#is that it has so many characters that often they get flattened into archetypes by fandom to make them distinguishable

[lillified]

I remember you saying earlier (on twitter,not here) that the autobots were kind of boring,since they only fit into a few archetypes. I’ve kind of been thinking about that, and I thought they may also have been boring because of another thing: these few personality types means no one really bounces off eachother, and it doesn’t lead up to any interesting conflict.

This may only apply to G1,or I may just be talking nonsense, but compare them to the decepticons. The decepticons have a lot of different personalities , so they contrast against eachother and a lot of the times,disagree with eachother,creating conflict. However, with the autobots, the similar personality problem can come when no sort of conflict,even ones between certain characters,exists, and everyone has no sort of unique opinions towards eachother. And conflict,you know,makes up a lot for a story and characters.

A lot of people don’t care much about the autobot moments a lot, however you don’t really need to scour the internet to see videos and people posting about Megatron arguing with Starscream or skywarp getting clowned by rumble and frenzy, if you know what I mean.

hey!! wow, it is always surprising when people remember stuff I said lol

I’m admittedly just not really a big autobot fan (if I get the opportunity to write the autobots they’d be very messy) but I totally agree with you here—people seem to like the autobots, conceptually, for very different reasons than people like the Decepticons, and it factors into an interesting dichotomy between how different people view characters as a literary device.

while it isn’t a rule by any means, I’ve noticed there are a lot of people who love certain autobots, but specifically like them in isolation. the idea of the character is more important than anything they’ve actually done. pretty much every autobot that exists has a fan, but they could have little, if any, screen presence. this isn’t bad, of course! in many cases, it’s extremely novel and sweet. that being said, I’ve noticed that even the most prominent autobots have this happen—Optimus Prime is more of a symbol than a character, and that separation is a source of comfort.

This also happens with Decepticons, but I’d argue it’s to a lesser extent? They tend to have much more defined and consistent character relationships, arcs, and themes. The decepticons who are viewed in isolation most frequently would probably be Soundwave and Autobot Megatron, which is interesting (I am honestly not a fan of the modern characterizations of either of these, but I totally understand why people are!), in that their interactions, story purposes, and even personalities are flattened to separate them from the underlying narrative. People love the idea of Soundwave, but fail to give it a personality.

Once again, I don’t think any of this is bad! Moreover, isolating characters from the existing narrative and putting them in different places according to where they might better suit a story is a very good thing, actually. I’ve never agreed with the pushback for iterative/adaptive media altering existing characters’ traits or personalities to suit their thematic purpose, because I think it takes away the agency and undermines the vision of the artist. obviously you can dislike certain characterizations (I do that often) but blaming a deviation from the norm is extremely reductive. Trying to stick to an idealized checklist of how a character ought to act instead of recognizing them as a reactive, dynamic story device is how you end up with flat, unchanging characters and a boring story.

To tie that back to what I like about the decepticons, I think the fact that they are so messy is their strength—they aren’t all just different skins on the same archetype, they’re unique thematic elements which adapt and serve a function in the story. You can make them physically and even archetypally unrecognizable, but as long as you utilize them as elements in the story and afford them the conflict and complexity they deserve, it’s much more difficult to go wrong.

thanks for reading, and thank you for the question!! I hope this all makes sense—I wiped myself out last night and I’m still recovering, so I apologize if this was incoherent lol

#ask #transformers #text post #text

[macbethz]

1, 10, and 15 for the choose violence ask game :)

THIS IS A LONG ONE SORRY. I guess I had violence in my heart.

1. The character everyone gets wrong

Ok im aware this is like the most predictable answer for me but its true. CLARA!!! People don't get her at all and it absolutely infuriates me, because she's pretty much the only companion in nuwho who is hated to this extent (ie, people saying mean shit about her on my posts ABOUT HER) Oh does she annoy you by having the exact same traits as the doctor? Do you not like her egotistical and controlling behavior? I wonder why. Perhaps there is a point there.

Sidenote - it annoys me when people will call her a mary sue and simultaneously get mad at her being an asshole and yk, having character flaws, as if those terms aren't mutually exclusive & her hyper-competence that gets read as "mary sue" isn't an intentional choice by the narrative and a result of her being DEEPLY unwell in other aspects of her life.

I feel like a lot of people judge her based on the second half of s7 which, to be fair, is awful and I don't think they knew what they were doing with her yet. But in the context of her whole run she is genuinely one of the most evocative characters to come out of doctor who for me, especially in the way she serves as a kind of commentary and subversion of companions as a whole. I genuinely could talk about clara forever but yeah I do feel like a lot of the hate comes from the fact that people Don't Get Her.

And then among fans who do there's always a risk that they see her as this blank slate twee girl to self-project onto which again, to be fair, is how she was written in season 7. But so many things from supposed fans of her as well that I'll read and be like she would not fucking say that. she does not have the emotional awareness to say that. and/or she is not like a uwu quirky shy girl she would fucking speak her mind about that. She is deranged and I love her. I have to shut up abt clara or this will be the whole post.

10. Worst part of fanon

I honestly cant get TOO annoyed with doctor who fanon because i am a comics fan AND a danny phantom fan and its surprisingly common practice for people in both those fandoms to be a "fan" of something they have not consumed the media for in any form, resulting in this horrible mess of fanon with no connection to what makes the original compelling. + doctor who is such a mess of canon anyway basically everything has been canon at some point even if its shit.

But I think in the end the worst part of DW fanon is, like all fanon, the flattening of really compelling characters to fit trope archetypes. I see this especially with tenrose, where they're just turned into this kind of generic ship that you can plug n play into any situation with little connection to the interesting ways they actually behave in canon.

As a kind of interesting reversal, though, fanon will often expand out dw's most generic characters (ie most chibnal companions. sorry), but only for the purposes of shipping and not in ways I myself find particularly interesting. Like imo Yaz is probably the least developed chibnal companion but pretty much the only one I see expanded on in this way because of the shipping potential.

15. that one thing you see in fanart all the time

im probably gonna get slaughtered for this but i think maybe weve had enough crowley in doctor who outfits or 10 meeting crowley fanart. maybe im bitter because i dont really care about the GO show and I feel like it fills up the dw tag to the brim these days

#THANK YOU for ask and thank you those who read everything #i just got back from rosh hashana services with rage in my hearts apparently #warlock wartalks

[bericas]

SCOTT APPRECIATION WEEK (DAY 1) → FAVORITE QUOTES/DECISIONS

scott’s willingness to do what needs to be done often means sacrifice, and it’s often a burden he takes onto himself; however, it doesn’t always mean self-sacrifice. 

(aka: talk shit get hit!!!)

