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#disclaimer: this is all just my opinion
egophiliac · 1 year
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so we know you love diasomnia endlessly, but who is your favorite character from each of the other dorms
this is SO hard to answer, because so many of the characters are, like, those pet adoption ads that say "MUST STAY TOGETHER, CANNOT BE SEPARATED". it's all about the relationship dynamics! and I think everybody in the main cast is pretty neat, honestly; there isn't anyone who doesn't have something I really like about them. but if I haaaaad to choose...
Hearts - Trey, partly because I do like me a good Mom Friend™ character, and partly because he pretends like he's all sane and normal, right up until he does something to prove he's just as much of a dipshit as everyone else. you're not immune, sir.
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Savana - BUFF 👏 TSUNDERE 👏 WEREWOLF 👏
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Octa - this one took a lot of soul-searching, because I do feel like the Octatrio is at their very best when it's all three of them, especially when they're in full Ed Edd n Eddy mode. but in the end, Jade ekes out a win, because sometimes you get this Jade:
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and then when he gets back from his nice mushroom-foraging hike, you get this Jade:
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Scara - Kalim, my sweet little moron. such a good heart, so few braincells.
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Pome - 90% of the time when Rook shows up, you know it's going to a be fun time watching a silly little man dance around and break into song for no reason and wax poetic about the beauty of, like, a chair. always a delight!
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except every once in a while, he'll bust out something that is absolutely insane even by Twst standards:
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this isn't a complaint, it's just. why is he like this. I want to study him under a microscope, except I'm afraid of what I might find.
Igni - MUST STAY TOGETHER! CANNOT BE SEPARATED! ...but I would probably go with Ortho, just because right now I'm pretty invested in his Learning Emotions story arc and looking forward to seeing it progress. he's a good boy who will post your cringe fanfic publicly if you annoy him
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...and at this point I'm calling technicality because the ask says "other dorms", and I genuinely do not think I could choose between the Dia boys at this point. let's see how episode 7 goes first!
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lu-sn · 10 months
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Rank the VegasPete kisses 😈
suz i stg this ask is gonna get me super mega cancelled. when you find my mangled body in a decrepit alleyway tell my family i loved them
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6. i love you, pete.
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listen, no okay, LISTEN, put down your pitchforks, this is an s-tier kiss okay, i know!!!!! I KNOW BUT EVERY VEGASPETE KISS IS INSANE!!!! SOMETHING HAS TO BE AT THE BOTTOM
i did and still do think it's a lil cray cray of vegas to say he's in love with pete like ten days after dicking him down, but the blood-streaked mouths and vegas's devastated face as he pushes pete away afterwards sure do make up for it
5. you must suffer until i'm satisfied
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the thing that gets me about this one is the total lack of artifice on vegas's part. despite every touch of his before this having been part of a long, cruel, twisted performance, this one is so gentle. so unassuming. a gift, more than anything else.
the conversation after is critical to their relationship, and i'm not sure pete would have wanted to open himself up like that without this kiss as proof of vegas's... sincerity? vegas isn't playing a game anymore — and pete can finally stop playing too.
4. psycho
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head in hands!!! i can't believe this isn't in the top 3 someone send me to jail rn
i don't need to talk about this yall Know. third eye opened brain chemistry rewired brainrot permanently acquired "you like me like this" "i know exactly what i want" the way their hands paw at each other the way vegas smiles the way pete's KNEES GO WEAK I'M FOREVER SCREAMING
3. you're the most important person in my life
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ugly sobbing in the gutter they trust each other they cherish each other they're going to work so hard to stay together they're coming together as EQUALS in the LIGHT AFTER THE STORM I'M—
it's the way they cradle each other's faces in their hands, okay. it's the unbearable tenderness, and it's the promises they're making to each other!!! that shit just gets me real bad 😭
2. (we only kiss people we like)
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their entire sex scene is characterized by an unexpected, intense tenderness, and this last kiss is really the nail in the coffin for me. the way pete is leaning up into this, chasing vegas's mouth — the way vegas is so unbelievably soft as he presses himself into pete — the space they've carved out together in the darkness for this moment of startling intimacy — something has changed here, in both of them. and it's going to be their undoing.
1. i need you, pete.
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I DON'T CARE IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ME I WILL DIE ON MY LITTLE HILL THIS IS THE BEST KISS IN THE ENTIRE SHOW. SCREENSHOTS DO NOT DO IT JUSTICE. vegas is TREMBLING into this kiss he is TERRIFIED he's made an awful awful mistake and he's about to lose the best thing he's ever had he is CLINGING TO PETE trying to press all of his monstrous love into pete's skin i'm so sorry i didn't mean it i need you i will worship you look at how gentle i can be with you? look at how desperately i want to cherish you please please pete don't leave me MY GOD I AM CHEWING ON THE WALLS IT HURTS SO GOOD
and pete is so vulnerable to this kind of touch. he's shaking too, he's gasping and sobbing and almost can't believe what he's about to do in return. pete intends for this to be their last kiss — and vegas has no idea.
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asha-mage · 12 days
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The Seattle Polycule's got nothing on the assholes from Night City.
Consider enlarging for readability- I did my best for the amount of effort this was going to get.
(File under: things I made while procrastinating the final mission in Cyberpunk 2077).
