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floareadeaur · 1 month

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I'm the anon who asked for hcs with ferid in intimate moments. I also think that such labels as 'vanilla' or bdsm don't fit him, I don't think that he would care about this stuff, and neither do I. But I couldn't find any better words to describe what I wanted to say. I also didn't want to write a long essay about it lol. I am curious about vampires' nature and how their emotions work.

First of all, I thought that you are a reliable person that can actually see Ferid for who he is. I also knew from the beginning, when I started reading the manga, that Ferid, and many other characters, aren't how the fandom perceives them as. It is sad how so many characters in such amazing mangas and animes get so misunderstood by the whole fandom. I knew that Ferid had many 'secrets' and that everything he shows to the world is simply a facade. I knew that he had hidden motives and he may be an antihero. I understood that he was actually a lonely and generous soul, besides all his masks that he puts on to hide this vulnerability of his. I don't want to write an essay about him, so I'll just say that I agree with everything that you write about him.

Second of all, because I realized that there's finally another person that can really understand these characters in OnS, I decided that it is best to ask for your opinion on this matter, since it confused me. I thought for a long time that all vampires are asexual, but I saw how many vampires in ons break the stereotypes of vampires in their universe. So I've been wondering for a while if Ferid can also feel lust. I like your writings and your perspective about him. I can also feel that you genuinely love Ferid, even if he's fictional, because of how much of your soul you put in these analyses and stories. I guess that the Seraph of the End fandom perceives Ferid like how so many other people in the ons universe view him as. That's why so many characters in OnS are driven to do something for their love for someone, but Ferid may be the only character who REALLY was unloved, alone and misunderstood his entire life. I sometimes wish that Kagami would add a love interest for Ferid that could understand and love him, even if the manga is not about romantic love, rather about familial love.

But it's worse when you're a ferid kinnie and the fandom also thinks that you kin him for being 'creepy' and a clown with daddy issues. LIKE WTF IS WRONG WITH THIS FANDOM?? I am part of many fandoms but this fandom is the worst one that I have ever been in. If I were Kagami and I saw how this fandom is, I would honestly kms. So much effort is put into these writings of Kagami, only to be misunderstood and fetishized by the whole fandom.

Hello!

Honestly, I did not expect to receive such a message. Usually, the feedback here is non-existent. I can say that it is one of the most beautiful surprises of my existence on tumblr. Thank you!

I prefer this type of communication, where people who read this blog talk openly and honestly with me, saying exactly what they think, what they like about what I write, or what they love about this series. Or, last but not least, what frustrates them about fandom.

Maybe it is because that is how I feel a real human interaction here, or maybe I just love discussing everything in depth!

Do not worry about using those terms. I have a very long opinion about the origin of "BDSM", or the way today's society influences such labels. All I can say is that, as you pointed out, I do not see Ferid falling into such "mechanical" labels.

I do not see many characters being into these labels, honestly. But I guess it is easier to classify characters under such categories in a black-and-white fashion.

To touch more on the topic you opened in the previous question, about what Ferid would be like intimately, I deeply emphasize his need to live truly, authentically and freely, as who he really is.

That is why I think he manifests very naturally and organically from an erotic perspective and just loves passionately, as it is said. Showing his real personality, being vulnerable. Love for him must be genuine.

Perhaps many do not notice this. But this character has extraordinarily sharp and objectively correct discernment.

For Ferid, good is good, bad is bad. His understanding of the world and values is not distorted. That is precisely why he is so angry that his world, including his soul, is created from darkness, from a curse, a putrid origin. Because he realizes well what normality would be, something that does not exist in OnS. And he longs for this good and harmonious ideal.

That is why he is so frustrated and angry at those who should have given him genuine love: his parents, his older brother, Rígr. Remember how he tells Rígr, in their discussion in chapter 91, how he believes it is a father's duty to teach his son "the meaning of life". And beyond any irony, Ferid is right. It is the duty of the parents, the older brothers, the figures who have authority and responsibility over the little ones to genuinely love and care for them.

But Ferid was only objectified and used by all these people who played a fatal role in his existence, especially considering that he was a child, or at most a teenager when he interacted with them, meaning that he was an extremely impressionable being, an easily marked, vulnerable one.

And on the principle of his own universe, he tries to pay back all these people. Revenge is not something that makes him happy, given the ideal of a good universe that he would like, so he suffers.

But this tangibly demonstrates how Ferid knows what true love is, but has never met it. He tries to create it, going so far as to change the rotten origin of the universe that created his soul and holds him captive.

For me, this shows a special nobility of soul, a huge potential that Ferid has.

That is why I believe that if Ferid met genuine love, especially romantic, erotic love, he would give everything for it.

Of course, it is a situation he never encountered before, and he needs some time to get used to it.

That is why I described him in the previous answer as appearing "frozen" sometimes, stiff.

But if she truly loves him, Ferid opens up and resolutely offers a love of the same kind.

Ferid needs to be seen as human. A human person is not a label. How Ferid is not a label. A human person has a complexity of nuances, a paradox of experiences and feelings. Perhaps the hardest thing is seeing someone as human, not projecting your expectations onto them and just understanding that person.

In his love for his beloved woman, Ferid could be seen thus, humanly, in his complex reality with all the nuances. And he would see her that way too.

For the first time, he, who always truly reads people, would find something so harmonious in her being: the ability to be seen as himself through someone's eyes.

That is why I mentioned in several of my posts how Ferid would love to look into her eyes. Because her gaze would remind him of the sky, the place where he always looked for love and got no answer. But in that " sky " beyond her vivid, warm eyes, he now finds all he has sought all his life.

That is why I think that the way he would make love to her, how he would "be in bed" would be deeply derived from the way he loves her and how he feels loved by her.

I think it can be called "adoring" the way Ferid would make love to her. The way I portray every such scene with him in my mind is extremely organic, natural.

Their erotic intimacy would be a dive into the very lives of both.

It is precisely for this reason I see that Ferid has this tenderness and meticulous care for her. And at the same time that he leads her and is so dynamic.

Ferid simultaneously offers his sensitive fragility, his determined ability of leading to his woman. All in a lively, passionate form.

Thus I see that his every touch is so " consistent", " decided ".

It feels like a true dedication to her, how Ferid gives everything to their love, and I think this topic could be fleshed out more by me.

How the way Ferid touches his woman gives her safety and symbolizes how his true potential is given to a cause that makes Ferid truly happy. Why she loves him.

Why she loves Ferid Bathory, why she is melted in her intimacy with Ferid Bathory.

This subject is almost never touched upon in the writings of a fandom.

And that can lead us to what you were saying, why you love this character, why I love him.

I believe that the author of OnS has created vivid characters. Each character has a real human consistency. They are organically written, realistic for their contexts. That is why I think that each character can be admired, if we try to understand them as human beings in their universe.

I, at least, look at Kagami's works from a writer's point of view. I analyze literary, what were the intentions of the writer. Maybe that is why I also see these characters as living human entities in their fictional universe.

And I try to understand them like this. Before romanticizing, forming a romantic attachment, or a fantasy, I am focused on humanly understanding these characters and keeping their "living breath" further in what I write and analyze.

I think this is necessary in the understanding of some literary characters, especially when they are penciled in this way by the author.

Now, as I said, everyone understands everything as they can and as they want.

There was a time when I was so saddened by what you say, that the fandom does not understand any of the author's message. But I have realized that I had rather enjoy what I love than discuss what other people's opinions are.

Especially, Kagami said something that impressed me. He said how he never imagines "the voice of the fans" when he writes and that he is not interested in writing anything popular. He also said that he only writes from his heart, exactly what he feels and that he will always do only that, and how he strongly believes that if he does that, he will find his niche of readers.

There is a saying in my native language, "what comes from the heart touches the heart" and I think it is very appropriate for Kagami and OnS.

The author writes from the heart and his writings touch some hearts, as he touched mine, or yours.

This is nice and motivating enough for me so I can just enjoy this series that I love and ignore any unpleasant opinions of some strangers online.

At the end of the day, fandom does not define a series. As I said before, the canon material does not change. It is always there for those who want to read it, reread it, analyze it.

Thank you for answering me. It really means a lot. And yes, I can say "I love" Ferid, even if he is fictional. I love the humanity of the character and the way I can feel him "alive" in his universe. The way I can even discover myself, understanding him, and growing as a person, developing my soul and mind. This is what I do with Ferid, with this series, and I consider that the author has achieved his purpose as a writer with me!

In the end, you are right. It is ironic and sad how many in the fandom see Ferid just like most in his universe, but maybe that is the charm of this deep character.

Do not forget, he is named " unparalleled ".

Everyone in OnS does anything for the ones they love. But Ferid wants to change the very putrid origin of the world, the laws of the universe that created people out of hatred, just to have harmony, a real meaning, authentic love.

This universe has been corrupted since its creation, humanity is cursed and trapped as in Hell, and Ferid wants to solve this vicious circle, to break it.

I think this shows the nobility of this character, that he really is "one of a kind". And even though I wish he had someone to truly love him, I understand and appreciate the author's intent. The hidden nobility in Ferid's tragedy is something truly beautiful to me.

I would go into more detail about how Ferid would love his woman, how he would make love to her. But I feel like my essay is getting too long.

Please write me any questions you have. Just like that, just like now. I will gladly answer.

I think we can have some fascinating discussions!

Thank you so much for this heartfelt message!

Have a nice day to you and whoever finds this post!

#ferid bathory #owari no seraph #seraph of the end #ons #sote #ferid bathory x reader #ferid bathory imagines #ferid bathory analysis

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emzular · 2 years

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I really need you as a full grown white adult to analyze why you think a character that hates black people is fun to ship at all. Like I could just make fun of you but just think with your little peanut baby brain for five seconds WHY you think it's okay to "go deeper" on an abusive racist's character at all. Lol

i mean, i shouldn't give you the benefit of a response because you've been rude but i will.

before reading: abuse is never an excuse to be a bad person, but it does help to explain why people act in certain ways. tldr: i could talk about this for hours but at the end of the day if a non-white person says "he's a racist" then i say okay and i won't argue with you,

but as you've asked for me to analyse it i will. the second his dad hit him, i got it. if you've been in that situation or a similar one, you get it in that second. does it excuse any of the shit billy did? no. but does his character suddenly have more depth? yes. so that's why it's okay to "go deeper", because the duffers made him deeper. sorry, complain to them for making a character with an abusive homelife. because the way i see billy is that he's been raised with abusively strict rules, to respect his dad's wishes. he has to do everything by the way his dad lives. dacre said he didn't see billy as racist and didn't play him as such, and though the duffers have said contradicting things (they've said both he is AND he isn't), they removed all of the racial slurs. but the implication in those scenes with lucas is that he is racist, yeah i'm not denying that.

because then you see the scene where billy's dad abuses him. and for people who've been through shit like that it clicks. i'm not saying abuse is an excuse to be racist and i'm not saying i want everyone to love the guy, hell i don't love the guy all the time, but i understand him. at the end of the series, billy doesn't give a fuck that max is going to the snowball with her black boyfriend - he knows she'll see lucas there and he doesn't say a word cos he doesn't care, because max has already made it very fucking clear that she's tough and she can handle it. but at the start of the series, when the pressure from his dad is high, he does care cos he's selfish as fuck and he's scared, and if his dad finds out that billy is letting max hang out with a black boy, he'll lose it.

that's how i see billy. is he a cunt? yeah. but he is a cunt because he's been abused, and that makes sense to me. being abused is never an excuse to do bad shit but the character is seventeen and no one's ever intervened, and that's where the fics and the shipping comes in. we don't write the billy direct from the show, we write billy as if someone had intervened. a billy that gets called out for his attitudes, a billy that realises the way things are is wrong, a billy that realises an apology will never be enough: an au billy. and i've done shit (nowhere near as bad as he has) that i had been raised to think was right, that has been ingrained in me from shitty parenting, and it's only in adulthood when someone sat me down and called me out on it that i learned. and mate i'm not sitting here stanning the guy who beat up black kids - i'm stanning the character potential. they could've given this abused angry kid background to robin and she'd have been the one i stanned. hell, if they'd developed johnathan a bit more, i'd be over there in byers-ville.

and abuse isn't an excuse to be racist, no fucking way, but does it explain/shed a light on why he's acting a certain way? yeah. but again, i'm not going to sit and tell you that he's not racist because if you see him as racist, then you have every right to and i'm not gonna convince you otherwise. i just think that the billy you see vs the billy we/dacre see is different.

if you ever read a harringrove fic, chances are the first thing they write him doing is apologising, leaving his abusive dad and explaining this shit. we're not writing and headcanoning an abusive racist billy, we're not sitting around rejoicing in him being racist. that's not the billy we see. we've basically made up our own billy, because the billy in the show is a dick, but the potential future billy could've been less so. and that's the truth.

#ann answers #a ramble #billy hargrove #harringrove #i said too much #i do respect the not gendering me tho #that was very respectful of the asker #pronouns are she/her #this is long im sorry

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n1kolaiz · 3 years

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"Man fears death and yet, at the same time, man is drawn to death. Death is endlessly consumed by men in cities and in literature. It is a singular event in one's life that none may reverse. That is what I desire."

Character Analysis: Dazai Osamu

Age: 22 || Ability: No Longer Human

I've done a lot of research concerning Dazai's character because of how complex he'd initially appeared to me. It is still a question as to what his personality type is; some say he's an ENTP while others argue that he's an INTJ, and his enneagram would most likely be 7w8 (The Realist), but that isn't the thing I'm going to focus on.

According to general databases and fan analyses, his temperament is dominantly melancholic. A person's temperament is basically how they react to and live in this world. For those of you not interested in such details, don't worry, I'll get to my point.

The melancholic behaviour is characterised by individualism, self-reliance, and reservation. People of the melancholic temperament are described as having been overcome with sorrow and depressive thoughts, which is beyond the feeling of "just being sad."

Nonetheless, they are generally calm beings, with a tendency to hide how they truly feel by keeping their composure, even in events that demand severe reaction otherwise. Other aspects of melancholic temperaments is that they are absorbed in the cruelty and tragedy of this world, and tend to get lost in their thoughts.

Sound familiar?

Dazai is seen to be as the comic relief of the adaptation, and he'd never fail to bring about a sense of lightheartedness to relieve the serious moments; we all know that for sure. Remember the time both him and Kunikida found Nobuko Sasaki in that godforsaken hospital, and how Kunikida asked him about his opinion on the current state of affairs?

But, despite having developed a calm and serene personality, Dazai's dark side was more apparent during the Dark Era. There was a type of intimidating and arrogant flair evident in his behaviour, or even on his face. It was the type of demeanour that came off cold and terrifying to the rather unlucky people he dealt with. In a moment's notice, they could literally die by his hands. And I believe most of them usually did. It was during this time, he was more brutal and vicious. He lacked remorse. Plus, Dazai's suicidal ideations were more dense during this Era, and his suicidal tendencies did not do anything to alleviate the depth of how dark his character was posed to be.

Side note: Unfortunately, people misunderstand this 'depressed' part of Dazai; they minimise his character so much to the point that people use only a single word to describe him: suicidal. He is, in fact, so much more than that. I'll elaborate more on that in a while.

"Hey, Odasaku, do you know why I joined the Mafia? I joined the Mafia because of an expectation I had. I thought if I was close to death and violence—close to people giving in to their urges and desires, then I would be able to see the inner nature of humankind up close. I thought if I did that… I would be able to find something—a reason to live."

Dazai's approach to life is that of an aimless soul, weary of the world's oppressions and exhausted from the concept of living itself. Nevertheless, what he said above about having an expectation made me realise something: he had a goal, which he wasn't that enthusiastic about achieving—seeking for a reason to carry on with life. So he joined the Mafia.

And there, he met Oda Sakunosuke.

Despite how resilient Dazai carried himself to be (especially during the Dark Era), this specific excerpt stands in direct opposition of how he effortlessly embodied all things daunting:

"With every step I take, I feel as though the earth has opened up into a bottomless pit as I fall endlessly. As Dazai pointed to his forehead and approached the muzzle, the look on his face – like that of a child about to burst into tears – had already been branded upon my eyes."

- quoted by Oda Sakunosuke, excerpt from Dazai Osamu and the Dark Era Light Novel.

When I read this, it sent my mind into a spiral of despair and confusion. It was so vague, yet it made so much sense. Dazai was desperate to escape from this life, but part of him seemed to live in conflict with his desire for death. I won't elaborate more on this, because this specific excerpt has personal meaning to me, as I'd expect it to have for others as well; so I wouldn't want to ruin anyone else's perception on it.

