#vs like. just wanting end product NOW LMAO (I. STILL FEEL THAT A BIT. BUT. the journey itself feels different/better) | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

incorrect-ikevamp-quotes · 3 years

Note

why does jean warn up to mc so quickly? ikevamp makes it clear that jean is a pretty reserved person and doesn't open up or let people in easily but he seems to let mc in quite quickly and it confuses me quite a bit.

Oh boy, where to begin with this one.

Well, I have a lot of Feelings^TM about this, but I'll try to be concise. Essentially, I think Jeanne doesn't recover in the other routes--or the general storyline--largely because he's just a lot to unpack narratively speaking. And without some pretty direct intervention, he has a hard time healing. MC’s direct intervention was meaningful because it was focused, consistent, and adapted to Jeanne’s specific needs. She also doesn’t make light of his experiences which is key; she fully understands that she can’t fathom what he’s been through. There is a very weighty respect and acknowledgement, a seriousness with which she treats his wounds that’s important.

It’s easy to make this a “why is MC nOt LiKe ThE oThEr GiRlS” but honestly that’s just not the sense I get when I look at all the information available to us.

That being said, I also just feel like every person's recovery from traumatic events doesn't really look the same? I mean Leonardo’s cptsd isn’t going to operate the same way Jeanne’s wartime/Inquisition cptsd is going to operate. Some people require very individualized healing, others will often require a large scale group effort to lift them up.

Typically people don't ever just get over what happened to them and never worry about it again, either. It's usually a process of coping; the hope is that with time you find healthy ways to deal with grief and move forward. Therapists aren't magicians, they just help people process painful experiences/thoughts. It's honestly up to individuals to find meaningful ways to implement these tactics.

Tl; dr: My contention is that Jeanne doesn’t open up or choose to stay alive because MC magically heals him, rather his recovery is a convergence of many people’s efforts and hopes that he stays alive. Gilles (he insists that Jeanne must live, asks him to promise), MC (affirms and bolsters that promise), Comte (makes a second life and recovery possible)--and in no small measure Mozart and Napoleon--all make an active effort to buoy him. As people often say, it takes a village to raise a child.

While Jeanne seems to respond most powerfully to MC’s attempts, it feels more like a product of chemistry/compatibility than it does a random cop out. There is no insinuation that only romantic love can heal; after all, MC gets close to him without any romantic intentions at first. They’re just good friends? It’s more that their feelings simply moved in a different direction after a point, which doesn’t necessarily happen all the time. Jeanne is also incredibly moved by Mozart’s love for him as a friend, Comte’s love for him as a father, and even Gilles’ love as a comrade to an extent. If anything, without their input Jeanne’s capacity for romantic love would be questionable at best.

Now, because I can never for the life of me stop analyzing, I have a more large scale outline of my thoughts below. Spoilers for Jeanne’s route:

If we look at Jeanne's life history, he has pretty specific trauma. Most of the harm he endured was a direct result of human rights violations after the war itself. He didn't enjoy fighting and killing people, but he's also very much a man that sees the reality of his position: it's either kill or be killed. His entire goal was to defeat the enemy as efficiently as possible in the hopes of ending conflict, and with his enormous resolve turns the tide. He had no innate interest in inflicting harm, or lack of control when engaging. He isn't pathological about it, and doesn’t dehumanize the other side. He was more "this was an act of necessity, but those are still human beings." So as far as I can tell he has a very strong moral compass and sense of duty, he doesn't show much delusion/confusion in that regard. (Also evident in his conversations with the young orphan boy.) Furthermore, he has been shown to have a sense of humor--cracking jokes with Gilles and boosting morale for his fellow soldiers.

His childhood abandonment is significant (he left his home because he was "not an adequate farmhand and they had no ability to feed all their children") but I don't know if I would consider it a huge trauma point for him. It seems as though he deemed it an act of necessity--not spite. It was simply the way of things, and he couldn't help his wiry constitution. You'd be surprised how common that was once upon a time, tbh... While it's certainly not right or fair, it does appear that in his perception it was the choice he made and he moved on after he became a soldier. Just focusing on what he could do, rather than everything he lacked. For people in his position, they often feel it is useless to linger on what should have been. There’s no time to linger or doubt, life hangs in the balance.

That leaves us with his time under the Inquisition, just before he was slated to be burned alive. I think this is the keystone trauma point for him, because there are a lot of moving parts to his powerlessness here. The first part is that his entire life's mission--ending the war so that people would no longer have to die and/or starve as a result of senseless violence--was just sabotaged. All those years of doing things he never wanted to do (wartime violence) and being forced to leave his family to ensure they didn't all starve, all of it treated like some kind of joke. Like he didn't sacrifice years of his life and sanity to protect a people who were happy to call him a monster and watch him burn alive. The second part is the overt gaslighting and rewriting of Jeanne's personal history (and overall French public perception) for the sake of the King's political agenda. To call him a treasonous danger to the country when he was once lauded a hero. The third portion is the actual physical helplessness of being arrested, starved, and continuously maimed for no reason beyond pure malice. While it's never right to do that to any human being, this was done to a man who prided himself on his stalwart moral code. To abuse and torture him for something egregious that he would never do (at the risk of death) is just another slap in the face to everything he is and believes in.

I just feel like the context clarifies why that period of time would be the tipping point. His entire moral code and life’s work is being called into question and swept aside, as well as his agency? He believes very powerfully in a sense of right vs wrong, what's fair and what isn't fair. Somebody else deciding that for him--and deciding in a way that is openly unfair/incorrect--further makes him lose himself and his sense of reality. A person in that situation begins to doubt if they are good or bad. His belief in god all the more pressing; if he was a good person, why would fate bring him so much suffering? Honorable soldier or not, his blade has drawn so much blood...