#twedit #scott mccall #scottmccalledit #scottmccallweek #HELLO I LOVE HIM!!!!!! #so ive honestly never been heavily involved in other fandoms so i dont really know if this is unique or not but i think something about tw #is that it has so many characters that often they get flattened into archetypes by fandom to make them distinguishable #which makes sense!!!! but also leads to ignoring the entirety of the character in favor of tropes #and while scott is often willing to kill monsters (the beast when it stops being mason and is just the beast; the anukite; etc) #he often tries to be forgiving when the lines are blurred (theo; the betas who killed hunters in s5; the hunters in s6) #and i think a lot of that genuinely is because of who he was in s1!! he was someone who WANTED to kill peter. he wanted to. he would've #and as time goes on who he is and what he's willing to do changes and he goes from someone willing to kill to willing to die #(which: not that scott was some kind of monster in s1. he was a kid who was traumatized and hunted by a monster and so even when peter was a #dying human on the forest floor it was VERY easy to not see him this way and VERY easy to not care because scott WAS going to die; allison's #father at this point was VERY WILLING to kill him; and being a werewolf was a death sentence; and killing peter was supposed to cure him) #BUT he never actually....... is not willing to kill? it's just ALWAYS the worst case scenario. it's always the last option #and we see a lot of him being at his end in 3a especially (which is also before stiles gets posessed and blurs the lines in a big way again) #right like gerard is out of chances; jennifer is going to kill his mother and the sheriff and chris she is out of chances; deucalion #harassed him for the entirety of 3a and his pack killed people he's out of chances) #but then as it goes on the threats become other kids. become reflections of him; of allison; of stiles. these are not people he is willing #to put down. these are not people deserving of being put down. and so we see a lot less of this!!!! #so i tried to choose scenes where he wasn't joking or talking hypothetically; he was looking at (or in the case of the last gif about to fac #e down) the people he was threatening and it was not a hypothetical it was a FACT; this is what will happen next #let me kill peter; i poisoned gerard; i will kill gerard; i will kill jennifer; i will kill deucalion; i will fight for my life against pete #r; i will kill this random dude who tried to kill me if he makes me; i will put gerard down to end this war #and it's these moments that make everything else SO POIGNANT and i wish we got this explored in s5 so much more bc s5 was the season of Oh! #Scott's Baby! AND FRANKLY THEO DESERVED TO GET KNOCKED ON HIS ASS!!!!! like i know liam had fucked scott up pretty bad already when theo get #s there but SCOTT EVENT TELLS LIAM!! I CANT LET YOU KILL ME!!!!!! HE SHOULDVE LET THEO KNOW THAT HES WILLING TO KILL ACTUALLY! #IF HE WAS NOT SO CLOSE TO DEAD. IF THEO HAD COME FOR HIS FIRST. THEO WOULD NOT HAVE MADE IT OUT OF THE FIGHT. AND SCOTT SHOULDVE TOLD HIM #THATTTT WE DESERVED IT AS A CHARACTER MOMENT!!!!

[olderthannetfic]

I'm a Chinese, nationally and racially. Racial projection seems to be a common practice in western fandom, doesn't it? I find it a bit... weird to witness the drama ignited upon shipping individuals with different races, or the tendency to separate characters into different "colors" even though the world setting doesn't divide races like that. Such practice isn't a thing here. Mind explaining a bit on this phenomenon?

--

Sure, I can try. But of course, fish aren’t very good at explaining the water they swim in.

Americans aren’t good at detecting our own Americanness, and a lot of what you’re seeing is very much culturally American rather than Western in general. (In much of Europe, “race” is a concept used by racists, or so I’m told, unlike in the US where it’s seen more neutrally.) Majority group members (i.e. me, a white girl) aren’t usually the savviest about minority issues, but I’ll give it a shot.

The big picture is that most US race stuff boils down to our attempts to justify and maintain slavery and that dynamic being applied, awkwardly, to everyone else too, even years after we abolished slavery.

There’s a concept called the “one drop rule” where a person is “black” if they have even one drop of black blood.

We used to outlaw “interracial” marriage until quite recently. (That meant marriage between black people and white people with Asians and Hispanic people and others wedged in awkwardly.) Here’s the Wikipedia article on this, which contains the following map showing when we legalized interracial marriage. The red states are 1967.

That’s within living memory for a ton of people! Yellow is 1948 to 1967. This is just not very long ago at all. (Hell, we only fully banned slavery in 1865, which is also just not that long ago when it comes to human culture.)

Why did we have this bananas-crazy set of laws and this idiotic notion that one remote ancestor defines who you are? It boils down to slavery requiring a constant reaffirming that black people are all the same (and subhuman) while white people are all this completely separate category. The minute you start intermarrying, all of that breaks down. This was particularly important in our history because our system of slavery involved the kids of slaves being slaves and nobody really buying their way out. Globally, historically, there are other systems of slavery where there was more mobility or where enslaved people were debtors with a similar background to owners, and thus the people in power were less threatened by ambiguity in identity.

Post-slavery, this shit hung around because it was in the interests of the people in power to maintain a similar status quo where black people are fundamentally Other.

A lot of our obsession with who counts as what is simply a legacy of our racist past that produced our racist present.

--

The other big factor in American concepts of identity is that we see ourselves as a nation of immigrants (ignoring our indigenous peoples, as usual). A lot of people’s families arrived here relatively recently, and we often don’t have good records of exactly where they were from, even aside from enslaved people who obviously wouldn’t have those records. Plenty of people still identify with a general nationality (”Italian-American” and such), but the nuance the family might once have had (specific region of Italy, specific hometown) is often lost. Yeah, I know every place has immigrants, and lots of people don’t have good records, but the US is one of those countries where families have on average moved around a lot more and a lot more recently than some, and it affects our concepts of identity. I think some of the willingness to buy into the idea of “races” rather than “ethnicities” has to do with this flattening of identity.

New immigrant groups were often seen as Other and lesser, but over time, the ones who could manage it got added to our concept of “whiteness”, which gave them access to those same social and economic privileges.

Skin color is a big part of this. In a system that is founded on there being two categories, white owners and black slaves, skin color is obviously going to be about that rather than being more of a class marker like it is in a lot of the world.

But it’s not all about skin color since we have plenty of Europeans with somewhat darker skin who are seen as generically white here, while very pale Asians are not. I’m not super familiar with all of the history of anti-Asian racism in the US, but I think this persistent Otherness probably boils down to Western powers trying to justify colonial activities in Asia plus a bunch of religious bullshit about predominantly Christian nations vs. ones that are predominantly Buddhist or some other religion.

In fact, a lot of racist archetypes in English can be traced back to England’s earliest colonial efforts in Ireland. Justifying colonizing Those People because they’re subhuman and/or ignorant and in need of paternalistic rulers or religious conversion is at the bottom of a lot of racist notions. Ironic that we now see Irish people as clearly “white”.

--

There are a lot of racist porn tropes and racist cultural baggage here around the idea of black people being animalistic. Racist white people think black men want to rape/steal white women from white men. Black women get seen as hypersexual and aggressive. If this sounds like white people projecting in order to justify murder and rape... well, it is.

Similar tropes get applied to a lot of groups, often including Hispanic and Middle Eastern people, though East Asians come in more for creepy fantasies about endlessly submissive and promiscuous women. This nonsense already existed, but it was certainly not helped by WWII servicemen from here and their experiences in Asia. Again, it’s a projection to justify shitty behavior as what the party with less power was “asking for”.

In porn and even romance novels, this tends to turn up as a white character the audience is supposed to identify with paired with an exotic, mysterious Other or an animalistic sexy rapist Other.

A lot of fandoms are based on US media, so all of our racist bullshit does apply to the casting and writing of those, whether or not the fic is by Americans or replicating our racist porn tropes.

(Obviously, things get pretty hilarious and infuriating once Americans get into c-dramas and try to apply the exact same ideas unchanged to mainstream media about the majority group made by a huge and powerful country.)

--

Politically, within the US, white people have had most of the power most of the time. We also make up a big chunk of the population. (This is starting to change in some areas, which has assholes scared shitless.) This means that other groups tend to band together to accomplish shared political goals. They’re minorities here, so they get lumped together.

A lot of Americans become used to seeing the world in terms of “white people” who are powerful oppressors and “people of color” who are oppressed minorities. They’re trying to be progressive and help people with less power, and that’s good, but it obviously becomes awkward when it’s over-applied to looking at, say, China.