Back to my point: Odasaku was one of the only characters who managed to interpret the complexity of Dazai's mindset and was able to compartmentalise the specific details of his persona that made Dazai the way he was. Oda knew that Dazai wasn't just suicidal.

"For most things in life, it's harder to succeed than fail. Wouldn't you agree? That's why I should attempt suicide rather than commit it! Committing suicide is difficult, but it should be relatively easier to fail at attempting suicide!"

Others boasted about how he was just a suicidal maniac, and that was only because of how good Dazai was at concealing his own feelings whilst flamboyantly priding himself in new, risky techniques, which he sometimes elaborated on. But Oda, on the other hand, saw through his jokes, and empathised with his friend, never wanting to ever barge into his vulnerability without Dazai's permission, but still trying to be there for him.

"Listen. You told me if you put yourself in a world of violence and bloodshed, you might be ale to find a reson to live. You won't find it. You should know that. Whether you're on the side that takes lives or the side that saves them, nothing beyond your own expectations will happen. Nothing in this world can fill the hole that is your loneliness. You will wander the darkness for eternity."

Notice how Odasaku recognised Dazai's despair, before Dazai even dared to acknowledge his very own emotions? That was why, at Oda's death, he took the initiative to uncover Dazai's bandaged eye to show him that there was no use in concealing his feelings anymore.

Odasaku's last words to Dazai was to "be on the side that saves people," for he was aware that even though Dazai didn't believe there was a clear distinction between good and evil, he thought that perhaps Dazai would find meaning in his life, even if it was just a little bit of purpose.

In Dead Apple, we briefly relive this moment, but I'll write more on that some other time.

And when Dazai joined the ADA, he loses that dark side to him. No, wait, let me rephrase that: he loses a part of that dark side to him. He eliminated the raw sense of bitterness against the world from his face, and instead, he is seen to be a little more passive, and a little more adaptive. No doubt, he still does explicitly state his desire to die, but his wishes are very specific, if you know what I mean.

And a few years later, his journey with Atsushi began.

Atsushi and Dazai's relationship is just one of a kind. I think it isn't a matter of whether Atsushi needed Dazai, or whether Dazai needed Atsushi. It's the fact that they both needed each other. It's the way they both worked hand in hand, and how they sustained each other in ways they were lacking.

The two were polar opposites, but they had a tender kind of warmth embedded in their protectiveness for each other. Atsushi was just as lost as Dazai, but somehow, they worked together just fine. It was like their duality was meant to be. It was the type of symbiotic relationship, where their care for each other was implied, but very deep.

Does this also sound familiar... perhaps, in relation to Dazai's friendship with Odasaku?

Side note: Oda and Atsushi have the same enneagrams, which is Type 2, 'The Helper.'

There is a sort of balance that is brought about by two opposites. Odasaku taught Dazai many things, and I believe Oda learned a lot about a man's life from the way Dazai lived out his life with the innate desire to die. Atsushi sought for the right to live, while Dazai searched for a reason to live; in addition, Dazai validated Atsushi's feelings, and Atsushi was able to acknowlegde the amount of pain Dazai was going through.

Despite how Dazai's perspectives and beliefs stood in contrast with those of Oda's and Atsushi's, a type of inseparable bond connected the man who no longer felt like he was human, to the people who was the most human.

No Longer Human in the Japanese romaji is 'Ningen Shikkaku.' Ningen means "human," and Shikkaku means "disqualified." The late author, Dazai Osamu, wrote the book No Longer Human. He had gone through the rough throes of trauma and wrote this book as a semi-autobiography, whose plot was centred around a man who faked happiness, for he was tainted by the truth that everyone around him was fake themselves. He turned his life into a joke in order to protect himself from the delusions of this world.

This brings us back to the melancholic temperament, where a person was too deeply immersed in the sad truths of reality and the world itself.

And that's what Dazai's character and ability is based on: being disqualified as a human being, because he wasn't well-versed with what being human was actually like. The fabrications of being human sprung up all around him, but he wasn't willing to be fooled by how ingenuine the world truly was.

“I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind—of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.”

- excerpt from Dazai Osamu's No Longer Human.

People who don't feel human emotions or don't react to circumstances the way humans do have a variety of ways of explaining how they feel inhuman. They are highly intelligent, which separates them from the average class of humankind, since they've analysed and untangled the truths of life in order to attain understanding, which they value above all else. But, this understanding of the world and its painful truths results in a deep kind of sorrow, which only a few people can seem to empathise with in order to help them out with that burden.

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”

-excerpt from Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

Don't you think that this deep sorrow that lies in the heart of the intelligent, makes them the most human of all? They're too human, to the point where they don't feel human. Perhaps, it is a type of defence mechanism, where the mind numbs the heart from feeling normal human emotion, because logically breaking down such concepts is easier than feeling them. But it comes at a price. The heart is willing to recklessly comprehend and fathom any sort of emotion, including pain in its true form, but the mind bears more pain in understanding such concepts because it seeks to decipher every single agonising detail of how complex human emotions are. The mind thinks, the heart feels. There is a clear distinguishing factor between the two. Whether feeling hurts more than thinking, or thinking hurts more than feeling, or whether both these processes work hand-in-hand to make up the reality of life itself, is up for an individual to decide.

Only a few people can seem to empathise with intelligent people who are deeply sad at heart, in order to help them out. As for Dazai, it was Atsushi and Oda. They never took away the pain, but they made him grow from it; it worked vice versa, too.

Of course, there are less tedious and more appealing aspects to the concept of Dazai's intelligence. Dazai was seen as a threat to his enemies because of how manipulation and his keen skill of deduction made up how sharp his mind was. Besides, no one could commit '138 murders, 312 cases of extortion, and 625 cases of fraud, along with various and sundry other crimes,' without having a certain level of intelligence, right?

Dazai had the moral alignment of 'chaotic neutral.' He was more focused on using his intellect to achieve the desired end results of a predicament, and he wasn't afraid to use the wrong means. A famous example was when he deflated the airbags of Ango Sakaguchi's car in order to gain the assured protection of Kyouka Izumi.

Justice is a weapon. It can be used to cause harm, but it cannot protect or save others.

Another example was when he blew up Chuuya Nakahara's car.

Just kidding. That was just a simple pastime (；・∀ ・)

His moral alignment points to what Oda said about him: the part where he mentioned that Dazai didn't really see any difference between good and evil. As long as his ends were achieved, especially if it were in the benefit of his fellow colleagues, he wasn't afraid to exploit, threaten, or endanger others' wellbeing. Because, at the end of the day, the end result triumphed the morally bad methods utilised to achieve it, correct? He always had a reason for his motives and actions, even if those actions were evil and inexcusable.

(eg. action: the psychological abuse he bestowed upon Akutagawa Ryunosuke.

motive: to enable him to hone his own ability favourably and to curb his arrogance)

But the consequences of one's actions will always catch up with a person, no matter what heights they've achieved.

Okay, we're reaching the end of my rambling very soon, I promise.

“If I had to go, I’d like to go out just as beautifully.”

“I’d prefer you don’t go.”

This part of the post is highly inspired by iwachuwu!!

An important factor of Dazai's development is highlighted BSD Wan's episode 10:

I'd like to appreciate that this scene focuses on how much Dazai actually means to Atsushi. When Atsushi responds with "I'd prefer you don't go," he said it lightheartedly for he thought Dazai was joking. But he wasn't. And once Atsushi absorbed the fact that Dazai meant what he said, he was overwhelmed with anguish at the thought of ever losing Dazai. Dazai, on the other hand, had a sense of longing on his expression. There was that look of pure desperation on his face. He was so desperate, yet he knew he couldn't act on his desperation due to a promise he'd made to someone dear to him. But keep in mind, Dazai is unpredictable, so we can never be sure of what's going on in that headspace of his.

Nevertheless, this time, Atsushi recognised Dazai's suffering, as no one usually cared to do, and Dazai didn't put in any effort to hide how he truly felt, as he habitually did. And this mutual emotional connection happened countless times during all the times Oda spent with Dazai as well.

To summarise,

Dazai's character had been carefully wired and patterned out in a way only a few would put in the effort to understand. Dazai was more than just suicidal; he was a being wandering from place to place with no specific aim. He was too smart for his own good. Dazai understood too well of how the world worked and deemed it void of any sort of hope.

Side note: Yes, the truth does come at a price, but it all comes down to how a person understands the truth. As for Dazai (both character and the author he was based off upon), well, it was quite tragic. But that's the way it is for some people, I suppose. But everyone has a different path to travel on, remember that.

His transition from working with the Port Mafia to the Armed Detective Agency was proof of how well-executed his character development was. It was two different personas morphed into what he is today: a womaniser with questionable morals a person who is still standing even after the rough refining process endowed upon him by the realities of this life.

However, he had people along the way come and teach him a thing or two, which perhaps made his life a little more interesting. Perhaps these people were passing clouds that hid the void out of sight for just a moment, and Dazai was always seen to be grasping on to these moments, and letting them go whenever it was time to let go.

His outlook on life makes his intellect look all the more intriguing. It shows that not only does his intelligence contribute to his own wit and shrewdness, but also the practical sense of realism that explains how tired he is of the concept of living because of the truths there are to bear.

However he's enduring the pain right now is by far the most bravest thing a person could commit themselves to doing. It takes courage, and it takes strength, but only a few would ever take the time to recognise such efforts.

Dazai has one of the most beautiful character developments, but I do hope that the development doesn't reach its end anytime soon.

fanart credits: @S7dOZPN3jWBB6cW on twitter

“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness.

Everything passes.

That is the one and only thing that I have thought resembled a truth in the society of human beings where I have dwelled up to now as in a burning hell.

Everything passes.”

excerpt from Dazai Osamu's No Longer Human.

#bsd #bsd dazai #bungo stray dogs #bungo stray dogs wan #bsd wan #bsd dazai osamu #bsd characters #literature analysis #literature #dazai osamu #bsd odasaku #bsd atsushi #bsd analysis #bsd atsushi nakajima #.ryley.speaks

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wenellyb · 2 years

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Hey, I wanted to get your opinion on something

I've seen a lot of people hate on Malcolm Spellman for mistreating Sam and Bucky in CAATWS and so they aren't looking forward to Cap 4.

But I really enjoyed CAATWS, and don't really remember them mistreating either character.

Sure, Sam's trauma could have been dealt with a bit more (I really wish they did), but a lot of his trauma (Riley, military, etc) wasn't relevant to his arc in the show, so it might have felt out of place in terms of storytelling. I think the show did talk a little about his trauma as a black man in America, and of losing his parents, both of which were relevant to the plot. They could have gone more in depth, but I don't think that warrants so much hate for Malcolm Spellman. I hope to see a more in-depth delve into Sam's trauma in Cap 4.

But anyway, those are just my thoughts. What do you think?

Hi Anon!!!

Thank you for this ask, it's really interesting and I think I tend to agree with you..?

I apologize in advance, because this might be long, I'll try to make it short but I don't promise anything.

I have written about this before, but I have no problem with the way Sam was written in the show, I've loved Sam since first seeing Civil War and in the FATWS I felt like I really got to know him, instead of getting glimpses of him in other Avengers movie.

The way I see it, a lot of people on this site seem to think that there is one and only one correct take about a movie or a show, when in fact it's only an opinion, and of course depending on your expectations, personality and tastes, you will have different opinions.

I agree with you and I don't think that Sam's character was mistreated. I've also read that a lot of people felt like Sam wasn't the lead character in the first few episodes, and I didn't see it at all. If anything, the fandom were making a lot of the episodes about other characters rather than Sam: Bucky, Zemo even Walker, but the problem was the fandom, not the show itself. If you watch the show, you can clearly tell the show is about Sam Wilson as the lead character, and Bucky as his partner.

I don't think Bucky's character was mistreated either, but I can understand the problem some people had with the was his therapist turned some of her sentences. Because to me it's clear that Bucky has never been responsible for anything he did as the Winter Soldier.

And also Bucky was kind of a jerk at the beginning of the show, but I didn't feel like it was bad writing, because then it came full circle in ep 5. It was just a story they told, and if you ask me, I saw Bucky growing, and learning from his mistakes. Not being mistreated. But I can understand that some people didn't see it that way.

I have read great analyses explaining what was wrong with the way Sam was written, and they're great, really interesting and eye opening, but it's a feeling I just don't share.

My only beef with Malcom Spellman was his decision to kill off Lemar Hoskins, as someone who grew up watching movies where they killed of the Black character first for absolutely no reason, as if there were just. expendable., it was really disgusting for me to watch Lemar being killed off, not because it would have been a great storyline but just because they needed a reason to show Walker's descent to madness (spoiler alert: they didn't need to kill Lemar for that). Worst part is that Spellman knew exactly what he was doing but decided to do it anyway (I'll link the intrview where he talks about it if I find it).

So yeah, I'm not a big fan of Spellman either, but for different reasons. Non Sam-related reasons.

Would have I loved to see more of Sam and his personality, and his background and flashbacks? YES. Would I have liked to see more of Sam dealing with his trauma, and painful moments? Not really.

I wouldn't have complained, and I wouldn't have minded, I even think those scenes would have been powerful, but it's not something I felt was missing or was even needed.

I had been the writer of the show, I wouldn't have changed a single thing, except I would have never killed Lemar (that was bad writing imo).

I loved how the show was written, I loved that we got a show dealing with racism the way no other MCU show/or project has done before, not even Black Panther, I loved that we discovered the heartbreaking story of Isaiah that just felt so realistic, because that was what would have happened if a Black Super Soldier had existed, and it actually has happened, but we got to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I loved how they built up Sam's journey to becoming Captain America, showed his internal struggle and then gave us a reveal in the most glorius ways. I loved episode 6. I looved everything about the show.

Was it perfect? No, they could have wrapped up the story about the flagsmashers better, there were some scenes missing. Was it perfect to me? A hundred times yes!

Because at the end of the day this is fiction, and I love my fictional stories to have satisfying endings, because we don't get those in "real life". But I can understand that other people have different expectations about their fictional characters. We don't have to all feel the same way about everything.

I don't know how to explain this but I feel like a lot of people on Tumblr are set on this idea that shows/movies should focus on a character's trauma. I'm not against it, and I can understand that people wanted to see more of that side from Sam, but I personally didn't.

And even if I did, the way Sam was portrayed felt really realistic to me, a lot of Black men deal with trauma the way Sam does, keeping everything inside and tying to put up a front. The fact that we didn't see tears or anything doesn't mean that we didn't get to see Sam's feelings, struggles or emotions, because we did.

Saying that Sam was portrayed badly in the show, is not an objective statement. It's an opinion. It's not wrong, but it's an opinion.

You're allowed to like the way the show dealt with his character and you're allowed to hate it too, it's all good.

I personally don't watch MCU movies, to see my favorite characters go through painful moments and relive their trauma. I do want to know more about them, their background, their history, and personality, and I hope we'll see more of it for Sam, but that's it.

My answer is all over the place, but in short, I personnally don't think there was anything wrong with the way Spellman wrote Sam, even though I understand why some people did, but I still don't like it how he killed off Lemar Hoskins and his flimsy justification, so I'm cautious about him too. But I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for Cap 4.

#sam wilson #anthony mackie #malcom spellman #anon asks #tfatws #I would have added more Sarah scene too!!!#I hope this is clear

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life-rewritten · 3 years

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Tharn and Type 7 Years: The duality of TharnType and LeoFiat

Okay, let's crack on to episode 4. This is going to be Looong! Strap in. Another episode that yes I enjoyed. This show is like returning back to an old love, it feels nostalgic, it's the best thing in the day to end with, you're excited but also scared at the same time because you've become so attached that any issues that ruin this will break your heart into pieces. And I wasn't expecting it, but I became pretty attached real fast, I fell hard again. I am so grateful for this show for bringing back that excitement, and longing because waiting for the episodes is beginning to start to hurt.

Addressing the Complaints

In episode 4, fans have said that this episode was another filler episode full of nonsensical scenes and purely another LeoFiat storyline, fans were upset at the lack of screen time apparently for MewGulf (who play TT). I say apparently because that's rubbish, they still have more screen time than others. Fans also thought the plot had started to be stagnant and nothing was happening. Hmm, I can see how fans may think of the last one, because I too even after watching episode 4, felt the story was on hold; however, I wasn't angry, I was intrigued. I know that the writer of this show leaves clues, information for where her plot is going right now; Tharn and Type are on a roller coaster, everything right now keeps building up, moving up waiting till it reaches that pause before we all fall and lose our minds. Because of the angst and drama. Because it will be painful. On Today's analysis, we're going to break down The dichotomy and duality of our two prominent couples this season in episode 4; LeoFiat (LF) and TharnType (TT)

Now, this is an example of the duality of LeoFiat and TharnType. We get two scenes at the beginning of episode 4, both associated with the making of or eating cake. It's funny when I analyse some shows as sometimes I hate looking deeper into scenes that may not even be planned or aren't actually that deep. But I got irritated because people stated that it was pointless having the cake scene; one because it was censored and we didn't get a kiss from TharnType, and that's what the scene was for to them, two because why the hell is Fiat eating a cake happily so important for TharnType?