People often reference his stilted social skills (and I am of the belief that he is on the autistic spectrum) as a reason why he is so "people-adverse" but tbh? I don't agree. His memories before the onset of this trauma reveal that he was actually a very warm person, and that people were more than willing to fight under his banner. He had friends, and he had comrades--his country loved him. He was the picture of well-meaning civic duty. Just because he doesn’t integrate smoothly into larger social groups or adapt well to socially shifting circumstances, doesn’t mean he just hates people lmao. When people give him the space to exist within his comfort zone and don’t take advantage of him, he thrives. Compounded by that, we also have his actions in the present to further prove what is true and what isn't.

While he is stern with the orphan boy (I'm sorry I can't remember his name, damn it) there is no malice or cruelty in what he has to say. He doesn't punish the kid or do anything out of line. It may not be fair in terms of the adult level of discretion he asks of him, but the kid also didn't have a lot of options realistically speaking lmao. Same thing with MC, she and the orphan boy are nearly identical in how Jeanne treats them. He's a little rough, but the route reveals that his intentions are just a reflection of what he's been through. He truly believes that if a person isn't strong, they won't survive--because his entire life was a series of trying to be strong/reliable because nobody else would. There was nobody to protect him, and nobody to care for him went things went south. It was him and his sword against the world, and even his exceptional skill as a fighter did not protect him from the Inquisition's arbitrary torture. He has lived in a world where good acts can become absolutely meaningless, where following rules and helping people still gets you slaughtered. That's going to take a considerable toll on his mental health: where do you find the will to go on when the next second of your life could mean the devastation of everything that matters to you?

Spoilers: you don't. Or if you do, every minute of the day is a fight to stay alive. That is the point at which we meet Jeanne. Caught in the hellish whirlpool of wanting more, wanting better--but being terrified of the cost. The cost of hoping, only for his entire world to go up in flames again. It's not a small thing, in my view.

If you have any doubts as to whether or not that is the case, I direct you to literally every singular instance in which Jeanne's emotional sensibility goes visibly dark/south. When do these instances happen? When it rains, for one. And when Shakespeare deliberately starts pressing on his sensitivities: about the soldiers he was forced to kill, about the nation that spurned him, how he's truly "wicked" at heart and doesn't deserve to be happy--seconds before flames erupt for the festival. Does that really sound coincidental? I mean lmao. The rain is a painful reminder, but MC transforms that memory into something a little lighter with her bet. He has nothing to lose in her game, all she does is ask for time with him or offers him something if she loses. There's a playfulness there, a restoration of agency and ease that's invaluable to his recovery.

As for Shakespeare's deliberate retraumatization...I can't even begin to explain how damaging that event was. Shakespeare is undermining Jeanne's agency in that he--not unlike the corrupt monarch of Jeanne's era--is twisting Jeanne's beliefs to work against him. He knows full well that Jeanne doesn't feel like he deserves somebody so bright and understanding (we need to remember it's not really a luxury he's had much in life, especially after the war ended). He knows Jeanne has a tendency to impose that strict moral code on himself even more than he does on others. To reaffirm his every worst fear and lurking terror only throws Jeanne into a vicious downspiral. Jeanne doesn't reject MC out of disgust or hate. He rejects her because he literally cannot handle the concept of trying to be happy again, or of burdening her with his constant struggle to move on while he’s in the middle of a bad episode. He knows he won’t be able to stop reliving the past, that every second of his life and breath will be colored by his gruesome memories. He's trying as hard as he can to keep the intrusive thoughts quiet, to move on. But I'm not going to lie to any of you, that is incredibly difficult to do alone.

The next obvious question is, well why can't the other men help him? This isn't to say that they can't--we see how much solace Jeanne finds in Napoleon and Mozart. Even Isaac is gentle with the veteran. But there are limits to how much they can do. Napoleon is struggling with his own wartime trauma, and it's not identical to Jeanne's. Plus there’s a distinct difference in their sensibilities? Napoleon is the type to habitually seek comfort in helping others when he can't help himself, he's not as in tune with answering his own personal feelings and regulating them. (I mean just look at his new ES: he knows what he wants, but it takes a nudge from Isaac for him to go through with it.) He’s very communally reliant in ways Jeanne isn’t; Jeanne is a very private person, and typically prefers one on one from what I can tell.

Mozart is the definition of repression, and if you look at their interactions it's usually Jeanne that's smoothing over Mozart's rough edges. Mozart says as much himself: that he feels like a rotten friend because he knew Jeanne was struggling with a lot of intense trauma, but he didn't know how to unravel it without hurting him in the process. Mozart calls it personal cowardice, but honestly I just feel like they both had too much going on to be able to help each other effectively. (And Jeanne expresses this sentiment too? This idea that he's not angry with Mozart? He knows they're both carrying a lot, he's just touched Mozart cares about him in return.)

Okay, briefly unrelated, but like. Am I the only one that wheezes uncontrollably when Mozart is like "?????? Idk what it is about MC...I don't want her to be scared of me..." in his own main story in the baths. And Jeanne. IS TRYING SO HARD. NOT TO SPILL THE BEANS ABOUT HIM O B V I O U S L Y BEING IN LOVE. THE HILARITY I CAN'T DO THIS. Jeanne was like "yeah....yeah that's rough buddy.......[screams internally, give your boy time Jeanne he's fragile]"

Honestly? That's the thing about Jeanne too--he has incredible self-awareness and hyperarousal-related (I mean the PTSD kind, get your head out of the gutter) awareness to the people around him. He's very, very conscious of the fact that he is surrounded by geniuses when he can't even write his own name. Just because he has the fortitude not to lash out with his insecurities, doesn't mean he never feels stupid or inferior. And it doesn't help when there are people in the mansion who call him--a fucking war veteran from 500 YEARS AGO--nAiVe. He's not naive lmao. He just doesn't know how the world works so many years later, and it's a ridiculously steep learning curve? Leonardo and Comte are nearly 500 years old, but they lived throughout every hour of that time in a linear fashion. It is a big deal to be moved from 1430 to 1890 in the span of a second asynchronously, and then be expected to function without a hitch??? Given the circumstances he adapts well.

That atmosphere--this constant impatience with what he doesn’t understand, his inability to be caught up to speed quickly--is going to hinder his recovery lmao. He feels like a burden most of the time, and agency and freedom are crucial.

