#that created him and it’s basically like his friends acknowledge his personhood but in the eyes of the law and ocp he has no rights because | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

captaintoomanybattles · 2 years

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I think you're misreading what Tony Stark meant when he called Wanda "a weapon of mass destruction". He's not talking about how he personaly sees her, but about how most of the world and the officials who would be in charge of granting her a visa were most likely seeing her.

He "locked her up" in the compound both because, yes, he was afraid she would lost control again, hurt people and aggravate her case, but also because he didn't want her to have to deal with people's hate due to recent events. And yes, he should have talked to her first. I don't know how well they were getting along at that point, but I've got the feeling he did came to care for her a bit and was genuine when he said he was trying to protect her. Maybe because I don't automatically assume the worst of him? Having spend his whole life at the mercy of the public opinion (and likely having had to deal with his fair share of slander) he was realistic and knew that, considering she had "proven" to the world that she could bee dangerous even when she wasn't trying to be, her chance of obtaining a visa were close or equal to zero at that point.

To summarize: she was a "weapon of mass destruction" in the public's eyes, not necessarly in his. And I think if you truly believe he was talking about his view of her, you don't get his character at all, sorry I personnaly don't think canon support this interpretation all that well.

Hi there! Anon is referring to this post. Maybe “incapable of seeing the humanity of anyone like him” was a little hyperbolic, so I’ll try to explain what I mean in more detail. I’m going to put this under the cut because this is going to get long.

So, my interpretation of Tony isn't based on that one line; rather, I thought that line was a good microcosm of an attitude we see from Tony throughout several movies, which is basically that his goals are more important than just about anyone else, and when someone gets in his way, he’s very good at sort of... locking down any sense of compassion or empathy for them.

Before I go any further, I do want to acknowledge, (A) that the MCU doesn't necessarily maintain good character consistency through all the movies, and (B) it's been awhile since I watched CW, so I don't remember all the details about it (I hadn't actually remembered that line until I saw the gif and thought it was an interesting comparison). I bring up the character consistency thing because, tbh, I thought CW was out of character for almost everyone at one point or another, so I don't consider it the be-all end-all for any of the characters' interpretations.

With that out of the way, let's talk about Tony’s character. The thing is, I do think he's well-meaning. He wants to save people, he wants to do good. That's why he takes on the Iron Man mantle, that's even why he creates Ultron. However, I also think he has a hard time seeing other people, and especially people who are different from him or outside his immediate family circle, as fully realized individuals with feelings, goals, and lives that are just as important as his. And when he comes into conflict with someone, I think it’s very easy for him to treat them as less-than, or even expendable.

So, in Civil War, Tony recognizes that people are afraid of Wanda because of her powers. But rather than trying to defend her, he locks her up and enlists Vision to keep her on house arrest indefinitely. It’s not just that he should have talked to her first-- why was his first solution that she needed to be imprisoned? I don’t think Tony intends to be cruel here, but I think his instincts in this situation speak volumes about how he views Wanda-- not as a kid to be protected, not as a friend to be supported, but as a problem to be solved, a danger to be averted. Her autonomy and personhood are sacrifices he’s willing to make in order to appease Ross. (And to comply with the Accords, but he had to have known that this was a potential outcome of signing the Accords-- he’s not stupid.)

We see the same thing again with Peter-- Tony believes he needs more support to fight Steve’s team, so he flies to New York, blackmails a 15-year-old into coming with him to fight adult superheroes (one of whom Tony (presumably) thinks is a dangerous mass-murderer who just bombed a building full of civilians) on foreign soil, lies to Peter’s guardian about where they’re going, and puts Peter on the radar of anyone who is trying to enforce the Accords. (This doesn’t become a plot point, obviously, but... Peter is an enhanced vigilante who didn’t sign the Accords. Tony’s actions could easily have landed him in the Raft). Again, he doesn’t look at Peter and see a kid, or even an equal-- he sees someone he can manipulate into fighting for him, so he can win.

That stays true in Spiderman: Homecoming, as well-- Tony gives Peter stuff and then ignores him, waits for Peter to mess up and then yells at him, doesn’t tell him anything or support him in any way, but expects Peter to somehow intuit what Tony wants from him. Again, he doesn’t treat him like either a kid or an equal, but as a tool he can drop when not in use.