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magentagalaxies · 2 months
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making my own post bc i have thoughts and i don't want to keep having to go back and forth with tags and replies on someone else's post:
anyway original post i started this conversation on: @charlotterenaissance
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my tag essay:
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@liliana-von-k's reply:
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(all this context is bc i have even more thoughts so i thought i should make my own post)
anyway to respond to that i 100% agree!! it also reminds me of something from my very first conversation with bruce (when we did a zoom interview before we knew each other) which idk if i've posted this aspect of before: i forget what my exact question was but i essentially brought up this kind of paradigm the KITH's female characters are often discussed in and how it's kind of strange comparing it to the actual representation of female characters in the show. like, sure dave "passes" the most as a conventionally-attractive female character, but also i'd honestly say any of the kids in the hall can pass as female, not even just from a genderqueer perspective but from a not all women are "conventionally attractive" perspective. like i know cis women who have a jawline like bruce's or a nose like scott's or any other feature that isn't seen as "feminine" from (often white-eurocentric) beauty standards and many of them are gorgeous.
and the fact that KITH's female characters are often discussed through a lens of "who plays the best woman" (meaning the one who "passes" according to beauty standards) is as frustrating as it is fascinating bc i really do think it points to the way the media tries to comprehend this gender nonconformity and shove it into a box they can understand. because the kids in the hall have already destroyed the most obvious box their female characters could be put in - yes, they are male comedians, but even though the most often way society rationalizes men dressing femininely is as a comedic act (whether as a man purposefully trying to elicit comedy via feminine actions and dress or via a man who genuinely enjoys feminine expression being made an object of ridicule via comedy), the kids in the hall break this framework (this "binary", if you will) by being comedians who are in control of the audience's laughter, but playing their femininity as genuine. you don't laugh with them at their femininity because they do not laugh at femininity, but you also can't make their femininity the subject of ridicule because their position as comedians means they are at once in on the joke and steering the joke in another direction. this technique is more subtextual (and likely subconscious) in the portrayal of female characters, but it's a tactic scott knowingly (and expertly) employs when playing buddy cole
so since the "men in dresses equals comedy" box is eliminated, cishet society feels the need to create another box for them to rationalize this gender nonconformity in, by attributing it to a spectacle other than humor. so they decide to instead view these gender transgressions through the lens of beauty and sexual attractiveness. this also helps rationalize any confusing attraction a cishet person has to one of the kids in the hall dressed as a woman - they pass too well, or at least whichever one you're attracted to (most often dave) does. making a spectacle of the kids in the hall playing women eliminates any confusion or implications that maybe gender and sexuality isn't as rigid as we think, by othering these performers as a special case and convincing yourself that there is no real woman who looks like dave foley in drag, and if there was she would be cis.
it's a slightly better box to be in than having the femininity be the target of ridicule, but it still misses the point that the femininity explored in kids in the hall is not meant to be othered. it leaves out so many of the show's most iconic female characters - fran is not glamorous, but she is a realistic woman. chicken lady is more chicken than lady, but she is still a well-written female character - and reduces others to their attractiveness when the sketch itself is not about that at all. and when i brought this up to bruce he sounded as though he had been waiting for someone to make this analysis, because even though the guys joke about it themselves it is at times uncomfortable to be in an interview that focuses so much on how the interviewer finds dave in drag sexy, or picking apart which physical aspect of the guys passes best. i think i remember bruce saying something to the effect of "no one's asking which one of us is the most hot playing a business man, but that's just as different of a person from us as playing a woman"
and it's interesting to think about this in the context of how the media in general treats people who identify as women in this framework of focusing on physical attractiveness all the time. in recent years, this behavior is more widely known to be sexist af so the overtness has declined (tho is it absolutely still present to some degree), but since the kids in the hall are all male it's fair game to make these sorts of comments about their female characters to their face, because it's spectacle and separate from them. even the exact same people who would call out a comment being made about a cis female comedian are often oblivious of how it could potentially apply to these male comedians, or have other bizarre lines within their ability to rationalize this gender nonconformity for themselves.
take the "wedding dresses" sketch that was censored from the amazon revival for example (this sketch was showcased at sketchfest's "scenes they wouldn't let us do" and has appeared in kith live shows since 2015). this sketch was censored because even though amazon would let the guys play women (and even then it was often an uphill battle), they would not let the wedding dresses sketch air because it featured men wearing wedding dresses in a comedic setting. the rule of thumb seemingly is: men wearing dresses is always comedic (and therefore transphobic), unless he (typically dave foley) passes too well, in which case trans people have nothing to do with the conversation. but the fact that they were men dressed femininely was never the point of the joke, it was the idea of a wedding dress, a significant garment symbolizing an event meant to be only worn for one day, being these guys' everyday wear and all the conflicts and community that came from that. it was an ode to the outsiders, a celebration of those who live and present unconventionally. and the fact that it's never about gender is in itself the most upliftingly genderqueer thing of all.
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poppypickle · 1 year
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sea-jello · 1 year
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in a constant battle between "kai would not baby nya and lloyd cause they're his equals and just as capable as he is, if not even more" and "kai is a very protective person by nature, but especially protective over nya cause she's his sister, and he's very dependent on her since they raised each other, and especially protective over lloyd cause he's a literal child and the youngest in the team, and he got attached after he pulled him out of the volcano"
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personishfive · 5 months
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Yay someone else who’s obsessed with Thieves’ Den and what implications it has for Joker and how it tells us how he sees the world and his confidants. He doesn’t nerf the other thieves just for an advantage because he wants it to feel as real as and as true to them as possible. Though I argue that it’s not entirely accurate but pretty close. “ It leads to the question why doesn’t he just play it with his actual Phantom Thieves. Probably because time crunch and blowing off steam he needs someplace where time and consequences have no real meaning.