Well, I'm here to tell you that it is essential, every dialogue in these two scenes with cake is needed as much as the shopping scenes and the long focuses on characters doing mundane things. It's actually again telling you and building up the story in subtext. TharnType the show has always been a show that uses subtext to build up the tension and show what's going on secretly below the surface, in season 1 we saw this happen the opposite, we saw the angst and the fights and the pain on the surface, but we realised the depth, the meanings, the actual psychological links of our characters in subtext. In season 2 we have this reversed, we're getting the angst and the conflict being built up in the subtext. On the surface, we see ordinary moments that seem like they hold no meaning.

Except they do: Take the cake scene, for example, we are again shown the mindset of our characters and behaviours towards the plot of the story: The marriage conflict with TT and the Fiat's interference with TT as the villain of the show. We're shown hints again to their personalities, mindsets and behaviours.

Let me break it down even further:

THE MESSY THING ABOUT CAKES

Cake Scene Number 1: Tharn has woken up to make a cake for Type because it's his day off in a while. Tharn isn't a great cook, so he's made a mess of the kitchen, in order to prevent more messes and Tharn getting hurt, Type distracts him with his body and intercourse. Type then proceeds to ask Tharn out for shopping, and a date and they tease each other.

Cake scene Number 2: Fiat is happily eating cake, Leo shows up and berates him for his messiness, and Fiat pushes it off. Leo continues to complain whilst babying Fiat, Fiat and Leo then discuss Leo's family and how Fiat likes being seen as the favourite son in that family. Fiat then convinces Leo to take him out to go shopping for shoes he wants. Leo says he'd go alone, Fiat disagrees and manipulates him into letting him go by being more baby and cute.

Tharn and Type:

Messes and Destruction

So why is this cake scene so important? The dialogue and behaviour! Tharn is shown to be impulsive and rash. This is repeated throughout the whole episode. It's a warning, Tharn is spontaneous; ready to do new things, step out of comfort zones despite the mess and destruction it could cause to him and his safe space. With cooking he does it because he promised Type, it's to make sure Type is comfortable on his day off because he worries about him overworking (this is also repeated for the plot of this episode). However as much as he promised to cook always for Type, we've seen twice with his cooking, that Tharn is prone to making more of a mess than something useful. We even see a pan of the camera to the counter to show how much chaos he had caused. There's a reason for why it panned out. We've seen his battles with the eggs, the first time he hurt himself and Type was over-worried, and this time he messes up and destroys the kitchen to get one egg broken for the cake. It's cute but look at the dynamics:

Type's Protective and Reactive Nature

Type is more reactive to Tharn's hurt, mess and destruction, and he's protective over what they have and is more on the watch for the damage rather than the gesture. Tharn wanted to be romantic, but he ended up ruining it by rushing, by being impulsive, by not slowing down; the gesture is for Type and to make Type happy, at ease and comfortable but it doesn't end up like that. This is foreshadowing; the cake making is the marriage plot. The reason why Tharn wants them to be married is so he can have a stable and secure relationship with Type, to make them happy and feel safe. Still, Type is more worried about the results of marriage, the 'mess' of their relationship if people get involved with their relationship or if the marriage doesn't work out because of society's laws. This again shows how much both of them are doing things for each other but not actually not seeing each other and understanding each other. The more Tharn pushes the more Type will be worried and overreact. This was foreshadowing.

Leo and Fiat:

Messes and Obstructions

This is the one everyone said was a waste of plot except it wasn't. Look at the first details, we see Fiat happily and messily eating a cake, he's so happy, peaceful and joyful. This is the first scene we've seen him this way so far we've seen him anxious, mean, grumpy, loud, obnoxious and just overall unstable. The reason? Because Leo wasn't there. His friends mentioned it, he himself said it to Leo in episode 3 that he was losing his mind without him there, but he didn't want to bother him since Italy was so important to him. That one minute of him eating cake and smiling peacefully is there for a reason; its to show him blissful and different, the effect of Leo on Fiat.

He's not meant to be a devil or evil he's just a kid who is spoilt and bratty. Fiat knows how he is with Leo, and he appreciates it, he enjoys all that Leo has done for him, and it makes him love Leo. Yes, Love, Leo. He knows about his feelings, but he pushes them down because Leo keeps pushing them aside and seeing them as nothing. I wrote a post previously (here), detailing how both Fiat and Leo have feelings for each other, Fiat has been forced to let go of those feelings because Leo keeps rejecting and sweeping past his feelings because Leo sees his love as fickle or part of his spoilt personality; for example with this scene when he replies to Fiat's confession, 'You always say you love someone to whoever pampers you all the time'.

Leo doesn't take Fiat's feelings seriously because he thinks Fiat plays too much with people, and he doesn't want to be that to Fiat (just a game to distract him so he won't get bored). Fiat just wants to be with Leo and to be by his side at all times. For Fiat, if being friends is the only way to do so, then it is better to stay friends. That's what this scene is showing you with their dynamic and with their dialogue.

Fiat's spoilt persona

Which brings us to Fiat's childish personality. I said in my previous post, Fiat felt neglected by the people around him; his parents, his friends who see him as an annoying brat and Leo, who didn't take his feelings seriously. We find out this episode that Fiat is close to Leo's family, he's like their son they take care of, but because they live far, he still feels neglected and alone. His actual family definitely don't show him care and emotional support, but they do spoil him with materialistic stuff probably. Hence why Fiat has embraced this spoilt child persona because it gives him what he wants; his parents attention, Leo's family's attention as the favourite 'son' (basically he's babied by them and spoilt by them) and Leo's care and affection.

In fact, this is the reason why he proceeds to eat messily like a child, he knows Leo will clean it for him, and this is why he proceeds to whine and cry and complain because it gets Leo to baby him. Fiat embraces this childish, immature, spoilt personality because it makes it easy for him to be taken care of by Leo. See the cake scene for example; his mouth got wiped by Leo, Leo brought him water and then proceeded to accept Fiat's wishes to go with him to the mall because of him acting like a baby.

On the other hand, Fiat just wants to spend as much time as possible with Leo; it's why he was so determined to join him at the mall despite coming up with other reasons. Fiat knows he loves Leo, probably knows what it means, but Leo's constant rejection and blindness make him think it's unrequited and failed. But one thing most important to this plot, Fiat gets what he wants by being a baby. He doesn't like when he's being neglected, so he becomes manipulative, stubborn and immature whenever he wants something. This is why he becomes our villain. Leo can calm him down, but Leo is also the person who's making Fiat more of our villain because he refuses to accept Fiat's feelings; if he had taken him seriously, we wouldn't get this conflict. Fiat needs Type to distract him from his frustrations with Leo.

Plot: Fiat and Leo have known each other for a long time, are close to each other's families, and Fiat is used to being spoilt and babied.

IT’S A DATE!

Shopping scene Number 1: It's a date, Tharn and Type eat and Tharn tries to get the marriage conversation in again, and Type becomes a bit possessive when he notices Tharn on his phone, changes the subject and we get Tharn's work philosophy, Type tries to warn Tharn to slow down, but it ends with Tharn proceeding to hint to marriage again, Type smiles whilst rejecting it softly.

Shopping scene Number 2: Leo is possessive and jealous about Type, he wants to ensure that Type is just a fling to Fiat, Fiat doesn't get why Leo is acting this way and proceeds to say its because he gets what he wants, its a conquest basically, Fiat distracts Leo by complaining about his legs and then Leo continues to put shoes on Fiat as Fiat stares at him lovingly.

Tharn and Type.

Tharn; The hasty and rash

Again we get a repeat of this motif. Tharn wants to rush out some plans for his work, but Type is worried about him not slowing down and waiting to see the results. Again we see this misunderstanding of each other's perspective. Tharn wants to rush work stuff because he wants to make things stable and secure for him and Type fast, so their future is safe. Type doesn't understand why Tharn doesn't focus on the now, and take things slow and be protective of his work more carefully. Tharn's business is a metaphor like the cake for their relationship. Again the reason why he's being impulsive is for Type, and again Type doesn't see the reason for it.

This is repeated again with the shopping scene, Tharn is rash and likes to spend money without thinking, because he's used to being wealthy and spoilt, (like Fiat). Again Type is protective of finances, he's their financial planner, he thinks of the big picture. He protects their relationship from any potential signs of harm, stress or issue. We actually see him do so this episode once he discovers Nana sneaking around in Tharn's life. It's him being protective and preventive. This date scene dialogue also foreshadows what will finally get Tharn and Type to the end of the conflict; possessiveness, communication and understanding. These are three things that get Type willing to accept the proposal;

Possessiveness

Because Type finally realises that many people are still trying to ruin him and Tharn and marriage will help him get security and stability. Because the reason why people keep doing this is that they think he and Tharn are single. He realises he needs them to be exposed to the world to avoid these minor issues.

Communication

It's only after Tharn explains why he rushes his work style for their relationship that Type finally gets his point of view, it makes him understand more why Tharn is more eager and trying to push things, it's for their security and stability, its for Type, so he also starts to feel grateful and happy at the thought of the ring on his finger. Hence the smile.

Understanding

It's not yet happened but its losing Tharn that would make Type understand why marriage was needed. It's through them finally reaching a breaking point that will eventually push him to accept it despite his fears.

Leo and Fiat:

Leo: The oblivious and the envious

Fiat basically says again the reason why he acts spoilt is, so that Leo pampers him; he doesn't like the idea of Leo not doing so. Obviously, the shopping scene is vital to the plot, it introduces Leo to Type, and at first, you seem him react uncomfortably because he's guessed it's one of Fiat's 'fake' relationships, people who he flirts with and sleeps with and gets bored of quickly; a quest. He still doesn't notice Fiat asking for his feelings; Fiat asks him if he thinks he's handsome Leo walks away (again pushing his feelings to the side/overlooking them). Fiat also explains why he likes Type; because he's hard to get, and a quest, it excites him, and it makes him determined to win his heart.

We get even more clues to this when Fiat tells Leo he's always gotten what he wanted, but he had one thing he could never get. If the audience pays attention, you'd see him pause on Leo. Leo's feelings are what he couldn't get and what he had to give up on, but he diverts it to a lie, which he says that it's wanting Leo to stop nagging him. Thing is this shows Fiat's mindset again. Leo's requited feelings are something he's tried to get, but he didn't have a chance according to his perspective. Again Fiat knows he loves Leo, you see it again when he looks at him lovingly as Leo puts the shoe on him. These two aren't seeing each other eye to eye. But yes, shopping for shoes is important to the plot.

Plot: Fiat sees Type and proceeds to be eager and ensure he can keep texting him. Fiat admits he wants to be with Type to Leo. Leo isn't happy. Tharn notices Fiat and worries but gets distracted by Type so forgets about him.

PHONES, SOCIALS AND PICTURES

Scene 1; The social media scene: Type and Tharn discuss Tharn's worries for Type's work and how much energy he puts into it. Tharn wants Type to be more comfortable and at ease, and sends a picture on Instagram showcasing his ownership for Tharn. Type feels happy when seeing people's reactions to Tharn until he sees that Nana has liked all of Tharn’s picture, he's worried there's a homewrecker upcoming, and asks Techno for what he knows. Techno reveals he saw Nana and Tharn together. Type becomes possessive, looks through Tharn's phone and proceeds to go confront Nana.

Scene 2: The gym scene: Fiat is happily on the phone texting Type, he sends a picture (just like Tharn) to Type and discusses his behaviours and attitudes since he started getting physical therapy. Leo gets jealous and tries to get Fiat's attention, finally asking Fiat if he sees Type as something serious, Fiat says Yes. Leo loses his cool and becomes upset. Fiat doesn't notice as he's distracted happily texting with Type.

Tharn and Type:

Possessiveness and Preventiveness:

We see Type again lean towards marriage when he notices how happy he is when Tharn declares his ownership. But also they communicate, and Tharn tells Type he's worried about him overworking, he wants to be the one taking care of Type. Type is happy and grateful, he understands he's Tharn's number one priority. And he likes seeing people react to Tharn as a good boyfriend. But we see his fears come back, because the reason why he hates being exposed to the public, why he keeps refusing to involve people in their relationship is because of people like Nana.

Now I just want to speak about Type and Tharn's possessiveness and irrational jealousy. Obviously, people would say this is the reason for toxicity of TT except if you know the show and understand them it isn't. The way they started their relationship is enough to show you why they are so jealous of people, it wasn't to do with them not trusting each other, or being toxic and controlling. It's not to do with any of that.

It's to do with Long. Remember him? In Season 1 Type had to go through a lot because of people's interference; San kissing Tharn, (making him finally call Tharn his boyfriend) and Tar returning and chasing after Tharn ( making him also protective and find out Long's interference causing them to break up). Finally Long had been manipulating Tharn for a very long time psychologically, emotionally and physically. Type knows Tharn is easily manipulated and easily attractive to problematic people.

Nana is one of them, she's a flashback to all these people who tried to ruin what they had, and both TT has shown repeatedly this season are extremely overprotective of their relationship. It's not a surprise Type looks into Tharns phone and answers Nana and goes to her, he's being protective and preventive not toxic. He knows Tharn won't cheat; it's not about him; it's about as I keep repeating preventing measures that could cause harm to their relationship. Same reason why Tharn wants to get married and declare ownership, its to protect and secure their relationship. They have the same goal, just different methods.

Leo and Fiat:

Possessiveness and Proclamations

If you guys didn't notice Leo was mirroring Tharn is season 1 episode 2 I think. Type showed attraction to Tharn shirtless and drinking water, and the jealousy seeing him text someone else. We’ve those scenes before because we’ve seen Tharn do all that is S1. First thing to notice is; Leo is confident, he can distract Fiat. This shows you he's been doing it before, he's used to getting Fiat's attention on his body, and he's used to getting Fiat distracted from other people, this is why he hasn't bothered with others. Because Fiat gets bored and returns back to obsessing and flirting with him.

The problem here is Leo is too late when it comes to Type; it's his lack of presence in episode 1, 2 and 3 that led Fiat to seek comfort and trust in Type. Fiat finally found someone else to be excited about, someone else to feel inspired by and someone who makes him not bored when Leo isn't around. Fiat likes that about Type, he wants that; he's being distracted from his own feelings for Leo, he doesn't see or understand why Leo is acting out. He's too focused on his quest. And I get it, he finally has a chance to move on from Leo and still keep their friendship intact. Type is the way to do that.

The Problem With the Unofficial Label

This is the danger of unofficial relationships. Leo thought his comfort zone was being in this unofficial thing with Fiat. He had feelings, but he also thought Fiat wasn't going anywhere or getting distracted because he always returned back to Leo probably whining and throwing tantrums, he probably also again threw his shot and flirted heavily with Leo.

Leo was okay keeping what they had this way (like Type was okay with keeping him and Tharn hidden), but it's only when he realises that their relationship isn't stable or secure for him to declare ownership that he reacts, he's learning just a bit too late. Fiat's entire focus has shifted to Type, and it isn't going to change any time soon. Leo has pushed Fiat away too much that now he's going to be regretting it and being hurt because of this.

To all the people who feel bad for Leo, Fiat isn't manipulative or using Leo, he has no clue about his feelings for him, he gets hints sometimes, but it's always pushed away once Leo rejects his flirtations. If you noticed this episode before Type showed up Fiat was saying how he felt to Leo repeatedly;

'I love you the most in the world."

"I'm handsome don't you think"'

"If I stop, won't you pamper me anymore?"

Each time he got rebuffed by Leo, Leo assumed Fiat was saying I love you to anyone easily as long as he was spoilt by them, he believed it was fickle and interchangeable. He walked away when he was asked if he thought he was handsome because of jealousy, and he failed to see Fiat's fear when he said the last quote. Leo doesn't see Fiat's feelings and Fiat has stopped trying to see his. Hence fixation on Type. Again this is for the plot, Fiat is a villain. After all, he's started to want to win Type's heart because he likes how he feels with him, and he's never lost a quest before.

Plot: Type is getting closer to the idea of marriage, Nana has come into the picture. Type is determined to prevent her from doing something and goes to confront her. Fiat is also starting to fall harder for Type and has decided to pursue him. Leo, on the other hand, is also getting jealous and losing his control of his feelings and Fiat's attention.

