the line it's gone. Then ill be able to superficially say stuff about space.

When you were doing this character did you stay in character a lot off camera?

CM: I find it quite hard talking about that whole method thing. In retrospective I can see how a character affects me. There was a lot of parting and craziness. My wife can see always how a part affects me personally because she has to live with it. But it’s not a conscious thing I don't walk around doing that some actors do that and that's fine. You're with the character every day. It's work bed work bed. There's not that much extra time. You are the character.

How long was the shoot?

CM: Twelve weeks.

What was the genesis of Neil approaching you to do this?

CM: He saw me in some movie and I went to see him and I was so overwhelmed. He produced this film called Intermission. So I had established a relationship with him. The thing about being old, the character has to be 16. The best roles you have to fight for. You have to really want to do it and you have to go after it.

Do you have an overall game plan to your career choices?

CM: I don't think about those things. If it happens it happens. All these projects that represent the challenges there all have been amazing directors I think. Some have succeeded and some haven't. But no it's not like checking boxes and saying 'if I do this that will allow me to do this.'

How did you do such a great job on making your character in Red Eye be so hated?

CM: Well that's the purpose of him in the movie is to be Fucking hated.

Would you have done Batman if it wasn't someone doing it like Christopher Nolan?

CM: No I wouldn't have done them. I wouldn't have done them if the script wasn't good. If you give e mediocre script to Chris Nolan or Neil Jordan, they're never going to make it a masterpiece unless the script is good.

How did this year compare to the breakthrough of 28 days later?

CM: It’s very hard to have a perception on oneself. When these movies came out I was working so I escaped a lot of it. So you're not involved in it. Batman was Christian Bale's movie. I was only in that movie.

Did you read for Batman?

CM: Come on. Do I look like a Fucking Batman?

In this movie, did you get to hear the 60's music and make it apart of your understanding about the character?

CM: Kitten becomes obsessed with the saccharine, less intellectually challenging music. There was a lot of that music made in the late 60's and early 70's. She identifies with Sugar Baby Love. Which is great because she attaches so much important to these tunes. So we listened to these songs all the time. It's an immersion of that time. You have to do that. The 70's everyone was fucking with sexuality. They were all these androgynous things. The clothes were flattering to men as well as women. There were great clothes.

In the movie, what turned out to be your favorite music?

CM: When Van Morrison comes on it just knocked me. I'm just reading his biography now.

Do you have a favorite concert you went to?

CM: I saw Al Green. He's incredible.

Are you amazed with what women go through to look beautiful?

CM: I have a deepening respect for women. It's a lot of pain. The plucking of the eyebrows is the worst. It gets better. The first time is hard. But I liked looking pretty. I looked like my sister and she’s a very pretty girl.

Kitten's motto is that everything is too serious. Is that what's fascinating about the project is that she doesn't want to be serious yet she's contrast to the most serious things in these decades that she's in?

CM: I think she's very astute and very smart but knows exactly what's going on. She just pretends. It's a defense mechanism to pretend all this stuff isn't happening.

How do you feel about being apart of the small Irish artistic community?

CM: It’s amazing. These guys affected me hugely growing up. They changed my approach to life. Iv worked a couple of times with these guys and they've paved the way and they've all been tremendously supportive to me. Particularly Liam Neeson. He's sort of a surrogate movie dad to me.

How is it working with Danny Boyle on this bigger budget film?

CM: I'm right in the middle of it. I have a weekend off. It's great. He's totally on fire.

Is it good working with him a second time?

CM: Working with these actors again there's ease. That's why I think people collaborate and people return to work with the same people. If you worked and gone on and there s a level of success why not work again together.

Is there a director you'd like to work with?

CM: Oh there's too many but I couldn't. There's no point.

Is there an ideal role you'd love to play?

CM: I don't think they'd ever make a movie about Chuck Baker but I'd love to play Chuck Baker. If there was an interesting story. I'd love to work with Robert Altman. There's so many.

You started working right after you got married, did you have time to go on a honeymoon?

CM: No. I made Breakfast on Pluto and then Red Eye.

How was your wife with that?

CM: She's fine she knows me from before I was an actor.

Did she influence you in any way to be Kitten.

CM: She's fine she knows me from before I was an actor.

How was your wife with that?

CM: She's fine she knows me from before I was an actor.

#Cillian Murphy #Interview #Breakfast on Pluto #Kitten braden

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rikeijo · 1 year

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Today's translation #261

Febri vol. 40. Kubo Mitsurou's interview

Part 7.

--- You have also done research, before you started working on your storyboards.

"To watch figure skating competitions, we've been to China, Russia, Barcelona in Spain, at the same time also doing some location hunting.