hi ^_^ yeah like one thing about me is that i love taking stuff that doesn't actually have much real significance and running with it because it's really funny to me. it's really funny to me. like obviously the thieves den exists purely as fun side content for the player in a rerelease game, and its minor mentions in-story are just to introduce it naturally, but if you decide to take it legiterally its really fun. (have i ever mentioned how funny it is to me that the default thieves den bgm is an instrumental version of no more what ifs) (this doesn't work In Universe because the thieves den is unlocked before jazz jin but like. its really funny to me. you get it) (and yeah every thieves den conversation etc becomes way funnier when you remember that this is meant to be in joker's brain)
im also like this with, like, the third eye (i cant believe joker is cheating at games with his magic insight/vision powers </3 don't tell anybody!) and grapplinghook (i have a set of comics planned about grapplinghook that i haven't gotten to yet bc life is hell but i really really really love grapplinghook. my 'joker persona5 fucking loves his grappling hook' kind-of-headcanon is very special to me lmao) like yeah these are literally just gameplay elements but we can get silly with it.
anyway *joker voice* lets play this card game together gang! and then the others do way worse than they did in his brain. or something. joker loves her friends so much👍
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jessicas-pi · 11 months
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it's actually, genuinely, honestly hilarious that in a fandom where popular ships include characters who are biologically related, characters with a 10+ year age gap who met when one was a teenager or even a child, and characters who have tried to kill each other, people hate on a friends-to-lovers ship with a <2 year age gap where the characters have a deep emotional bond and plenty of romantic subtext, because "they're siblings". my brother in the force they are literally not.
#i'm just saying. out of all the ships in the star war; sabine and ezra have one of the healthiest dynamics#right up there with kanera and bail and breha and obitine and maybe a few others. there are SO few 'problems' with it.#not that those 'problems' make a ship BAD when it's written well or in certain context.#just that out of all the ships to pick on; people choose THIS one?????#the one with character growth and found family and mutual respect??#the one with self-sacrifice and decades-long loyalty and obitine parallels and a jetpack chase scene????#what's there to hate???#and i would add a disclaimer about how if you dont ship them its fine as long as you dont bully but honestly?#i am so so tired of having to qualify my statements.#this is about the targeted hate. this has always been about the targeted hate.#and i don't care if someone loathes something i love as long as they they keep that loathing out of my personal space.#this has been a tag rant. thank you for reading.#btw i'm not being sarcastic about it being hilarious. it genuinely cracks me up to see people get SO hateful over this#for a reason that does not exist#as opposed to several other ships which DO IN FACT HAVE THAT OBJECTION.#like. oh my gosh. are you even listening to yourselves.#if u wanna have the don't-ship-siblings fight then puhLEEZE bring it to someone who ships siblings.#jessica's controversial star wars opinions#sabezra#(don't worry that this post is a vent because i'm getting bullied or anything. im not visible enough for that i guess lol)#it was written in humor not in hurt :)
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mako-ink · 6 months
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Farrah’s event spoilers//
Okay, so I finished her event yesterday and while I keep finding these events that don’t progress the overall story to have become bland/old, especially the events with poorer pacing and writing that feels like it treats the viewer almost like a child (basically telling everything not like an actual narrative with natural dialogue) I VERY VERY VERY much like how in the perceived good ending, Farrah finds out what her mother did and never forgives her.
As a person who grew up abused by their own mother, always hearing people say “well she’s your mother, you should forgive her” it always feels like a breath of fresh air when I see fictional characters denounce the parents that were meant to protect them, even if Farrah’s mother had good intentions she must have known eventually what was going on. There’s no excuse really otherwise. I’m glad there was the choice to look further, deeper into Farrah and her mother and find out hey, maybe this person failed terribly as a parent but didn’t really show any true effort to apologize or make up for the possible years of torture Farrah went through. There really isn’t any kind of apology that can be forgiven in that instance, and Farrah doesn’t owe a relationship or forgiveness to her mom.
I don’t know, stories that criticize bad parents has always hit very close to home, forgiving your abuser in my opinion is never a good route to go not only in a writing sense but also for my own mental health, I would never submit myself to forgiveness to make my abusers feel better about what they did to me. In short Farrah event has a decent moral perspective.
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sweetsuke · 2 days
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who has the best fs2 and why is it them
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Since apparently there are gonna be some new changes to the show
Best possible outcome:
The show is trying to catch up with modern train technology, and cabeese are not in use anymore, therefore the caboose character is removed entirely again, and the removal is properly incorporated into the show this time.
Best outcome that I dare not dream of:
CB is back, and he has a substantial role in the show.
Worst possible outcome:
The Post-2018 Caboose character is here, and he's even worse somehow.
Funniest possible outcome:
The show is trying to catch up with modern train technology, and cabeese are not in use anymore, therefore the caboose character is removed entirely again, except there are still somehow ghost spotlights on where he would be if he were there.
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i hate slowed + reverb i hate sped up i hate "oh but this is the only good part of the song" i hate the fact that a song can trend and then stop trending and all of a sudden we're all just supposed to stop listening to it and listen to the next big thing. i hate the tiktokification of music
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thepictureofsdr · 2 years
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“controversial opinion alastair carstairs has potentially had the hardest life out of any of the main characters in the shadowhunters universe so far” now you may be thinking to yourself “WHOA tumblr user thepictureofsdr back it up there, that is an incredibly bold, broad, and obnoxious take” HOWEVER i have a case to make.