‘A MUNDANE PLOT AND STAGNANT STORY TELLING’

Three scenes with immense depth to character building mirrors from season 1 and more plot building. The plot hasn't stayed still, Tharn is more determined and closer to getting Type to accept his proposal, but he's impulsive, rash and rushes things without giving Type room to think. His brother warned him about this in the episode and its foreshadowing he needs to stop and slow things down. Give Type time! Type is possessive of what he has with Tharn and is also closer to leaning towards marriage, but if rushed, he'll panic and lose his cool.

Fiat and Leo's plot is building, both have feelings for each other, but because Leo refuses to tell Fiat straight up or take his feelings seriously both think it's unrequited; in response, Fiat finds distraction and excitement with Type and so proceeds to focus on that conquest, he's determined to win Type's heart, but he also likes being with Type because Type seems to understand him and is just like him remember.

Leo, on the other hand, this episode realises someone has actually taken his place in Fiat's mind and is now panicking and no longer willing to keep their relationship unofficial.

See? Is that not a plot? We get both information and a build-up to Fiat becoming the villain, whilst again making us feel sorry for him. We get the marriage plot still ongoing, there's more manipulation to get Type to say yes, and he's close to it, but if rushed, he'll stop. There's still miscommunication and misunderstanding of each other's perspective when it comes to both our characters. The plot has not paused; it's always moving, everything was needed this episode. So all those people who keep complaining, please for the love of god calm down.

More Tharn Type Analysis: Masterpost Check under Tharn and Type Here

#tharntype #tharntype 7 years of love #tharntype 2: 7 years of love #tharntype the series #tharn and type #thai bl #bl series #bl drama #december #november #cwg #fvete #mewgulf

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silverducks · 3 years

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Game of Thrones - Jaime Lannister

A rambling character study of Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones.

Introduction

Ok, so nearly a month since I finished watching Game of Thrones, and I’m still not over how it ended. Like some things I can reconcile myself too, some things just annoy me when I overthink what happened and some things - ok one thing in particular - is just not letting me go.

And that is the way the show ended for Jaime Lannister.

I know I’m like 2 years too late on the GoT bandwagon and no one cares anymore. But I’m writing all these posts because I still care, having recently experienced what you all went through 2 years ago. And I know what I’ll be posting will have all been posted countless times before and discussed in the fandom years ago. But I kinda need to still get my own thoughts written down and outta my head.

Before I go on though, I just want to add in here that I do still love this show and, even right to the very end, think the acting, crew, music, sets/scenery, costumes, basically everything was pretty much amazing. That is except the writing, which, went downhill after series 4. Before then it was pretty much amazing too (not always perfect (is anything?), but so darn good!)

Now, turns out when I came to write down my thoughts on Jaime’s ending, I had even more than I realised. Basically it’s turned into me writing one massive analysis of Jaime’s character based on the show. So I’ve split it into separate posts, with this first one more of an intro, a summary of my thoughts and overall opinion on Jaime and a bit of context on my own experience with Game of Thrones.

Now, spoilers for Game of Thrones ending

I’ve read/watched a lot on the internet since I saw those episodes (series 8, episode 4 and 5 in case you weren’t sure) and I know a lot of people don’t like how they ended Jaime’s story in the show either. But I’ve also read a lot of comments where people did like it, or at least thought it made sense. The reasons they give make no sense to me, but it’s made me think and overthink and analyse way too much about how they did end his story.

So, in order to try and get them out of my head, I’m putting them down here. It’s a long, pretty rambling read, split up into a few parts because it got so long. Across the posts I’m going to go through my own understanding and perception of Jaime’s character and his arc and why I think they completely ruined it in episodes 8.04 and 8.05. I’ll then focus on some of the main reasons I’ve seen why people think it did make sense, and why (even though I maintain everyone is entitled to their own opinion) I completely disagree. Jaime’s character arc was annihilated in the show even more than Kings Landing. And that is more than a bit frustrating.

Now, just a bit of background to add some context to my thoughts; I basically only got around to watching the show a few months ago (I’ve not read the books yet). I basically binged watched the entire show and am now just a little bit reeling from it all! LOL! Also, as I did binge watch it, it meant I didn’t spend time between episodes/series really analysing/theorising etc. I had a few ideas and thoughts, but not to the depth it would have been had I needed to wait impatiently for each new episode. This means I think my viewpoint is of the show as an overall whole, rather than each separate series, because it kinda all rolled into one. This may, or may not, have affected my opinion and so this analysis of Jaime Lannister and my disappointment in his ending. It also means, having only watched the show once, I’ve probably forgotten or missed bits. However, since I finished the show, I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos and read a lot of stuff on the net about it, including in comparison to the books. (And I maybe rewatched some of my favourite scenes just a few times…) And now I am analysing and theorising and thinking about this show way too much! LOL!

So I guess my viewpoint isn’t one of ignorance, but it might not be quite the same as someone who’s been invested in the show from the start.

Like most viewers, I pretty much thought Jaime = evil villain for most of the earlier series. He had the odd moment, but it wasn’t until he did that speech with Catelyn about the conflict of all those oaths he’d taken that I even started to take note of his character. And then series 3 happens, where he has his road trip with Brienne, loses his hand, saves her from a bear and basically starts his wonderful path of character development. And basically manages to go from a guy I pretty much do not like at all at the start, to one of my all time favourite characters ever.

Also, I’m definitely a Brienne/Jaime shipper and did wish them to have a happy ending. However, I pretty much never thought the show would actually even go there, let alone make it happy. In fact, I actually did my best to NOT ship them for such a long time because, being Game of Thrones, I knew it was very unlikely to end well. But, then yeah, their intense staring contests kept on happening and darn it, the way that Jaime’s voice breaks when he says Lady Brienne and him giving her a priceless sword, and what the sword represents and…

Ok, well, yeah, I could gush about them all day, but anyway, I ended up not being able to fight the ship any more after series 6 and THAT tent scene. But, even then, I still didn’t think the show would make it canon, like it would just leave it all open ended/make up your own mind kinda thing.

And then we get to series 8. Like we have a whole episode (that is actually named for their very storyline) with Jaime just staring at Brienne, being all dorky around Brienne and then, if that wasn’t enough, he even KNIGHTS Brienne! I mean, this is epic for this ship! And I would have been ok (not happy, but satisfied) as a Brienne and Jaime shipper if that had been it.

But then no, then he barely leaves her side in the fight against the dead in the next episode – they fight side by side with their two halves of one whole swords, each risking their own life for the other multiple times. And then in the next episode (where I don’t think there’s barely any scene where they’re NOT right next to each other) the show DID make it canon. Like it actually did go there, they slept together (in an adorably awkward scene I love). Heck, Jaime then even chooses to stay in the North and be with Brienne, even though he hates the North. Like this was just epicness of all proportions and I got so excited and all those shippy feels I was trying to hold back just came rushing out and then... and then...

THEN that scene happens. He leaves her. Like WTH…

Anyway, more on that in another post. I guess what I’m trying to say is that as much as I ship them, my issues with Jaime’s ending is less about his relationship with Brienne, and more just his complete 180 on character development. Jaime’s arc has been heavily influenced by Brienne, but it is still amazing in its own right. As I didn’t expect Brienne/Jaime to ever happen (so when it did and then got taken away in the very same episode, it’s incredibly frustrating and gives even less credence to what does happen), it’s not why I’m so annoyed and disappointed with what happened to Jaime.

I’m annoyed because they took all this amazing character growth over 7 series and then screwed it all over in less than two episodes. No, that’s not enough. It was a complete and utter character assassination that completely undermines and destroys 7 series worth of investment and development, completely nullifying everything Jaime went through as a character.

So, yeah, I’m a bit annoyed, but that’s because it makes no sense and it’s bugging me enough to write this whole series of posts. Because I can’t let it go. And having read people justify, even like it online, it’s made my inner analysis thought train go into override. And I’m sorry if these posts are like I’m preaching to the choir, or writing such obvious stuff and repeating myself, I’m just trying to get it all out my head as coherently as I can. Hopefully allowing me to move on a bit.

#Urgh #I need to sit in a corner and try to cheer myself up again before I can write anymore #Maybe watching some Brienne and Jaime fan videos will help cheer me up #And also simultaneously depress me even more.

#Game of Thrones #Jaime Lannister #Brienne x Jaime

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greylunar · 4 years

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PLEASE do in depth analyses of all of the houses for your quiz I was enraptured reading the gryffindor one and I didn’t even get gryffindor

JUST FOR YOU ANON, I am going to compile the sort of Final Breakdown of every house, in my opinion, that you get at the end of the quiz now. Theres more in-depth analysis of specific questions under each house’s tag on my blog, and you can feel free to ask more specifics of course bUT here is the masterpost of that c:

A Hufflepuff is, unlike a Ravenclaw or a Gryffindor, an internal house. I know what you must be thinking, “how can you be the house of loyalty if you’re an internal house?” Puffs have a small network, Their People, maybe friends, maybe family, maybe friends who are family, maybe an assortment of small pets or animated characters. While Slytherins also have Their People, they have resources and associates to draw from when their bored, whereas the term associates exhausts a Hufflepuff. Spending time with people they don’t love doesn’t ever sit quite right, although they will often do it in an attempt to make folks happy. Hufflepuffs yes, are a house of kindness and of love, but unlike Gryffindors when it comes down to it they don’t have to go out of their way for kindness and love. Gryffindors will seek out situations in which they can do good. Hufflepuffs good is smaller (not lesser) in which they will do as much good as they can for the people directly in their line of sight, but when granted with the great expanse of the world it is easy for them to shrink in on themselves and not be able to cope. That said, they have so much love to give out, and will often want all their love in one place, slightly selfish but mostly excited collectors of people. If your version of the ideal future is a vague image of all the people you love in your house for [insert holiday] that is a very Hufflepuff sentiment. Hufflepuffs, like Gryffindors, are inherent/intrinsic worth folks. Hufflepuffs know who they are, or at least how they define themselves. Their moral code may not be their local government’s law (and actually very often isn’t), but it does exist and is rigid, and puffs won’t go against it unless incredibly pressed. This is a point of contention with Slytherins and Ravenclaws, and even Gryffindors who feel like they have to perform/validate their identity and choices through others. Hufflepuffs are themselves, and no one else, completely and quietly. They love their People. They want to build a home for them. That isn’t to say that puffs are necessarily gentle pushovers. A huge component of Punk and Anti-fascists align themselves with Puffs because they are So themselves and So invested in the safety and well-being of their people and community. Like slytherins, hufflepuffs often know/feel they’re weird, and tend to relish in finding people as absurd and lovely as they are. They will forgive people, possibly too much. But quietly, they will shift the little orbit of the world around themselves to be a little kinder, a little gentler, for them and the people they love. Be kind to yourself. You do not have to be any bigger than you are.

Slytherins are linked to identity, changing themselves to meet their needs and the wants of the world around them. They have specific people that are Theirs, and their circle of Actual Trust may be rather small, even if their friend/associates/resources group is a wide network. Slytherins are tied to wanting, craving, and not necessarily in a bad way or in a way that’s “ambition”. Slytherins are a house made up of people who want something or someone or some goal desperately or are made up of a myriad of little wants, but also struggle with the idea of worth and whether or not they have done enough to deserve the things they want. Sometimes, these wants are secret. Slytherins are often caught up in this wanting and this worth, and cannot see that they are already loved, completely and wholly, for who they are. When you care for someone you care for them with all of you, you are inherently a protective house like hufflepuffs for those that you care about most, and for all your wanting so so so many of you are beautiful creators (the worlds and story ideas slytherins have just roaming around in their brains?? amazing!). My advice to slytherins, if I can give some without being asked hahaha oops, is to recognize that for all the shapeshifting of the self you do, you can be exactly who you want to be, if you just give yourself permission. Who would you be in a dark room without any mirrors? How would you dance? How would you dress, for just yourself? Of course, that doesn’t mean you have to change your life tomorrow. It just means, sometimes, starting in little ways, take back a little bit of ground from the world. “This part is me. This part is mine. You aren’t allowed to have it.” It can be quiet. But you are worth so much, and you are yours. You are just as much of a person as anyone else, and have already earned love, because you never had to earn it in the first place.

Gryffindors believe in innate worth, innate characteristics, sort of your personality is that way because That Is Who You Are. Similar to hufflepuffs in this way, anti-slytherin experience haha. Gryffindors, unlike Hufflepuffs, are an external versus internal change maker. Because of this, they are often more broadly idealistic than hufflepuffs (think range, although they both hold their core values very deeply, hufflepuffs are on a smaller more condensed scale whereas gryffs will spread themselves thinner. Puffs do not have to change the world, rather they create a Home in which to put their world into, whereas a lot of Gryffindors struggle with feeling that they aren’t doing Enough, not Enough good, not Enough love. That the failures of the world are in part because they haven’t done enough to help personally). Gryffindors are very solid with their identity. While slytherins/ravenclaws will see their body/their reflection in a mirror, a scientific fact of life or something they wish they could/can change and shape, Gryffindors (with some exceptions for gender, trauma, and mental illness) tend to be confused that there are answers other than “I see myself in the mirror.” However, Gryffs can be performative, because while they see themselves, they need to be told that they are going in the right direction, they need to be loved, they need to help. Gryffindors will lose themselves a bit in an empty room, in isolation, moreso than hufflepuffs or ravenclaws. They create and change the world around them FOR the world around them, and so the world can look at them and say “okay, you did it, its okay now.” In this way, they are closest to slytherins, seeking validation, seeking a legacy, even though they may not even do it/realize its for themselves. They do good, or they try to, based on how they have defined it for themselves. They will care for you with all of them, if you earn it. They will hold you. But the voice in their head says “am I sure that this is what good looks like. Am I sure that this is enough.” From your friendly neighborhood Hufflepuff, sometimes doing what you need to take care and save yourself is the best thing for the world. Maybe cook something, have a lil dance party. You are an important part of the world. Start small, and love that part the most. You can add on from there c:

Ravenclaws shape the world around them, and create, in order to create a world that better suits themselves and their goals, rather than Slytherins who shape and create/recreate themselves to suit the world, meaning they are an external house, creating and impacting in the world around them rather than in themselves. Unlike Gryffindors, the other external house, Ravenclaws do not feel as much pressure to be seen in a sort of grand legacy or entirely shape the world around them. They give and seek knowledge and creation because, in a very basic sense, they feel like they need to. In a way I’ve said it “I could not write poetry for 30 years and that wouldn’t mean I’m not a poet. I am a poet. That does not change.” But Ravenclaws will get restless if they don’t create if they don’t learn. Their legacy doesn’t mean that the whole world will remember them forever. Its that they will create/make/do something that will matter to even one person enough that they will be remembered. A lot of Ravenclaws feel tied to their Ravenclaw identity because they don’t quite know who they’d be if they weren’t the ‘intelligent one’ if you will. But Ravenclaws sometimes forget that they create beauty every day, learn things new and small every day, without even meaning to. Ravenclaws believe identity is created/forged/remade constantly as information is gathered, and often try to seem neutral, scared of sharing an opinion unless they’ve thought it through completely and are certain they should stand by it. Ravenclaws are often searching, looking for something bigger than them, as almost to prove they are small in comparison. Sometimes the best thing a Ravenclaw can do is realize that all those wonderful books and poems and pieces of art that make you dream of a fantasy world were made in this world. This place, so full of love, that gave them to you in order for you to love it back. A lot of ‘gifted kids’ put themselves in Ravenclaw, without realizing that it was the rest of the world that put them in Ravenclaw, and not something that they chose. If that’s the case, maybe now is the time to ask yourself who is it you want to be? The self is a construct loves, and a uquiz doesn’t define you. You define you. You’re so good at creating Ravenclaw friends. Create you. You’re already magnificent. You’re already worth it. Now its time to look at yourself and give some love to that self, to ask it what it wants to be. You are, more than anything else, your greatest masterpiece.

#tal asks #anons #quiz related content #hp lore #hp lore masterpost #ravenclaw #gryffindor #hufflepuff #slytherin

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a-sleepy-reader · 3 years

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Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov: an Analysis and Review

Foreword

Trigger warning for themes of paedophilia, sexual assault, stillbirth, manipulation, violence, and tragedy as well as gruesome descriptions of death. If you want a review free of spoilers, please scroll to the section labelled ‘Conclusion/Review without spoilers.’