--- Did it have any influence on your storyboards in some parts, that you could go to visit the actual locations and get to know figure skating better?

"I didn't have the chance to talk with figure skaters in person during competitions, so concerning the question: how to create a mind of a figure skater in a work of fiction, we had to complete the puzzle with external pieces. From the beginning, we planned to focus on the relationship of a skater and a coach, so Yuuri and Victor, but before we did our research, we didn't have a clear image of that relationship. If you focus too much on expressing the bond between the characters, you then can hear comments like: "At best, it's just a story based on delusions produced by a woman's brain". Actually, when I drew "Moteki", quite a lot of people told me that I completely do not understand men, or the opposite: "Why a female author knows so well how a male virgin feels like?" - there is no limit to how somebody can respond to you work, so the only correct thing the author can do is to send their work off into the world with a determination stronger than anybody else's. At any rate, in case of Yuri!!! on ICE, we had to work with a very strong motivation, or it wouldn't work. However, we couldn't quite find anything that could become the core of that strong motivation.

[Notes: If you like Jp dramas or movies and you haven't watched it yet, I recommend watching "Moteki" or reading it if you prefer mangas! Imo, it could be quite interesting for YoI fans, because it shows you clearly what Mitsurou's view of young Japanese men is like. Of course, just because two works have the same author, it doesn't necessarily mean that they need to share the same philosophy, tropes and so on, but there are a few similarities - the main character is a glasses-wearing guy from Kyushu with almost no experience of romantic love, for example...

For me personally, the way I interpreted Yuuri really changed a bit after I watched "Moteki"! I've talked about it a few times in my previous posts, but Mitsurou was in the past bashed by uke-Yuuri-obsessed fujos, because a few of her comments about Yuuri didn't necessarily agree with fujo-version of him. After watching "Moteki", I think for her, those comments could be still very temperate, actually. It just gives you the feeling that she's not one of those authors, who treat their characters like their precious babies that must be protected at all cost.]

#yuri on ice #yoi translations #yuri on ice translation

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brookheimer · 1 year

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hi! i started following you when i found your veep posts after i finished the show! I've been enjoying your posts discussing the shiv pregnancy plotline and i love all of your analysis posts! ❤️ i'm also REALLY hoping they don't pull an amy plotline on this, but i don't think they will. and this message below got really long, i'm sorry!

i think shiv's plotline is also a new way to look at femininity and womanhood through her eyes. she's considering if it will hold her back professionally, and also how people may see it as an excuse to treat her differently or fragile bc of it -at least that's how i took the fall scene and her conversation with tom on the steps. it does seem like she might be trying to prove something to her mom. she also mentions their mom the most (maybe the same/more than roman does?) and their conversation last season in italy wrecked me, personally.

i don't always agree with shiv, but at those exact points it's just like the aspect and pain of how she's seen or treated differently bc she's a woman is emphasized and it stabs right through me. like, i get it. i can truly understand what it feels like, and they portray that perspective perfectly.

awww oh my god hi !!! so glad to have another veep expat onboard here there are disconcertingly few of us. and yes i completely nd totally agree -- i'm - gulp - maybe looking forward to the pregnancy plotline possibly?? like, do i trust succession to do it well? not entirely. but do i trust it more than any other show currently airing that i can think of? ummm yeah probably. i am also a known Complicated Female Character Aficionado and while i have always liked shiv a lot, for some reason i never quite resonated with her the way i have some other female characters -- not entirely sure why that is, maybe it's the wealth, but maybe it's the lack of focus on her inner life in prev seasons. not that she isn't complicated or interesting, but that a lot of what we know about her really only relates to her relationships with men and how she exists around them -- which is obviously an incredibly huge aspect of her character and the lives of women generally (i fuckin know it is for me), but we haven't seen much of who she is outside of that. and even if she's literally nothing outside of that, i still want to see and explore it, because that's character depth too (she's so wrapped up in roy-style masculinity that she literally doesn't know who she is outside of it etc).

to me, the most interesting shiv scenes have largely been the ones she shares with other women -- with gerri, with her lawyer friend, with the woman she talked out of coming forward about cruises, with fucking caroline?? like, there are just a lot of Career Women Who Shove Down Femininity To Exist In Masculine Worlds in television these days, and i just want to see some more interiority with shiv, because i know it's there, we get hints of it and it plays across snook's face in every scene. i'm not saying i want to be explicitly told every aspect of her life -- god, no, that would be an entirely different show -- but that i want some like focus on her, not her relationship with tom or logan or kendall or roman but something with the purpose of developing her. more than any other character on the show i feel like i just know so little about her life before, beyond, outside of waystar royco. and if there isn't stuff beyond that, then i want to see that too! i just think there is so much that could be done with shiv that hasn't been quite covered already (it is an ensemble show, after all) and i'm really hoping this plotline will kind of fill that void. maybe it won't, maybe it'll suck, but maybe it will be the deep dive into shiv i've been waiting for. praying and praying and praying succession does for shiv what i so desperately wanted veep to do for amy brookheimer fr <3

