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96percentdone · 5 years

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Oumasai with every number?

WElp. I knew this was coming at some point. Come to think of it I think I’ve done this meme before for oumasai like the whole thing. is it cheap if I just copy paste my answers. eh I’ll see if anything’s different. under the cut!

1. If you had to change the pairing’s very first meeting, how would you change it?

Neither Kiibo nor Akamatsu are there and it’s just a 1 on 1 clash of personalities. Saihara tries prying at Ouma for information and details but Ouma keeps lying and prodding at him for fun. It sets up the rivalry really well and the themes of the game by having them come into direct conflict like this. Also I just feel like we should start with Saihara as the protagonist since Akamatsu as a protagonist gives us nothing except a bait and switch. Like anything else she does could easily be done as an assistant.

2. What song fits your pairing the most?

I’m not good at this sorry. No idea.

3. What is your favorite AU/prompt idea/trope for your pairing?

uhhh right now its the band au I thought of but generally speaking I really like mutual pining and two person love triangles, and Ouma really makes it easy to give me a two-person love triangle, although this ship can do that in other ways. Phantom thief is really good for both of those things but I have since expanded my horizons to More Creative versions of the same two tropes. I just think it suits them.

4. Do you prefer canon ideas or do you have your own headcanons for them?

This is like a weird question because aren’t all headcanons in some essence based on canon. like even headcanons for an au setting are still using characterization from canon in some way. But like I generally like aus more than I like canon fics for v3 because v3 is just....hoo boy. But like all my headcanons and fics are based on analysis I did of canon and what canon told me these characters would be like. So.

5. Favorite canon moment of them?

So my definition of canon might be super picky to some people but it’s basically “content you can’t skip” meaning no ftes, bonus dialogue, etc. So for me that’s...probably right now it’s that bit at the end of chapter 5 where Saihara calls Ouma a friend despite literally everything it makes me sentimental. but I’m also a sucker for the ch4 “when I find someone I like” scene.

6. Least favorite canon moment of them?

This hasn’t changed but it’s still the fuckin “You’re alone and you always will be” line. It’s not in character and it's narratively redundant and ineffective. More on that here.

7. Favorite headcanon trope/idea? (Your own or someone else’s)

the band au I have in mind. I really wanna write it right now but I feel bad because I still have prompts, even though right now I have no prompt ideas and the prospect of them is exhausting. but LISTEN. the band au is gonna be really good I swear.

8. Least favorite headcanon trope/idea?

Excluding pre-game, which isn’t actually real and if you believe pre-game was a real thing in the way shirogane presented it, you have been duped, as well as other fujoshi fan favourites uh...any trope or au that involves ouma being a killer in some way. Like if they put him in the position of killer in a way that doesn’t really justify it based on his canon characterization I just don’t care. It’s cheap writing just for angst and dark vibes.

9. Favorite aspect of them/their relationship dynamics?

Honestly I’m here for the entire dynamic. I’m a real sucker for characters that are foils that encourage growth and development in the other through one way or another. I honestly wrote about this much better in other posts, including the one I linked to, and its one in the morning, but yeah. I really just like what canon provided me as a whole, and I love how they play off each other by representing the opposite of what the other stands for down to their cores.

10. Least favorite aspect of them/their relationship dynamics? (Can be headcannon)

pre-game isn’t fucking real it is a LIE by shirogane stop talking about it. Actually kinda like in my komahina answer, I feel like ouma’s character arc was really well resolved, and like way better than Komaeda’s, but I feel like his arc as an antagonist with conflict wasn’t. He was just killed off and then Shirogane came in with her 100000 lies for chapter 6 and derailed everything in Kodaka’s attempt to be clever. “See I’m showcasing the themes by having everything shirogane says be a mix of truth and lies, and be saying something thematically different, because I’m being really clever and lying about the themes at the last second.” it’s dumb.

Unfortunately unlike with Komaeda there’s no easy way to fix this without trashing Kodaka’s chapter 6 as a whole, which also means throwing out everything that was building up to it because its the core of the game. I’d like for there to be a version of v3 where Ouma is truly confronted with him being wrong instead of it just kinda happening offscreen in an implied manner and never talked about again.

Saihara’s monologue in the epilogue has like a compromise of both their views, which I actually think is a good one and a thematic resolution to his character arc as well as the game, but it really kinda sucks the character that represents the other half of that didn’t get to see or realize that in his own right. It’s kinda lopsided.