Introduction

Calling Lolita a controversial novel is a safe bet. Some readers revolt at its topic, others still protest it as the inspirational romance of the century. Both give Lolita a bad name. I will say it once very clearly; plot-wise, Lolita is a book about a paedophile who grooms, manipulates, isolates, and rapes a twelve year old girl. It is disturbing subject material to say the least, subject material that has to be given more thought than its protagonist’s ramblings of adoration for the book’s namesake.

For instance, despite its fluctuating reputation, Lolita has found itself to be a playful and humorous novel to many, a “...comedy of horrors” according to the San Francisco Chronicle. So what is Lolita, exactly? A comedy? A thriller? Both? It is time to examine this twisted novel and see just how tangled its thorns are.

Plot synopsis

Humbert Humbert is a typical man by most standards: a handsome, French writer and professor with a soft spot for road trips… and little girls.

Humbert categorises the sexes into the male, the female, and the nymphet, the latter of which describes peculiar young girls Humbert feels an intangible attraction to. It is with such a nymphet that Humbert self-describingly falls in love with; rambunctious twelve-year-old Dolores(whom he dons ‘Lolita). He cannot keep his mind off of her; ‘light of my life, fire of my loins.’ In however poetic a prose he may choose to describe it, Humbert feels a physical bond to young Dolores like to no one else since his dead childhood sweetheart. Humbert goes so far to pursue the girl that he marries her mother, whom he plots to drown in the blue depths of a lake to have Dolores all to himself. However, what Humbert describes as a work of fate led to the day Dolores’ mother’s brain lay strewn about the road, smeared by an incoming car. She didn’t need to be subject to Humbert’s schemes to die.

From there on, Humbert has legal custody over the twelve-year-old fire of his loins. Raping Dolores becomes a routine. Though she does initially say yes, she is a minor incapable of consent in the imbalance of a grown man with everything to lose if she is to either escape or stop the affair; she will lose her only family if she reports him, and risks breaking his heart if she cuts off the affair altogether-unfortunates only know what people do when they have nothing to lose. Orphaned and trapped, Lolita agrees to Humbert’s ‘love.’ As he described it, ‘she had nowhere else to go.’

Two years pass before Dolores falls ill during their second road trip and is taken out of the hospital by an uncle aware of Humbert’s affairs. By way of escaping with this newfound relative, Dolores is finally free from Humbert’s possessive grasp. Depressed by his separation from the girl, Humbert lives a miserable life for several years before receiving a letter from Dolores herself saying she is married and pregnant. Though Humbert suspects the man behind both titles is her own uncle, Dolores refutes this by saying that, though she was in love with him, they did not settle because she refused to be in his pornographic film.

Enraged with the uncle, Humbert arrives at Dolores’ uncle’s house and murders him before being arrested. It is here that we learn Lolita is Humbert’s autobiography of the events surrounding his ‘love’ for the book’s namesake. Though he wishes for the girl-turned-woman to live for a great many years, the victim, escapee, and survivor dies in 1952 during childbirth. Her offspring is a stillborn.

Analysis

It’s a curious thing, really. That so many interpret Lolita as a romance, I mean. Of course, it often presents itself in its writing as a summery romance to read on the beach. A handsome man meets a female. An attraction is felt. Male and female confess an attraction for one another which leads them on a series of road trips following the female’s mother’s incidental death. The language is no exception to this tone-just read the first paragraph:

“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”

It’s made up of beautiful, flowery sentences, language suggestive of the pure romance of a man ‘in love.’ With a twelve year old girl he rapes. Yes, Lolita is one of those novels that wears many outfits, its outermost lining being that of a tragic love story of one traumatised man and his ungrateful lover. This perspective is especially interesting when taking into account Lolita’s exquisite writing; could the flowery language have prompted so many to interpret this book as a romance? Could Lolita be representative of how so many wield words to distract or deceive those trying their best to disapprove of them? Either way, few deny that Humbert is lying, to himself or to the reader, of exactly how the events of his fascination with Dolores occurred. Digging further into the book, Lolita becomes an unreliable narrator’s documentation of the rape and manipulation directed toward a naive minor trying to cope with her mother’s death. Further still, it is a comedic satire of a paedophile’s attempts to justify his crimes... and failing miserably. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I wasn’t even her first lover.” Deeper still and it’s one man’s search for his childhood sweetheart(dearest and deadest) he never finished loving, so he seeks, endlessly, to shower her lookalikes with unwanted ‘love.’ Without end. Without fulfilment.

Lolita is a story of infinite stories.

Review

What first struck me about Lolita was its beautiful writing; its eloquent prose, imagery, and metaphors hopelessly hooked me from the first paragraph. Nabokov never ceases to use amazing similes, description, and personification to amplify the reader’s experience of the goings-on of Humbert and the girl. This is especially striking in contrast to its tragic subject material; Humbert will rape, and he will manipulate, and he will scheme a murder, and he will hurt so many innocent lives, but he will do so with seemingly effortless grace in the scribbles on a paper.

Despite this, I did not find Lolita to be a difficult read regarding comprehension of the text. True, many a word I did not understand, but, despite this, I could always tell what was being communicated; the language is certainly not as dated as Hemingway nor Shakespeare. It may even be a calming read for those with a strong stomach, and will certainly teach a thing or two to those wishing to learn more about poetic writing styles done well.

Some may find the book to be lacking in terms of plot and overall excitement, but I feel this is a subjective view rather than a relatively factual one; Lolita is not an action book. Nor is it a drama. Humbert sometimes spends pages describing the exact locations of a road trip, or exactly how he earned money in the 50’s, and so forth. Some may find this mundane; I will admit that I was, at times, bored by it myself. However, what Nabokov sacrifices in brevity he makes up for with a profound understanding of Humbert’s emotions, environment, and thoughts.

One slight criticism I do, however, have, is that I found all of the characters in Lolita were fairly bland for me. True, Humbert is unique in his attempt to beautify the macabre, but beyond the initial shock factor of his morale and the revelation that he is seeking the love of a girlfriend from his childhood, Humbert can be mostly summarised as ‘quiet, manipulative, scheming, and possessive of Dolores.’ I was not invested in him as a character, probably due to a lack of good qualities within him; it is true that by one perspective, his story can be interpreted as tragic for him, though through the more common lens of Lolita being a 336-page manipulation of the severity of the atrocities of an evil man, Humbert loses all good qualities beyond his capabilities as a writer.

The same goes for Dolores herself, as I found her to be fairly two-dimensional; she is very sensory and seeks goods of food and adventure and she has a rambunctious heart unconcerned with how others’ feel nor how others perceive her. She is what many would call a ‘wild child,’ and though she becomes more withdrawn later in the book due to the numerous abuses she endured, I did not see much depth to her beyond face value.

That being said, I certainly do not think the characters are bad, just that they are underwhelming in comparison to the rest of the story.

I recommend Lolita to those enthralled by character-driven stories of nuanced emotions and traumas, a sort of story of the broken attempting to break the whole. If you are not put off by very thorough descriptions nor by a purposefully thin plot, I have the impression Lolita will revolt, horrify, hypnotise, and seduce its readers into its soft, macabre pages.

I give Lolita a rating of 90%.

Conclusion/Review without spoilers

Lolita is a vile, endlessly layered story of trauma and the endless search for lost love, horrific abuses, of humorous wit and smirking irony, and of one man’s endless destiny of deceit. I suppose Humbert’s own initials best summarise the smile and wink this book will deliver as you holler at Humbert, weep for Dolores, or perhaps even vice versa. They do say Russians are witty, and Nabokov does not fail this reputation even when we analyse how Humbert Humbert’s initials sound in the author’s native language:

Ha-ha.

#literature #books #classics #book review

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itsybitsylemonsqueezy · 4 years

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Hi! I happened to stumble across your analyses on both Majima and Saejima and boy am I blown away by them! You captured their personalities so well it’s awespiring. Is there a chance you’ll write a post about Kiryu as well? It’s just that originally I’ve had a hard time liking him as a character because of the numerous mistakes he has made across the series (and the fact that others don’t really address them for some reason). Despite that I’m a huge fan of kazumaji and that’s why I feel conflicted sometimes. Anyway, I would really like to hear your thoughts about it!

Awww, you’re very kind ^^; Thanks for asking for more c: So, the reason why I haven’t yet made a post about Kiryu is NOT due to my lack of feelings about him, it’s quite the opposite. I have essays worth of feelings about Kiryu and just... have not found the time to really give those feelings credit ^^; But, since you ask and you’re having a hard time with his character, let me at least start.

As a preamble, let me first say that there’s a difference between a character making a mistake and the writing making a mistake. This is not to say Kiryu never makes mistakes, far from it. I have a lot of feelings about Kiryu’s mistakes, they’re one of the reasons I love him, but a lot of the more egregious fuck ups are the writers making weak or poorly thought out choices. For example, like you point out, Kiryu makes mistakes and no one ever calls him out for it... that’s a writing flaw, not a problem with Kiryu.

(Please note that to give my best reading of Kiryu, I’m going to reference as many games as I have seen, which is through game 6. If you do not wish to be spoiled through at least game 5 (I never reference game 6 if I can help it), do not read further.)

Continuing with that example... I cannot tell you how simultaneously OVERJOYED and FURIOUS I am about game 3 when Mine, MINE YOSHITAKA, a character who was introduced that game and then never appears again, is the only person who criticizes Kiryu’s decisions when he has DEMONSTRABLY made bad ones! Like, Mine’s criticisms are ENTIRELY valid, but because they come out of his mouth it’s hard to say if the audience is meant to sympathize or not. Especially since Mine is sort of the antagonist of that game and he’s not really pitched as a sympathetic character. You have to really be willing to be critical of Kiryu to hear what Mine’s saying there and agree with him. The way the scene is played, you’re sort of supposed to still identify with Kiryu and insist that he’s never done anything wrong ever, even though he’s put all of his friends in a vulnerable position and IS arguably to blame for the state Daigo’s in now, as Mine points out.

And the writing is on some level aware that it is Kiryu’s fault or they wouldn’t have brought it up. They wouldn’t have had Mine say that if they didn’t see that problem. But the problem is they’re afraid of letting Kiryu be flawed. They’re afraid that if Kiryu’s wrong, even once, he won’t be The Good Guy anymore and the audience won’t like him anymore. This is weak and cowardly writing. Characters aren’t compelling because they’re never wrong, characters are compelling from what they do when they’re wrong. Any character who’s never wrong is unrealistic and, ultimately, boring. We all fuck up, we’re all only human. You ultimately will not identify with an infallible god because they would make choices you wouldn’t. I’m sure we can all think of characters who were pitched to us as infallible that, sooner or later, we ended up hating because of this very trait. So trying to pitch Kiryu as infallible is a ginormous mistake. But an understandable one, especially in a franchise that depends on the likability of its main character. But this means that they don’t trust their own writing, they don’t trust Kiryu’s inherent appeal and they fuck up the story around refusing to take risks. It’s one of the most heartbreaking writing decisions for me that those words come out of Mine’s mouth and not one of Kiryu’s friends.

Because it’s Kiryu’s friends who deserve to get to say that. It’s Kiryu’s friends, the people who are directly affected by his actions and the people who CARE about Kiryu, who have the right to criticize him. Not some fucking young blood with a chip on his shoulder. Having Mine say it makes the criticism look biased an illegitimate when it isn’t. I understand the writing impulse to not let us criticize Kiryu, but think how much more compelling it would be to show that Kiryu’s relationships are strong enough to handle criticism. That the trust and love is there for a friend to come to Kiryu with this and to force Kiryu to confront himself and listen rather than ignore the problems and insist that he’s never done anything wrong. But to make that call, to let us doubt Kiryu, you, as the writer, have to trust your story, you have to trust your character, and, worst of all, you have to trust your audience. Many many writers of popular media do not trust their audiences. They don’t trust that if they let you doubt, you’ll come with them and see where the story leads. They’re afraid you’ll lose interest and turn away. Many writers feel that they cannot take the risk of trusting their writing for fear of losing their base and therefore their income.

And, again, part of the issue is the aims of the story. At the end of the day, RGG is here to produce a fighting video game, that’s it. Wrapping that up in a compelling story makes it more sellable, but their primary focus isn’t the story itself. It’s getting you to buy a fighting video game. If the mechanics aren’t up to par, if they fights aren’t cool and interesting, the rest doesn’t matter. RGG came up with a story to link the games together and invested in making an interesting protag, but it was to sell the games. If the point of this story was the story, I think we’d be seeing different writing decisions and maybe some of these flaws could have been avoided. And I don’t actually mean to point this out as a criticism and say why aren’t they creating art for art’s sake? I mean it really as a grain of salt that I personally use to try not to hold the writing here up to the standard that I would a novel or something. That may not be useful perspective for anyone else, but it’s a thing I like to keep in mind.

So, part of what we see in Kiryu is that the writing fucking sucks. And it’s fair not to want to redeem Kiryu’s character or dig deeper into him when the writing hasn’t provided you with much. So no one feel bad if you’re not persuaded by my assessment, I’m not here to shame or convince anyone, I’m just offering my two cents.

And now alllll of that said... Let’s talk about my boy, Kiryu Kazuma.

I said earlier that characters are compelling based on how they react to mistakes, how they deal with them. Let me tell you, Kiryu is aware that he’s made mistakes. And he has regrets.

What I find compelling about Kiryu is that he tries so fucking hard to do the right thing, all the fucking time. What I find compelling about Kiryu is that he wants so much to make people happy, to make people proud of him. He is scared all the time of doing wrong by people and making himself untrustworthy, making himself scary. He has lost so much, he has lost everything and he still gets up every goddamn day and tries.

Does he fuck up? YES. ABSOLUTELY. ALL THE FUCKING TIME. But he gets up. Every. Fucking. Day. And tries. And you can’t buy that. You can’t ask for that. That’s just who he is, a guy who tries.

I don’t... have time to explain the depths of my love for Kiryu, but let’s take my favorite Kiryu, what I think the best characterization of Kiryu is in the entire fucking series: game 5. Game 5 Kiryu is my favorite fucking Kiryu, including 1, including Zero, bar fucking none. I fucking love game 5 Kiryu.

And Game 5 begins with a colossal mistake.

Before the game starts, Kiryu is convinced, either earnestly or nefariously, to leave his little family and specifically abandon AHEM release his daughter Haruka to someone else. This is the stupidest fucking thing Kiryu’s done since giving up the chairmanship. But he does it because he is told that he is a greater threat to his family WITH them than abandoning them. I want you to think about that. Kiryu loves his family so much he would sooner leave them than do them harm. I need to remind you that Kiryu has already destroyed and rebuilt his own life once already. He has repeatedly given up everything for his dream of having a family and for all his beautiful kids more than once. And he just loves his little Okinawa home so much, he can’t stand the idea that he would bring it harm, so he fucks off. This is categorically the wrong decision and any other reasonable adult would know this. I’m sure you yourself understand intuitively why a parent, no matter how dubious, can’t just leave a brood of underage children to fend for themselves in the world.

But here’s the thing: Kiryu’s made a number of dumbass decisions that have led him to this point in his life. He doesn’t have any adult, peer friends to counsel him about this. He’s deliberately estranged himself from Majima, from Date, from all the people who could have helped him out here and told him not to. And deep down Kiryu’s always been worried that he was unworthy of this. He’s always been afraid that he didn’t really deserve to be happy, deserve his little family of innocents. And the plot SURE AS FUCK has confirmed that for him, repeatedly putting the kids in danger and reminding him that you can never actually leave the yakuza. Kiryu knows he’s fucked up. He knows adopting his family was a mistake, but it was too late, what was he gonna do now? But here comes this little insidious voice confirming his worst fears, telling him he needs to go, and Kiryu listens. He has no one else to listen to and he’s been so beaten down by the plot by this point, he’s lost so fucking much now, that he doesn’t have the strength to believe in himself anymore. So he goes. Believing that he is doing the right thing.

And then, as it always does, the plot comes for him, telling Kiryu he needs to come help, telling Kiryu only he can fix it. And Kiryu, for the first time in his life, puts his foot down. He’s so fucking tired, he won’t fucking do it, not one more time. Because every time he gets his ass up to help, what happens? Someone else dies. Someone else dies and it’s Kiryu’s fault all over again, and it’s Nishiki all over again, and Kiryu can barely fucking live with himself for all the guilt that he feels. He starts to help and he just loses. Every fucking time. So this time, no, this time he won’t do it. He can’t do it anymore. He just wants... everyone to be okay. And he’s so sure that everyone would be better off without him.