(disclaimer this isn’t taking into account the villains or immortal characters while i personally understand cringe teenager psychology i cannot personally understand the psychology of people over 300 nor those with murderous urges, im not finished my degree. one more disclaimer in the notes)
there is one singular thing that i think sets alastair apart from any of his other mc shadowhunter colleagues: the fact that he has been alone his whole life.
you can pluck any mc from any cassie series and create a web of support for them, whether it be family or friends, whether the characters believe they have that support system or deserve it or not, that support is STILL THERE. at all points in TMI, clary, jace, alec, izzy, and simon were all there for each other. alec was pretending to believe jace was evil in coa? izzy was staunchly defending jace. clary had a falling out with the others? she had simon. this pattern continues into the books, with gideon and gabriel being forgiven by institute and allowed a place to heal, with jem and will each going through hell but having each other and then having tessa, with the blackthorn siblings having each other to fall back on (including emma), with kit finding a home in LA and then with the carstairs, with the merry thieves considering each other brothers, with cordelia spilling her heart out to lucie, hell even grace had jesse. obviously i haven’t named every character but you get the trend im going for. every character has had SOMEONE, a friend, a significant other, a parabatai, a sibling, the rare parent.
then we have alastair. he had a roughly normal childhood for a few years despite the moving around, having a healthy relationship with his baby sister. but then he turned 10, something changed and he lost everything. on top of having moved around a lot and not having a single stable friend, in a way, he lost his sister and parents. it’s impossible to have a carefree sibling relationship when you’re actively giving up your life and time to protect them. it is by no means cordelias fault that their relationship was lost, but its a sad truth. he loses that reliable open sibling relationship, he loses that relationship with his father, and his mother ceases to be a mother and becomes more a coworker in this panic to keep the family afloat. by taking on this adult role so early on in life he loses the innocence and unconditional reliability of those relationships, and he seemingly never turns to them for comfort ever again, with cordelia only finding out about part of his emotional ordeals in cog, and even then he doesn’t burden her with everything. with this breakdown of the parental units and relationship as well as being isolated, alastair also loses his only example of what a healthy romantic relationship should look like, he has no real idea how a partner should act, which we know will come into play later. let’s also not forget how the one family member that could’ve helped, jem, was actively pushed away by elias who raised his children to not trust silent brothers for his own personal selfish needs.
then he goes to school, desperate for friends and what does he get? a year of verbal and physical bullying, with rumours being spread about his family and bruises slowly covering him. he then has to spend years pretending he’s awful just to survive and by some miracle he gets out and makes 1 (one) singular friend who then publicly friend breaks up with him by threatening to throw him in a river at an engagement party attended by what i assume is the entire enclave (thank you matthew). THEN (yes this tragedy is still going) we get to one of the most unsettling relationships in the series, mostly because the bizarreness of it is just… never addressed? we get alastair and charles who were together in 1902 when they wouldve been about 18 and 23, meaning we got a man who would’ve graduated college by then going after someone who would have just graduated high school… on top of that it was an incredibly toxic relationship with charles making him feel as though he were worthless and a dirty secret and centered the entire relationship around him, his own schedule, his needs, his wants, never making time for anything on alastair’s terms. on top of the love sick teenager syndrome, alastair had never personally witnessed a healthy relationship so on top of that AND being desperate for the closeness and intimacy and support he’d gotten from no one before, he had no way of knowing he was being treated badly, he didn’t know any better until much later, after witnessing charles propose to not one but TWO GIRLS while still keeping alastair sidelined.
so to summarize, alastair has never had a lasting, appropriate, healthy, unconditional, relationship with 1. a parent 2. a sibling 3. a friend 4. a significant other 5. family. he has never been loved for the sake of being loved, hes never had someone care for him because he simply exists, everyone wants something from him and he’s never felt what its like to be truly cared for. for every trauma he has endured, for every night he went out as a child to find his drunken father passed out in a bar to drag him home, for every beating he suffered as a school boy, for every friendship that crumbled to nothing, for every time his only relationship used him and sent him to sleep unsure of his worth, he didn’t have a single person. there was no jem to assure him that no matter his faults he deserved love, no cecily to hand out forgiveness and remind him to not dwell on the past, to just move forward, no julian to turn to when he couldn’t hold up anymore, no izzy to tell him he deserves better or to point out the flaws in how he’s treated, no alec to let him rest and defend him, he has never experienced those healthy dynamics.
not only has he been dealt an awful set of cards, hes never had a single person to help him through life to the point where hes not only alone but the few relationships he does experience actively cause him more problems and pain. mind you this post doesn’t even really address the main traumas he endures this is just the breakdown of his relationships so just mentally add on his MAIN story to all of this… everything elias made him endure, all the bullshit the thieves throw in his face, every time hes given up his life for the sake of someone else… this is just the background to all of that.
in short i think alastair has had one of the hardest lives maybe even the hardest, not because i think hes suffered the worst traumas of all or i think he wins the sadness games, but because he has never had a single person to help him through what he’s experienced, to love him because he exists, never had a single person to care for him through it all and not only is he aware of this tragedy, he thinks he deserves it. he pushes people away, keeps his walls up, thinks he doesn’t deserve love from others, thinks he is too damaged and twisted to burden someone with his existence, and despite his genuinely kind soul, he still thinks he’s cruel and awful and deserving of nothing, but are we surprised? its not like he has anyone to tell him otherwise.
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touyasdoll · 1 year
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I think that Hawks is super into alternative people.
Like I think he sees someone with a haircut that’s a little out there or piercings or full sleeves of tattoos or covered in chains and studs and it makes his brain buzz a little. He sees someone who isn’t afraid to go against “the norm” and he’s immediately drawn to them.
Because he’s the model hero. He’s always doing what’s right. Doing what’s expected of him. He’s charming and personable and everyone loves him, but it’s a show. It’s pomp and circumstance. The Commission molded him to be this way and he knows that, but it’s not like he can just stop now. He can’t go against their expectations for him.
However, he can and does pursue these people. He can’t help it. He’s fascinated by them. He wishes that he could do what they do. The most he can get away with is wearing some flashy jewelry every once in a while. He wants to feel the vibration of a tattoo gun on his bicep. He wants wants to wear something that’ll make people stop and stare and not just because he’s a famous hero.