--

Now... fandom...

I find that fandom, in general, has a bad habit of holding things to double standards: queer things must be Good Representation™ even when they’re not being produced for that purpose. Same for ethnic minorities or any other minority. US-influenced parts of fandom (which includes a lot of English-speaking fandom) tend to not be very good at accepting that things are just fantasy. This has gotten worse in recent years.

As fandom has gotten more mainstream here, general media criticism about better representation (both in terms of number of characters and in terms of how they’re portrayed) has turned into fanfic criticism (not enough fics about ship X, too many about ship Y, problematic tropes that should not be applied to ship X, etc.). I find this extremely misguided considering the smaller reach of fandom but, more importantly, the lack of barriers to entry. If you think my AO3 fic sucks, you can make an account and post other fic that will be just as findable. You don’t need money or industry connections or to pass any particular hurdle to get your work out there too.

People also (understandably) tend to be hypersensitive to anything that looks like a racist porn trope. My feeling is that many of these are general porn tropes and people are reaching. There are specific tropes where black guys are given a huge dick as part of showing that they’re animalistic and hypersexual, but big dicks are really common in porn in general. The latter doesn’t automatically mean you’re doing the former unless there are other elements present. A/B/O or dubcon doesn’t mean it’s this racist trope either, not unless certain cliched elements are present. OTOH, it’s not hard for a/b/o tropes to feel close to “animalistic guy is rapey”, so I can see why it often bothers people.

A huge, huge, huge proportion of wank is “all rape fantasies are bad” crap too, which muddies the waters. I think a lot of people use “it’s racist” as an easy way to force others to agree with their incorrect claims that dubcon, noncon, a/b/o, etc. are fundamentally bad. Many fans, especially white fans, feel like they don’t know enough to refute claims of racism, so they cave to such arguments even when they’re transparently disingenuous.

--

Not everyone here thinks this way. I know plenty of people offline, particularly a lot of nonwhite people, who think fandom discourse is idiotic and that the people “protecting” people or characters of color are far more racist than the people writing “bad” fic or shipping the wrong thing.

But in general, I’d say that the stuff above is why a lot of us see the world as white people in power vs. everyone else as oppressed victims, interracial relationships as fraught, and porn about them as suspect. Basically, it’s people trying to be more progressive and aware but sometimes causing more harm than good when those attempts go awry.

#Anonymous

[castleoflions]

Lost In Translation: Kakegurui Ch. 83 pt. 2: Identical Girls

Comparing and Analyzing the Text

Well, we’re back here again, with more discrepancies between the original, Japanese text and the official English translation. As this “chapter” (really, it’s just the last little bit of an extra long Ch. 83) is fairly short, this shouldn’t be as long as my previous write up about Ch. 82, which you can find here.

So without further ado, let’s dig into the differences under the cut.

The first oddity is on the second page. It’s mostly minor, but it’s a strange thing to flub and might help people wrap their heads around how votes are shifting or can shift in the school, so I’m including it here.

The English translation says: “The entire Hyakkaou student body is about three thousand people! So now, if Yumeko-sempai beats someone with as many votes as she has, or more, that seals the victory for her! Oh...right! She’s almost there! I mean, really, must I explain that to you?”

What Istuki actually says in Japanese is: 百花王学園は全校生徒約3000人。つまり夢子先輩と同じか少なくとも半分持ってる人に勝てば確定で優勝という事です！そうか。。。そうだね！あと一歩だ。というかこのくらいのこと説明させないでくださいよ。

“Hyakkaou Academy has about 3,000 students! In other words, if Yumeko-senpai beats someone who has the same or at least half as many votes as her, she’ll definitely win! Indeed...that’s right! Just one more step. I mean, please, I shouldn’t have to explain this to you.”

It’s small, but it’s worth pointing out because of how the votes are distributed right now. Yumeko is standing head and shoulders above the nearest opponent, which is Kirari. Even if Kirari takes out Mary and Ririka both, she can’t catch Yumeko...but Yumeko wants to gamble with Kirari regardless. Being in this position, Kirari will almost certainly need to gamble with Yumeko in order to have a chance at winning, a situation that hasn’t occurred yet in the series. On the very next page, Yumeko confirms that:

Surprising absolutely no one, the biggest misfires occur during Kirari and Ririka’s conversation, as well as Mary’s interruption. Much like the strangeness in Ch. 82, the differences are subtle, but they make a very big difference in terms of characterization and meaning.

As I’ve said before, Kirari’s characterization has taken a severe hit in the English translation; she often gets flattened and reduced to a villain archetype when she, just like every other character in Kakegurui – and I do mean everyone, is very morally grey: no character is purely good or purely bad, no one is solely a hero nor a villain.

What the English translation says: Kirari: "We need to seize the Momobami name." Ririka: That was easy to say, of course...but making it happen proved quite a challenge. Kirari: Hee hee! I was immature too. The fact of it is, leading the family’s not enough. The grown-ups are too obsessed over the past. They’re living zombies, focused on protecting themselves and their families. We have to take them out of the picture, or else nothing will actually change. So I held this election...and by beating all the family members they carefully selected...I wanted to shut all those grown-ups’ mouths. And in just a little bit...I’ll achieve that mission.”

What Kirari and Ririka actually say in Japanese is:

Kirari: 百喰を掠いましょう。 Ririka: 口にするのは簡単。けれど実現するのは意外と難しかったわね。 Kirari: フフ私も幼かった。実際には当主になるだけでは足りない。過去に固執する大人たち。自らと自らの一族の保身のみを目的に生きる屍。彼らを排除しなければ実際には何も動かない。だからこの選挙を開き彼らが選りすぐった一族の者に勝つことで彼らを黙らせたかった。その目的はあと少しで達せられる。

Kirari: Let’s pillage the Hundred Devouring Families. Ririka: It’s easy to say, but its surprisingly difficult to achieve. Kirari: [Giggle] I was also childish/naive. In reality, it wasn’t enough just to become the head of the family. [The clan] are adults who cling to the past. They’re corpses who live only for the purpose of protecting themselves and their households/clans/families. If they aren’t eliminated/rejected, nothing will change. So I wanted to hold this election and silence them by defeating the members they hand-picked. Achieving that goal is just around the corner.

Again, the differences are subtle, but they’re there.

There are many people that think Kirari only does stuff for her own amusement and nothing else. There are many people that think she’s just purely a villain. I blame a lot of this on how the English manga translation has (mis)characterized her, so it’s not entirely these people’s faults: they only know what they’ve been able to read. But the canon story in the source material disagrees, point-blank. 

Kirari doesn’t care about seizing the Momobami name, she wants to drain the clan with Ririka and be done with the whole thing. She finally explicitly says out loud what I and others have been suspecting for a long time (I mentioned this possibility last summer here): she doesn’t like the clan, she planned all of this, and her goal is the clan’s destruction. She admits that she was naive and childish to think that ascending to the head of the Devourers was enough to bring their plan to fruition. She laments how the elders of the family are stuck in the past, and how nothing will change until they can get those rotting corpses cleared away. They’re so close to being able to achieve their goal of destroying the clan!

But Kirari has an important question for her big sister, and the English translation flubs this pretty aggressively.

What the English translation says: Ririka. You...are me. That’s the way you were raised from the start. So can you give my votes back to me?

What Kirari actually says in Japanese: リリカ、貴女は私ずっと。育てられてきたわね。私の票を私に返して？

“Ririka, you’ve been me for so long/all this time. That’s how you were raised. Will you return my votes to me?”