But coming back to Civil War, I also think that Tony never treats the Accords with the seriousness they deserve, and I believe that comes from his place of privilege, and his unwillingness to empathize with opposing points of view. His guilt and what he sees as atonement are more important than the consequences the Accords will have on his teammates. (I also think it’s worth noting that it seems like he maybe doesn’t feel particularly guilty about Sokovia UNTIL that woman confronts him and makes it personal-- but it’s at the start of the movie, so who knows, maybe he’s been stewing about it the whole time).

As Iron Man, he can always take off his suit if he wants-- and he had already eased out of the Avengers at the end of Ultron, so he wouldn’t even lose that much by it. But Wanda, Steve, and Bruce don’t have that luxury. Simply to exist outside of the Accords puts them at constant risk of imprisonment. (Obviously Bruce isn’t in CW, but Ross makes it clear that if/when they find Bruce, he will be considered a weapon). This is something that Tony doesn’t even attempt to understand-- he seems to think they’re all in the same boat, when in reality, he has a degree of privilege that his teammates can never access. And of course, once the shit hits the fan, Tony breaks the Accords anyway-- which he can do with pretty much no consequences, because at the end of the day, he’s rich, white, and an unenhanced human.

And of course, he ends up choosing to fight his friends rather than actually listen what they have to say, because he’s impatient and again, he doesn’t seem willing to understand that the consequences the Accords will have on Steve, Wanda, and Sam (as a non-wealthy Black man) are far greater than the impact they’ll have on himself. He knows that they’ll likely be locked up in the Raft; he knows the chances of Wanda, especially, ever being released are minimal, and he knows that Bucky will not receive any sort of fair trial or legal representation. But he doesn’t care, because he made a deal with Ross and that’s more important. Now, I’m sure he sees this as saving their lives, because Ross was willing to kill them-- but he again is imposing his vision of how he wants things to be, rather than stopping to learn the other side of the story, or empathizing with the others’ point of view.

I believe he shows a lack of respect/empathy/compassion for others to some degree in the Iron Man movies, as well, particularly the first one. It’s been a while since I watched any of the IM movies, but if I remember correctly, he frequently demeans and objectifies the women he sleeps with, making a show of not remembering their names after they’ve slept with him. Now, it’s understandable to forget people’s names-- but he seems to take pride in not remembering the women he’s slept with, in reducing them to basically a notch on his bedpost. In Iron Man 1, it takes him meeting Yinsen before he cares at all about the Middle Eastern civilians his weapons have destroyed-- up until then, he was proud of being “Merchant of Death”, and apparently never cared or thought to wonder about who his weapons were being used on. His attitude didn’t change until it became personal. This isn’t exactly the same as his treatment of Wanda, but to me it again shows that he just has a difficult time empathizing with or having compassion for people that he’s decided are “Other”.

Then we have Endgame. In Endgame, the most logical way to "fix" the Snap would be to undo the last five years. Five years of suffering, of people dying due to events caused by the Snap, the displacement of the people who come back from being Snapped and find everything changed, their homes gone, families torn apart, the infrastructure of the changed world incapable of supporting the sudden population influx... all of that could have been avoided by setting the world back to how it was before the Snap. But that was unacceptable to Tony, because then he'd lose his daughter.* The fact that he had found happiness with his immediate family meant more to him than the suffering of the entire rest of the world.

* This isn’t to say I think he should have sacrificed his daughter. To be honest, I don’t see why he couldn’t have had Bruce return everyone else to their pre-Snap state but keep Tony, Morgan, and Pepper as they were, but... Endgame was kind of a mess anyway.

Okay, this was very long and rambling. I want to reiterate that I don’t hate Tony. I think he’s an interesting character, and I enjoy writing him in fanfic (although I generally write him as being more compassionate than I think he is in canon). I also want to acknowledge that he is certainly capable of great self sacrifice. But I think he tends to see the world from a very me vs. them mentality, which leads to problems. He’s not incapable of empathizing with/acting compassionately towards others, but he often chooses not to.