Another thing that occurs to me about the mansion's arrangement is that there is a power dynamic, just as any space with people in it has some level of hierarchy (unless you live with miraculously chill people). Jeanne is acutely aware that Comte is the most powerful being in that space, and he is not only hatefully angry at him--but likely afraid too. We have to remember that the biggest betrayal he witnessed in his life was at the hands of a monarch; it was the aristocracy that turned on him and erased the truth. Comte is openly a child that resulted from both that era and that type of lineage, I don't really blame Jeanne for being wary. He intimately knows how willing rich people are to throw normal folks under the bus to suit their ambitions/whims. Comte, while not deliberately threatening, also seems to be painfully aware of this impression he gives off. His "chad persona" as I've mentioned allows him to navigate his life in secret by necessity, but it’s actively damaging to his son. He can't reveal the truth because of Vlad's betrayal, and he's openly unsettled by what it could mean to be honest. Will they wonder about Vlad and find themselves ensnared under his mind control as Charles and Shakespeare are? Will Comte himself be subjected to the mortifying ordeal of being known only to lose them?? That's a risk he isn't willing to take--and that leaves him in a double bind.

What is it that they say, the truth will set you free? This is where MC and Comte come into enormous play when it comes to Jeanne's recovery. One thing to keep in mind is that most of the people in the mansion have their own traumas they're trying to carry, and I feel like a lot of them are unsure how to approach Jeanne. Or if they do, he's very guarded. It takes a lot of consistent effort to get through to him. What does MC do when Jeanne unleashes his harsh worldview on her? She's understandably frightened, but Jeanne isn't malicious (so she chases him around). In fact, he openly avoids and runs away from her--well aware that what he's done is wrong. If anything, he did it on purpose, bringing us right back to Shakespeare's verbal undoing; why does Jeanne attack her in the first place?

LMAO. He attacks her because she essentially says "oh thanks for helping me!" "I am not nice. Watch yourself." "But you seem like a nice guy to me?" "REEEEEE" Does the pattern become a little clearer? When people think kindly of him, his instinct is to shatter that illusion with an impulsive reprehensible act. When people think poorly of him or lash out, what does he do? When that orphan boy starts yelling and screaming, Jeanne is nothing but calm. He explains the situation, and offers the kid a choice, perfectly happy to be the bearer of bad news. This operates on many levels I’m sure, but I have a feeling it has something to do with him being hailed a saint and a war hero only to be tortured and branded a monstrosity (and he probably thinks being a vampire is doubly monstrous). He’s more comfortable being hated because he feels it’s what he deserves in a lot of ways.

Jeanne has a lot of internalized self-hatred because of what he's done, and because of how much harm was inflicted on him outside of his control (he's Catholic and he was tortured, come on this writes itself). If I'm honest, I think that's actually the greater part of why he hates Comte lmao. Comte refuses the very concept of being cruel no matter how much Jeanne lashes out. Sure he lectures him and scolds him, but he never actively limits what's important to him or controls or harms him. Comte fully realizes the tragedy of how Jeanne's life was used by a nation in dire straits, and knows he needs time and acceptance to heal. No matter how dismal or unhappy, Comte doesn't stop--he fully believes Jeanne should have time in his life where he can really live for himself for once. But therein lies the issue, Jeanne doesn't know how to live for himself.

Which brings me to how MC and Comte "heal" Jeanne. I feel like they give him the space he needs to recover, and that's what results in his gentled temperament and happiness. Remember that so much of his main story is MC endlessly chasing after Jeanne. No amounts of his hissing or running or threatening stops her. Even if his refusals are empty of real dislike, they're enough to deter most people. Not MC. She's able to see through to the depths of who he is, and doesn't just use him for her own ends? She actively seeks to teach him (to read and write) to help him settle better in this era, she actively tries to ease his distaste for rain with a well-meaning bet, and she never gives up on him. (Actions mean so much more to him than words in general too, tbh...). Love is more easily defined by work and effort than it is by attraction.

When he has his episode at the festival, sure she's rattled; but that's because she truly believed that he didn't want to be around her anymore. When she notices he really doesn’t want to be followed, she stops like any normal person would. It’s only when she reads his notebook and sees the truth for herself (that he’s given up despite having the same feelings for her) that her determination is rekindled. She doesn't approach him fearfully, doesn't treat him like he's made of glass either. She just wants him as he is--accepts and loves him as he is. Scarred, bloody, exhausted, abrasive, terrified. She doesn't define him by how easy he is to love. That is a huge issue with traumatized people lmao. Because of their maturity, people always just assume they don't need help, or they rely on them to an extent that isn't sustainable. The second they reveal need or that they struggle, people walk away or victim blame them because it’s easier than taking them seriously.

While MC's attempts may be a little more obvious (cherishing his lily field, wearing the hair pin he gave her, careful about his gruesome injury, really listens when he talks about the horrors of his life and accepts that he experienced a level of agony/terror she can never understand, tries to express her feelings no matter his evasion) I think it's also important to consider Comte's large scale effort. I don't say this to undermine MC, I say it because Jeanne's life was defined by a complete lack of security. He left his parents to make their lives easier, he lived in a war that meant life or death any second, and his country's leader branded him a traitor which lead to his endless torture and public execution. Jeanne does not know a life in which safety is the norm. Point blank. He does not understanding going outside and not expecting the worst anymore.

Comte not only understands that level of despair, but treats it with dignity and respect. He fully accepts being hated if it means Jeanne can use that hatred to live on and find a way to heal. And most importantly, when Jeanne begins to move forward with MC and Mozart's help, Comte never once holds it against Jeanne when the truth is revealed. He's not angry, this isn't about reprisal or reparations or revenge. It's just love.

Jeanne doesn't really have a concept of this? His entire life was mostly transactional, defined by strength and efficiency. Nobody gives a damn about your feelings. You either hurl yourself at the problem or die. Nobody is going to help you or carry you or save you. While he may have had a little more support while he was in the military from his fellow soldiers, that support system was ripped away from him during the Inquisition.