#ok so fun fact i accidentally ended up writing out like five more paragraphs of thoughts bc this is literally my Pet Issue i'm sorry yall #i will probably be posting that next as a separate thing LOL #so sorry for not shutting up about thsi everyone. but to be fair. you are literally asking ME the girl notoriously obsessed with narratives #about female characters who struggle with being perceived as female forced to reconcile with their gender and their relationship with it #and the fact that maybe they do desire 'feminine' things (like family/love/etc aka basic aspects of human life we have inexplicably dubbed #feminine and turned into like Death Pits for 'strong women') esp when thru especially humiliatingly 'feminine' (again - perceived as fem-#inine bc pregnancy isn't just feminine blah blah blah but the roys and their ilk sure fucking see it as such) experiences like pregnancy #you're asking ME to not be insane about a shiv roy pregnancy plotline? that could literally heal the world from the disaster of veep s7???#be so for real rn #LOL #but yes thank u for the ask hard hard hard agree <3 that convo w caroline fucking destroyed me bro #asks #succession #shiv roy #succession spoilers #honeybunchcalum #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy

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antiloreolympus · 2 years

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8 Anti LO Asks

1. i love ppl who are like "wow persephone looks so mature now!!!" ma'am she literally looks the same, all of them do. the only person who looks different is hebe and she's just a hera clone now. i swear they just make up whatever they want to see and claim it as fact.

2. //FP..

I find it dumb that some people are gonna be like "Persephone is 30 now so her romance with Hades is perfect now" like, buddy, she could be 70 but she has barely lived like 1% of what Hades has lived, and why do I care if she's 30 if she acts and looks like a 19 y/o, if you're gonna use that 3000-year-old-l*li argument, then her romance with Hades, a +2000 year old guy, is creepier from the begining

3. Teen Hebe looks exactly like her mother, RS really has no understanding of character design smfh

4. NGL I'm kinda impressed with just how bad S2 has been. IDK why its this way, RS' lack of writing ability finally being too obvious to ignore? Her refusing to listen to her editor? Her being lazy and stealing ideas from other comics/fanfics/theories like she's done before? General burn out? Writing herself into way too many corners and her now flailing/burning it all down to doing whatever the hell this is? Who knows, but it's shockingly bad.

5. Def my favorite thing the stans try to do is claim the comic is actually “super diverse” and they post like .. one panel of a non-name nymph that’s drawn bigger or whatever and claim that’s actual representation. Like no?? If you can’t even name the character and they can easily be cut out of the comic with nothing being changed, that’s not representation at all. Far from it actually.

From OP: Exactly!

Reminding me of the ‘RS is normalizing breastfeeding’ posts I saw recently. It’s literally Ancient Greece, of course the nymphs with babies will breastfeed. I’m positive they haven't developed formula in the mortal realm. I don’t think getting excited over it is a bad thing at all but it’s disappointing because it’s the bare minimum.

6. gotta love GOTTA LOVE RS having persephone say her attitude when she was 7 years old was "internalized misogyny" like... I swear I could hear her thinking "hmm how can I address all the criticism I've been getting in the vaguest way possible?" like something about that moment feels very performative, as a way to throw a crumb to those with valid criticisms of her fantasy racism and complete double standards when it comes to the women she portrays

7. Not sure how this will all be handled in part 2 of season 2 (badly probably considering how bad the first few chapters are) but I think what ultimately bothers me so much about fans attacking and criticizing Demeter is that she’s not proven wrong.

What I mean is - when someone decides to do an overbearing parent storyline, typically they are supposed to show how the parent is right, but also wrong in not letting the child do something. Demeter not letting Persephone interact with Olympus was done because she felt Olympus was bad and would hurt her child - she is proven right because the gods use and abuse each other (especially women) and treat Mortals, Nymphs, Shades, and other non-gods as expendable trash.

However, what we don’t really get is Demeter being proven wrong. Sure, Persephone finds a friend in Eros and falls in love with Hades - but Hades is basically a romanticized, rich, slave driver that treats everyone around him badly. Eros doesn’t respect Persephone’s choices and forces himself into her business quite a few times. Persephone’s only real female friends, Artemis and Hera, also don’t really treat her well either. Artemis completely misreads her and Hera literally tries to set her up with her ex lover even though she’s barely an adult.