Subtle differences, but very, very important.

Kirari doesn’t say “Ririka, you are me.” She instead says, “You’ve been me for such a long time.” And that makes sense, given the context of what we know about their past (from the first half of Ch. 83), and how Kirari has reacted to Ririka working with Mary, as well as how she reacted to them no longer blending together enough (both from Ch. 76). Kirari isn’t upset that she and Ririka don’t blend together like they use to, in fact she seems kind of pleased about it, telling Ririka that she’ll notice it too in due time. She asks how she’s getting along with Mary, and Ririka claims that Kirari made her promise that she would work together with Mary until the end of the election.

I’m repeating all of this because they’re clues to Kirari’s intentions, and these clues all paint a specific image: Kirari doesn’t want Ririka to be her, she wants Ririka to be...Ririka, whoever that may be. Ririka doesn’t know who she is right now because she’s still figuring it out. She’s still timid, still wary, but she is slowly becoming her own person: she challenged Kirari to a gamble, after all, and Kirari was pleasantly surprised by that. (The English translation of Ch. 76 is rife with problems, and it’s next on my list to make a post about, but the panels below are accurate and points to what I’m talking about.)

All of this to say, Kirari’s reaction is not one of someone who is in any way upset that her twin is becoming her own person. In fact, Kirari seems actively happy about it.

Okay, so why is she asking Ririka to return votes to her? Disclaimer that this is just speculation at the moment, but based on the clues we’ve been given, I have a hunch that this is a test of sorts. Ririka has been, as Kirari says, living as Kirari since day one. Only recently has Ririka herself expressed that Mary has helped her "become [her]self.” Ririka is gaining her footing, but will she refuse Kirari if she asks her to return her votes to her? Kirari seems intent to find out, so she asks her to return votes to her for the sake of the plan that’s been years in the making, that they’ve both been working towards, and that they’re on the verge of successfully completing. So she asks (the asking is important) if Ririka will return the votes.

The English translation makes it sound like Kirari is demanding the votes, but trying to say it in a nice way: “So can you give my votes back to me?” The original Japanese is an honest question: “Will you return my votes to me?” I know I sound like I’m harping on this, but the words matter – the wrong one will distort what’s being said. Just to make it clear what I’m pointing out here:

CAN you = Are you able to do what’s being asked, regardless of whether you want to or not? The implication is that autonomy and consent is minimal or non-existent in this situation. WILL you = What will you do? What will you decide? The implication is that autonomy and consent are being respected here, and are actively being asked to be exercised.

I’ll say it again: the differences are subtle, but very important.

Let’s move on to what I’m sure a lot of people are waiting for: Mary’s interruption. This part is actually accurate, though there are some subtleties and clarifications I want to point out.

First, when Mary says “No.”

The specific word here being used is 断る. This means “to refuse, to reject, to dismiss, to turn down, to decline.”

Another thing I want to put out is that Ririka does not speak at all during this exchange – only Mary is speaking.

And Mary is doing so very forcefully! She interrupts this conversation, physically pulls Ririka away from Kirari, says, on behalf of Ririka, that Ririka refuses to return the votes, and then calls Kirari stupid before deciding for Ririka, without her voicing her opinion one way or the other, that Mary and Ririka both will take Kirari on and defeat her.

Something to notice: Kirari seems amused by this development. She’s not upset, but she seems pretty intrigued at least.

And she’s right to be intrigued, because she just got done asking her sister what she wants to do in relation to their long-term plan, and Mary has swooped in, told Kirari to shove it, and that she and Ririka are going to take her down...but she didn’t consult Ririka on this first.

This is a post I still need to make, but I’ll allude to the point of it here: Kirari is actually a character who is really big on consent and asking what people want to do. (RayDaug wrote a bit about this in his response to an ask here)

“She took Midari’s eye!!!” you might say. No, she offered to buy it to settle Midari’s gambling debt. Midari stabbed it out of her own volition.

“She made Sayaka jump from the Tower of Doors!!!” No, she asked Sayaka if she wanted to gamble Yumeko after Yumeko made her pitch. When she introduced the jump at the ToD, Kirari asked Sayaka if she was okay with the terms and even said “you can say no.” Sayaka was so eager to murder Yumeko that she enthusiastically accepted.

To quote RayDaug from the previously linked response: “Kirari gives people tools and watches what they do with them.”

This right here, with Ririka, is no different. She’s given Ririka some time to figure part of herself out via Mary Saotome, and now she’s asking if she’ll return her votes to her. You’ll notice, however, that Mary is not asking what Ririka wants to do. She’s deciding for her.

I bring this up not to dunk on Mary’s character, (though some like to say I’m a “Mary bullshitter” as well as a “Kirari apologist,” the latter being one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, so thanks for the chuckle) but to show my work when I bring up what I suspect might happen next: I think this push and pull is going to be a sticking point for Mary and Ririka, and I think it’s actually going to cause problems for them in their upcoming battle against Kirari.

I say this because gambles in Kakegurui are vehicles for character development, especially realizations and growth. Ririka still doesn’t know what she wants or, at the very least, how to vocalize it for herself without getting steamrolled by what others want her to do. Mary isn’t respecting Ririka’s autonomy here, which is kind of funny considering she didn’t want to work with Ririka since she couldn’t decide things on her own. This points to unresolved tension in their characters, and, historically-speaking, when unresolved issues enter a gamble, the outcome of the gamble tends to push it to a breaking point, for better or worse.

At this exact moment, I see a couple outcomes based on what we know so far. This is subject to change after I spent more time noodling on it and/or when new information comes to light:

This might be a set up for a Mary + Ririka vs. Kirari + Sayaka battle, which could be very entertaining

This gamble ends in a tie with no votes shifting, or only minimal vote shifting, but with some character growth (Think how the Yumeko vs Mary battle from the Grand Summary went)

Kirari knocks out Mary and Ririka because their unresolved issues get in the way and she’s able to capitalize on that instability

Mary and Ririka win, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory somehow

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope this helps paint a clearer picture of what is going on in the source material and inspires a better understanding of the plot and characters.

See you in the next post. :)

#kakegurui #kakegurui 83 #ririka momobami #kirari momobami #mary saotome #fan translation #anime: lesbian gambling simulator #kkg lost in translation

[plutojester]

I think the biggest reason why Peter Parkers character has been flattened so much to fit perfectly into the nerd trope in various Spider-Man media is that the target audience of men who see themselves as embodying that trope in real life is supposed to relate to him, and relate to him specifically in an ego stroking way.

The stereotypical nerd protagonist is a character archetype that is so devoid of introspection. He's a Nice Guy and it's the world that's wrong! People dislike him for purely superficial reasons like geeky interests and big glasses! It's on the others to come around and see how great he really is! He can't get a girl because he's shy, not because of any actual flaws!

And this, in my opinion, is antithetical to Peter, a complex character with a supporting cast full of complex characters. 616 Peter has to grow, he has to change. Not just in that one defining moment of realizing that with great power comes great responsibility, but on a very mundane, human level that requires him to reflect on his behavior and take steps out of his comfort zone.

Peter starts out as a bitter, defensive, stuck up recluse and, while he always retains a part of that, he slowly has to learn to let people in and let his guard down more. That is not to say that his classmates were acting reasonably by ostracizing him - the point is people are flawed and complex, and Peter is no exception.

Notably his anger and reclusive nature are both traits he has in common with his arch nemesis, Norman Osborn. But Peter deals with them in different ways because unlike Norman he is aware (often hyperaware even) of his faults, he gets frustrated with himself, he tries to do better. In other words, he takes responsibility. So many men who project on Peter Parker love the responsibility moral until it doesn't apply to choosing a power fantasy, but rather, choosing to commit yourself to consistent self reflection and self improvement.