One very common sentiment regarding elongated imprisonment and torture is that survival occurs in pairs. It is an undeniable fact that people need others to survive. It is the nature of who we are. Individualism has never proven to be successful, or if it is, its dividends are astronomically minimal when compared to people working together.

What does it mean to be the most reliable, steady person in the room? Usually it just means you don't know how to ask for help when you are no longer capable of maintaining that stance. Napoleon is guilty of it. Leonardo, Comte, and Jeanne all are too. It's part of why MC and Comte's capacity to see what he needs and provide as much as they can is such a big deal. That sort of consistent support (without a constant necessity to beg for help) allows Jeanne to be able to re-integrate into his new reality and find joy. Even if his nightmares and memories never go away, they are now being actively overrun by positive experiences. That's the thing about recovery, really--it tends to be more about drowning out the negative as much as possible and coming to terms with it, than it is about forgetting or never feeling it again. It’s about softening the sharp edges of pain like sea glass.

So is MC magical and randomly got Jeanne to open up? Nah, I don't think so. I think it was a series of persistence and real acceptance of who he is that made him warm up. People really seem to underestimate how deeply affecting understanding is, but that's how damage is undone. Jeanne can't really linger on the idea of his own monstrousness, his unworthiness, a lifetime of misery, when the person in front of him actively listens and cares about him. Makes him laugh and smile and lose himself in warmth for the first time.

If I'm honest, I feel like people also just...underestimate the level of traumatic resurgence that's perpetuated and inflicted by society’s standards in general lmao. This rhetorical structure in which good and bad exist in moral extremes, this idea that people should be able to recover and never experience relapses or periods of sensitivity. The refusal to radically listen to people and their problems, and make active attempts--not matter how small--to mend/ease those hurt feelings. Granted there will always be people in the world who do not want to improve, but I feel like most people want to. It's hopelessness, silence, and stigmatization that remain the true enemies of traumatized/mentally ill people everywhere. And among that population are always war veterans...

#ikevamp #ikemen vampire #ikevamp jean #ikevamp jeanne #ikevamp meta #ikevamp saint germain #ikevamp comte #sorry i have a lot of feelings about this topic kjahsflkjhsjkghfd #but yes!#i think mc being able to help him was more about her sensibility and the mental fortitude/space to be able to care about him as he needed #i don't think it's necessarily that she's SpEcIaL #trauma is a sensitive subject--especially considering he's a war veteran #but i also think it's simple and complex at the same time #simple in the sense that people really do just need consistent support and love to be able to care for themselves again #complex in the sense that support can come in so many permutations and some of them are very delicate and multi-faceted #and thus must be handled with extreme caution in some regards #anywho not that i'm any kind of expert this is just what i understand and see #also in case it wasn't clear i love him and cry every day (look away comte it's my whoring hours)#though i hope this helps??? i went off harder than anticipated lakjhglkj #thank you for the ask!!! <3333 #asks #rambles #not incorrect quotes

94 notes · View notes

everything-laito · 3 years

Note

hey,,, i've seen this controversial opinion about laito not being sexually assaulted by cordelia. . .as the only opinion of laito that matters, what are your thoughts on it? i know you've made some posts in the past about cordelia and laito's relationship, but i think that now would be a good time to i guess, remake a post or clarify your thoughts so people could follow along?? i hope you enjoy your day.

*proceeds to crack all my knuckles at once*

This isn't really my own "response" cuz oh boy I'm sick of this petty ass drama lmao. To begin, SKLDJF I'm very flattered that you hold my opinion in that high of regard! I'd say there's others that have interesting interpretations of him too though :) but again, thank you :') glad you enjoy what I have to say!

I know I've already kinda responded to this via a screenshot here, just to hold you––and others reading this––over. As much as this is a great time to talk about a how-to-analysis, I’ll still put that as a separate post eventually, but I still will go over the philosophy of truth and writings etc. But anyways, to answer your initial questions, they’re under the cut!

And no, I’m not specifically calling anyone out here. These are just issues with the fandom that I find as a whole, along with some extremists. Thus, I’m not going to be putting tags for people to easily find this post because I don’t want to be wound up in this drama––once again this is just more commentary on the fandom as a whole, which hopefully you can apply to people you find!

I have a lot of my own thoughts about Cordelia and Laito’s relationship here (just in case if people need it):

1. Goes over potential grooming of Laito, facts about Cordelia and what happened before she did stuff to Laito, and when did she rape Laito for the first time?

2. Stuff about incest and how any relationship out of a parental/child relationship is abuse even if it’s not penetrative sex, more incest stuff, and just more thoughts on their relationship

3. Neuroplasticity, trauma, Karlheinz, and isolation

4. What does sexual trauma look like? And some stuff on Laito’s facade

5. More stuff on his facade, and projection on Yui

6. My thoughts on Laito’s dark fate vampire ending + Conclusion

7. Answering some inbox stuff relating to Cordelia

Sure I realize I might be missing some stuff but that’s just my whole analysis on them. I’ll probably make some follow up posts eventually but I’m not sure when that will be.

But as for this analysis/ramble, I’ll divide it up into sections:

The issue of hypocrisy in the Dialovers fandom:

I- oh dear god. Ok, just saying, there’s a lot of people being like “oh I hate Cordelia because she was abusive” then ??? yo??? Why do you like the boys?? They’re abusive and we see more of them than Cordelia??? I just personally hate hypocrisy. However, it’s okay to hate Cordelia! It’s okay to love Cordelia! It’s okay to hate the boys and it’s okay to love the boys too. But recognizing that you don’t like one or the other just because “they’re abusive” is a fallacy at that point.

The reason why so many people hate Karlheinz/Cordelia/Beatrix/Christa/Richter (or at least start off hating them) is because they are written as the villains of the story! Karl’s the main villain, and the rest (including the diaboys and Yui) are kinda just tragically wound up in his plans. You sympathize more with the boys because you spend more time with them and watch them grow! It’s a whole “us vs them” situation. Since those people were awful to the boys/the boys hate them, you’re like “yeah they’re bad!” But the issue with the whole “us vs them” situation (as in real life) is that people tend to excuse the actions done by the “us” party.