11. If they aren’t a canon pairing, how would you get them together?

Ya kinda can’t in canon because of everything you’d need some serious canon div and even then it would be a post canon slow burn. Because they both would have to get past their issues in canon and only then can they really get closer and be together.

12. If you had to take them and plunk them into another fandom, what fandom would that be? Why?

last time I went with ace attorney, and i’m probably not gonna top that au I invented on the fly, but my ideal au for any given series is “how can I make this higurashi.” the answer is higurashi. one day I’ll finish writing that ask about it.

13. How hard is it write/draw your pairing? Scale of 1-10.

eh it’s not very hard I’d go with like a 2-3.

14. Is there a pairing that you think rivals them?

For me, not really. It’s the most compelling dynamic written in dr as a whole, and I have a lot of fun exploring other ships, especially wlw ones, but this one is still canonically the most interesting.

15. Which character of the pairing do you like more? (Would you ever pair yourself with them?)

It flips but rn Saihara

16. Which character of your pairing would be the one to break up with the other? Why?

Ouma because he’s the kinda dipshit who’d bottle up his emotions and then decide instead of talking about anything he’s worried about he’ll just break up but he won't mean it. and it’ll be really messy but I think Saihar’s intuitive enough to be able to push through that.

17. Are they relatable as characters or as a pairing?

See my last remark reminds me very much of my own literal actual relationship so I’m gonna say pairing.

18. Did you once/ever dislike one/both of them?

I didn’t like Ouma before the game came out because everyone else loved him for no reason. I changed my mind. I always liked Saihara though.

19. On an estimate, how many posts have you made about them?

idk. 100? maybe?

20. What made you decide to ship them?

Canon gave me a lot of material but I was in the moment I knew Ouma was canonically gay for Saihara, which I learned like before everything else.

21. Favorite genre for them? (Angst, fluff, etc.)

I like fluff man. I’m a fluff guy. I’ll take some angst but I need happy endings.

#oumasai #saiouma #ousai #saiou #my meta #anonymous #hope.txt

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dylanjonferguson-blog · 5 years

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S01E07: “Target For Terror”: Dichromatism

Our misty, videotaped dreams of the un-human Hobo as an actor of radical freedom may have been premature, if not delusional. The dog's narrow focus on interpersonal justice leaves no room for ideology, politics, or other forest-over-trees considerations. “Target For Terror,” the seventh episode of TLH, is a mix of menace, moral clarity, and naiveté that mimics a dog’s worldview, but draws uneasy parallels with our own.

The fairly fantastic characters of “Target For Terror” literally leap from the headlines. The first thing we see is the bold, 72-point pronouncement at the top of a broadsheet, filling the screen: "TERRORISTS MAKE MORE DEMANDS." The unidentified newspaper reader then folds down the page, which, like an upside-down opera curtain, has the effect of revealing our human hero. Paul Hamilton – young man, snub-nose, Lego-hair, jacket-collar popped, flared pants swishing – is striding confidently into a train station. Following closely behind are two sketchy characters, who we immediately surmise are the terrorists. It is as if the dramatic headline conjured these players, or as if we have passed through the headline, into the world of ALL-CAPS anxiety, entering the fear-soaked deathscape of broadsheet news.

Briefly now, let’s jump ahead to an almost unaccountably strange moment that occurs halfway through the episode. One terrorist walks in on the other, who is perusing a thick paperback, and tells him to “Stop reading that junk!" Why were we invited to this moment? The title of the book, unfortunately can't be glimpsed. The only part of the cover we can see in an element in the lower left-hand corner: a swastika! Is it a book about Nazism? Are we being told that the terrorists are Nazis? Or that they're anti-fascists who consider Nazism "junk"? Perhaps it's a red herring to focus on that graphic detail. But surely there's a reason the one terrorist is chastised for reading a book.

I think it has to do with the newspaper headline at the start, which introduced our setting as a reductive and fearful world. Being in the world of a panicked newspaper means rejecting the world of books, which would include depths of context and greater stores of information, reasoning, empathy. Even the terrorists reject any intrusion from that world, which is foreign to the territory of the tale.

A dog must naturally see the world as tense and simple, but we are coached that way by broadsheet profiteers. And those who manipulate their message.