Thanks for the ask, anon, and I hope this all makes sense!

#asks #discourse #t0ny stark #i should also probably mention that civil war was the first marvel movie i saw all the way through #(i had seen the first half of thor and iron man 2 before that)#so that definitely colors my interpretation of him #for better or worse

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abigailnussbaum · 4 years

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Infinity Train, S1-3

Infinity Train is a Cartoon Network animated series (now transferred to HBO Max) that premiered last year. Three seasons, each made up of ten 10-minute episodes, have aired, so you can watch the whole thing in an afternoon. The premise is quite familiar - the titular train picks up passengers (mostly, though not always, children) who are at some kind of crossroads in their lives. As they traverse cars filled with challenges, puzzles, dangers, and sometimes just nifty environments to explore, the passengers work through whatever issue brought them on to the train. Their progress towards wellness is reflected in a number that appears on their hand, and when the number drops to zero a vortex appears and returns them to their home. The train also contains native inhabitants, usually referred to as “denizens”, who sometimes help the passengers, sometimes hinder them, and are often just going about their own lives.

Like I said, the sort of premise familiar from many children’s stories, in which a character who is struggling with some important challenge or milestone is whisked off to a fantasy setting that just happens to have been tailored to help them work through their problems. The execution is pretty fantastic, with both the writing and animation striking a compelling mixture of humor and emotional depth. The train itself is a wonderful creation, vast and often surreal or even phantasmagorical, and the denizens are quirky and winning in their own right, not just as reflections of the passengers’ needs. The show also features an absolutely stacked voice cast, with guest appearances from Kate Mulgrew, Bradley Whitford, Ernie Hudson, Lena Headey, and many others.

But what I find fascinating about Infinity Train is how, almost from the first episode, it sets to work examining the core assumptions of its story template, chiefly the idea that the train is helping people, and that its kind of help is effective and positive. As someone who grew up on stories like Infinity Train and didn’t question their premise until I got older, it’s fun to watch a show that leans right into those inherent problems.

The first season of Infinity Train tells its story pretty straight. Our protagonist is Tulip, a tween who is struggling with her parents’ recent divorce. When a scheduling snafu between them leaves Tulip unable to get to a youth coding camp she’d been dreaming of, she impulsively runs away from home, and ends up being picked up by the train. There, she’s quickly joined by a royal corgi called Atticus, and a scatterbrained robot called One-One, who try to help her in her journey towards the train’s engine. Along the way, the trio are menaced by a sinister, semi-robotic figure who is destroying the environments in the train’s cars, and who seems to be fixated on One-One.

Even in this fairly basic spin on the story, a few reservations crop up: first, Tulip doesn’t actually have a real problem. Yes, her parents’ divorce has put a strain on her, but she still seems fairly well-adjusted - she has friends and interests and, apart from the ill-advised decision to run away, doesn’t seem to be acting out in dangerous ways. The things she learns over the course of her journey through the train - to face up to the hurt that her family’s breakdown has caused her, to admit that her parents’ marriage wasn’t perfect, to realize that their divorce wasn’t her fault, to ask for help when she needs it - are probably things she would have figured out as she gained some distance from the trauma of the divorce (or, for that matter, that any halfway-decent child psychologist would have helped her realize). It’s hard to justify a cosmic interference in her life, much less one that puts her in mortal danger, as the journey up the Infinity Train often does

And sure, this is a children’s adventure story, so it’s far more compelling to watch the child protagonist struggle with real danger (that is always avoided at the last possible minute) than attend a therapy session. Even if, as adult viewers, we might see the whole thing as unjustifiably risky. But the thing is, Tulip herself very quickly expresses resentment towards the train. When she realizes that the number on her hand drops when she does something healthy and good, Tulip’s reaction is anger, and for a while she refuses to cooperate with the system, covering her hand and refusing to consider how her actions are affecting her number. Even within the children’s adventure template, the child protagonist says what most of us would feel in her situation - that being kidnapped and made to jump through hoops for the sake of some seemingly arbitrary, numerical value of “wellness” is high-handed and manipulative, and encourages hostility and suspicion, rather than participation in the train’s system.