He just wants to experience little doses of freedom and when he meets you, he feels like maybe he finally can.
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azulock · 1 month
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What are ur pet peeves?
Uhhhh like in general? Relationships? Writing? Cause God only knows I have strong opinions on everything.
But here, have a top five with one bllk specific one and four general writing ones
1. When fics have the European characters (like Noa, Kaiser, Chris, etc) using "soccer" instead of football in dialogue. Like come onnnnn only Americans use soccer we all know that
2. The thing I mentioned about how most dad!character fics rely on gender stereotypes to make the kid seem cute, esp little girls. I swear being a girl dad is not cuter than being a boy dad
3. How most fics describe the reader as this dainty girly petit girl, which gets esp worse with SMAUs. Us monster truck sized girlies deserve love too
4. How in most fics the reader is this innocent girly free of lust or sin to be corrupted by the sexy guy. I know it's a basis for a lot of kinks but it gives me Christian values vibes, I'm here for the sluts, the heartbreakers, the men eaters
5. Fics that are like 5 pages long but don't have a read more
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will-o-wips · 4 months
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It is 4 am. I'm staring at the ceiling of my bedroom, coincidentally having my phone right in my line of sight, and write this with the exasperation and intense focus that I probably won't ever have again. I'm about to attempt to make any sort of sense of the latest Hayao Miyazaki movie, The Boy and the Heron (or rather, How do you live? in Japanese), that I watched for the first time in theatres a day ago.
I cannot claim to be right, or to know everything about this movie. Actually acclaimed critics and people with obviously more braincells than me have probably better takes than I do. But I must speak, lest the insanity truly take over my brain, lest I really end up combusting because of how much I want to talk about this.
Prepare yourselves for the most incoherent train of thought and line of consciousness you will ever experience.
FILLED WITH SPOILERS READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. YOU WILL NOT UNDERSTAND UNLESS YOU HAVE SEEN THE MOVIE.
Before I start with my actual thoughts, however, I'll state my personal feelings about the movie, because I feel that matters too, and this is my post anyway so! But I personally left the cinema feeling somewhat mellow. I was not insane about it yet. It was,,, "meh". The impression of the ride was great; I was giggling along with the funny and even sometimes not purposefully funny moments, I enjoyed the animation to the point I would genuinely flap my hands in excitement at how good it was, I understood the story in great lines by noticing small details and going "oh so does this mean x?". But I did not cry. Not a single tear during or after or before the movie. I did not waver with my opinion on it as I rambled about it to my friends online and irl, much to their annoyance. I did not hesitate when I put it in my silly little Studio Ghibli movie tierlist maker that I update whenever I watch another one of these films together with my friends, categorized (in)discreetly under "all vibes no plot but there's a witch/wizard". I still don't, in fact.
So, given all of this, you'd probably say that I disliked the movie. That I would not have so much to say about it, after doing my mandatory ramble and update. Wrong. I still have more to say, somehow.
Despite that, I didn't rewatch the movie itself. I read an entirety of one (1) review of it, together with one (1) random video essay of 8 or so minutes, covering the basics of it. I reblogged one (1) post about its protagonist on tumblr and otherwise kinda read through the rest of the posts on here. I did not re-experience or re-examine this movie again. I cannot (again) accurately reference anything besides that what I vaguely remember from watching it a day or two ago. It's not playing anywhere near me anymore/not out anywhere else yet, so really, I don't even know what possessed me to write about this, or even say anything. The most fascinating thing (to probably all of us here) is; what made me change my mind about it?
It might've been the review on IndieWire. David Ehrlich and his well-written review, bringing things into much needed context as to why this movie was created. It could've been the fact that I've actively processed the movie better, now a little bit of time has passed. [Honestly it deserves a second watch/view for something more concrete, but I'm repeating myself with this, you get it.]
But I don't even really understand it myself. I felt and still feel so detached from this movie in a sense. I appreciate the artistry that went into it, and I adore the way it simply tells the story and leaves it up to interpretation. It references every single film Hayao Miyazaki has ever made before, and elements of other Ghibli films can probably be found in there too, if you looked hard enough. The vibes were similar to those of Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle, given how inexplicably fantastical the world was. It just existed and breathed, and we as the audience jumped straight into it. We never got more exposition than what was needed; honestly I have a feeling that the second half of the movie was the vaguest piece of media I have ever consumed in my life. But it also had this perfect balance of the more drama-focused Ghibli films. The Boy and the Heron, in my opinion, is like the golden middle between reality and fantasy, both in terms of its narrative as well as comparison between other Ghibli movies.
This might also be the reason why I felt confused. The lines between reality and fantasy were so effortlessly blurred, that you could only process a singular picture. And when things are vague to me, I constantly need to pick them apart and analyse them, simply to satisfy my own curiosity.
The moment before I stepped into the movie theatre, my friend who watched along with me told me they heard it was a film about grief. I nodded along and said "yeah, okay, that just means it's another one of many Hayao Miyazaki and Ghibli films. Most of them are about some kind of loss, and dealing with it, either way." I sat down together with them; row 9, chairs 17 and 18, with my two bottles of water (one carbonated, one stilled) and the bag of terribly sour packaged chocolate pretzels I bought at the theatre itself. Horribly overpriced for the quality, I must say. My friend held onto the popcorn, and we sat through the ads, talking and laughing, anticipating something that was supposed to blow us away.
I cannot speak for my friend, but I think they really liked the movie regardless. They didn't cry at it either, even though we both know of each other that we always cry at such things. Somehow this movie evoked a certain stillness in us both; a stalemate between emotions and confusion. Maybe delayed processing. Maybe something else entirely. We both, or at least I, hid it until later.