Paul Hamilton is a kind and rich fellow. The terrorists want to kill or capture him as part of an obscure plot to get at the boy's grandfather, Chief Justice Hamilton, played by John Carradine. Carradine, very old at this point, sometimes struggles with his delivery, but still has a large, theatrical presence, and beautifully gnarled, expressive hands that cling to fine lapels in his opulent office, which is replete with mahogany furnishings and a deep, patterned carpet that no doubt hides expensive Cuban ash. The camera films that office with a certain staid reverence: we’re not to scoff at this man, we’re to see his perspective as right and proper. The terrorists, in comparison, have weird, strained faces, natty clothes, and awkwardly-carved facial hair (one is played by the great Cronenberg regular Geva Kovacs). The dog – named Nick, this time around – saves Paul in the train station, but Chief Justice Hamilton warns his grandson that the rugged schemers are still out there. Now that the terrorists have spooked their prey, they take another line of attack. By successfully kidnapping Paul’s fiancée, Pam, they force the groom-to-be to come out to a remote hotel in the country, where he too is kidnapped.

“We have a cause,” the terrorist tells Paul, warning him not to try any funny stuff. “We live for it, and we’re willing to die for it.” But what this cause might be is, glaringly, never even hinted at.

In the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, US intelligence officials initially concluded that Syria was behind the attack, as retaliation for America’s downing of an Iranian passenger jet earlier that year. President Reagan, however, shifted the blame to Libya’s President Gaddafi, who was a more convenient villain (and happy to play along, to boost his anti-American cred). The U.S. president-cum-actor even participated in the creation of a neo-conservative conspiracy theory that had Gaddafi and Carlos the Jackal heading a deranged hit-squad hellbent on assassinating Reagan. A similar form of narrative alchemy happened in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, when the Bush administration shifted the story to point blame at the unconnected Saddam Hussein, even though almost all the attackers were Saudis. The point is that American government ideologues seem to kind of like terrorists because, unlike a state army, their origins and motives often seem unclear, and so can be manipulated in the public mind. Obviously, anyone willing to kill and die for a cause has strong beliefs, but American governments would rather obscure the meaning, or even existence, of a cause. We can all remember George W. Bush nonsensically asserting that the terrorists simply “hate our freedoms.”

This matters, because our films tend to reflect, intentionally or not, the false storylines being peddled. At the height of the Bush-era terrorism panic, The Dark Knight was released, starring a Bush/Blair-style Batman battling an anti-ideology lunatic who just wanted to “watch the world burn.” Why? Oh, no reason. Terrorists, we’ve been counterintuitively led to believe by state propaganda, don’t really need a reason. Apparently they just want to fuck shit up (or “maximize chaos” to use the ridiculous description of Nazi motives peddled by Jordan Peterson). It’s clear why we’re fed this lie. Obfuscating the position and ultimate aims of the terrorists makes their actions seem mad, and any opposing actions seem justified.

With both Pam and Paul captive to the villains, it’s up to the dog Nick to save them. And here we’re introduced to the episode’s most sympathetic character: Osborne, the meek, bespectacled man who runs the dilapidated country inn where the criminal action is happening. Unlike Paul, Osborne is not aligned with state ideology; he’s motivated by narrow, everyday concerns, like ensuring no dogs loiter on his property. We’re clearly meant to identify with Osborne: when Nick sprays the hotelier with a water hose, to get his attention, the water is first sprayed directly on the camera lens, at us.

Nick rouses the non-ideologic self-interested character to the defense of one political side. However, he does this not by appealing to ideology, but by threatening the comfort of the passive actor. This is reminiscent of how the newspaper is always declaring our comfort to be under threat. The sleight is possible, since the terrorists’ positions have been strategically re-written so that it appears that threatening stability is a goal unto itself, rather than a means to an end.

The Hobo is of course not actually acting in defense of state ideology, but his narrow focus on context-free morality (and waking up the non-ideological actor with his moral concerns) can be exploited to that end.

The dog comes from a third world, not of power or of resistance, but the world of the woods. Among the trees, living as an animal, there are only immediate concerns, so of course he can’t see the greater context of his actions. But at times, this can also be an advantage, for him. When the terrorists chase Nick, he leads them off into the trees, and there they become hopelessly lost. In the woods, among individual trunks, their ideology can't follow, so they're easily duped.

Osborne has a “No Dogs Allowed” sign on his property. By forbidding dogs, Osborne wishes to keep the wildness of apolitical moral action at bay (the forest, after all, is cut down a safe distance from his beloved lawn). And yet, even though he appears unaligned, Osborne’s cherished obsession with self-concern is policed by the channels and apparatuses of the state (which are nourished by a particular ideology, though he doesn't see it).