What we really needed to see was some positive aspects of Olympus- Hades actually being a decent person, Persephone finding true friendships, maybe groups that help lower-class beings, or Persephone finding something good at her university- something that proves to Demeter that while Olympus can be dangerous, it can be good too. I’m just not seeing the good at all, and that’s what makes it hard for me to paint Demeter as an abuser. If anything, all I’m seeing is a justified mother and a bratty, man-obsessed daughter who doesn’t respect her own privileged upbringing.

8. How can "the other kings became kings because they took advantage of a fertility goddess" make any sense when Uranus is a sky god just like Zeus (sky-->rain-->fertility) and Cronus is literally an earth god, he carries a sickle fcol

#anti lo #anti lore olympus #lo critical #lore olympus critical

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bylertruther · 1 year

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This might be an odd complaint but I really don’t like how people act like Byler endgame would just excuse every other shitty thing that’s been done to everyone but conveniently attractive presumably straight white men in this show writing-wise. I’d be more than happy to have Byler be endgame and I expect it, but the amount of racism that’s been brushed off is ridiculous in and outside of the show. The weird St*ncy moments this season, the fact that she doesn’t get a storyline related to her trauma. Even season three was incredibly white of them. Joyce not getting hardly any scenes with Jonathan and Will these recent seasons. All of it and more—it won’t suddenly go away and make everyone on that writing team geniuses. And this isn’t to sound ungrateful or anything, but it really is disappointing sometimes. They exceed tremendously at some points such as the Upside Down lore but as for other aspects…

i don't think it's an odd complaint. it makes me think of those people who, when reccing something, will just say "you'd like it, it has gay people" as if that's a statement of substance.

there will always be people of the "i can excuse racism and misogyny, but i draw the line at queerbaiting 😤" variety, and while it is important to be critical of the media you engage with, i... have come to accept that some people just don't care lol. even when it comes to the gay shit a lot of people still don't care to engage with it in a deeper, more meaningful way, and instead prefer to just make their own shit up that's more superficial and doesn't even align with the themes of the show or the characters themselves. literally just look at the popularly held fanon here and how people treat anyone that disagrees with it lol.

it's upsetting, especially when you're part of the groups that these writing decisions affect, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. this show is written and helmed primarily by white people, the fandom consists of many people who are nostalgic for the bigotry of the eighties, as well as people who don't particularly care to interact with the deeper themes it contains, and that will chide you for speaking about the actual text of the show. obviously not everyone is like that, but there's a reason why it can be so miserable to engage with st content literally everywhere.

we're inevitably going to see people call them the best writers ever (assuming all goes well lmao), as if they haven't made a million missteps with how they treat their characters of color and their female characters. and if things don't go well, then that's probably when they'll bring up those two issues as a sort of "well, what did we expect when x and y happened" even though they literally never talked about it or cared about it until the writers did something that suddenly affected them personally.

#i so agree with you bc some things i feel are done fantastically well and then other things it's just like . What Da Hell...#the white male jumped out #as it often does i'm afraid....#asks

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princesskoriandr · 1 year

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Why do you think DC editorial treats Kory the way they do? Like do you think there is a reason she kind of gets erased from certain narratives or is seen in a certain way?

I think it comes down to sexism, forgetfulness, and there being a lot of creators at DC that are writing and editing but aren't necessarily coming from a comics background? so, we have people who haven't actually read a lot of comics doing work in a medium they maybe don't totally love or respect and, because of that, a lot of beloved characters get lost in the shuffle of "updates" and editorial decisions that are geared towards trying to bring in new readers (which have notoriously failed almost every single time they've been done regardless of the decade). also the fact that the majority of the industry writers and editors are men is like a huuuuge factor in this for me because these kinds of industries are hostile to real, living human women and often treat female characters like they're disposable (women in refrigerators would like to have a word) when many of the most beloved comic book characters are women.

Kory is, unfortunately, a character that experiences sexist treatment from writers and is a victim of updates aimed at new readership (that like...didn't work. people who pick up comics for an event rarely keep buying and it's becoming 90s level difficult to be a new comic reader again). there's also the fact that people love the idea of Nightwing but maybe never read New Teen Titans or Titans or Teen Titans v3 or, or, or, etc. and go "well she doesn't seem to be that important to Nightwing right now so she probably never was" which results in....everything that's happened in the last 10-15 years, you know? it's the same as when Vic got boosted up to the JL and his years with the Titans, who he sees as being part of his family, were totally erased because the people making that editorial decision maybe weren't familiar with just how important the Titans are to his origins.