It was midnight, and right before we stepped on our train home, I was excitedly going on about the references and animation, the things I did appreciate. I bragged a bit about how I recognized Kenshi Yonezu's voice in the final credit song that we didn't get to listen to entirely, because it was so late and we had to rush to get home. They laughed at me and told me to take some time to actively formulate any coherent thoughts on it. I disagreed (lovingly and jokingly of course), and we left it at that.
In the train itself, the same high dimmed into a simmer, the excitement replaced with contemplation, and I kept talking.
I told them: "I believe that this truly is his last film. This felt like a goodbye." And in return, they replied: "It's crazy how this is the last time we'll ever get to live in such a moment. The release of the final Ghibli movie in theatres.
"I'm glad we got to go."
I was too.
I got home, rambled about the intrinsic way The Boy and the Heron referenced other Ghibli movies to my online friends who had yet to see it. Followed by a heated tangent about how When Marnie Was There truly could have had better direction in regards to the narrative, as well as how Only Yesterday was the most boring out of all Ghibli movies. It was a nice night. I didn't think about the movie again.
The following morning, I contacted other friends, who told me about how Robert Pattison voiced the Heron in the English dub, which I hadn't seen or heard at all. He did a great job, judging by the trailer. This led me to another opinion, namely the video essay (I will try to find it and put it in the notes later if you are curious), which claimed something similar to this (of course, paraphrased):
"This is a farewell. The one true movie to tie such an expansive career. It is another movie where you are allowed to explore the magical together with the main character, while sticking close to the processing of it all."
The review I read said it was a swan-song, that it was the question and title of the movie in Japanese, posed at us, after The Wind Rises left it open to interpretation at the end of its run. That this was a story about the legacy that Miyazaki is leaving behind, how reality and fantasy coexist together, possibly influencing each other (not explicitly said but what I interpreted that review saying, so no this is also not completely like this).
Other tumblr posts I've seen on here say it was a film most likely dedicated to his son, Goro Miyazaki. That it was a gentle "I'm sorry, the shadow I leave behind is huge. I know that you will try and fail to fill it. It's okay; you don't have to. You can leave it behind. It's alright if this legacy dies with me."
Some other sources I've seen compare the main protagonist to Miyazaki himself, trying to grapple with the ending.
Yet somehow, all of these interpretations seem to fail to explain the entirety of this movie. The bigger picture if you will. These themes and moments and interpretations are not wrong, but to me, they're not satisfying enough.
Because maybe I am the only one who actually was insane about this moment, but I will never forget the delivery room scene between Mahito and Natsuko. How Himi addresses the magic stone, pleading to let the two go, saying "Natsuko and the boy who is to be her son". (Again, paraphrased, I cannot remember the exact line.) Maybe I am the only one who witnessed the whimsical fire witch and the going back in time plots and the fact that a younger Kiriko and Himi were there, already part of an ecosystem. How we already know from the other grannies in the house that Mahito's mother disappeared once for a whole year into the tower, and then came back the same as before. How the pelicans were BROUGHT there, that they did not belong there, and yet were forgetting how to fly. How they ate the Warawara, these creatures that were rising above to be born in the upper world. How the Heron's weakness was his 7th tail feather (or something along those lines), and how the fish and the frogs chanted for Mahito to join them in the tower. That the great-great-uncle was hoping for Mahito to succeed him and build a new tower, yet the king of the parakeets butted in and haphazardly did the job, resulting in it immediately toppling over, as well as the stones getting cut.
I think about the final scene where the Heron says "It's best to forget. Do you have any keepsakes?" And Mahito shows not only older Kiriko's figure, but also a piece of the stone paths they walked upon in order to get to the centre, the beating heart, the magic stone and his great-great-uncle.
How this is taking place during a war, that the timeline goes from his mothers death that Mahito cannot get over, to the welcoming of his stepmother and his new younger sibling. Them moving back to Tokyo. The way the tower completely collapsed. Completely and utterly collapsed and perished; not even a trace of it left behind. The way that older Kiriko keeps yelling it is a trap to Mahito in the beginning, but that both he and the Heron know. That it is inevitable to tread this specific path. That he must see for himself, whether his mother is truly alive. The way she both was and wasn't; first a mirage of her older self disappearing into a puddle of water, and second a firey spirit of her younger self coming to help Mahito. The way that he reads and cries at the book she left him, the way he hits himself with a rock after his big fight with his classmates; the way Mahito in general drowns consistently in the beginning of the film. He drowns in the fire that he lost his mother in. He drowns in the mud and the dust when he tries to enter the tower at first. He drowns in his dreams, in his tears, drowns right into his quest to find Natsuko (straight through the floor, by behest of his great-great-uncle), drowns in pelicans trying to eat him, nearly drowns in the actual sea until younger Kiriko fishes him out.
Now these things may seem like me just randomly naming shit that happens in the movie. Hopefully in a slightly poetic way, possibly. I could go on and on about the imagery, truly. But my point is, this movie may have been Miyazaki's last movie, his way of closure, his way of speaking to his son about his legacy, his way of describing the grief of losing his mother (idk if this is autobiographical or not. It very well may have been), yet...
Even so, it doesn't really fit the entire picture. It feels incomplete. The analyses always focus on the true meaning behind this movie, what happens behind the scenes, this one key climactic moment between Mahito and his great-great-uncle. But that's as if you would ignore the rest of the movie in general. As if the fantastical aspects weren't there to abstractly tell a story besides just being a symbol of closure for the person that directed it.
Personally, this is a tale of rebirth. Of losing yourself, and then rediscovering yourself in a way. I associate it with my own personal loss of my grandfather; the family member I felt closest to out of everyone.