Ultimately, Tulip goes back to playing along with the train’s scheme and benefits from it. She gets her number down to zero fairly quickly, and gets to go back home. But along the way she also solves the mystery of the train’s mysterious villain, who turns out to be another passenger, Amelia, who was picked up by the train after the death of her husband. Instead of letting the train walk her through her grief and learn to accept it, Amelia tried to take over the train and use its reality-bending capabilities to recreate her lost husband. Along the way she’s committed so many acts of abuse and mayhem that her number has extended all the way to her neck. So even once Tulip talks her down and convinces her to stop hurting people, they both acknowledge that she’s never going to get off the train (oh, and by the way, the journey on the train happens in real time, so Amelia is now an old woman).

Now, it should be obvious that Amelia’s problem was significantly more complex and fraught than Tulip’s, and rather than helping her, the train gave her a venue to indulge her grief to anti-social, even psychotic extremes. So at the end of the first season, we’ve encountered two passengers. One who benefitted from the train’s system (after some initial hostility) but who also probably didn’t need its help that badly. And one who did need serious help, but instead got an opportuntity to screw her life up even more than it already was, and probably irrevocably. Not a great track record, in other words.

The second season mixes things up a bit by making its protagonist a train denizen, and giving us a behind the scenes look at the train’s community when the passengers aren’t there. MT (or: Mirror Tulip) is a character first encountered in the first season, whom Tulip helped to escape from the mirror world. She’s being pursued by mirror cops who want to destroy her, and in the process of evading them, she comes across a passenger, Jesse, and decides to help him get his number down so that she can piggyback on his exit and evade her pursuers. Jesse initially seems like he doesn’t belong on the train - he’s almost preternaturally friendly and happy-go-lucky. But it’s eventually revealed that his willingness to go along and get along is fairly indiscriminate, and leaves him prey to stronger personalities, as when he tolerates and even enables the violent bullying of his younger brother.

It’s a thornier problem than Tulip’s, not least for making it harder to sympathize with Jesse. But it’s also one that exposes the train system’s flaws, as Jesse is so passive that he doesn’t even try to move through cars and get his number down until MT lights a fire under him. And that, in turn, triggers MT’s own identity crisis, as she begins to wonder whether she has a right to exist as her own person, or whether her entire purpose is to reflect Tulip or help passengers.

That tension comes to a head when Jesse and MT encounter the Apex, a group of child passengers, led by teenagers Grace and Simon. The Apex have come up with a theory of the train’s nature that runs completely counter to its actual purpose - they believe the train is their reward, and that the system trying to bring their number down and send them back is cheating them. They strive to get their number as high as possible by committing acts of violence against the train’s denizens, whom they dub “nulls” - not real people, incapable of feeling pain.

Because S2 has been told from MT’s perspective, we know that the Apex are wrong about her and the other denizens (and in general, it’s not a good sign when someone says “this being, which exhibits all the signs of personhood and feeling, is actually not real, and is only shamming a form of suffering while feeling nothing”). But at the same time, it has to be acknowledged that this is an entirely plausible conclusion to draw from the evidence at hand. The train exists for the passeners. It has created environments and beings whose sole purpose is to interact with and affect the passengers. Why should those beings be real? Which is yet another failure point of the train’s system, because as both Tulip and Jesse’s stories show, developing connections with denizens is what spurs passengers to travel up the train and get better. The Apex have therefore interpreted the train’s system in a way that can only accomplish the exact opposite of what it was designed to do.

The show returns to Grace and Simon in its third season, in which we learn more about their history and their understanding of the train. We learn, for example, that Simon’s hostility towards denizens was sparked when the one who befriended him (The Cat, a character who appears in each of the show’s seasons) left him when they found themselves in a dangerous situation. And we learn that the Apex worship Amelia (whom they view as the train’s true conductor) and believe that the current system is a corruption of the one she intended, in which the passengers get to enjoy the train for as long as they like. In yet another demonstration of how open the train’s system is to misinterpretation, the Apex warn their new members that if they let their number get down to zero, they will “disappear”. Which is the same reaction Tulip had when she first witnessed another passenger departing, and, again, a thoroughly logical conclusion to reach given the evidence.