If that’s a huge screaming red flag for anyone else IT SHOULD BE. Kiryu is in a depression spiral. He’s suicidal. He’s cut himself off from all his meaningful relationships, he’s not participating in his favorite hobbies, he’s alone and isolated in a new city where he doesn’t know anyone. He’s Not Doing Good. Game 5 is about finally, FINALLY confronting Kiryu’s demons, all the pent up unresolved guilt and turmoil that we never fucking addressed for 5 games running. (And if you’re hearing Bitter Resentment in the way the games have handled Kiryu’s emotional reactions OH BOY YOU BETCHA but that’s for another post.)

So Kiryu finally says no. He won’t fucking do it. But the plot comes for the fucking carotid. It’s Majima. It’s Majima. The only person Kiryu really, truly trusts. The person Kiryu was relying on to still be there, to be strong, to do the things Kiryu couldn’t. It’s Majima this time. And Kiryu loses his goddamn mind. That was the one thing you had left to take from him, his belief in Majima, and you took it. Kiryu nearly has a psychotic break at the news and decides, fine. Fine. I’ll go fix this, and then I can die. Then it’s over. Because there ain’t nothing left for him now.

And he does. Kiryu gets his ass down there, he solves the fucking problem, and then he does his level best to die there. Because it’s what he feels he deserves. He’s let down everyone. All those losses, all those people... they’re his fault. If he was really the hero, he could have saved them. If he was really a good person, these tragedies wouldn’t keep happening. It must be his fault. Fuck, even Majima died, even Majima... and he wasn’t even there, he couldn’t even have helped him, he just... He abandoned him. And Kiryu feels intensely that guilt and grief for his mistakes and his missed opportunities. And all he can think to do with that feeling... is die. It’s what Nishiki did before him. It’s what Kazama did before that. That’s what you do when you’ve fucked up and you don’t know how to fix it. You die. Then no one has to deal with you anymore.

But Haruka. His daughter. The best thing he ever did. She’s up there on stage and she loves him. She still loves him and wants him to be her dad. She’s been with him the whole time, she knows all about it. And she’s not scared. And she doesn’t think he’s bad. Maybe... maybe he can stay alive then. Maybe it’s okay if Haruka is still his daughter. And against all belief, he finds his way back to Haruka. He stays alive for her. He won’t repeat the mistakes of the past. And maybe... he can learn to do something different this time.

Kiryu... makes mistakes all the time. But he knows. And he feels so guilty. The writing doesn’t always do a great job of showing it. We don’t process Nishiki the way we should. We kill Rikiya for no reason. We forget that game 3 should have been TRIGGERING AS SHIT. And we awkwardly no homo out of Kiryu’s most important relationship while still insisting that it is Kiryu’s most important relationship. The writing is spotty and flawed and sometimes you can barely piece together a coherent narrative out of it.

But at its white burning core is a guy who just keeps trying. Who gets up the next day and tries again. Because he’s lost so much. Because he loves so much. Because he believes there is value in being nice to people and being a good person. And I love that.

#Kiryu Kazuma #Yakuza #I have a lot of feelings about Kiryu Kazuma #have some #major spoilers for game 5 #floweysky

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the-ice-sculpture · 3 years

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I’m really tired of seeing thinly (or not so thinly) disguised insults towards anyone who has even a few criticisms of the Loki show. These insults often come with an air of self-believed intellectual superiority and condescension. Whether it’s intended or otherwise, there are underlying implications and insinuations in common arguments I’ve seen a lot of, which basically boils down to the following:

You can’t distinguish between your own personal headcanons and reality = you'll push your own idea of what something should be onto something so much you won’t even be aware of it and you’ll be frustrated when it doesn’t meet those expectations. You don’t have enough self-awareness to tell the difference between what exists in your imagination and what exists in reality (unlike me, who doesn’t need to push any ideas about what I’d like in terms of characterisation because I personally believe the show already happens to reflect that)

You don’t understand the nuance of it = you’re not intelligent enough to think in shades of grey and varying degrees of subtlety and interpret this (the same way I do). Your thinking is shallow and your ability to analyse lacks depth. Regardless of your justification, if you think there are OOC moments, then you’re just failing to pick up on the nuance. You need someone (such as me) to hold your hand and tell you what to think and how to see (what I claim) is really there

You don’t understand how storytelling works = you can’t recognise any devices used and why they’re used. (Unlike me, you’re not clever enough to understand what the show is doing and the purpose of why it’s doing it.) If you criticise some of the execution of the storytelling methods the show has adopted then it can only be from a lack of understanding on your end and nothing else

You just want the show to be like fanfiction = you’re incapable of wanting different things from fanfiction and canon and you don’t have the intelligence to recognise this. (I know this because I can recognise this and ‘diagnose’ it in other people)

Loki’s obviously acting to trick the TVA/people into underestimating him = it’s idiotic not to interpret this theory that’s currently unconfirmed in canon as of S01E03 the same as me. If you have doubts then you’re incapable of picking up on the clues that (I personally believe) are there

You’re determined to not like the show. You want to tear it apart = all of your opinions and arguments can and should be rendered invalid regardless of your justification. If you don’t like certain aspects then it’s because you never gave the show a fair go to begin with. Therefore, you’re narrowminded and it’s your own fault if you don’t like it/elements of it because you never wanted to like it in the first place. You want to be miserable

You’re all the same = you can’t think for yourself. Each one of you can be generalised to one hivemind-like entity with no variance in opinions or your justification of them and you’ll blindly follow each other without any critical thought. If you express criticism, you’re now an anti. It’s black and white: either you’re completely pro-show or anti-show and there’s no room for anything in between

You’re stuck in the past = if you’re not completely onboard with any tonal and character changes you find jarring then you’re incapable of accepting change. You just want something unimaginative and uncreative and boring (which I might imply reflects your personality)

It’s not until now that Loki’s finally shown in character = people who thought he was in character in previous movies are wrong and aren’t real fans if they don’t accept this. There’s no room for extrapolation from previous movies, and if you do that then you’re just using your own headcanons so you must be wrong about any perceived changes in his character. (But if I extrapolate from previous movies to justify some of the show’s choices with his characterisation, then that’s completely fine)

You’re making your mind up before the whole show is even released = you can’t have any opinions about the show so far until you’ve seen all the episodes. (Unless, like me, you’re happy with the show)

If you’re reading this and are agreeing with the takes on anyone who expresses so much as a few criticisms, then please read the rest of this post.

I want to emphasise that it’s only a fraction and far from all people who like the show who I’ve seen these kind of takes from, and I have nothing against people enjoying the show. It’s only when I see stuff like the claims listed above that I become frustrated.

People will have different takes and interpretations, it’s only natural. No one can call an interpretation of a character and/or how they’re presented objectively wrong or objectively right. But that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable for anyone to resort to insulting others (whether blatantly or through implication) who have opinions that differ to their own.

Just as a thought experiment, let’s try this the other way around, shall we? Let’s imagine that some of the people who aren’t enjoying aspects of the show start spreading posts about the people enjoying it. If this was to occur, there’d probably be posts about how anyone who thinks he’s in character will blindly go along with whatever show creators tell them, that they (the fans of the show) must have never understood the depth of Loki to begin with so they can’t be real fans, that they’re so determined to enjoy the show that they’ll twist the narrative to suit their own needs and desperately invent reasons to accept it...

I could think of more but I’m going to stop here because, ultimately, it’s not nice, is it? It comes across as a super shitty thing to do for a reason: it is super shitty.

I hope it goes without saying that I'm not claiming the examples I made up are true. No one should be claiming anything like the things I invented for my thought experiment are true in public, no matter where on the spectrum of opinions on the show they sit. It’s rude and insulting and would contribute greatly towards further fandom division and a toxic environment filled with feelings of hostility over something fictional to begin with.

No one is intellectually superior for their opinions on a TV show. People can and should feel however they feel about the show. In an ideal world, they should be able to express that without any harassment or being treated in a derogatory manner or made to feel like they have no place in fandom. This goes for negative opinions and positive opinions and anything in between.

I just really wish people would keep their opinions restricted to the content of the show itself rather than reactions to it sometimes for reasons like this. If groups of people can’t do it without feeling the need to make it out like they’re intellectually superior and anyone who expresses opinions that differ to theirs must be stupid then maybe they shouldn’t be doing it at all. Especially when the overwhelming majority of the more critical people go out of their way to tag their stuff so more positive people can avoid it if it gets them down. More critical people don’t have to do it, but the vast majority of the time they do it as a curtesy. It’d be nice if that curtesy wasn’t repaid by being so disrespected.

And please, before piling on someone’s post about how they’re just lacking a nuanced understanding or are applying their own headcanons, maybe consider that your own interpretation of someone’s opinion could be doing precisely the same thing.

One final thing I’m adding as a preventative measure: if your response to reading this is something along the lines of going ‘but some people really can’t distinguish their headcanons from reality!’ then you’ve really missed the point. The point of this post isn’t to debate whether or not every claim is valid (that would have to be a case by case analysis, and it would be so open to interpretation that you could never reach a definitive conclusion anyway, so it’d be pointless). The point is that it’s incredibly rude to publicly insult someone’s intelligence and make up a bunch of condescending assumptions about them based on their opinions. If you’re treating someone or a group of people in real life like that (and yes, if they’re from the internet then they’re still real people) then you’re doing something far worse than the people I’ve seen branded as toxic people for expressing criticisms of fiction.

*For the record, I’m not saying that anyone with criticisms has never said something along the lines of my thought experiment examples. I haven’t seen any of that myself, but I’m not all knowing. I’m just reflecting on what I have seen, and the vast majority of it has come from a fraction of people without (or with far fewer) criticisms of the show. But it’s irrelevant who it comes from, because my point remains the same: it’s shitty regardless of who says it

#loki series #my posts #fandom wank #I may regret posting this

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yourdesertsunflower · 4 years

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Boruto did a disservice to Temari

Sorry, in anticipation I warn you, this will be long.

Okay, okay. I love Temari. She is my favorite kunoichi, I love each and everyone of her appearances in Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, I watched all filler that she was on, and I even have her on my avatar. So, yes, this by no means is to hate on the character but to actually show how Boruto writers completely misunderstood her.

I’ll always love her character, but I got to admit I am not okay at all with somethings they are making her do in the Boruto’s anime. And no, it’s not because she moved to Konoha, or decided to take mainly the role a housewife (a bloody difficult job if you ask me) because I frankly couldn’t care less of any of that if she is happy. I really think that Shikamaru and Shikadai make her genuinely happy and that’s all I want for her. She had went from so much shit that I only want to see her feeling value and loved, that’s the least she deserves and her husband and son give her that.

The problem is that, in most of her characterization in Boruto, I hardly see that Temari we got to know and love in the anime and manga of Naruto. Now when we get to see her in her recurring role in Boruto she is capitalized by her writers as a joke of the “crazy wife and mother that would rather hit you with your fan than having a civilized talk and will be angry twenty-four seven with no apparent reason.”

And that, my friends, is not Temari. At least not the Temari I grew to love in Naruto.

Through this post I’ll try to explain why I think that that portrayal of the abusive housewife and mother that they give her in most of Nara Family moments in the Boruto manga, and specially the anime, is (in point of view) completely mislead. It had become clear to me, through my time watching the show, that Boruto writers are clearly not even trying to understand Temari’s character and how they are using her as a recurring joke rather than considering her as a real three-dimensional character. And I despise them for that same reason.

So, without more vacillation, I’ll get started.

1. Who is Temari?

Before venturing into everything that is wrong about the characterization of Temari in Boruto and trying to pin point when this actually started to happen, I would like to see deeper into Temari’s character. I think it’s only wby understanding her character previously from Boruto that we will actually understand how inconsistent is her writing in the show.

I decided to base my analysis of Temari’s character in the Naruto series in two key aspects: an overarching analysis of Temari’s character profile using the Myres Briggs Personality Types and the Enneagram and in pin-pointing will pin point some specific moments of characterization in the manga of Naruto that show her character.

Before starting with the analysis, I want to be clear about why I use the Myers Briggs Personality Types and the Enneagram in my analysis of Temari. I really don’t usually tend to care for the function of neither of those test in real life (if you do I am perfectly fine with it, it’s just something I don’t do myself) but I think they can be great tools for any author to understand better the behavior, desires and motivations behind their characters. I personally do this in my work and I highly recommend it for any other writer out there.

Remember, this is my own personal analysis and I’ll tell you when my opinion differs from the majority, I’ll justify everything said in my analysis, and I’ll leave links to every info that I give you.

Well, speaking specifically about Temari. Who is she? What she wants? Why she wants it? What she’ll do to achieve it? What she really needs? Which is her fear?

This between others are questions that any author or actor has to ask themselves when they are writing their characters. It’s a question of giving the character depth, making it seem “like a living breathing human-being.”

Kishimoto state it in the most bluntly, yet efficient ways, when he presented Team Seven by making Kakashi ask them about their likes, dislikes and dreams. Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke’s response reflect all this questions even though they are not saying it directly. I won’t analyse this respective scene, because if not this will be really long, but I promise to do it sometime in the future.

Well using the Myers Briggs Personality and Enneagram Test we can get to full-picture of these questions. Myers Briggs Personality test will tell us who the character is in it’s core; how they’ll behave, how they’ll face a situation and their outllook of life. The Enneagram on the other side show us their wants and needs, what they long to archieve and their fears.

In the case of Temari I would classify her as an ENTJ but,her most common classification is ESTJ and a 8w9 as her Enneagram. If you want me to explain why I think she is an ENTJ an not a ESTJ (thoiugh I’ll construct my case over ESTJ) just ask for it cause I’ll be more than happy to do it. But for now, and in order not to make it way longer than it will already be I’ll focus on Te (Extraverted Thinking) and Fi (Introverted Feelings) both functions that both types share as their primary and inferior function respectively and will be key for my analysis.

Source Temari’s Personal Database

(If you want to understand the differences between ESTJs and ENTJs here is a good tumblr source that explains everything quite complete yet quite simply explained)

Let’s go first with the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator)

What means to have Te as a primary function and Fi as in inferior function?

Te as a Primary Function (Extroverted Thinking): Think of your primary function as your strongest suit, things you are good at. Dominant Extroverted Thinkers tend to be logical, objective and fair. They are very organized and try to arrange the real world to suit their needs.

Strives to bring order, control, and rationality to the systems and operations of the outside world.Evidence: Temari is able to rationalize situations and access their pros and cons quite easily. This is showing in the flashback where she doubts of the productivity of the Konoha Crush since she maintained that there alliance with Konoha was much more valuable any they could gain from the attack.

Insists on objective standards and measurable goals. Evidence: She is prone to be involved in and thinks in things as if they were projects like the preparations of the Chunin Exam, the Allied Shinobi Forces, etc. (see the image of the Fourth Databook)

Tendency to quickly express their judgments and opinion, to literally think (i.e., make judgments, conclusions, and decisions) aloud. Evidence: In her match against Shikamaru she was pretty quick in express her analysis of his movements aloud.

Speak before they listen which can either make them strong and courageous leaders or seem abrasive, dogmatic, or controlling. Evidence: Temari asserted a leadership position within her village and also within the Allied Shinobi forces (despite not being strictly one) showing us her natural inclination to take charge.

Source of the Image

Prone to overstating things. Evidence: In her fight against Shikamaru thinking she knew all the extent of his technique.

They may say things that, in retrospect, they wish they could rescind, or at least soften (specially true for hypersensitive Fi), which can lead them to respond defensively or re-actively. Evidence: Sasuke Retrieval Arc, Temari’s expression as Shikaku reprimanded his son. Konoha Hiden, Temari feels ashamed about what happened the

Fi as a Inferior Funtion (Introverted Feeling): Inferior Function is that thing that we often push aside the most and find most difficult to fully grasp. However, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t play a key role in our behavior. People with Fi are driven by an internal moral compass, helping them adjust their actions in order that what they are doing helps or affects people in a meaningful way. This gives them a sense of loyalty to those around them, considering the wants and needs of those close to them.

Loyalty and dutiful nature due to a well constructed inner moral compass. Evidence: Fierce sense of loyalty to her village and her moral and ethical duty towards it.

Not prone to display emotions, may see them as a weakness.Evidence: The famous, “Had you received emotional training?” after the failed mission against Sasuke.

If taken to their worst they can have an all-or-nothing nature, this is neutralized when more “healthy” and less hypersensitive their Fi is. Evidence: Her whole fight against Tenten. She should to be someone strong, determined, disciplined with a strong chracter that will never let anyone mock her.

Image Source

Strong sense of inner control reached by vigorously working to control the outside world. The only way they can feel in control of themselves is by taking control of their surroundings. Evidence: How she managed to control the situation when Shikamaru was trying to ask her out on a date, her reasoning during their Chuinin Exams fight.