Same thing goes with extreme Karl/Cordelia/Richter fans (I’ve never seen a hardcore Beatrix/Christa fan but they’re probably out there). Some hate the diaboys but love the people in that party. They’ve also done some shitty stuff too! Bro, even Yui has done some terrible stuff! But that’s because she was a product of the events she was thrown into––and same with everyone else.

Karl has been the mastermind of all this, and for me I don’t have any sympathy for him, mainly because we’re not shown anything to sympathize with (except that he just is tired of living but idk why he wants to create a whole new race like lmao science nerd ig, I feel that king). A lot of people like him for his looks, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing––he’s a fictional character, objectify these characters however you want. This is more of a personal opinion of mine though. And maybe people do just sympathize with his outlook on life, that’s totally fine.

But since these characters are all attractive in their own regard, they all get the treatment of “pretty-boy” syndrome (Idek if that’s the exact name for it). Which is just the privilege pretty people get. But again, this is fictional, so it’s not necessarily important in this case. Bro I got into DL cuz of “ooga booga hot vampires” and stayed for the complex lore and characters (especially one complex character, wonder who that could be). I imagine most people got into DL because of that, or out of sheer curiosity.

Ok, I’m throwing out a lot of points but not really connecting them. Lemme give you an example: I don’t like Reiji. His character doesn’t vibe with me most of the time aside from the fact that he’s hilarious. But I just am very neutral/neutral-negative on his character. But I’m not like “oh cuz he’s mean/abusive” cuz LOL EVERYONES MEAN IN THIS GAME. Sure you can still say that, it’s just not a very strong claim. Hypocritical claims tend to be like that. Same with a lot of Yui haters. In this case, they’re more jealous that she’s there and not them, which I’ve explained a lot in this post about toxic femininity and Yui in the fandom etc. But it’s ok to just not like a character! It’s alright! I know someone who just doesn’t vibe with Subaru. She doesn’t know why, she just doesn’t vibe with him. There’s no need to defend it either. But the use of hypocrisy is my main issue, and I’ll get to that in the next section.

(There’s a really good post explaining this too but I cannot find it for the life of me. I think it was made by @/abottleofkarlheinz or @/the-madame21)

How opinions of fictional universes left unchecked can effect real life:

I’ve said this a little bit in that Dialover PSA post I’ve made about Yui that I linked a couple paragraphs ago. But the reasons why people say they hate Yui is concerning. If you don’t like Yui, that’s totally fine! Again you don’t need reasons to hate on a character or defend it. But if you do choose to defend those characters, make sure what you’re saying isn’t out of some other place in your heart. Let me explain.

In that “Yui PSA” post I made, I say how your attitudes in being critical of a fictional universe usually does reflect on who you are as a person, at least when you’re making certain claims. In that Yui post, I say that the hatred on Yui is a result of the “other girl” mentality. On top of that, it erases her experience as a survivor. Yes, this is a fictional character, but bringing that into real life can have some dire consequences if you don’t differentiate them. If you have the same attitude of Yui with other survivors if the “abuser is hot” then thaaaaaat’s so fucked up.

For example, there’s people who have crushes on real life serial killers! That- that’s absolutely disgusting! Those real people killed living people and effected so many lives and families. Dude I have fictional crushes on fictional serial killers, and that’s different, because it is a removed universe. It’s why I can still call myself a lesbian but still have crushes on fictional male characters, for a further example (and vice versa! I have straight friends who crush on fictional characters of their same gender! But that doesn’t make them any less straight. And no, I’m not erasing bi people here either, just clarifying in case if you needed that).

Not being able to differentiate your opinions of a fictional universe can get very toxic. Like I love Laito, but I’m not like “omg I wish he was real so he could do that stuff to me uwu” like no!!! UH!!! I wouldn’t want to date anyone like him in real life! That’s literal abuse! And if Laito was here in real life it’s not a controlled environment, he’d literally be able to do anything with you, etc. That’s what makes a fantasy, a fantasy. They’re controlled.

Also vice versa, some people get really triggered by Dialovers, specifically Laito’s route. A lot of non-consensual acts that he does have been experienced by people in real life in any extent, myself included. For me, it’s a personal escape from that, because it is an environment where I am prepared for those events and can control my exposure to it. For some, they are reminded of the reality they had to experience. Fictional universes are inspired by real life, no matter what way you look at it. Real life people are making it, after all.

I feel like I’m going in so many circles, but trust me, I’m getting to the point.

I- I can’t explain this enough but it is most definitely implied that Cordelia had raped and sexually abused Laito. If it was explicit, DL would be an 18+ game, but they cannot do that in Japan. I’m not going to like defend this point because so many people (myself included) have defended this point. It’s implications carry over into Laito’s character and why he’s like this. He’s a textbook sexual abuse survivor. I just,,,, cannot explain this enough. Same thing with overwriting the abuse of Yui. They get jealous of Yui. Sure I’d say a good chunk of people have ravishment fantasies here. At least the 18+ people in the fandom who are into that stuff. But oh my dear god, ravishment fantasies are super super dangerous to enact in real life. It’s possible to do them, but it would take years of building up to that point in kink. That’s a whole other discussion though and I’m not incredibly comfortable talking about it knowing that minors read my blog (I’ll also have to say here: no minors in kink--its alright to educate yourself but pleaaaaaaaaaase don’t enact on any of those activities until you are of age, and even so that still can be dangerous right as you turn 18).

But anyways, saying that Yui should enjoy this because she’s experienced the ravishment fantasy you’ve dreamed of? Oh fucking hell, if you leave that opinion and mentality unchecked and it goes into real life, that’s incredibly awful. Abuse apologists are absolutely terrible people, almost as much as the abusers themselves.

If you twist the narrative that Laito loves Cordelia or Yui loves the boys at the end of the first game, that’s still––ughhhhhhhh. Especially when it’s so obvious that Laito has so many mental issues with Cordelia. His whole monologue and breakdown at the end of Dark Fate definitely tells us that he has had such an issue with Cordelia. And MB+ Laito is still Laito. As for Yui, dude she literally goes through stockholm syndrome in the first game like it is so goddamn apparent idek how to explain this at this point.