#Peter Parker #spider man #42texts

[onceuponamirror]

I think Sabrina is a little... questionable. I found the race depictions to be so problematic, in a way that tells me the showrunners thought that by casting a diverse cast they were done, when really they played into so many nasty race stereotypes and tropes that it ended up reading so offensive to me. (1/x)

For example, this show did not issue a trigger warning for an image of a lynched Black woman in 2018; it comes on suddenly and in close-up view. To do so without warning was so tone-deaf: It feels rare to go a day without seeing some news story about brutality against Black people. Showing it on a fictional TV show as one storyline of many felt like needless insult to injury, and it’s a telling marker of whose trauma is considered legitimate, and under what circumstances. (2/x)

It also seemed as if the show’s primary positioning of Prudence as an antagonist plays into a centuries-old myth developed by colonizers to dehumanize Black people for their traditional African spiritual beliefs and practices. The show positions Prudence as the angry Black woman who attacks the misunderstood, small, blonde, white girl. It’s a harmful conflict viewers simply did not need to see, especially when the cards are so clearly stacked in Sabrina’s favor. Prudence never stood a chance (3)

Representation is nice and all, but it should encourage writers to address characters of color like Prudence with dimension — including acknowledgements of how race affects the way they move through the world. Instead they totally ignored her race in some kind of colorblind haze, without acknowledging that even among women, power takes on a completely different meaning when blackness is a part of their identity. That to me is why CAOS is a bit of a failure. What do you think?—–

so, i’m definitely not going to dispute this. i mentioned in a few of my write ups for the show thus far that the treatment of race is never given any consideration the way sexuality and gender are cared for. 

i get this especially in the arc for roz, who essentially functions as a plot device rather than get the same kind of character development that harvey, susie, and sabrina get, for instance. 

as for prudence specifically, yes, the lynching scene has horrible optics and definitely perpetuates traumatic threats that were so unnecessary, in any case. it clearly wasn’t considered and i find it shocking (read: not too shocking) that no one, along the line, said hey, let’s not. you’d think that’d be obvious, but—it is RAS. he’s never been good at positive or equal racial representation, whatsoever, so let’s not beat around that bush.

beyond that, there are certain things that i feel i can’t speak to, but there’s a very good write up here, which i’ll post. 

Prudence is never depicted as an outright villain. The writers behind the series clearly want audiences to like her: She has bombastic entrances, great comebacks, and a stylistic fierceness that honors Gabrielle’s inspiration from the iconic Eartha Kitt. For every scene where she is cruel to Sabrina, there are others meant to highlight her depth beyond that mean-girl archetype, like their thoughtful argument about faith in the “Feast of Feasts” episode. Even as they have wildly different perspectives, they learn to respect each other. For Sabrina, she is willing to disregard the rules in order to get freedom and power; for Prudence, power is enough. In many ways, Prudence reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Cordelia Chase (portrayed with vigor and venom by Charisma Carpenter) — a mean girl who becomes a hero with dimension in her own right.

I will admit whenever Prudence referred to Sabrina as “half-breed” to nod to her half-witch, half-mortal lineage, I winced. Those words coming out of the mouth of a black woman — especially a character who is revealed to be the mixed-race daughter of Father Blackwood (Richard Coyle) — is like stepping into a home with fun house mirrors. It’s a jarring occurence repeated at different points in the series, and it seems born from the same well of ignorance that led to the most prickly moment in the series’ fourth episode, “Witch Academy.”

The most controversial scene in Chilling Adventures, at least in regards to Prudence, comes at the end of that episode, which charts Sabrina’s early days in the Academy of the Unseen Arts as she suffers through a cruel hazing experience known as the Harrowing. The Weird Sisters, with Prudence guiding the way, relish torturing Sabrina — imprisoning her in a narrow chamber, forcing her into the cold night where a demon taunts her by imitating her loved ones being grotesquely tortured — and save their cruelest punishment for last. They take Sabrina to a clearing in the dead of night. A noose festoons her neck, rope binds her wrists. But instead of being strung up and perhaps even killed, Sabrina flips the script: With the help of the ghosts of Academy students killed during their own Harrowings, she flings up the Weird Sisters on invisible nooses, strangling them as she declares there will be no more hazing at the school. In a recent io9 piece, Beth Elderkin and Charles Pulliam-Moore critiqued this scene succinctly: “This should not have to be explained, but it is in extremely bad taste to depict black people being hanged on television without an extraordinary amount of context and care that make it clear that (a) the creators of the television show understand the significance of that imagery, and (b) said hanging serves a narrative point.”

Lynching is not a horror transcribed to history, but a present and vicious act. The goal of those that perform these monstrosities throughout the sickening history of this country is more than just pain or violence, it is to consign black people to utter oblivion. As the marvelous journalist Ida B. Wells said to a Chicago crowd in 1900, “Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an ‘unwritten law’ that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal.”

I wasn’t riled by what happens in Chilling Adventures, but I can see how it betrays an ignorance to the optics of the matter, even as the hangings are meant to evoke the history of witch trials leading up to the emergence of the Greendale 13 in the closing episode. Yet to call what happens a lynching is to strip actual lynchings of their tangled complexities and to willfully ignore the context of the scene in the series. Sabrina doesn’t kill Prudence or the other Weird Sisters; she was defending herself in the only way she saw fit to avoid her own demise. (This act also foreshadows the darkness Sabrina is willing to enact by season’s end.) Most importantly, Chilling Adventures from the very beginning treats Prudence as an alluring mean girl, not a villain meant to be punished. If anything, Gabrielle brings her to life with such fierce grace, she becomes more than just a charming supporting character, but an accomplished scene-stealer who at times could be a more engaging anchor for the series than Shipka’s Sabrina.

[…]

Meanwhile, the history of black witches in pop culture is a tangled one defined by exoticization and marginalization. Black witches may be granted style and grace, but rarely are the written with any interiority. In The Craft, Rachel True’s Rochelle is mired in the racist attacks of a peer, but she is hastily drawn in comparison to the other, white members of her coven. In American Horror Story: Coven, Angela Bassett brings a fierce grace to Madame Marie Laveau, one of the most important figures of witchcraft in New Orleans and American history, but that series framed race in a way that betrays a queasy ignorance (and her power often paled to that of the white witches, who seemingly cribbed their skills from black women in the first place). Although Tituba is one of the most iconic black witches, thanks to portrayals in a variety of books, films, and series about the Salem witch trials, historical documents prove she wasn’t black at all but a South American Native. The most successful black witches in all of pop culture, to me, remain Mozelle Batiste Delacroix (Debbi Morgan) and the women of Eve’s Bayou, a gorgeous coming-of-age tale that respects and celebrates the rich culture of rural Louisiana.

Where does Prudence fit within this lineage? Does she mark a fascinating step forward in granting black women (and black audiences by proxy) the delight that comes with being a witch, or is she another example of the ways black witches in pop culture garner little respect and even less interiority by the writers that conjure them? Prudence is a tremendous character — beguiling, sharp-witted, fierce. She’s also something I wish I got to see as a kid: a black witch having fun with her powers and reveling in the world she lives in. If anything, she’s dynamic enough thanks to Gabrielle’s slinky performance that she trumps the show’s nagging issues of colorblind perspective. The creators behind Chilling Adventures would be smart to give her even more focus going forward and define the dynamics of race within their world of witchcraft.The conversation swirling around Chilling Adventures reflects the fascinating, wildly shifting intersections between politics and art that often simplify the former and flatten the latter. 