The season’s story involves Grace and Simon being separated from the rest of the Apex, and, in their attempts to get back to them, picking up a young passenger, Hazel, whom they try to initiate into their understanding of the train. The two teens’ interactions with Hazel shed light on the crucial difference between them. While Grace genuinely cares about the kids she’s gathered and sees herself as their protector, Simon only teaches Hazel about the train because he wants converts to his worldview, and validation for his anger at the Cat and other denizens. Once separated from the Apex and their regular schedule of destruction, Grace’s care for Hazel causes her number to go down, all the more so when she discovers that Hazel is really a denizen, and lies to Simon about it to protect her. Simon, meanwhile, only sinks further into his anger and resentment, and when he discovers Grace’s lie he sees it as a betrayal of everything they stand for. The conflict between them ultimately leads to a confrontation in which Simon is killed, while Grace reveals to the Apex that their conclusions about the train and its denizens were wrong, and that they need to come up with a new system.

So, to sum up, the Infinity Train:

Kidnaps people whom it perceives as being in need of help and holds them, sometimes for years or decades, until they achieve a predetermined threshold of wellness.

Advances this goal through a system of rewards and punishments that is so transparently manipulative, it alienates basically everyone who engages with it except the guy whose problem was being pathologically passive.

Relies for the success of this system on a community of denizens who haven’t signed on to it and who are often unsuited to the task of shepherding others towards growth.

Is so open to misinterpretation that a large chunk of the train’s passengers take the exact opposite message from it that they were meant to, which leads them to behavior that could put them permanently beyond being able to leave the train.

Sometimes kills people.

I’m pretty sure most of this is stuff I’m meant to be taking away from the show, but I also wonder how far Infinity Train is willing, or able, to take this idea. The open ending of S3, in which Grace, though headed in the right direction number-wise, is still nowhere near being able to leave the train, and also more focused on remaking the Apex into something more constructive, suggests that future seasons will get further into the question of whether the train can be reformed or made more productive. Or, conversely, the show could abandon its original premise and just become a story about the train, and the community of passengers and denizens that develops on it. I wonder, though, how much you can push against the inherent limitations of this premise - when you’ve got a story where getting better and more well-adjusted causes you to be forcibly ejected from the story, where does that leave you as far as plot progression and character development are concerned? There’s an inherent conflict to a world that is designed for a specific character (or group of characters). Infinity Train is fascinating for how it leans into that conflict, and I’m very curious to see how it handles its core contradiction going forward.

#infinity train

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very-grownup · 3 years

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THE YEAR IS 2020 AND I WATCHED NEON GENESIS EVANGELION FOR THE FIRST TIME, PART 13

Episode 25.

I spend twenty minutes after the episode ends trying to articulate what I think happened to my friends, gesticulating wildly.

The episode starts with a condensed version of the last upsetting bits of the previous episode and thus sets the ground for my difficulty in expressing my thoughts on it because of the imperfect intersection of linear narrative and metaphorical examination of selfhood. I've been trying to follow the show as a narrative, even as things dissolve, but here everything just goes STOP NO CONTEXT JUST IDEA AND INTERNAL INTERROGATION which I think I follow but I have difficulty following WHILE ALSO thinking about giant robots.

Something bad happened after the events of the last episode and maybe in the overall narrative structure that's all that matters? I guess this episode is about the question of what the end goals of all the barely understood players are vis-à-vis humanity through Shinji et al.

How can we be our fullest self? What and who informs who that self is? The passive approach, as seen in Shinji, isn't it. You cannot only do what you are directly told to do and you can't intuit what other people want you to do as unspoken directions.

The isolationist approach, as seen in Asuka, isn't it, either. Trying to act and live above and without human connections or direction has made her sense of self the most fragile. She's just a shell projecting an ideal around a core of hatred.

Misato is there as, perhaps, the end result of trying to live life like Shinji into adulthood (the result of Asuka's approach is evident because she's shattered), a projected false self created to fulfill the outside expectations of others while the inner self gets lost.