I think there are also hundreds of editorial decisions that go into every working day that we couldn't begin to parse because it's just not our workplace. ultimately, comics are weird and the editorial decisions at DC have made much less sense in the past (as lame as things can be rn I promise they used to be a lot worse).

#aside from like....d*dio i don't think there's someone like laughing behind their computer screen about these editorial decisions #i think sometimes people just make bad decisions without realizing because they aren't very familiar with the characters they're writing #which makes me sad! but unfortunately comic writing is still a job #so sometimes people just get assigned to roles they aren't necessarily suited for just like any workplace

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explosivenebula · 2 years

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(Hello, how are you ?). May I make a request for the 400 follower event?. The number of the prompts are 24 & 25, and the character is Kunikida Doppo from BSD, with female reader please. An angst with fluff ending, where reader accidentally encountered the person who always bullied her when she was still in High School, and the bully started to humiliate her in public, but then Kunikida comes and defend her. (Thank you, have a lovely day, and congratulations for 400 Followers)

'You can depend on me' Kunikida Doppo x fem!reader {400 FOLLOWER EVENT}

PAIRINGS: Kunikida Doppo x reader WARNINGS: self-degrading thoughts, swearing GENRE: comfort POST TYPE: drabble

400 FOLLOWER EVENT REQUEST

PROMPTS: "Why, should I be scared?" + "See? I told you I could handle it."

Hello, anon! I'm doing great, thank you! Thanks for requesting, I really enjoyed writing this. Hope you enjoy it. (I tried my best to write the bully as GN, but I think I slipped up a few times. Apologies!)

"You're worthless."

Her words ring in your head, stabbing at every point in your heart trapped within a cage of thorns. Every sentence you tried to speak, every pleading look you tried to give, all amounted to nothing.

Like you were nothing.

It was supposed to be a simple mission, and in all honesty, it was. For anyone besides yourself. Paired up with the idealist, your loving boyfriend, Kunikida Doppo. Something as simple as dropping off a guarded briefcase to a well-known business manager, a mission you found him complaining about was a waste of time.

Maybe, I'm a waste of time for him too.

You never had these thoughts often, especially since he would show you his affection and promise that was far from what he thought of you.

But running into your high school bully had planted seeds of doubt in your mind, especially when the public torment had begun.

"Where's your partner, huh? From the looks of it, he ran off. I'm not surprised, but he must have been stupid to even choose you in the first place."

You swallowed down the bile in your throat, eyeing the person in front of you. Their eyes seemed to throw daggers into your skull, perhaps a representation of what they truly wished to do.

"Why are you here?"

They laughed, eyeing you up and down with a certain scoff you found much more than irritable. "Am I not allowed to be here? This is a public place, you entitled bitch."

Sighing, you tried to walk away, attempting to leave before things escalated. It wasn't until you felt them grab the edge of your blouse, yanking you back in place, that you recognised the gravity of the situation.

"Where the hell do you think you're going, huh? I'm not finished with you."

It became increasingly clear that the two of you were starting to cause a scene, people walking by sending small glances in your direction. Most didn't approach you, recognising you from papers that frequently floated around regarding the agency.

Obviously, your bully had been far too concerned with finding ways to withe back into your life instead of realising your position within the formidable ADA.

"Can you just leave me alone? I haven't done anything to you."

Your eyes widened the second her hand raised against you, the palm laid flat and twisting to bring itself down on your face, the slap sounding and ringing your ears.

You could have stopped it, of course, you could have. You were a member of the ADA, you had the power and knowledge to tell her to - overly harshly - back off.

But you were also diplomatic, and with the people staring on in utter disgust at the way your bully was treating you, it was obvious you couldn't do much to stop it.

As usual.

You felt a soft sting on your cheek, a small cut forming where the obnoxiously large ring on their finger had hit your skin. Small trickles of blood stained the collar of your blouse.

"You've always been so pathetic. You can't even defend yourself? So weak."

They spat, noticing the way you seemed to stand eerily idle at their words. Just a little longer, you promised yourself. Just stand there a little longer, they'll walk away eventually.

"Not even saying anything now?" Her hand pushed out to shove your shoulder, making you take a step back to stop yourself from falling to the ground. "But you had so much to say earlier-"

"Do we have a problem?"

Your eyes widened at the familiar voice, a soft pain in your heart at seeming so useless in front of him. "D-doppo..." His eyes met yours, hands resting on your shoulders to swivel you around.

At noticing the small wound on your faze his gaze hardened, flicking to the person standing across from him. "Who the hell are you?" They sneered, watching your boyfriend pull you closer.

"I'm from the Armed Detective Agency, and to my knowledge, you're harassing one of my colleagues."