Fi might also inspire them to take up causes that have personally affected them, ingrained on a deep fear of being a bad person or having corrupted moral. Evidence: Given her participation in the Konoha Crush Temari is one of the main actors to amend the relationship between Konoha and Suna in the time skip. Also she wants to archive a peace she never had due to her childhood as a Gaara’s sister and Rasa’s daughter, shown in her important participation in the Shinobi Alliance. Her deep care for both of her brothers given their mother’s death and she taking a position of caretaker within the family on an unconscious level.

Unconscious yet particular empathy and concern for children, often finding great fulfillment in having and caring for children. Evidence: In Part I, after the Sasuke Retrieval Arc, The Sand Siblings stay in Konoha to help at the Academy. Temari reveals to Shikamaru that she had done it because she was fond of it. Children seem to really respect and admire her.

Source MBTI

Enneagram: 8w9 (The Diplomat)

Basic Fear

Eights with a nine wing fear being hurt by others. They avoid situations in which they have less control, generally preferring to be in positions of leadership.

Basic Desire

Their basic desire is to guard themselves against threats and control their own destiny. They may express this by asserting independence at a young age.

Hence Diplomats (8w9) defend themselves by building emotional walls and denying vulnerability. They seek to appear strong, subconsciously believing that being too emotional will make them seem weak (Haven’t you received emotional training?). They,

Dislike taking orders from other people

Though they are certainly not the most chill of all types the most calm and laid-back of the eights.

Struggle to openly share emotions

Fear being controlled by others

Seek autonomy and independence.

At their best diplomats use their wit and ability to see different perspectives to face different projects. Their naturally energetic and confident persona make of them people that can lead others effectively, through support and guidance. They have a talent to give others what they need, and are empowering and advocating for others. They feel a need to protect the ones they love and enjoy their-selves the most when they are surrounded by these people.

Image Source

At their worst diplomats, given their struggle to control their temper and their tendencies to be stubborn or rigid can enter excessively in conflict or disagreement or directly reject and dismiss others. They struggle to face emotionally vulnerable situations due to their sense of lack of inner control with can make them seems overly confident or emotionally detached. They also can develop a dislike for rules from authority figures.

Image Source

The best way to communicate with a 8w9 is to be direct and straightforward, while encouraging them to share their ideas. If conflict arises it’s better to address conflict directly and logically; discuss and work together toward the best solution.

Source of Enneagram 8w9

Conclusion

For that we have seen through this analysis some key things about Temari.

She is quite a direct and logical and rational individual who values to get things done in the outside world.

She has leadership skills, given their courageous and confident attitude, but can also come up a abrasive or controlling.

Tend to overstate things and may say or do things that they, later on, wish they could soften.

Is incredibly loyal to her set of values and those around her and tends to involve personally with the things she works on.

She tends to want to have a control of the outside world and her worst fear is to loose it, cause is in the only way she can feel in control of herself.

She wants independence cause that is the way she can feel in control of herself. Therefore she tends to leave emotions on one side, they are less controllable cause they are in her inner world, and focus her energies on the outside (rational) world.

2. Shikamaru and Konoha Hiden: The Beginning of Everything.

I can begin to trace the disservice towards Temari in this point in time, in the anime’s adaptation of her character from the light novels. From here we can begin to see how they are starting to tweak Temari’s character (in a way that’s unfair and clearly not coherent) to fit her into the mold of the angry or crazy girlfriend/wife though with moderation.

Why? Why, do you have to adapt an moment like this...

Clutching his back, Shikamaru turned his eyes toward the voice.

A woman with a sharp gaze and golden hair tied into two bundles stood there, holding a giant fan in both hands. And that fan had no doubt created the wind that had knocked Shikamaru flying.

Temari...

"So you're just gonna skip out?! You're gonna do whatever he tells you to? That's not like you at all! I expect a lot more from you! Get it together, you idiot! I mean, I know you actually think this guy's boring! His stupid lecture's total garbage! Am I right? Say something! Shikamaru!"

His ears, now accustomed to Gengo's weighty tone, took in the screeching, loud voice, and his eyes flickered with pain. "Ah!"

The haze blanketing his head vanished cleanly and completely. The thing squeezing his heart was gone; it was as if a hole had popped open in his chest.

But it felt amazingly good. He inhaled deeply, down to the bottom of his stomach, and slowly let it out. A laugh naturally followed.

A single blow to pull him out of the genjutsu...

"So you show up out of nowhere to badmouth me?" He put a hand on the back of his head, eyes fixed on Temari as he stood up.

"I came to save you. Quit grumbling and thank me." She rammed the end of the folding fan into the ground, rested her right elbow on the pivot, and puffed her chest out. Behind her stood a line of ninja. They all had the mark of Sunagakure carved into their forehead protectors.

"I can't exactly go letting you die now, can I?" She grinned.

Her smile, glittering like the fire of the desert sun, cleared Shikamaru's heart. Her earlier words came back to life in his head.

Source: Naruto: Shikamaru Hiden - A Cloud Drifting in Silent Darknes (2015) by Masashi Kishimoto, Takashi Yano

as this?

I know this may be completely unpopular but, hey I am here to say what I think. You can always count that’ll be honest. And I don’t like this.

This in my opinion this is not female empowerment, this is not funny and this is not Temari reacting naturally to the situation she is involved in. Is just simply her hitting Shikamaru with no reason at all.

In the novel, as we have seen, Temari lectured him (oh, boy did she lectured him just rightly). She basically made her come into his senses using logic and reason, using words, the same through which Gengo almost defeat him. And that is Temari, she may not be the best at expressing her emotions but when conflict arises she address conflict directly and logically. She explains, in a way that yes may seem imposing for others, but that always uses Te (extroverted thinking) as her main weapon.

Temari would never make someone come to his senses by a love declaration but she wouldn’t slap him on his face either.

Temari does this because, although Shikamaru hurt her, Shikamaru is someone dear to her and she knows that he needs of a little bit of tough love in order to function. This is Temari’s way of being empowering and advocating for others.

And you may be asking. But hey, Temari had already slapped Shikamaru before and you didn’t say nothing about that moment? Yes she did, but that moment was intrinsically different to this second one.

This slap...

It’s justified in Temari’s character. Maybe it’s not the best thing she could do, nor what I pictured her to do, but is not that detached with the situation.

Let’s see another extract of the Light Novel to understand better the context:

"Oil" A voice called to Shikamaru from behind.

He clicked his tongue imperceptibly. The voice belonged to the person he least wanted to speak with at that moment. Ignoring it, he kept moving forward.

"Shikamaru, hold up!" The voice beat at his back, threatening to send him flying.

"What?" He turned just his head to look at the woman over his shoulder.

Temari from Sunagakure. Her hair was shorter now than it had been two years ago, and she had pulled it back into two bundles on either side of her head. Her eyes were gentler now than they had been, set in a fairly adult looking face. But given that she was older than Shikamaru, her face didn't just look grown-up; she was actually already a very fine adult.

"What's going on with you?" She stared at Shikamaru with eyes that drooped somewhat more than they used to.

"What do you mean?"

"You've been weird lately." Temari's slender hand reached out to Shikamaru's shoulder and pulled him around to face her.

What a drag... The words made it all the way to his throat before he managed to desperately swallow them back down.

"I mean your attitude at the meeting there. You just sit there with your mouth shut. Everyone gets nervous; the whole place tenses up, you know."

"It does?"

"You didn't notice it?" Temari's eyes grew wide. "What happened?"

"Nothing."

"It's something you can't talk to me about?" Temari's hard gaze hurt.

In the two years since the Great War ended, Temari had been a good and understanding partner in their work on the alliance. She shared his desire to keep the shinobi from fracturing into factions once more after they had finally come together in the face of a powerful enemy. She had rallied the Allied Forces with him. The strong bond between Naruto, seen as a candidate for the next Hokage of Konoha, and Gaara, the Kazekage of Sunagakure, also played a part; the relationship between the two villages was extremely good, even among the five great nations. With these kinds of outside factors also at work, Shikamaru and Temari each recognized the other as their greatest ally in the alliance.

"Something's happening in Konoha." She had fairly good insight.

However, her shot was a little off. Nothing was happening in Konoha, although it was true that they were trying to take care of the situation with only the shinobi of Konoha. So Temari was half-right, half-wrong.

The basic policy of the alliance was that matters relating to the life or death of shinobi themselves exceeded the framework of the villages and should be shared with the entire group. What Shikamaru and Kakashi were attempting to do was in very clear violation of this policy. Even so, he couldn't say anything. Getting the alliance involved now and stirring up trouble with the Land of Silence was not a good plan.

I'll handle it... His resolve hardened.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"There's not."

Temari dropped her eyes at Shikamaru's curt reply. "Okay," she muttered, lifelessly. In the next instant, the brief look of sadness on her face changed to anger.

It was all he could do to take a breath. He had no room to dodge; before he knew it, Shikamaru was flying. He tumbled down the hall a few times before ending up on his backside in a seated position. The right side of his face swelled up, bright red. Stroking his hot cheek, Shikamaru looked up at an indignant Temari glaring down at him.

"I never actually thought I could've misjudged you so badly!" Her angry yell turned into a powerful wind, pushing up against his face.

"I-I'm sorry..." The words were unconscious. He unthinkingly took on the persona of his father stumbling home in the morning, only to get yelled at by his mother in the entryway.

Taking long strides, Temari passed by Shikamaru and disappeared, her eyes slightly damp.

Source: Naruto: Shikamaru Hiden - A Cloud Drifting in Silent Darknes (2015) by Masashi Kishimoto, Takashi Yano

We see a Temari that is continuously trying to reach someone who she had become closed to and with whom she had worked side by side since the war ended two years ago. Someone who she thought trusted her. The slap is given her sadness with ended up being represented in anger (inferior Fi). She had a real reason to be sad: Temari isn’t someone who lightly trust or cares about someone and Shikamaru was just closing the door to her. Saying that he didn’t need her. And there’s nothing that Temari wants more than feeling need, something that is evidence in her Tsukuyomi Dream, which may not be canon, but yet captured Temari’s character.

Not only that but, as we said, Temari’s basic fear was to be hurt by others. That’s why she usually has that overly confident and seemingly emotionally detached attitude. And once she left her guard down she was hurt by non other than a person she hold dear, which we have seen ain’t an easy point to reach with someone with Temari’s personality. Given her “all or nothing” outlook this might be a really bad wound for her, like if he was back-stabbing her.

That’s why "I never actually thought I could've misjudged you so badly!" and Temari’s cry really is so important. It shows she’s truly hurt. It justifies her punch, no. But it explains it. (I won’t lie, I also wanted give Shikamaru a good punch when I read this)

Also this moment wasn’t exactly the best adapted sequence but it’s much better than the previous one and with the right context it all comes quite justified.

You could also say that there was also that one time were Temari hits Shikamaru with her fan after she realizes in the Konoha Hiden that Shikamaru and her were actually searching for a wedding gift for Naruto and Hinata,

“Hmm, so that’s what it all was....” She said, smiling peacefully.

“No, hold on ...Ah!!” Shikamaru inadvertently let out an exclamation.

It was possible that Temari’s misunderstanding had been- “Hey, oi ...You couldn’t have thought that, right.”

When he said that, for some reason, Temari silently took her tessen off her back, holding it in her hand.

“H-hey...what is it?” He asked. “Why’re you suddenly taking that out...? Wh- what’s up with your chakra...?!”

Temari grinned affectionately at him.

Shikamaru was captivated by the sight, and found a smile forming on his face, too.

Smiling at each other like that, they looked like the very picture of an intimate pair of lovers.

That night in Konoha...

One sudden, out-of-season gale swept over Konoha’s hot springs, and lasted the entirety of the night. The residents and tourists spent the whole night awake, too frightened to sleep...

Source: Konoha Hiden: The Perfect Day for a Wedding (2015) by Masashi Kishimoto and Shō Hinata

And I agree I am not saying this is fine either (though there isn’t that much of an explicit but an implicit hit), but is also something Temari shows to be sorry and ashamed about later in the story. Even though she is prideful and won’t be able to admit it she finally does. Because at the end of the day Temari is a lover and fighter but, even though she won’t admit it, will love rather than fight.

Besides the context in here is different. They had already went on a date and could almost be consider a couple. I had already posted a quote were Ino and Sakura talked about Shikamaru and Temari’s relationship. It was obvious there was something going on for months (If you want to get to know better you can see the time line). It wasn’t that far-fetched to understand the situation as Temari, someone who’s pretty direct, was interpreting them.

It’s something through which they both learn and grew together. Shikamaru will never be as frontal as she might want to but he is willing to give it a try for her and she is willing to try to understand what is going in his mind.

Also I think that this novels suffered of having different writers so it sometimes feels as the story unnecessarily regresses. Kishimoto only illustrates the stories and this becomes pretty showing. However and despite I don’t enjoy Temari hitting Shikamaru, the novels itself aren’t that detached from Temari’s character. The soul of her character is still there.

But are these slight changes in the anime showed us the way that they were trying to head Temari’s character in Boruto, changes that as we had seen during her analysis don’t seem to fit rightly her character. Specially in Perriots adaptation of the manga we see a deep misunderstanding of Temari, from her behaviour to her wants and feelings. Unluckily, the worst was yet to come.

3. Boruto: Why did they did this?

Well, here is what triggered this whole post. Temari’s portrayal in Boruto. And I got to say one thing before starting with this analysis. I really like some scenes of Temari in Boruto.

To see her in action, training with the new generation of the Ino-Shika-Cho and protecting her son were fairly enjoyable but, more importantly, are congruent with her character. It’s her more domestic scenes which I tend to dislike a lot.

I consider than in this scenes they depict Temari as an angry housewife and an aggressive mother which, in my opinion, are the greatest disservice to Temari’s character. Maybe I am the only one that thinks this, but (as I said previously) I don’t find them funny nor that they depict Temari correctly, serve a motif in the narrative or serve any agenda. They are simply treated as comic relief.

This is truly hurting for someone that is not only a Temari fan but a ShikaTema shipper since they transformed a relationship that was based on mutual trust, respect and communication above anything else into this dynamic we see in Boruto.

And I have to hypothesize why they made Temari do this I would have two main factors:

Lazy Writing and Appeal to Nostalgia: All Nara men marry to troublesome woman so they found in this moments a cheep way to remind the audience constantly that Temari is troublesome and therefore be able to make easy correlations to Shikaku’s relationship with Yoshino.

The Tsundere Trend: Maybe this is me overthinking a little bit too much (but when I don’t) but the Tsundere one of the most capitalized dere types in anime. People seem to love them in a way I don’t fully understand. Having a woman inflict danger to his partner is the most easy way to scream “tsundere” maybe not the best but an easy one. Mind that when we speak about a tsundere I mean:

A stock love interest who is usually stern, cold or hostile to the person they like, while occasionally letting slip the warm and loving feelings hidden inside due to being shy, nervous, insecure or simply unable to help acting badly in front of the person they like.

The Japanese term tsundere refers to an outwardly violent character who "runs hot and cold", alternating between two distinct moods: tsuntsun (aloof or irritable) and deredere (lovestruck).

Tsundere Source

Funny enough I never saw Temari as a Tsundere. I would never say, from the manga, that Temari ‘runs hot and cold.’ Yes, you don’t want to mess up with her when she is angry but it’s not like this happen often in the manga.

The only time I consider we have seen Temari go angry pretty quickly (in Naruto) was in her match with Shikamaru when he said that he wouldn’t be defeated by a woman. But I think we can’t apply one situation to larger and broader spectrum. That was in the middle of a fight and, as I explained in a previous post of mine, there were much more other things involved in the context of the manga/anime at that point in time.

I have always consider Temari someone who was deep in control of herself and her emotions, capable of displaying what she wants to show when she wants. This is because of her own basic fear of being hurt, hence she only shows this emotions when she is either, truly hurt, angry or when she trust enough the other person.

That’s why is so important that the only times we have seen Temari fully displaying this emotions were around Shikamaru or her brothers.

I don’t like that much dere types but, if I had to chose one, her sarcastic humor and realistic outlook of life, always seemed more alike to the profile of a hinedere

The hinedere is a sarcastic, cynical person who always looks to the darker, more realistic side of things and is very quick to reveal that to other characters. They tend to be arrogant and cold-hearted however, the hinedere will have a soft spot for their love interest and will reluctantly but reliably do anything for them.

Hinedere Source

This dere type may not be as popular but, I think, fits much more her personality all through Naruto. However, that’s a personal opinion and no falling into a dere type should, if it’s understood correctly, disrupt the core character.