Rei I feel is the one who is closest to having it 'right' insomuch as there can be a right way to be a human being (and perhaps part of what Evangelion and its characters are grappling with is that there isn't or if there is, it's not a simple thing). She recognizes that who Rei is is shaped by Rei's interactions with other people and the passage of time and I think that Rei 3's apparent rejection or turn on Gendo's influence is because she knows that's not the entirety of it. Everyone is confronted to some degree by the fact that the version of themselves seen by other people is flawed but in Rei's case she's able to know it in a profound way because she is aware of the previous Reis and their memories but also of herself as distinct from them. So Shinji knows her but he doesn't Know Her and much of what Rei knows of others is removed, the Rei deaths and recreations putting a barrier between a direct human connection. The human connection is key but perhaps the degree to which so much of it is abstracted in Rei is why she isn't fully emotionally engaged as a person, even when her understanding of personhood is so much fuller than the others. No human connection leads to Asuka: fragile and quickly destroyed. Shinji recognizes the importance of the human connection, maybe, but fails to enact the how and in its place he has the projections of what he thinks other people want guiding him.

The people in our hearts aren't real people but just manifestations of our self speaking through puppets that look like people we know and can't substitute for human connection and create a similarly false self for the benefit of the false people projections (Misato).

Shinji's fear of being hurt by human connections results in his inability to make human connections and his holding himself up to the standards of imagined human connections which are unsatisfying and disappointing to everyone, including him.

Gendo's Human Instrumentality Project seems to be about recognizing the need for human connections, specifically individuals filling needs for each other that cannot be filled by the individual alone, both for the pursuit of fulfilling the need to find the true self but also taking humanity beyond humanity. I think it's because Gendo has sublimated his grief and sense of loss with respect to his wife into viewing the ability of individuals to obtain fulfillment and then lose it as a weakness that can be overcome.

If all of humanity loses its individuality and turns into the orange tang all humans are always complete and cannot be made incomplete by losing part of themselves. This is too much connection and gross, indistinguishable. What is the point of this if there is no individual?

Right now it looks like all approaches are imperfect and lead to failure, certainly in the context of Evangelion and these characters.

Visually everything is very cool in this episode even though the budget limitations are obvious. The work arounds are creative and inform the substance of what's being said, I think? There's distortion and dissolving and isolated figures on foldout chairs under spotlights.

My favourite thing is how the false characters, the characters talking to the real characters in the chair, are clearly drawn differently, badly, off model. Something is done to indicate their lack of realness, especially the false Shinji in Misato's heart.

I'm sorry if this commentary has become increasingly boring, I'm sorry if I'm doing or talking about Evangelion wrong or badly or pointlessly. I've really enjoyed it. This concludes my report on the penultimate episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The final episode behind the cut.

Episode 26.

I appreciate the honesty of opening the episode with text that basically announces "look we don't have the time to explain everything so we're just going to explain it as it pertains to this microcosm called Shinji". It's a very clever/honest sort of meta acknowledgement of MAN THE BUDGET OOPS but I feel it's also in a way of framing the psychological aspect of the narrative as something that is not unique to Shinji but Shinji is merely the lens through which something more universal is viewed.

The episode seems to be divided into four distinct sections. The first bit is a ramped up version of the meditative internal discussions that have become increasingly frequent during the series. Interrogation by on screen text asking questions like are you happy, why aren't you happy, what do you want, why do you want this, why do you do that ... some of them very basic therapy sort of questions, others being refinements of that, questions meant to prompt you to look inward for an answer only you have.

But although we're told that this is an examination of Shinji sometimes Asuka is answering, sometimes Rei is answering. Sometimes they're asking the questions. Sometimes other characters are asking or elaborating, unseen.

Previously I've talked about feeling like narrative-wise things have been dissolving, when I try to recall a sequence of events, but here what's dissolving is the distinction between the characters because the experiences are unique but the feelings are inherently universal.

There's a lot of different things going on here, visually. Still portraits, reused footage from previous episodes, repeated shots of a rotary phone with the cable cut really sticks in my mind for some reason, what seem to be actual black and white photos of contemporary Japan. There's a universal quality and it's also how everything around you, all the people and experiences, make up the you that you are, shown with an outline of Shinji that's filled with rapidly flashing poorly imposed images of others that don't fit in his outline. It's cool.