Ok dear god lmao wow, uh I think that’s answering the first couple of questions?

The philosophy of truth:

“Truth” has been an incredibly debated topic in philosophy for years. Truth is more of a subjective item rather than objective. Sure you can have personal objective truths, but they may not be the same truths for others. For example, a tomato is red. However, that tomato is red to me, because I am not color blind. A red-green color blind person may see the tomato as being brown or more muted in color. That’s their truth. They can’t really imagine what red is (ok depending on severity of their color blindness), considering they have not experienced the color red in the same way people who don’t have color blindness do. God uh, here’s a whole ass essay about truth, I’m cherry picking some of the things in there that are relevant to this.

Basically what I’m saying is, truth is very subjective. However, there are philosophers arguing a more objective truth. But that’s a whole other discussion. Also, this isn’t to support any political opinion, but I can use that as an example. Let’s go for well... The death penalty. I’m in America, we have the death penalty in some states. Yes, this is a very controversial topic, and no I’m not arguing the ethics of it here. Just hear me out.

If you live in Europe for example (except in Belarus and Russia––ok when I looked it up they consider Russia in Europe and technically it is but also there’s the whole chunk that is not- lmao even the truth of geography can be subjective), you might be like “yeah what the fuck are Americans doing?” (a common sentiment that I also share lmao). But yeah, what the fuck are we doing? Why is the death penalty still in existence? Yes, there’s statistics that prove that it doesn’t deter crime, but even crime rates is caused by a lot of different things too. Even statistics aren’t always accurate, because of many different factors. They’re not objective either, although good statisticians try their best to get good results and not skew the data. (please try to see where your data is coming from and who it is sponsored by––it matters a TON)

I’d say the closest thing we have as an objective truth to argue the death penalty or not is money. Money, although the concept is subjective, is a very objective currency. It’s why artists hate “exposure” compared to “money” as sole currency. The death penalty is very expensive, and not even used that often.

So, although money is currency made by us, and is technically 75% linen and 25% cotton (in America at least) with some funky dudes n numbers printed on it, it doesn’t sound that special. However, it would be considered as a baseline of some type of “objective truth” in ~society~ because people are typically on the same page of what money’s worth. Even so, this baseline of truth is still subjective! If Bill Gates accidentally has a $20 bill fall out of his pocket, that’s nothing to him! But if someone who’s working very hard to make ends meet loses that same amount of money, it could deal a lot of financial damage to that person.

Ok, hopefully you guys kind of get my drift. There are a lot of theories of truth, I’m just explaining one (honestly I forget the name of this theory) because it is the closest to the types of truth we are dealing with. And in this case, it’s called “canon.”

What the fuck is analysis:

The concept of “canon” is the objective truth that we have when analyzing universes. They’re our bread and butter of interpretation and extrapolation. The art of analysis clings to this notion of an objective truth. It needs a baseline. I’m going off of Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle, because that type of analysis I have the most experience with.

This is called rhetorical analysis. Rhetoric is the use of words in a persuasive fashion, and the analysis part is a breakdown of how words are used in order to achieve persuasiveness. I don’t typically use a lot of explicit rhetorical analysis in my personal writings, but I guess a version of it. Which typically has to deal with intention and execution. A lot of analysis on language has to do with this. Language is incredibly subjective. Certain words carry individual meanings to people. I have gone over the difference between real and lexical definitions before, and I’ll do it again.

I’ll just copy and paste what I’ve said before here from this analysis:

To put it simply, lexical definitions are the definitions you find in the dictionary. This is an “official” and “agreed upon” definition. Real definitions (quite a misleading name in my opinion) is the definition that’s more kind of “felt” in a way and how you internally interpret the word in context (these can be through individuals or any niche group). What I mean by this is that when you say a word (for example) to convey a feeling, you usually won’t know the dictionary definition off the top of your head. You say that something’s “savage” for example when you want to describe something violent or gruesomely awesome (it depends if it’s in a slang context or not) but there’s many lexical definitions (and outdated lexical definitions) of the term. But the first definition that usually comes up is “adj (of an animal or force of nature) fierce, violent, and uncontrolled.”

But people typically don’t think of the lexical definition when they learn what a word means; they usually learn the context of it and apply it as such. And that’s what a “real” definition is. Laito has a differing definition of what affection and love is, and that’s his own meaning and what it means to him.

I’ll even add another example to that too. The word “cunt” in english refers to a vagina. That’s just it. It’s lexically synonymous with “vagina,” “pussy,” etc. However, “cunt” has a subjective meaning to it. This is where “real” definitions also come into play. Many people view the word as vulgar and dirty. And that’s cuz we live in a ~society~ lmao. Our use of language has shaped what this word means in a context outside of the dictionary. I’ll do you one more. The Japanese word マンコ (manko) is also vulgar slang that’s kind of like our word “cunt/pussy.” Sometimes I say “cunt” for jokes, but I don’t use it that often to begin with since it’s just a very strong word to most (albeit it’s not that strong of a word for me). However, マンコ is a strong word to many Japanese people, but if I hear it even though I’ve been learning Japanese, it doesn’t have that same effect as hearing “cunt” for me is (which still, idc if I really hear it depending on context) because I haven’t been shaped in a culture that uses Japanese.

Even so, tone, intention, and context is HUGE in this. If someone called me a “useless fucking cunt” when they’re angry at me, I’d be close to crying. If someone told that to me as a joke, I’d be like “lol yeah you right, bitchass” and if someone said that in a consensual sexual context, it would certainly tickle my masochistic heart.

DSLKFJ also sorry if you don’t like hearing that word, I just had to utilize a strong example for this. But anyways, now let’s change the lens to Dialovers.