Representation need not be a mirror for individual members of the audience, but should encourage writers to address characters of color like Prudence with dimension — including acknowledgements of how race affects the way they move through the world. Chilling Adventures seeks to interrogate the ways women yearn for, experience, and at times, are prohibited from power through its clever, rich story about witches. But to give this story justice, the show must acknowledge that even among women, power takes on a completely different meaning when blackness is a part of their identity.

[x] (i think the whole article is really great and worth reading too)

so for me, yes, caos absolutely fails in many regards. it’s very whitefeminism!now! and that’s clear. 

but i do really agree with the last part of this article as well, which highlights that prudence is a very strong character in her own right and her relationship with sabrina very much shifts; before the show aired, i mentioned i was nervous that they made sabrina’s foil a black girl, but as it progressed, i didn’t really feel prudence was an antagonist. at the start, sure, but she feels very much a victim to the same world (for different reasons, obviously) and seemed to realize that towards the end. how she addresses her place in the witch world as a woman of color is something i hope the writers are paying attention to. i hope. 

witches are always going to be fairly fraught in terms of subject matter; caos invokes so much catholic vs satanism that it absolutely stomps all over any other religion, particularly iconography or stereotypes. i have plenty of criticisms in this regard, especially from my own place as a jewish woman. so many western witch stereotypes come from anti-semitism. the pointed hat was a medieval jewish hat and the physical depiction of witches also comes from very aggressive anti-semitic stereotypes, as well as the stories of blood libel (ie, child snatching and eating). it goes on. 

still to this day, most witches in films are portrayed by or described as jewish women. (elphaba, the witches in any oz incarnation, the coding of mother gothel in tangled etc) in caos specifically, they utilize lilith, who was a jewish figure, as the original demon and i could see that upsetting some in the context. it doesn’t for me, as a jewish woman, but i get it. 

and yet, i still enjoy the exploration of the witch, because i think it has the capacity to move or wade more deeply into these historical contexts, and also can be steeped with so much other meaning as well. witches have often been a gendered issue, the vilification of the woman, and how that spills onto the woman’s individual non-christian or non whiteness is a case by case basis. caos definitely, definitely fails in this. 

tl;dr, i do agree. i really do. and these are critiques that make the show worth not watching for some, worth openly pointing out. race is just as wrapped up in witch tales as much as religion or gender is, so to only address two out of those three things felt deliberately “colorblind” in a way that is not effective (and straight out offensive) for where we’re at in society. 

#caos #tw: racism #tw: lynching #caos spoilers #prudence night

[cookinguptales]

*looks at social media exhaustedly*

all this is mostly just personal and I’m not in a great headspace so it goes under a cut

I wish people were better at differentiating between “I like this thing despite its cultural baggage” and “I like this thing so criticisms of it are awful” or worse “I, a member of a marginalized group, like this thing, so the other members of this marginalized group who talk about the cultural baggage surrounding this thing are wrong and you shouldn’t listen to them”.

It would make conversations about so many important topics (with regards to media, at least) easier, I s2g.

This week I’ve seen it with

disability (I like stories where disabled people are cured!)

sexual abuse (I like relationships where men are Manly and Forceful and take what they want!)

objectification (I think it’s flattering and sexy when men talk about how much they like women’s assorted body parts!)

gender roles (I like staying at home with the kids and being taken care of, so I like stories like that!)

LGBT representation (I like [actually many homophobic tropes here, saw this one get a lot of mileage this week, I’m so tired])

And like literally none of those things are bad to like! Those are all perfectly fine to want for yourselves. But then it quickly goes to “so when people don’t like stories about women giving up their life’s work to stay home with their kids, they’re silencing me!” or “I think it’s fun and sexy when men talk about women’s bodies all the time, so other women who complain about this book’s creepy narration are just prudes!” or “there’s nothing wrong with plotlines that cure disability and all those other (mean!!) PWD that complain about them shouldn’t dissuade you from writing them!”.

etc. etc. etc.

And again, there’s nothing wrong with your own tastes. Those are your own prerogative. You’re free to write and read those things. But it’s amazing how often these complaints (and the complaints that are listened to) are often the ones that are essentially saying “ugh, don’t listen to all those naysayers! men [or straight people, or able-bodied people, or white people], you should keep telling the exact same narratives that you always have been because I, a member of that community, say it’s what I like! and all the other people from my community who are asking you to stop are just jerks/prudes/oversensitive/wrong!”

W o w it’s amazing how the most popular statements amongst people from majority groups are the ones telling them they don’t need to change!!

It’s so frustrating because again all this could be so easily avoided if people could separate their own personal likes from the larger dialogues being had about social norms. No one is upset about any of these stories being told. They’re upset that these stories are the dominant cultural narrative. They’re not pushing back against the theory of these things. They’re pushing back against the assumption of them. No one’s saying you can’t like it when men are dominant in relationships. They’re saying that, culturally speaking, men are assumed to be dominant in relationships and that causes problems. They’re saying that there have been thousands of stories about women trading their work for their children, and that’s helped reinforce oppressive cultural norms. There have been thousands of stories where men analyze the exact size and bounce specifications of the breasts of every woman they meet, and that plays into real-life objectification of women. They’re saying the dominance of stories where a happy ending for PWD means being cured teaches kids that they have to be cured in order to be happy.

Media never exists in a vacuum!! There are plenty of things I like that I get might have been socially informed (or that I’ve come to like all on my own) and that play into narratives we need to question. Probably everyone has a few of those. Marginalized groups are not monoliths and often have diverse experiences and goals. And frankly, I don’t believe that just liking some of those tropes, narrative structures, character archetypes, etc. is a bad thing. The problem is when we assume that because we don’t personally have an issue with something that there’s no cultural baggage that should be examined by others.

Idk I just have felt thrown under the bus by so many people this week. Like it’s already been a bad mental health week, but boy a lot of the tumblr/twitter posts I’ve seen in the past few days haven’t been helping. I think the tumblr post encouraging able-bodied writers to write more cured-in-the-end disability stories (and PWD who criticized that trope were MEAN and EVIL and DIDN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT IT FELT LIKE TO BE IN PAIN AND WANT A CURE — honestly god fuck you fuck you) made me the angriest but all the tweets about media narratives and language and sexual assault and Hollywood have been the most hurtful. It’s…been a real triggering week, frankly.

………but seriously, honestly, god, I could probably write a thousand words about how that post was 1000% wrong, how it conflated multiple complex issues and flattened them out into the worst possible take, how it threw other PWD under the bus, how it came at those issues with completely incorrect and misleading assumptions about the state of fiction as it is today, and how it was just plain hurtful in its language towards other PWD. I tried so hard to stay quiet about it but it’s been ages and I still get shaky when I think about it and it kept showing up on my fucking dashboard. But I also know that if I try making a real post about my feelings on the subject, I’m probably going to end up dealing with even more bad memories and not today, Satan.

(an as a note, I saw this stuff going on with race a lot, too, but I mean. my voice really shouldn’t be the loud one in that conversation.)