That's when the episode transitions to its second bit which is, like, I don't know. It's a bit student film, it's a bit like that Loony Toons bit where Daffy Duck is talking directly to the animator who can erase and redraw him at will. It's barely animated in parts.

I had this understanding that Evangelion ran out of money near the end and that the last episode was barely animated at all and I think I assumed it would be like how I understand the second disc of Xenogears to be, just ... text because we can't do assets? But it's not. It's unpolished and sketchy and minimal, in spots just pencil drawings or roughly coloured in with markers, at one point it's just wave forms? But it was sad and weirdly beautiful and it felt like an extension of Shinji's internal struggle for meaning and understanding. Maybe because the lack of budget gives it an aesthetic similar to a student or art school film, it informs the material with a sincerity that I feel would be lacking in a more polished, traditional product. The fewer hands that can be felt in something the more /authentic/ it feels.

I, at least, have a greater patience and a great appreciation for something when I feel an authentic quality from it, even though that's only my perception. Form and substance compliment each other here, even if it's just because of budget constraints.

There's a really good part where it's just Shinji in a white void and it's, you know, about how that's the safest because there's nothing constraining him because he's the only thing, but it feels empty because how do we know what we are if we have no references. So a horizontal line is drawn and that's the ground in this white void and Shinji is then standing on the ground and it's reassuring, it's a reality that simultaneously limits your options but in limiting them defines what they are. It's just ... good.

Once things have been completely broken down it's time to I think reassemble them and that's the third part of the episode where Shinji wakes up in an otoge game where everything is good and normal and Asuka's his childhood friend, his mother is alive (but still faceless) and his father ... also exists and is not being actively cruel but hidden behind a newspaper, similarly faceless, existing but known (he's at the table, Yui is in the kitchen with her back always to the camera), Misato's his hot teacher, Rei is the new transfer student ... There's running to school with toast in mouth (from otoge Rei). Shinji's just a Normal Teen (but the normalcy is false, this weird artificial hyper normalcy that contrasts with the sad, raw realness of Shinji's life in Tokyo 3).

That's on the stage that Shinji is watching from his stool in the empty gymnasium with Misato and it goes dark and it's like ... this is another reality but I don't think it's meant to be a quantum thing but an example of the potential of, like, /imagine/ a you who is happy. So this is the fourth part of the episode and it's characters, every single character, interrogating Shinji, pointing out Shinji's flaws, and giving him ... advice? Guidance? A lot of it is ... bad. The characters recognize real problems Shinji has, that Shinji knows he has and then they tell him things which are presented as, for lack of a better term, 'solutions' to his problems of self. But a lot of them are not actionable. Some of them are little more than 'you hate yourself but have you considered ... not hating yourself?'

Much like when Shinji gets praised, once, by his father for what he did in the robot and that is assumed to be good because it's good in comparison to the nothing he's received, the words Shinji gets here are presumed good because they're actual acknowledgement of his problems.

The result is Shinji standing on the earth, surrounded by the other characters, announcing that he is determined to care for himself, and they all applaud and congratulate him and it's weird. It's presented as happy but there's no emotion. No emotion in this climax of a series that has so effectively evoked so much emotion, raw and powerful and real and relatable. It's not happy. It's not sad, either. It's just an absence of sadness. It's this orange tang safety in muted absence of loneliness or danger. I think because Shinji is given good conclusions for his problems (self-worth and love have to come from within, you need to allow yourself to care for yourself or you'll never believe completely that others can care for you) but he's not shown a good path to get there. What people tell Shinji gives him an understanding of what the goal is (happiness) but none of the tools to get him to happiness, something he has no real personal experience with, so the ending he arrives at isn't authentic. It's a false construct, like the otoge realty.

It's not a good ending but I think it wants there to be a good ending and the viewer to recognize when a 'good' ending isn't really good. It's a lot to think about. This concludes my report on the final episode of Neon Genesis Evangelion.

#neon genesis evangelion report

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swapauanon · 6 years

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Kingdom Hearts: re:coded and how not to convey your theme

Okay so, we all know what people think of re:coded’s story. I mean, the gameplay is pretty great, but the story...