No, it never explicitly says that Cordelia rapes Laito. It doesn’t. However, there’s this WACKY thing called being able to infer, reading between the lines, and identifying implications. Those are kind of all the same things. However, indirect exposition is used a lot in effective creative writing. The utilization of this type of exposition is more preferred when writing a story, because direct exposition is kind of referred to as “info-dumping” when used excessively. Forgive my jargon: this is just showing vs telling as we’re taught in every writing class. I’m personally very bad at it, which is why I stick to writing these, and stick to reading creative fiction. (NOT SAYING IF YOU’RE NOT GOOD AT THIS TO NOT CONTINUE TO PRACTICE CREATIVE FICTION, I JUST DONT HAVE THE CURRENT MOTIVATION TO GET GOOD AT IT)

Dialovers uses a LOOOOOT of showing. And even so, its “showing” ability is very minimal considering the Japanese language can be vague on its own, it’s medium (visual novel) does not show a lot of things explicitly most of the time (and even when it is shown it doesn’t convey a lot). There’s several CGs of Laito and Yui where it doesn’t show the amount of pain or the dire situation Yui’s in, compared to what she’s saying she’s going through.

When I made my whole breakdown on Laito’s HDB route from Yui’s perspective, I got several comments about how they didn’t realize how bad his route really was. That’s either because people might not have experience with verbal abuse themselves, can’t exactly see Yui’s body language except her head (and even so, her expressions are limited), or don’t know a lot of gaslighting/verbal abuse techniques/have done research into it. Honestly verbal abuse is kind of hard to realize, so I’m not calling anyone dumb here. Despite me knowing a lot of the signs, I didn’t know I went through it––and even so I’ve denied it. And that’s what is so effective about this game though! Especially Laito’s route! Because you’re also sucked in with limited knowledge because you’re seeing this through Yui’s perspective, and on top of that it’s isolating. You can only make so many choices, and I feel like Dialovers is perfect as a visual novel. You get caught up with a lot of shock value things that Laito says, which serves as a perfect distraction for your first time through. But anyways, I’m getting off track.

For example, many people found his Maniac 07 chapter to be very confusing. I broke that one down here as well, and even so I was confused at first (also I was like 14/15, dear god). It tells you SO little, but you know that Laito’s incredibly upset at Richter for some reason, and even so, Yui comments on it a little too. Laito is shown to still hate Richter in DF, but he talks about it a tad more.

Here’s a further example from my writings in that first part of the Cordelia/Laito analysis series but I have bolded the terms I use to convey this rhetoric:

There hasn’t been any flashbacks that specifically show us the first time that happened. However, I believe that there was a flashback in HDB that shows one of the first times. Here’s a scene from Laito’s Dark Epilogue:

Cordelia: ー Laito…Laito… Laito: …Hm? Is something the matter? Cordelia: I have a favor to ask. It just isn’t enough. You can do it, right Laito? Laito: You really are something…So that’s why you came to me again? Cordelia: Fufufu…That’s right, Laito. Come on, quickly… Laito: …Guess it can’t be helped. I’ll love you plenty. Cordelia: Aah…My cute Laito~ I love you. I really do. Laito: I can do it…right? Cordelia: Of course, Laito. Now, quickly…

First of all, ew. Second of all, Laito’s diction implies that this was maybe the second or third time this occurred. He asks a question, and ends it with “again.” We know by this that it is not the first time, but the question also means that Laito might not have expected to occur again. His tone also implies some surprise to it, at least in my ears. His other question, “I can do it, right?” screams hesitance to me. If this scene took place down the line, or after many times he did this with Cordelia, I don’t believe he’d be some level of surprised or hesitance.

That’s what rhetorical analysis is. You take the contextual meaning of the words, the tone they use, and extrapolate what they imply. On top of this, we know that the term “love” here is sexual, implying that they did something sexual. We are not given the details of this, but considering we know that Laito uses “love” before he rapes Yui in the game, we can infer that’s what happened (or something similar) to himself with Cordelia, considering he projects on Yui quite a bit.

I was going to go over what is good/bad analysis, but I think I’ve implied it anyways here. Utilizing separate information from different sources of canon in order to make sense of something is good analysis. That’s our objective truth: canon. I’m not saying I’m the best at analysis, but I am fairly confident in it. It’s how I’m able to attempt to answer some of your “how would Laito react” questions without it being specifically hinted in the game. You cannot cherry pick specific sentences and go off of that alone for analysis. It’s context. It’s reading tone. It’s knowing the characters attitudes towards things, how they speak, etc. There’s a lot going into analysis in general. I know I didn’t elaborate on Aristotle’s rhetorical triangle right now, but that’s for another date I suppose.

Oh dear god I hope I didn’t lose you guys, I know this is a lot of information, but if you have any questions/comments/clarifications, as always, please let me know!

Hope you enjoyed! -Corn

#analysis #ask corn

37 notes · View notes

lady-grace-pens · 3 years

Text

This or That: Writer Edition Tag Game

@writingonesdreams tagged me to do this! Major thanks to you!! I’ve actually wanted to do this tag for a bit now lol

1. Historical or futuristic?

Futuristic just doesn’t fit my vibe at all lol, plus it’s kind of boring. I’m a huge fan of history and vintage things! Always have been

2. Opening chapter or closing chapter?

I haven’t written many closing scenes yet, but I feel like I would be much much better with them as compared to the opening scene.

3. Light and fluffy vs. Dark and gritty

I thrive off of the drama I give my characters lmao, give me angst any day

4. Animal companion or found family?

5. Horror or romance?

Hot tip: I’m a big sucker for cheesy Hallmark romance movies and I’m not afraid to admit it ;p

6. Hard or soft magic system?

I honestly have no idea. I haven’t read or written enough fantasy or done enough research in order to really form an opinion on this

7. Standalone or series?

I don’t have any plans on writing a series. Right now I prefer to write standalone novels that have enough potential set up for a sequel if I so desire to write one in the future. I feel like that’s a happy medium between the two

8. One project at a time or always juggling 2+?

I’ve said this before, but I like to dedicate all my love and attention to one story at a time. I can’t imagine trying to juggle any more than that, so huge props to those who are able to!