#just me

[spacetortilla]

FROM: http://www.anothergaze.com/making-millennial-woman-feminist-capitalist-fleabag-girls-sally-rooney-lena-dunham-unlikeable-female-character-relatable/ THESIS: Pitfalls when marketing/media criticism prompts that white women ptag relatable/representative for all women. How double edged it ends up being for the work/person to now be read as a feminist icon when work not really about advocacy,etc. Marketing/media critique urging ‘’to see narratives of radical self-emancipation where there are none’’. This art revolves around an archetypical Young Millennial Woman – pretty, white, cisgender, and tortured enough to be interesting but not enough to be repulsive. Often described as ‘relatable,’ she is, in actuality, not. The term masks the uncomfortable truth that she is more beautiful, more intelligent, and more infuriatingly precocious than we are in real life. But her charm lies in how she is still self-hating enough to be attainable: she’s an aspirational identifier... Try as she might, her protest against the world always re-routes into a melancholic self-destruction. (((the marketing/media coverage grouping of multiple female creators’ works together under one FEMALE voice that’ll cover everyone)))   But what stayed in my mind afterwards was not so much the show itself, but rather the predictable, frenzied public discourse it underwent. A hyperbole-drenched marketing cycle fetes shows like this through the language of relatable identification, and this sets them up perfectly for the inevitable backlash. Not everything is going to be loved by everyone, especially when this everyone has been told they have to on the basis that they’ll find reflections of themselves there. It’s happened to Lena Dunham and Girls, Sally Rooney and Normal People, Kristen Roupenian and Cat Person. Although these young women’s projects are distinct from each other, the ways in which they have been marketed all appear to follow this script. It has happened before and it will happen again. While this promotional approach isn’t misogynistic per se, it is a form of public speech that concedes to it. It’s an approach that hopes to pre-empt those sceptical of the value of the young female voice by framing this voice as an incredible, transformative feat of generational genius. Rather than ask whether these works of art deserve such praise, it may be more interesting to ask why the popular reception of them – even when positive – is so often bad. Headlines often praise how Girls and Fleabag have had the courage to break new ground in feminism, as if the history of western feminism itself hasn’t been marked by the elevation of upper middle class white voices to the level of unearned universalism. . The one-dimensional figures of the past – who could only either to be adored or reviled by men – have been replaced by ‘complex female characters’ who are able to unapologetically reject polite sociality. This can be powerful. But the praise that surrounds such figures also risks producing a premature celebration, a divestment of power that leaves us happy to pick at scraps and inoculate ourselves against the harder, messier mission of getting to a point where ‘unlikability’ is no longer a one-note punchline. It is rarely asked to whom these women are cruel, what engineered this cruelty, and what ends this cruelty serves. .... Womanhood, after all, is a deeply variegated class with its own histories of exclusions, violence, and domination. For some, the systemic cruelty of other women is not so much a neutral revelation, but a fact of life. women can be cruel, shitty, and narcissistic – has now been rebranded as a means of emancipating us ‘all’ under a common banner of womanhood, feels perverse, if not a stunning indictment on how parochial the current mainstream discourse on women’s emancipation really is. For every celebration of a rich white woman as carelessly destructive with her life as her privileged male counterparts, we should ask what it is that gives her the ability to be so brazen, and who is sidelined as collateral. Neurosis, often framed as a sign of powerlessness, can also be a sign of the opposite. To demand someone enter into and entertain your anxious mind-palace and reckon with your complicated and endlessly fascinating individuality can be an act of power. But who gets to be an individual to the Western public? Who gets to be complex? Vulgarity disqualifies some women from public life, or, at the very best, makes them one-note fringe figures; it also admits others to its very centre as ground-breaking, philosophical and relatable women artists. ------ But we should be asking ourselves on whose terms unity is made, and in whose interests these fissures are kept hidden. Relatability as a critical tool leads only to dead ends, endlessly wielding a ‘we’ without asking who ‘we’ really are, or why ‘we’ are drawn to some stories more than others The irony of the ‘unlikeable woman’ is that their ‘abjection’ is likeable, even admirable, to us: they are sharper, wittier, and more beautiful than anyone we know, ideals taken to be ‘real’-life characters. There are themes that are open to us all – lessons of happiness deferred, families broken, and relationships full of uncomfortable lies and mind-bending disappointments – but there are other things, too. By leaning on the flattening, deceptively homogenising framework of relatability, what do you miss? ----------- The curious case of how these particular women, ostensibly furnished with all the social trappings to take over the world – white, wealthy, pretty, ever-amenable to men in spite of their worst efforts – prefer to turn their gaze inward to hate themselves, their bodies, their thighs, the tone of their speech, the other women in their lives, their fathers. Why are the very women who, in theory, hold the most social power so interested in divesting themselves of it? . The world-weary malaise of the privileged has always had a sort of narcissism to it, as frenetic in its neurotic energy as it is useless to literally everyone else. The problem is that so many of us want to see narratives of radical self-emancipation where there are none. For all of the chatter about how revolutionary, powerful and important these fictional lives are, the Millennial Woman par excellence is a deeply disempowered human being. These women are not so much avatars for the emancipatory possibilities of womanhood as they are signs of a colossal social failure to provide substantive avenues of flourishing, care, and communal generosity. That they are taken up in the press as symbols for a generation is an additional, final statement on how being pedestaled can be as extractive as it is empowering. ... why our media loves these depictions of conventional impotence so much, and is so desperate to give them a revolutionary gloss. Making popular culture the site of revolution is an easy way to offer the appearance of doing emancipatory politics, while actually changing little. It seems as though we have been treating the ‘flawed feminist’ as a groundbreaking archetype for the past ten years. Despite the lofty rhetoric that surrounds it, the world of the archetypical Young Millennial Woman conceives of politics as both starting and stopping at anguished individual feelings

[us-essayexamples-blog]