Okay, it has a pretty good moral “People are people, regardless of background”, and tries to get this moral across by making the protagonist a digital copy of Sora.

And here’s our first problem.

Mickey and Co. treat Data-Sora as an extension of Sora and not his own person, and he’s treated as a disposable tool by our heroes. That and he never contemplates the nature of his existence until Maleficent destroys his fake Keyblade. Then we get a legitimately good way of getting the moral across, Pete and Maleficent refuse to acknowledge Data-Sora as a real person. Granted, it’s undermined by the fact that Donald and Goofy don’t acknowledge Data-Sora as an individual, but still, I can at least give this sequence of events a “You Tried” sticker.

That and Data-Sora growing a heart of his own and forging a real Keyblade to save Donald and Goofy was awesome.

Unfortunately, things go downhill as the writers forget that Data-Riku shouldn’t shoulder the original Riku’s guilt, on account of the fact that DATA-RIKU WAS NEVER A VILLAIN, so all of his guilt comes across as wangsty rather than heartfelt, and you just wanna wring his little digital neck by the time you get to memory!Agrabah!

Ahem... Sorry about that. Regardless, once Data-Sora has debugged Data-Riku, we get another misstep: Data-Sora’s personality getting reset once the Bugs have been defeated. It completely undermines what little character development he’s undergone, and the scene where he gets a real Keyblade, making it less “Data-Sora’s his own person!” and more “Data-Sora was so disposable that we can erase him and replace him with a new Data-Sora! Here! Have a character you hold no emotional attachment to for the final level!”

And then we have our final, and greatest, misstep: Treating Data-Roxas and Data-Naminé as expendable tools, despite both showing sentience and self-awareness, with Data-Roxas even damning himself to the same Hell Roxas was forced into, for no reason other than “Naminé told him to”.

Oh yes, let’s talk about the little sociopath now, shall we?

This, this was the start of Naminé’s horrible backslide from “sympathetic abuse survivor” to “Token Evil Teammate of the heroes of light”! I mean, first of all, it’s revealed that the mastermind behind the events of the game was Naminé, who created the Bugs using the painful memories of Roxas, Xion, Axel, Terra, Aqua, Ventus, and herself in order to indirectly test Sora via making Data-Sora endure a living Hell! And bear in mind, the Datascape, at this point, has been established to be an entire world with countless sentient inhabitants. And Naminé put all of their lives on the line for the sake of seven people. Oh but the sociopathic behavior gets even worse when you realize that she also created Data-Roxas, and basically ordered him to test Data-Sora’s pain tolerance then kill himself. Oh but why should we care about Data-Roxas? It’s not like he’s an actual person who’s sentient enough to resent his situation and not want to die, right? Oh wait, he is!

Okay, what the Hell happened to the Naminé who would’ve been able to save Roxas, Xion, and Sora if not for DiZ? Because she wouldn’t have been that callous!

And then there’s our biggest misstep, since apparently there’s a lot of debate over whether or not Naminé actually created Data-Roxas (but if she didn’t then who the Hell did?), and it’s perhaps the most pointlessly evil thing that’s ever been done in the franchise: Naminé programming Data-Naminé to kill herself once she’s completed her mission. And Data-Sora and King Mickey don’t even care, because Data-Naminé’s “Just a program”.

Despite Data-Sora also being a program.

Despite Data-Naminé expressing dread at her imminent demise.

Despite the fact that Tron exists in this universe and his personhood was never in doubt.

How do you drop the ball on your own moral that badly?

Regardless, I hope any writers reading this can understand just how this moral fell flat in spite of the noble intentions, and we can only hope that KH3 doesn’t make similar missteps.

Here’s hoping.

Edit: Also, as a counterargument to “They’re data, they were bound to lose their memories regardles!” 1. Winnie the Pooh still remembered his friends disappearing when all the pages were put back in the Hundred Acre Wood. 2. Then why didn’t Data-Sora forget whatever adventures he went on in the worlds he visited as he debugged them? 3. Also, how could anyone remember a time without the Bug Blox?

Edit 2: Also, is Data-Sora truly alive if he can’t stray from his programming? If not, then what was the point of having him get a real Keyblade?

#kh re:coded #discussion #analysis #tw suicide

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