The way you look back at such a traumatic stage in your life, something that irrevocably changed you for good, something that you probably don't ever want to relive again, but also mustn't forget. The way you instinctively are afraid to learn about who the person you love and grieve was, before you were in their life.
To this day, I still cannot speak to my mother about whether my grandfather had a favourite song before me forcing him to sing along with my favourites. A favourite book before he read out bedtime stories to me tirelessly. Who the boy in him was, and what wisdom and life lessons he carried on, into his grave, into the hearts of his children.
This movie depicts so much more than just grief, it's so much more than just legacy, even. It directly reflects the way I know I would have felt had I dared to actually see things for myself. If I actually dared to go through my grandfather's old things; the books he wrote and dedicated to me, the books he read when he was young. This movie depicts not how to live, but how to live on.
And the only way to live on is to move forward. To look at the foundations upon which it was built, to evaluate whether you truly want to have this be your burden to carry for the rest of your life. Mahito's abstract grief in regards to his mother, and the solace he finds in the fact that he at least knew who she was; that he at least had her in his life as both his mother and the girl that his stepmother knew, that at the very least he knows his mother would do it all over again, if she could. That despite everything, she did not regret a thing, and that she was not afraid. That somewhere, in the past, she lives on, happily marching toward this fate, because she knows that Mahito will be there to meet her again in the future.
And Natsuko, god, she worries relentlessly about whether Mahito will accept her. She worries to the point she yells at him, telling him that she hates him and his existence, because he rejects her so coldly and yet still bothers to show up in front of her during her most vulnerable moments. That he only takes and takes and takes; he steals her cigarettes in order to learn how to sharpen a knife from one of the servants. He uses those techniques to create a bow and arrow, a weapon. He gets into fights at school, he gets gravely injured on the side of his head, leaving a lasting scar.
If I were in her shoes, I would be furious at him too. Especially if he walked straight into the delivery room, trying to drag me out of bed while I was doing my damn best to keep the other child in my belly alive.
That scene, that sheer rage, and the way it ALL FUCKING SUBSIDES the MOMENT Mahito accepts her and calls her mother. The moment Mahito understands that through the literal whirlwind of plasters, things used to tend to wounds, none of those pleasantries/guards will truly allow him to reach her. The way he tries to nurse his own wounds, as well as try to nurse hers, over the loss of their shared connection (Natsuko's older sister, Mahito's biological mother), will NEVER allow him to make a connection with her. By being careful, by being polite, he will never get to be her son.
And he realizes, in that moment, that he wants to.
The magic stone tries to stop this. The magic stone dislikes disruption; dislikes things changing, dislikes breaking traditions (the taboo of entering the delivery room). The parakeets in the tower flourish because they follow the magic stone's whims more or less. They agree to follow its rules, even if it means they are prone to its abuse, because it gives them an advantage, a place to stay. The pelicans have to eat the Warawara, because there is no other food available to them.
The way younger Kiriko says "you reek of death", and how they establish this place is mostly made up of death and dead people. Dead people, or dying people, creatures that are begging to survive another day. Creatures that are begging to be reborn. That want to change, that wish to fly once more.
My mother once gave me a poem dearest to her heart. We have always been a family filled with literature and stories, but my mother was always the best at both writing them and reciting them. She used to read them out to me, back when I was in a particularly bad spot mentally, to the point I could not get out of bed for weeks on end, to try and reach me. She read with the sincerest passion in her voice, a small plea to get me back to the girl I was before.
I cannot explain or remember the poem by heart, but once I was at my true rock bottom, she told me to look it up. A Serbian poem, written by Miroslav Antić (I will add the name of it later), that was about growing up and growing into your own person. It made me weep, for it had a phrase I think I can only translate to this:
"Run and don't look back."
Somehow, whenever I look at all of these birds and creatures in this fantasy world, trying to fly desperately, trying to get to the skies, trying to get to even live, and think about the fact that the only way they can is by leaving this place. That the only way they can fly and survive as themselves is by leaving this tower, this stone, this foundation. By leaving and being born, by leaving and being reborn.
And, after all of this. Somehow I'm not even done yet. I haven't talked about the great-great-uncle in depth, nor the king of the parakeets, nor the heron whatsoever. I have not yet even touched upon what I might think the magic stone is, and the sheer amount of like symbolism I picked apart in my brain because of my insanity.
I'm probably not the only one who noticed these things. But so far I haven't seen anyone actively share these things, so, I will do my best to continue and genuinely wrap it up as best as I can. So that this can also bring the same amount of closure as the movie does.
The magic stone is like a shooting star that came onto the earth. It realizes dreams and worlds of whoever dares to walk into it and claim to own it; like how Mahito's great-great-uncle got obsessed and built a tower around it, caging it, taming it. And yet he still had to play to its whims, consistently making sure his own tower of blocks did not fall, that all of his work did not amount to nothing. Personally, I do believe the great-great-uncle could represent Miyazaki himself. That Miyazaki is trying to express how he built Ghibli and that now it has been going on for so long, and it has become unmanageable to continue upholding it. That it is time to retire.
A thing I find interesting and remember pretty well is the conversation between the parakeet king and the great-great-uncle. How they talked about Mahito's transgression, breaking into the delivery room (side note: he broke in and broke through to Natsuko with his mother's spirit. Mahito became Natsuko's son with the blessing of his mother; with the sheer love she had for him being carried on and through), and how the great-great-uncle says something akin to this:
"It is why I wish for him [Mahito] to succeed me."
"I cannot overlook such a transgression."