The wildness of the dog's morality runs outside of these channels. And yet, it is the dog, the apparently-radical actor, that draws Osborne's actions to a political side, for it is a roused Osborne who eventually unties and frees the kidnapped couple.

Here we see the dangers of radical actions being co-opted to state ends, if the actions don't have their own, competing ideological compass.

This is why Osborne changes his sign at the end, crossing out the “No,” so it says simply “Dogs Allowed.” Since the moral-ideological motivation of the terrorists has been successfully hidden from him, and his own morality has been manipulated to be indistinguishable from self-interest, he is now able to see morality, state ideology, and his own comfort as compatible, and indeed mutually-reinforcing.

The freed Paul Hamilton says he wants to make the dog his “best man.” Nick has been granted humanity because he is perceived to have collaborated with the correct (state) ideology.

The Hobo naturally flees this.

2 stars

#dogs #thelittlesthobo #littlesthobo #canadiantv #terrorism #vintagetv #politics

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unicornmagic · 7 years

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After last night's S02E08 debacle I went on AO3 to find there is very little S2 fic and exactly FOUR (4) Ani/Ray fics in existence. There is slightly more Frank/Ray (of course. Of course there is). Fandom!! You really drop the ball sometimes when it comes to the het I want to see in the world.

This genre is well out of my wheelhouse and I'd be pants at writing it but WHERE IS THE FIX-IT GDI

Spoilers ho

Idk why I let myself be duped into believing for even .05 seconds in the possibility of a happi endo for Ray and Ani--or even just, yanno, Ray making it out alive--but seriously? I was sure Frank would bite it, and after Sad Closeted Gay Dad* suddenly bit it, I really thought that death + Frank's might be enough blood to sate the wolves of this Dark 'n' Gritty narrative--BUT NO. NO. The moral of the story is "masculinity will fucking kill you"? "Trying to be a dad will fucking kill you"? The whole story was all daddy issues all the time, but not in a fun way.

Anyway, I was on board with Ani and Ray getting together as foreshadowed, even under the DARK CLOUD OF UNRELENTING GRIMNESS, because by the end they are two against the world who have been through life-or-death shit together, "saved each other's lives" precisely as stated, etc. etc. As far as Ray's shitty "my first wife got raped" backstory is concerned, well, Ani is a woman who is more likely to cut a rapist's balls off, shoot the fuck out of him, or bleed out before that happens to her (again), and as far as Ani's incredibly shitty "got molested as a child by some hippie pedo" backstory is concerned, Ray is a dude who has proved himself 100% safe & consenty by not agreeing to sex she tried to initiate when she was high. Not to mention that after he shaved off the pornstache, Colin Farrell was looking plenty doable. Together they fight crime!! (or grittily hopelessly try to, despite CORRUPTION, CORRUPTION EVERYWHERE). So my feeling about that was "get it, gurl," and Ani did, and for .05 seconds I thought they might both live to escape to Mexico together, even if literally every other character had to die to make it happen lmao--BUT NO.

And what kind of bullshit tragic flaw is "wanted to see own kid one last time"? It's not that I don't think Ray would've done it, but at that point in his character arc I felt he could've just as easily not done it--that it wasn't in fact inevitable that he would take that exit, and therefore the choice to have him do it and get gunned down in a scenic redwood grove--AS THE PROPHECY FORETOLD**--by the physical embodiment of unkillable Corruption (TM) was an authorial choice in favor of UNRELENTING GRIMNESS. Miss me with that shit, honestly. (Also, WHY GET IN THE CAR??? WITH THE TRACKER ON IT??? Seriously, Ray, you couldn't shoot the fucking thing off? Or at least disable it? Try to escape on foot? Run, hide, hotwire or hijack another car? I suppose he was trying to avoid collateral damage, but ugh.)

The wimmins getting shuffled off to weep and have babies while the menz do man things and get themselves killed was bullshit, obviously. When Ani got to save Ray from the shootout with Lenny & co. I had hopes the show would do better...BUT NO.

* Bury Your Gays bullshit. Fuck you, show

** "Lol, surely the weird dad dream prophecy will get averted, right? They wouldn't just straight-up have him die getting chased by a bunch of dudes in the woods, right?? RIGHT??????"

Tl;dr there is A LOT TO BE FIXED HERE lmao

#sad pornstache disaster dad #and stabby lady cop #together they fight crime #reader I shipped it #true detective

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