Okay so, they wanted to make Temari fall into this direction but... Why isn’t this her? Well that’s the following point.

4. Why this isn’t Temari?

Temari at the beginning of Naruto is someone that thinks that life is like in the dessert: everything is though and hard and only the fittest are meant to survive. Anything or anyone that shows her weakness is naturally inferior or undesirable. That is her outlook of life: you have to be pragmatic, logic and strong if you want to continue fighting another day. The weak are naturally destined to loose, and hence she doesn’t care to be the one to destroy them since it’s only when you impose fear that you’ll be actually able to survive.

That ideology, she had learn all through her childhood, translates in her battle against Tenten and began to be challenged in her battle against Shikamaru. At the end we see a Temari that, despite being born to fight, develops as a character chooses to dedicate her life to the search of peace in order to protect those weaker ones that she once loathed. That’s why she is an incredible ambassador for Suna and good adviser of Gaara: she yet has that pragmatic, logical and sometimes cynical point of view but that contrast with the idealism of her brother and helps them to balance each other out. She is highly loyal and I am sure she’ll do anything for her family and to protect that peace she found in it.

Hence, I always find it pretty hard to believe that Temari would rather take her fan and hit someone before having a reasonable, direct and straightforward conversation.

Even, before her evolution, we see that Temari is much less willing to enter a unreasonable and violent dispute than her brothers and that is what, in the first instances sets her apart from them.

When Temari first hits the scene just before the start of the Chunin Exams, by mere virtue of the fact that the group that she’s with is intimidating, she becomes a bit scary herself, but she shows to be different than both of them.

Kankuro comes off as the tough, scary guy who you don’t want to mess with only to be swiftly upstaged by the seriously blood-chilling Gaara.

(Sorry for the image in spanish but basically Temari is telling Kankuro to leave Konohamaru alone and to not involve her in his actions)

Temari, on the other hand, stands by coolly, occasionally offering her brothers warnings or plays referee. Her sit-back-and-bide-her-time attitude makes her look like the most stable of the three in comparison; Kankuro picks a pointless fight with a kid and Gaara ends up looking psychopathic.

Temari’s rational and cool behavior also pays testament to what readers later see are some of her major strengths which keeps repeating itself through the manga, in the Forest of Death during The Chunin Exams and in The Five Kages’s Summit it was Temari who during tense times was able to cool them up.

(Temari asking Gaara to calm down during the second stage of the Chunin Exams)

However, I got to admit that Temari isn’t a saint. She has a sharp tongue and she is straight foward and direct what, as we said before may lead to her to say things that, in retrospect, they wish they could rescind, or at least soften, which can lead them to respond defensively or re-actively.

Things like this we see them while she looks at Shikamaru after the failure of Sasuke’s Rescue Mission. Even when she had lectured Shikamaru she then looked at him as if she questioned if she had been to harsh on him. It was clear that she had misjudge him as she realized how much she cared for his friends. Or in the Konoha Hiden as, after having that little incident with Shikamaru she is nervous to see him again.

Images Sources (Manga in Spanish)

That’s why I can’t imagine Temari simply hitting someone just for kicks. Is not like she can’t but that she doesn’t want or sees the appeal to do it.

The is in a lot of senses the perfect kunoichi, disciplined, determined, strong and intelligent and will never let anyone mock her (that’s for sure). She is ruthless towards her opponents cause that is her way of approaching a rival but she will never be violent for violence’s sake.

It’s not like we just attacked the Leaf Village for kicks, you know? We were following orders. That’s all, just like we’re doing on this mission.

Temari to Shikamaru during the Sasuke’s Retrieval Arc

But even less than this I imagine being violent towards people she appreciates and cares as Shikamaru and Shikadai. Yes, I think she would most likely express herself through some tough love, being strict with Shikadai and not letting Shikamaru just slack and complain about everything. But, never, ever, I imagined her being physically or verbally violent towards them without feeling any remorse. Cause she never was in Naruto.

She was direct and honest, maybe a bit to much for people, but after her the Chunin Exams her character never showed to be like that to anyone. Even less towards Shikamaru.

You have the “crybaby” thing going on but I would rather think that of a positive rather than a negative aspect because of the way in which she says it. It shows their connection as individuals which is full of bickering and this back and forth of clever commentaries but that is build on common ground. You may not be the people that like these but that doesn’t mean that Shikamaru feel the same as you.

If not he would never have this expression on this face...

Source Image

Temari is the one that trusted fully in him during war even to the point of considering him capable of being Hokage because “he has the power to reach/.sway away people’s hearts” and she wants to create a world of peace with him. Their relationship was about bringing out the best of each other not the worst, which doesn’t mean they don’t function like fully capable individuals without the other (cause they do) but that through their interactions they developed into better people. We are after all, social creatures and we need of others and the Sand Siblings are exemplary that that doesn’t make you weak but stronger. That you can change your preconceived notions of the world and learn from others, change for the better and use that strength protect instead to attack or seclude yourself.

So why, if Temari was capable to reach a point where she was at her best, letting her fear to be hurt to fall, and use her naturally energetic and confident persona to lead others effectively, through support and guidance, Boruto writers tend to write her in her moments with Shikamaru at what would be her worst, struggling to control her temper and with her stubbornness and rigidness making her excessively enter in conflict or disagreement or directly reject and dismiss others?

This is a complete character regression for Temari. And I don’t mean that characters can’t have their moments, nor that Temari should be perfect, when they are at that stage. But that should be addressed in that manner and not as comic relief.

In my opinion Temari had always a talent to give Shikamaru what he needed, giving him some tough love when he needed but at the same time being empowering.

Source: Naruto: Shikamaru Hiden - A Cloud Drifting in Silent Darkness (2015) by Masashi Kishimoto, Takashi Yano

That’s why, with the clear feel and need to protect and be appreciated by the ones they love and enjoying herself the most when they are surrounded by them, I can’t really see Temari acting like this.

5. PS: I still love you

This turned out to be really long so I won’t pull it any further. Just let me say this last words.

I really like Temari, I really do, and in part a lot of my dislike of her portrayal in Boruto comes from that same factor. I truly think she is an amazing kunoichi and someone girls could look up to when watching Naruto, cause yes she had flaws, but this were addressed as such and were never used as comic relief. Besides, her good qualities and strengths quickly unnumbered her flaws: she was intelligent, strong, honest, disciplined, determined, dutiful, loyal and caring. Yes she might be prideful, overly confident, way to upfront and may not like to show that much her emotions but I don’t consider that this flaws could beat her logical and rational mindset that first matched her with characters like Shikamaru.

Truly I think these scenes are a disservice towards my favorite female character of this whole manga and anime to the extent that if there was one thing I could change about the whole series would be this.

Temari wasn’t that much in the manga or in the anime but she was capable of leaving a palpable impression in me (to the extent that I wrote a +6.6k word essay about her, counting quotes and all) as well as in lots of other people. And that should tell you a lot about her as a character, a character that yes; could have been even better in terms of story and narrative than she was in the Naruto but that also certainly is much better than how they portray her in Boruto.

#naruto #manga #anime #boruto #opinion #temari #shikamaru x temari #nara #shikatema #temashika #shikadai #violence as comic relief is not funny #i will get so much hate for this #character analysis

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macklives · 4 years

Text

session 92 end (bye 413...)

this session was so long but so fucking hectic what the fuck

im going to try and slim it down to its bare essentials rather than go on a full rant because im pretty sure i want to make a post later on about vriska’s characterisation (not anything about me liking her/disliking her, just an analyse on her life really, so it wont be too bias because thats not the point of an analysis. i also want to do one on aradia, been meaning to for a while... hmm... damn i havent done much analogies lately, and i THINK the last long post on a character i made was about davesprite??? so its been a fucking while. that being said, ill leave a lot of details out for this end of session notes so i dont just repeat myself later on. rather will keep to plot points here and then make character points in another)

alright

first we had a page or two where aradia confided in nepeta about her being dead which means nepeta is the only one to know this revelation. im pretty sure aradia confided because there was no other way around it, since nepeta was her server player, so it was inevitable. either way, aradia still put her trust in nep, which means, if you think about it, nobody else knows and nobody else ever will. and considering aradia asked nep to keep it a secret, it probably wont get explored by others until MAYBE later on, whenever its plot relevant, so everyone will be in the dark about it for a while which ill have to remember for future dialogue and scenes with aradia in them

then we met vriska

which, yes, is a meme. i may not have been on a lot of fandom platforms, but you cant escape some of the stuff that goes around the internet. even if you dont know undertale, im pretty sure you know of sans. or komaeda if you have/havent seen danganronpa. its just.. the memes, ya know? ive heard from many sources of the “vriska did nothing wrong” quote (even through mbmbam which??? WHAT) but since i didnt even know what it meant, i never explored it so then i never knew it was a homestuck thing. imagine my surprise...... i think even at the time, i wouldnt have known what homestuck was either honestly so it wouldnt even matter. i only recently learned about the fandom.... uhh, maybe half a year ago??? yeah, august, so my knowledge was slim but vriska is a thing ive heard before, which still shocks me

goddammit

anyways back to her

so her intro was something, we pretty much found out she likes DnD (a FANATIC in fact) and feeds her lusus the flesh of living trolls. which is fucked up. but i wont get too much into detail about that until i make a post about her life on alternia and the consequences of such. or maybe just alternia in general...?? or *both* heheheh but i feel i need more information before i go off on a tangent about that

then we met??? white text dude?? who is a major asshole but an asshole with insults that hURted, to think i felt bad for VRISKA when that happened. woah.

i said before, but... karkat, he cant really hit deep because his insults are just HIM and his way to express himself. like some people find it natural to just go “FUCK YOU” to show emphasis on a point, and thats just karkats way. he may do it so aggressively that it takes you a second to realize what he said, but usually i dont take anything to heart whenever he spurts out some insults. ive progressed to the point where whatever he says, is just “karkat” and not him trying to be actively mean. rather, its now funny whenever he does say anything SOMEWHAT creative, dude has an imagination that goes on for miles

but vriska?? she IS trying to be a bully, you can tell. but i feel theres something much more to that. like shes trying to prove herself and her “blueblooded” demeanours or whatever the hierarchy is. she doesnt want to show emotions so she makes herself a barrier by being mean is what i can gather from her conversation with kanaya. im pretty sure youre not supposed to understand her until its pointed out and rather see her as an “antagonist” at first, but yeah, her insults are more pitiful than anything and i also cant take her too seriously. i may not like her as a person but her character is interesting because you cant always have the goodie two shoes as the protags. it doesnt diversify the characterisation so i like vriska as someone who makes the plot work and it becomes more interesting since you have someone that makes it harder for the main crew to progress. a happy-go-lucky adventure with no trouble and no turnabouts would be boring in a way. so having a character like vriska, or like this new white text guy, it makes you stop for a second and realize oh shit okay, here’s where shit CAN go wrong and WHY. and i do especially like it when these bastards of characters somehow have more depth than being the “bastard characters”. kinda humanizes them in a way. doesnt mean you have to LIKE them continuously, but theyre humans (trolls whatever) in the end and every person has their own story whether its for better or for worse

for example, i like her being placed into the story, along with white text, by how its all leading to this “accident” and is slowly showing us hints on what happened, but in the end, it wont be until later that we know the full story. even if it was in the past, it apparently is very vital to the plot and shapes how the characters act in the future, so important aspects like that are to look out for. and usually they only occur when theres been some trouble within friend dynamics. so without these bastard of characters, plot wouldnt grow AS strong and i often keep that in mind when i explore a story.

anyways, I HAD A POINT TO THIS: so vriska and karkat are characters who are yes, mean, but it seems to be their personality, and the way they either show emotions and convey feelings (karkat) or make a barrier so they DONT show emotions to produce vulnerability (vriska), white text guy seems to mostly be out to be an asshole. he told vriska she was useless to sum it up but im not too sure if this is one of those “first dialogue” to mould out a bias opinion before we even get to the character themselves, but judging by how vriska and karkat played out, he surely means something bad and i dont know how to explain it. but i cannot base anything off from one piece of dialogue. i dont even know what else to call him other than white text guy so...... ill just leave that out for now, until we finally get his introduction

though, i do wish to mention, and will expand on, im not wrong when i say karkat and vriska are similar but in different context. sorry if youre favourite is karkat and you dont like vriska, or vice versa, but uhhhh their introductions are so similar its uncanny and the way they’re portrayed is the same except one is more on crack about the meddling, while the other is angry about the meddling. similar to how it was with karkat, we were introduced to vriska talking with someone we knew (tavros) whom she obviously didnt like, so obviously, from her point of view, she wanted to be menacing. like how karkat was menacing to jade because she wouldnt listen to his point... he got angry, so he lashed out. but us, the readers, didnt know that. we thought “oh god its this asshole” until we made it further in the story and started to warm up to karkat. it may not be the same with vriska, she may be a bully regardless, but you cannot tell me we moulded a bias towards her character as we did when we first read karkat. theyre both truly mean to other people, maybe both for different reasons, but i do want to point out the similarities and not leave that out. im pretty sure andrew basically gave us a conversation that formed our opinion of a character right off the bat rather than go into depth of WHY they did it, and how they are naturally without the conditions of the game. which, you can also see with vriska when she conversed with kanaya. andrew started off with a character who only appears to speak once, and makes you judge them from first appearance alone, without any explanation as to why they said what they said and how they are with other characters, let says. so you assume they were simply a rude character. now look how karkat turned out. so im guessing in homestuck, the first impression should never be the opinion you stick with until MAYBE 5 more conversations with that character (each one different)

OKAY done with the vriska introduction, now to slutquius

yes, hes kinda weird, i have stated that many times. i have no idea what to say about him other than he likes porn, he likes centaur dick which just so happens to be his lusus as well and if that isnt a red flag idk what is

he also likes his lusus milk, right from the udders of his guardian

fun times, fun times

my opinion of equius kinda.. differs. which i should really put in place the “dont judge by first impression” rule, because at first i thought he was rude with, then i thought he was hhh okay, because i understood why he was being so protective over nepeta and her team placement, since the people she was going to play with WERE dangerous. but if you think about it, both sides will probably put you in danger. it just depends on which ones you confide in more to protect your back rather than those which would cause trouble on purpose, in my HONEST opinion. so equius was a little overdramatic on that part, but i got what he meant. he was on the blue team and he didnt want to leave nepeta alone without him on the red. but then this session happened. and he went back to being weird again because of the whole porn thing, especially being so open about it like dude chill youre 13. but the thing is, then i felt bad for him because hes basically touch starved. to say that he could break anything he touches, i doubt people would go up to him for hugs. in fear they would be crushed to death by a simple hug. so im guessing hes rather lonely and doesnt really know how to interact because of this. so i felt sad that he had to live a life where he needs to be careful of everything he touches so it doesnt break randomly. see? poor dude. but then things got weird. and im pretty sure hes a masochist. so my opinion on equius is a fucking cosine graph

which brings us to the final point:

gamzee and equius’ conversation

i dont even know.....like.........gamzee was unaware that equius was using him for his own power play roleplay, right? gamzee knew it was a roleplay but it had had some.. idk.... obvious sexual implications? and i bet gamzee didnt really know that? he thought they were only venting out through a simple roleplay and trying to get closer because he originally thought equius hated him, considering equius flat out said “i hate you” and gamzee went “you tell me everyday and im okay with that” so.. gamzee probably wanted only to get closer to equius so he helped out his little problem which.. thats so sweet but i feel bad he was coerced into something he didnt get, especially since he was innocent enough to go along without knowing equius’ true gain

anyways, equius was getting off with the hierarchy thing. considering he’s “lower” than gamzee, and gamzee is surprisingly ...high on the spectrum??? so equius wanted gamzee to boss him around, because it felt only natural to him since he’s the “inferior one” and gamzee is The Big Man. like i get that, but it was written in a way that was so uncomfortable, that i wish i didnt. equius is just a weird character... hes not BAD per say, but hes... hes something alright

but im really liking gamzee. the two things which struck me in that one conversation, was the “i dont get why we should dictate people by the colour of their blood, i just see people as people” piece of dialogue and “i cant go around pleasing just everything so its alright if you hate me”

thats... so good, idk. i really liked that. i also really liked when kanaya said “youre dangerous but dangerous people are needed and are important because it shapes you” like <33 my fucking heart

god homestuck may be a tad on the weird side with some of its characters but it surely knows how to create great lines of dialogue

and that concludes the long 4 hour session i did, hope you all enjoyed it

with that, i rest

#homestuck #homestuck liveblog #hs92 #hs92 end #i wrote more than i should have but i had a lot to say #just you wait for those analogy/analysis posts

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