I feel this is important. It is key to how the great-great-uncle views Mahito in this. Because Mahito was not sent out on this quest to find Natsuko out of pure selfishness. Sure, his uncle would have wanted him to succeed him, but the entire reason WHY he believed in Mahito to begin with, is the fact that this boy was able to break the foundation and the traditions in the first place. Mahito inherently disobeys from the chosen path. Mahito inherently does not believe the Heron when he says that all herons lie. Mahito doesn't waver when the heron flies straight at him, he doesn't sway when the frogs or the pelicans overwhelm him. Mahito stands firm in who he is, even if he is trying to deal with new circumstances. Mahito inherently goes to places he should not be in (his curiosity for the tower). Mahito has enough power on his own to create a new tower, but only by rebuilding it from scratch.
This ready acceptance that the great-great-uncle has towards Mahito's decision NOT to inherit his legacy, is what makes me believe this is what this movie is supposed to represent. Break away from the old, off into the new. Closure. Moving on.
This is also reflected in the sentiment that Mahito truly DOES move on. He goes back to his family, his father, school, he goes back with Natsuko as his mother and a new younger sibling to Tokyo. He returns there where he came from, but he is not the same anymore. He is reborn into a new Mahito.
And god I feel like I'm repeating myself to death here; I really should have thought about the structure of this, but give me some slack okay. It's like 6:30 am already and I'm still not done, despite continuously writing and labouring at this.
So, the tower that immediately falls apart by someone who always follows the whims of a dream (the parakeet king and the stone respectively). God it is just such a momentTM. Because in the end even this shows that the parakeets, too, even though they by far had it the best in that goddamn tower, had to leave. For they could not build something on their own without learning who they were outside of the already established. Outside of just following the rules and all.
They had to leave, my GODDDDD.
As I'm getting progressively more unhinged, we shall move onto the most unhinged character in this entire fucking movie. The Heron himself. God there's too much to unpack here, really, but the truth is, the Heron was supposed to be the guide to Mahito. The Heron was supposed to be Mahito's biggest, most aggressive enemy, the direct antagonist to Mahito's protagonist. The Heron doesn't want change. The Heron tries to bribe Mahito with the fact that his mother is still alive, that he need only enter the tower, and lose himself to illusions and dreams. That fantasizing about his mother being alive won't only drown him more, that it won't just let Mahito sink into the deepest pits of his despair and anguish about such a death, that losing yourself to the belief that something is there when it is not wouldn't only be counterproductive. The Heron masks himself consistently; he says that all herons lie. He says that he only has one weakness, his own feather, that allows the arrow to automatically target him. In essence, the Heron shot himself in the foot beak. He himself slipped up in his mirage world, and came out to be who he truly was, this weird little man with a huge nose and a conniving demeanour. He adamantly cannot disobey the dream, for then his true nature comes peaking out (a small detail I absolutely love is the fact that the Heron's feathers also disappear out of Mahito's hands when Mahito is called back to reality by the grannies. The grannies protect him in the dream world too, by being his tether and support system while he gets over himself and starts trusting Natsuko). The Heron doesn't WANT to be a guide, for in order to be a guide, you must tell the truth. You'd need to know some facts about the world around you and share this information with the ones seeking guidance. This is how I believe Mahito understood the Heron before we did.
It's not that all herons lie; it's just that this particular one does not want to face the truth/reality.
Another interesting detail: the whole reason why only Mahito was able to cover up the hole in the Heron's beak was reminiscent about how only those that called you out can really patch up your old image. Only those that have poked holes in your false narrative are able to fill them back up again, and even then it is not the same, and even then it will not always be comfortable/reliable.
Either way, the Heron, after this wings partially turn into hands, his true nature, is unable to fly all that well for a while. He relies on Mahito's corkscrew thing in order to relish in his comfort zone of lies again. But throughout the movie, the Heron slowly starts to ignore the corkscrew completely; simply opting to stay in his (frankly, freakish) half gremlin man half heron costume form. The Heron changes because Mahito inspired him to change. Even though his image used to be spotless before, and he tried to deceive Mahito, after a while, he stopped doing that. The mutual trust both Mahito and the Heron had grew. The Heron became a person, although his heron-ness would never go away.
The Heron thus warns Mahito that he should want to forget. That he will forget, either way. That this struggle of his to grapple with the reality of his situation, and the fantasy that he was delving into, will become a far-off memory that Mahito should not revisit. The Heron, I believe, is genuinely trying to look out for Mahito.
"Don't dwell in what you have already overcome. Don't revisit the things you have already outgrown."
And this is where the movie more or less ends. Mahito still keeps that stone, and his mother's book, and he goes back to Tokyo; the only crucial difference is that he has overcome his own grief.
Now, I've said this like a billion times now, but this is the rebirth. This is what I think this movie stands for. What it means, at its core. This is what it means to live; to move on and to cut ties with that what has no place in your life anymore. Miyazaki, I think, is trying to give us closure, a final farewell to Ghibli altogether.
Now I don't know about any speculation that he might come back again, and personally, I don't think it really matters. If he does come back, good for him. I just don't know enough to say anything for sure, so I'll just say I cannot say.
Either way, I think, even though Miyazaki conveyed the need for a new start/a rebirth, he didn't really end on the complete abolishment of all that used to be. You are allowed to keep mementos of it; even though the Heron advises not to. Mahito is allowed to reflect upon this experience, to see it as another stone in his foundation/formation, to say that, yes, the spirit of this change will always stay with me, although it has passed.
Just like how Mahito's mom was someone who returned to the past without regrets. She never came back. She was a spirit that pushed Mahito forward, and he will always remember her, but it's better that she stay a memory than become a fantasy.
This is why I'm so impressed by this movie in general. I'm so thankful that I was able to witness this with a friend of mine. I'm glad that I was able to see this, even though my insanity knows no bounds, and the fact that I didn't even think about any of this until I really sat down to look through the options of interpretations.
I'm so glad I got to go. Now it's time to run towards the future, and never look back.
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