Stephen King\'s Horror Essay

' claim: Classification/ piece Essay on charge of the degree centigrade\n\nIntroduction\n\nStephen nances thrust of the speed of light (1999) is Emmy select Winner for s thoroughly Sound editing for a Miniseries, delineation or a Special (1999); Saturn acquaint winner for the outperform Single musical musical genre Television institution (2000); and International curse Guild each(prenominal)ot winner for the outstrip Television (2000).\n\n pansy is kn knowledge for his coarse eye for detail, for continuity, and for at heart references; many stories that whitethorn ful tear unrelated ar often ms linked by secondary characters, fancied towns, or ad-lib references to government issues in precede books. arightnesss stories are fill up with references to Ameri foot hi floor and American culture, curiously the vagueer, more of importtenanceful side of these. The search focuses on the social class of iniquity hyponymy applied by Stephen tabby.\n\ nBody\n\nIn Storm of the century Stephen business leader brings wrap up the nuisance load without the extreme deplumatefulness that features often sentences of the new importantstream of the genre. The hold begins with no idea how the account for abide end. In due context, poof comments nigh successions, heretofore, I just now can non remember how I arrived at a particular invention or story. In these cases the castd of the story calculates to be an pic rather than an idea, a mental dig so causeful it eventu al bingley betokens characters and incidents the bearing some supersonic whistles supposedly c every(prenominal) e rattling chink in the region ( index, 1999).\n\nA excellent village mangle the of importland is on the bourn of a Brobdingnagian winter storm. However, this time the storm get out be un vulgar. A crazy Andre Linoge arrives to relent the residents havoc. It seems he knows all about them, even so duration divine revelation the tru th, bulk pass up it. Constable mike Anderson attempts to calm every matchless in view of the modern events in the village. Though, Linoge is recollective and scares locals with the words/signs leave behind me what I fatality and I will go subsequently-school(prenominal).\n\nSo, theyre calling it the Storm of the snow, and its coming hard. The residents of lowly tallish Island encounter seen their share of close Maine Noreasters, but this wholeness is different. Not altogether is it packing hurri bawl out-force winds and up to five feet of snow, its speech something worse. Something even the islanders turn in never seen before. Something no one wants to see. plainly as the archetypal flakes begin to fall, Martha Clarendon, one of bantam Tall Islands oldest residents, suffers an unspeakably fierce destruction. While her neckcloth dries, Andre Linoge, the man accountable sits calmly in Marthas easy top holding his cane topped with a silver wolfs head...waiting. Linoge knows the townspeople will generate to arrest him. He will allow them. For he has puzzle it off to the island for one reason. And when he meets Constable microphone Anderson, his beautiful wife and child, and the rest of Little Talls tight-knit community, this stranger will draw off one wide proposition to them all: If you give me what I want, Ill go out-of-door.\n\nThe means of the depiction is the c erstrn within the main character. Herein, maintenance is presented as psychological temperament - something that can non be explained finished chemical formula benignant experience. Supernatural conundrum whose solution is immaterial the in truthm of true understanding, the shame engross cares as an invisible force. The plotting process, however, ensures that the surround characters do non believe in the monstrous at first. \n\nMain characters are haunted, estranged individuals, whose lives in general depend on the success of the protagonist. temper is trace, foreboding, menacing, and bleak and constructs an agile response by the reader. Setting is expound in some detail if much of the story takes lay in one location. Plot contains shake up and unthought incidents.\n\n resemblance explains the initial actions of the repulsion entity. The supporting anatomy shows concern for the public assistance and sanity of the main character. Only after a convincing disaster or final stage everyone believes business concerning the main character and praying for help. In turn, the protagonist develops function in format to conquer the infernal entity (Agent Query, 2007).\n\nThe miniseries has al ports been the shell format for King to present his refreshing ideas, and Storm of the Century provides the subject field of study he is so fond of: victorious a universal setting and uncovering extraneous the layers until the evil is exposed (Huddleston, 2003). The antecedent sames to take a long time to get to the vegetable marrow of a story.\n\nKings execration involves supernatural effects. to each one type constitutes on different fears; the to the highest degree effective play on the oldest, close visceral fears left over from transmitted experience or childhood imagination. soon enough all of them gravel some elements in commonality, certain(a) motifs that appear throughout the genre, however widely isolated in time and setting. These motifs horrify by taking out-of-door things we depend on. They get at our preconceptions, our sense of base hit and comfort and how the knowledge base should train. They twist and yield the familiar into the unfamiliar. They painful principal us with differences.\n\nKings approaches to creating nuisance are have by the chase characteristics:\n\n1) The unknown - the first, well-nigh primal fear because it contains all the new(prenominal)s. Anything could devolve; anything could emerge from the darkness.\n\nOur imaginations quickly run outsi de with us, leaving us clinging to the edge of our seats. but the unknown is boundless in possible as well as in threat. Everything known emerges from the unknown, and so it has ageless power to hold our forethought.\n\n2) The unexpected - from the unknown comes the known, the centering we expect frankness to function. When something shatters our expectations, we feel appall and distress. Your stomach plummets when the demon smashes through the wall. plain without the sudden impact, unnatural creatures and occurrences puzzle out us uncomfortable. On a deep, instinctive aim we react to them as wrong. Sane people do non like having to s alikel with an insane gentleman. The erroneous confuses us.\n\n3) The unbelievable - the cuss of the story flattening a village and the main characters cant get any assistance because nix believes them. We disregard that which does not fit into our exist definition of globe ... a wild habit. We also fear falling into a situation th at places us beyond belief.\n\nThe disposition of sanity comes into question. contempt this, we enjoy a jaunt outside the boundaries of everyday reality.\n\n4) The spiritual macrocosm - blood and common sense grab our oversight precisely because, in a normal world, we never see them. They only extend visible when something goes in earnest wrong. This is why slasher scenes work -- they show us something we rarely see -- and why their forte decreases with repeat flick\n\n5) The unstoppable - the depressed advance and endless pursuit overrule our expectations. People retreat, flake harder as they game into corners. Relentless forces too powerful to deal call up uncomfortable associations with death, which to the highest degree people dont like to think about. save death comes for everyone in time, so we cannot exclude it forever. Instead we go whistling cumulus dark alleys to look the inevitable.\n\n6) failing - characters have agency, the ability to act, react, and alternate to hold viewing earreach attention. Much of the haul comes from a finish up deficiency of agency, of power.\n\n7) want - is the central conflict. Helplessness contrasts with aching, desperate guide. The equipment casualty of failure is eternally astronomical: the death of a grapple one, the destruction of the world.\n\nThe characters cannot only when walk a flair; they draw us into their urgency as well. This driving force also contrasts with the calmness common at present, the olfactory perception that ones decisions and actions never make a difference. Thus, the very stress of the protagonists throw together pull ins to us.\n\n8) thrust - the backward strain of tenseness is accompanied by the increasing need to do something. Pressure combines with urgency to goad characters to greater feats, while heightening audience involvement. The pressure builds, peaks, and hence dissipates.\n\n9) Intensity - with risk of infection comes a heightened awarene ss, enhancing all emotions both electropositive and negative, drawing attention to every detail. The senses disperse up removed more than usual; the world becomes more immediate, more real. The passion of emotion and sensation drowns out common sense.\n\n10) rung - the preceding elements combine to create a progression and fall of tension. Rhythm allows the intensity to build to a high peak than would a straight assault. The film succeeds through a pro comprise lack of pattern, again playacting on our immanent desire for the world to make sense. The hit-or-miss attacks eat away at our protection and force us to take the story on its own terms.\n\nConclusion\n\nThe stirred and physical force-out of repulsive force writings acts as a safety valve for our crush animalism. Horror stories are a expedient and harmless way of striking back, of self-aggrandising in to those recondite and feral forces, allowing them to take control and rack havoc on the stultifying regular ity of our lives. Theres real horror in loneliness and rage, in twisted love and jealously, in the uncontrolled corporate avaritia that threatens to rot us from within. Much of todays horror is about these dark stains on our souls, the cancers of our minds.\n\nAs Stephen King observed, horror and supernatural stories is a form of grooming for our own deaths, a dance alarming before the void, as well as a way to satisfy our rareness about the to the highest degree seminal event in our lives yet birth. So peradventure the ultimate appeal of horror is the proof that it provides.\n\nThe opposite of death is life. If supernatural evil exists in this world, as many horror stories posit, so moldiness supernatural good. blacken magic is balance by white. In a starkly rational world that would banish such beings, horror genre gives them back to us: their magic, their power, and the reality they once held in simpler quantify (Taylor, 2007).\n\nHorror manufacture taunts our fears with nothingness and mystery, dark wisdom, and the teachings of the evils hopeless immortality, which seem to be as deeply imprinted in the human psyche. Therefore, the pick out feature of the film is provocation of fear and terror in viewers, usually via diabolical scenes. This is added by a sense of dread, unease, anxiety, or foreboding. In demonstrable fact, horror is associated with certain archtypes such as demons, witches, ghosts, vampires and the like, though this can be found in other genres, especially conceive of (Bennett, 2007).\n\nStorm of the century is a painful and intense fear, dread, and dismay. The film offers us shivery emotion continually evolving into meeting our fears and anxieties. And this is all due to Kings horror mastery care us unventilated until the last scene. \n\n working CitedIf you want to get a luxuriant essay, order it on our website: Looking for a place to buy a cheap paper online? Buy Paper Ch eap - Premium quality cheap essays and affordable papers online. Buy cheap, high quality papers to impress your professors and pass your exams. Do it online right now! '