You fumbled with the bottom of his vest, silently hoping he would drop it and walk away. You watched as your bullies eyes widened, taking a step back. "Y-you work for the ADA. You're worthless!"

You tugged his tie, sighing softly. "Please just leave it." He remained still, hands shoved deep in his pockets. "I can handle this."

"You don't want to be dealing with them, trust me." He shrugged you off, jaw set in a protective annoyance.

"Why, should I be scared?"

His eyes were hard set on their figure, hand resting on your shoulder in an overprotective manner. "For you to be causing a scene and provoking a fight with someone you can't win against is idiotic enough."

They stumbled, feet rooted to the ground. They were frozen; like a deer in headlights. "I- she started this! I'm the victim here." You could practically feel the visible scoff he gave, his hold on you only increasing.

"She did nothing of the sort. And unless you wish to file an official complaint against us for her actions, I suggest you leave."

Your bully gave a nervous glance before twisting on their heel, shoving themselves past the small crowd to disappear from his hard-set gaze.

It only softened when he faced you, using a small cloth from his pocket to hold against your cheek, wiping the blood. "Why wouldn't you tell me about this?"

Your forehead leaned against him, holding back frustrated tears. "I thought I wouldn't have to see them again. I'm sorry." He shook his head, using his thumb to lift your chin.

"Don't be sorry. Look, they're gone now. I promise they won't bother you again." When he noticed the soft smile and gentle nod from you, he stood up straight, putting the cloth away and taking your hand in his.

"See? I told you I could handle it."

Pressing a small kiss to his cheek, he flushed at your actions. "Thank you, Doppo." The blonde sighed, hiding his soft grin.

"No need to thank me. I'll always be here to keep you safe."

#kunikida x reader #doppo x reader #kunikida doppo #kunikida #doppo bsd #kunikida bsd #bsd #bungo stray drogs drabbles #bungou sd #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs x reader

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anazen333 · 3 years

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What I Love About Black Widow 2021

SPOILERS, so read at your own risk ;)

There are so many things I absolutely loved about the Black Widow movie it would be insane to try and mention all of them, but I'm going to hit some of my favorites:

Firstly, we get to really see Nat shine as a fully fleshed out and relatable character, rather than obligatory female member and eye candy.

She doesn't like letting people get close to her because when she does, she tends to love them with all her heart and will do anything for them. So when they betray her or are taken away, the pain is so overwhelming that it's easier to try and forget them, and keep everyone else at a distance. But even after all that time has passed, you can see she never really let her loved ones go; they were always in her heart and she will always love them (something I can relate to).

And it's not just her family she cares about. She cares about other people, even the ones who try to kill her. She tried to save that first Widow that went after them - grab her before she fell, and then tried to administer first aide. When she sees that there are more girls enslaved, she risks her life to get their information so they can be freed. She doesn't leave Antonia in her cell to die, but lets her out, and then frees her by using one of the few remaining Red Dust cures, which was a risk because they could have needed it in order to create more, and she couldn't have known for sure it would work on Antonia.

Nat shows that compassion and mercy are not weaknesses, but the ultimate strengths.

But she's not without flaws, flaws and regrets that still haunt her. You see the relief in her eyes when she realizes she didn't kill Antonia, but then the guilt of knowing it was her fault she was turned into Taskmaster. To me, it sounded like she was apologizing for both. And it's those feelings of guilt and regret and the need to apologize that really make her human.

And then we see the other Widows take Antonia with them. My bestie put it like this: "Girls helping other girls regardless of what they've been through or done is really so universally powerful."

I love how the underlying themes of family, pain, guilt, mercy, compassion, and inner strength were so prominent in this film and yet, it wasn't preachy. I feel like the best messages are the ones that show rather than tell.

Now onto the not so heavy things I loved:

(Okay, this one is kinda heavy), Loved that despite having been apart for so long, Nat and Yelena easily fall back into being sisters. It's how I am with mine and the film was able to portray that so well.

Love how much of dork Yelena is about her vest and it's pockets. Actually, love how much of a dork Yelena is period. With her disgust of 'poses', blunt observations, and comments on whether something is a cool way to die. (and another slightly heavy love - the fact that she got her dog and named it after the alias Nat pointedly disliked).

Red Guardian being a horrible dad but still trying so hard anyway, because he loves his family and refuses to give up.

All the action scenes. Seriously. Love those action scenes. But also really appreciate the pacing that allowed the characters and audience to breathe.

Melina being the best mom. Every moment she has is a Best Mom moment.

Costumes were amazing. (I want that vest, including all the pockets).

That the director was a woman. Yes to more female directors!

The witty dialogue between all the characters in every scene. Seriously, none of those jokes let me down and had me laughing so hard.

The fact that we get to see a low-key call back to Nat's introduction in Avengers where she pretends to be helpless in order to get the bad guys to reveal their 'diabolical plans'. Works every time.

Still am super sad that Nat Black Widow is dead in the MCU, but I'm thrilled she got to go off on a super high note.

...

Soooo, there actually was one thing I didn't like (but it certainly didn't ruin the movie for me, I am going to watch it again and again and get so much merch).

But I had a problem with Taskmaster.

To me, Taskmaster had the potential to be Marvel's Thrawn (a different sort of main threat that forces the established heroes to struggle in ways they haven't had to before and defeat said threat using new skills). So to treat Taskmaster as more of a throwaway cameo character was disappointing. Because honestly, the story doesn't need them. They could have been swapped with any random Widow and the plot would have stayed exactly the same - having Taskmaster in the movie doesn't add to the story in any way. So I'm hoping Marvel will have someone else take on the mantle and we really get to see them as a major threat.

But other than that, THE MOVIE WAS AMAZING!!! 9/10 from me. It has become one of my top three best/favorite Marvel movies for me, alongside Captain America: the First Avenger and Black Panther.

#black widow #marvel black widow #black widow 2021 #natasha romonova #yelena boleva #red guardian #melina black widow #marvel #mcu #black widow spoilers

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jinwoosungs · 2 years

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i can't believe i hit 300 followers 🥺 despite only having this blog for roughly 4 months, i can't believe it's grown so much, so thank you for that ♡

in celebration, i've decided to take requests and will work on them periodically throughout the following days. finals are coming up for me, so all i ask of you readers is to just be patient with me as i work on your requests.

CURRENTLY CLOSED! this will be reopened when i feel less overwhelmed ｡ﾟ(TヮT)ﾟ｡

rules

don't request any nsfw or dark content, only fluff/angst scenarios are allowed since i'm well aware i have a wide variety of readers in various age ranges.

most of my stories are pictured with a female reader in mind, since that's what i'm most comfortable with writing, but if you want the request to be kept gender neutral, that can be done ♡ i'm not too confident writing with male readers, and for that i'm so sorry. but i assure you, there are plenty of other tumblr writers out there who can!

i can only write inserts with the characters listed that i'm most comfortable with writing for, so please stick with those listed on my personal list. bold = characters i'm used to writing for.

as always, please do not plagiarize or repost any of these written imagines.

characters

jujutsu kaisen: yuta okkotsu, inumaki toge, maki zenin, gojo satoru

attack on titan: eren yeager, armin arlert, levi ackerman

tokyo revengers: manjiro 'mikey' sano, ken 'draken' ryuguji

my hero academia: izuku midoriya, katsuki bakugo, shinso hitoshi

haikyuu: tsukishima kei, wakatoshi ushijima

kuroko no basuke: akashi seijūrō, maybe aomine daiki and kuroko tetsuya

some final words: i want you readers to treat this event as a way to get the story of your dreams to come true. as you all may know, i am an avid reader of inserts myself and often leave likes on my favorite inserts with my favorite characters ♡ a lot of the stories i write and post here stems from my daydreams, which manifest because i haven't read an insert that had certain scenarios that i wanted to read, but didn't exist in fanfiction form until i wrote them out myself.

so please, tell me your daydreams, and i'll do my best to make them come true in the best of ways ♡ after all, it's the least i can do for all the support i've been given since i made this blog 🥰

#jjk x reader #kuroko no basuke x reader #haikyu x reader #bnha x reader #aot x reader #tokyo rev x reader #.requests event

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bas-writes · 3 years

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Hiiii I really love your writing. I'm really nervous about requesting cause I haven't done it since now. I hope you'll grant me my thirst for zoro. I'd like zoro with a fem s/o. My prompts: 87, 71, and 96. Zoro using the prompt and with blindfolding, discipline, and creampie. And with submissive reader. Thank you so much.

And I hope I managed to deliver a text matching your taste, Sweetheart :3 Sorry for the long wait!

I hope I haven’t went too hardcore with that one buuuut the prompt was asking for the roughest Zoro I could imagine... So I followed this instinct.

Character: Zoro Reader: female (cis) Word count: 1015 CW: explicit N.SFW content, rough (very rough but consensual) sex, hair pulling, blindfolding, discipline, brat taming, masochism, unprotected sex, dirty talking

Zoro—not counting you, the apple of his eye—had two big sacred things in his life: his swords and his favorite sake. He was not sharing, hardly even letting anyone hold their gaze too long on his precious belongings. He hardly even tolerated you around, letting you touch his swords only from time to time (but not too often and only with him around, they were too dangerous to let you too close) and sharing booze (the private stash, the booze bought as a crew’s supply he treated as kind of a common good anyway) only when he was in a very good mood.

You didn’t even try to think about playing with the weapons anyway, that’d be too disrespectful and too reckless. But sake? That was a tad different story.

You knew well where he was hiding the bottles, away from curious eyes and throats of the crew. The sake for bad days was stored in that one particular locker in the back of the gym, pushed between spare shirts and tugged into rags for additional safety. He trusted you enough to share this secret with you. After all, you had never tried to steal it. You had been only teasing him. And Zoro, in his own secret and grumpy way, loved it.

That’s why you made a little scene of your secret escapade, wearing his favorite clothes and making sure he saw you climbing up the crow’s nest. You felt his heavy gaze on your back, booty and thighs as you were making your way up there. The gaze of a predator who spotted his prey. The game was on, you only had to let him 'catch' you.

Such an impatient boy he was, appearing behind you mere minutes after you got the special sake out of the locker. He caught your wrist and twisted it almost painfully, pulled you close against his broad chest, mere inches away from his face. Sharp and musky, his natural scent filled your nose, your heart was already beating faster in excitement. The shadow on his face, the dangerous gleam in his eyes were telling you everything: he was going to get rough.

Exactly as you wanted.

“Don’t fucking touch what is not yours.” He grinded out and seized the bottle from your hand. “Who gave you permission to get through my stuff?”

You pulled the most innocent face you could, “I have no idea what you are talking about. It just happened to lay there.”

He twisted your whole arm and smashed you against the wall, a thud pushed the air out of your lungs. As he pressed against you and rubbed against your booty, you felt his erection growing rapidly. Impatient, needy swordsman.

“Do I need to remind you how a good girl should behave?” He rasped into your ear, his voice so loud and throaty your legs already felt weak. “Should I beat discipline into you? Is this what you want?”

Instead of answering, you shamelessly and challengingly pushed hips against him, rubbing your curves against his hardening cock. Sharp pull on your hair held you in place but couldn’t stop lewd sounds you made. Zoro groaned. He was way too weak for you.

His bandana cut your vision—he wrapped it around your head and tied tightly, not caring about strands of your hair getting into the knot. Your senses reacted almost immediately: sharp, wary and oversensitive, exactly as he wanted.

Zoro not only wanted to take you hard: he wanted you to feel it even more.

He kicked your legs spread and pulled down your pants and underwear. Holding you firmly in place by an arm twisted behind your back, he kneaded your ass with a free hand, sinking nails deep into your sensitive flesh. Once satisfied with the view, he reached between your legs and spread your lower lips, fingers sweeping along the slit.

“Already so wet, huh?” He groaned, lust almost overtaking his mind and senses. “You really like when I show you your place.”

Rustle of his sash and pants falling down were like a melody for your ears. Grabbing you by hair once again, he pushed you against the wall so hard you almost screamed, forcing you to arch for him, to bend so nicely he could take you exactly as he wanted.

He didn’t lose time for preparation. Once he lined with your hole, he entered you so hard you saw white in the darkness.

“You. Damn. Brat.” Zoro was hissing into your ear, each word pointed by the rough and powerful thrust of hips, by the harsh pull on your hair and arm. “You. Impossible. Woman.”

You could only moan and scream, abandoning yourself to his mercy, giving him everything you got. His rough ministrations were causing you pain—the good pain, the soreness you craved in your masochism, the power you desired in your submissiveness. Thrust after thrust, he was pushing deep inside you, lewd slaps filling your ears, matching the rapid rhythm of your heart, pulsing of blood in your ears. Taken from behind, you were slammed against the wall to the point of losing breath, rough wood rubbing against your skin barely protected by the shirt he didn’t rip off.

Zoro let you go only for a second, only to grab your hips and to fill you with his hot seed, pumping his big and thick load with rapid, chaotic and deep thrusts. Sudden imbalance made you fall on the floor, face down as your legs crumpled, too shaky to support your weight. He was still holding your hips, letting his seed flow freely down your thighs, leaving your cunt empty and burning for a release. When he finally let you drop whole on the floor with a loud thud, a disappointed moan escaped your lips.

“Don’t think we have ended here.” He grabbed you by the hair again, forcing you on your knees, rubbing your face against his still hard cock. “There’s still plenty I have to teach you. Open your mouth.”

And so you did, happy to obey and to be disciplined.

#one piece imagine #one piece scenario #one piece x reader #zoro x reader #zoro imagine #roronoa zoro #sinful #not suitable #sinvember 2020 #female reader #bas writes

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