9. One award winner or one bestseller?

Both. Both is good

10. Fantasy or sci-fi?

Fantasy! By far. Im so sorry, but sci-fi is just so boring to me 😂

11. Character or setting description?

I feel like I’m good at both. Characters have my heart but I’m also good at describing things! Especially places.

World building though… uuuuuggggghhh 😂 I HATE it. Like I need to do it because I don’t usually set my stories in an actual real life town or country, but still. It’s hard as fuck and I dread doing it.

12. First or final draft?

Oooh boy, I’ve got enough to say about this to write a whole post and start a little conversation 😂

The short of it though, is this. As of right now, I like investing all of the love, planning, and care that I possibly can into my first drafts. That way it’ll resemble the final product and I’ll save myself future frustrations. Quality over quantity, pay attention to all the little details, and focus on making the story exactly as how I see it happening. That’s my personal attitude towards this, and that as a result does make me a slow writer which sucks ass. But hey, you can’t have it all right?

Besides, the payoff seems worth it to me in the end. I’d rather have a first draft that I enjoy instead of something I hate and will have to rewrite and edit to death.

13. Literary or ‘commercial’ genre?

Both? Neither? As a reader, I don’t really look at one vs the other. I just enjoy stories that I enjoy.

As a writer though, my talents tend to be with literary, character focused stories

14. Love triangle in everything or no romantic arcs?

I tend to not enjoy romance outside of the actual genre itself. I typically avoid writing it in my own stories. It’s only when I can’t imagine a certain pair of characters being separated that I include romance. Usually though I don’t enjoy it as a writer and reader. I like to focus more on showing interesting family dynamics and strong platonic relationships.

15. Constant sandstorm or rainstorm?

Both of these choices sound evil to me. Give me sunny and 75 degree weather by all means 😂 Buut if I had to choose, I’ll take the rain because I’ve never been in a sandstorm before.

—

Think I’m gonna leave an open tag for this one. If anyone out there who sees this and wants to join in, do it! This is your sign lol

#writing #writeblr #writing tag game #tag game #this or that #writblr #writers of tumblr #writing community

19 notes · View notes

the-littlefangirl · 3 years

Text

TFATWS episode 1 rewatch commentary

The first scene was so beautiful. I loved that we didn't start directly with the fight sequence. It feels way closer to the quiet beginning of CATWS and I love it so much.

The title is also SO NEAT, music's on point too but hey it’s Henry Jackman the one thing I’m sure it’s going to be great overall is the score.

The choreography is AMAZING, really well shot. Sam shielding himself with only one wing was MA-JES-TIC.

“WHAT'S UP” EXACTLY SAM EXACTLY

I did feel so uncomfortable in regards to the military aspect of it. Not that I was expecting anything else, but both here and in Captain Marvel the military we're good guys < 3 propaganda is so blatant and ugh:/ At least there wasn’t a literal recruitment spot like with CM.

The yellow filter in the Tunisia scene BYE please stop with the yellow filters 2k21

"I've been working with the Air Force for six months now" So, did Sam even catch a break at all after Endgame? Or did he just throw himself to work like SOMEONE did after being iced for 70 years. Hmmm? Sam????

"Essentially, these people, they want a world that's unified without borders" OH NO! HOW AWFUL, how evil of these bad guys smh

Joaquin: SO about Steve

Sam: :)))))) nope

"Moon stuff" SAAAM

#1 cry with Sam's speech, full on chills.. Fuck. Me. His voice about to break before saying thank you bYE.

Shady politician: "It was the right decision" (FUCKKKKK YOUUU)

Rhodey: *press any key to doubt *

I need someone to analyze the different curation of the two exhibits pretty please

NOT THE PHOTO POST-AZZANO JFC. That photo is my weakness, Bucky sweetie (also I find hilarious that usually when there are articles about Stucky and/or #givecaptainamericaaboyfriend they aaaalways use that photo LMAO)

In case someone wants to read the transcription of the texts about Bucky: "In 1944, while on a mission to thwart a Hydra weapon transport in the Alps, Barnes was thrown from a train and believed to have been killed in action. It wasn't until 2014, over seventy years later, that it was revealed that Barnes was alive, having been found by Hydra operatives. Captain America himself (i can't read) the effort to bring Barnes in only to later aid in a escape from custody having been convinced of his innocence. Steve's loyalty to his old friend, coupled with his refusal to sign the Sokovia Accords, led to the dissolution of the Avengers and drove the Captain into hiding with other like-minded Avengers including Natasha Romanoff, Wanda Maximoff, and Sam Wilson. The current whereabouts of Barnes remains unknown, habing been labeled a fugitive following his escape from custody."

"current wherabout unknown" but not the government, interesting. Also, pretty good summary of CACW from the public's perspective, although one of the things I always wanted to see explored was the public's reaction of the fallout of them going into hiding after Civil War (which I'm hoping we'll get to see a little bit of in Black Widow).

Interesting point about the 70 years without having Captain America. Clearly the sacrifice play wasn't enough this time to fuel the nationalism so they went with a squeaky clean John Walker instead.

Sam saying the shield belongs to Steve I'm going to cry now excuse me. Sam. Sam sweetie.

The No. 1 Captain America comic in the display ugH fuck yes

See this is how you do a cameo that has actual meaning. Thank god for Malcolm Spellman being a competent writer. That scene was so well written.

HAVE YOU PRAISED ANTHONY MACKIE'S PERFORMANCE TODAY?? Holy shit that last shot fucked me up.

I'm loving the use of the wide shots, especially in the flashback. The camera movements are in synch with The Soldier's state of mind and mission focus, so good.

EVERYONE STAND UP FOR THE NATIONAL ANTHEM aka The Winter Soldier theme composed by Henry Jackman.

Without a doubt the most brutal TWS fight scene there has been, People involved in Punisher and John Wick are involved in this and it SHOWS.

For the record, still stands that the only time we've seen him chocking someone with his right hand instead of the metal arm remains the Maria Stark assasination. I know it's probably because of blocking and the way the shot was composed but the implications are still bone chilling. God.

Uhhmmmm I'm very ambivalent about the "Hail Hydra". On one hand, it was 100% fanservice and the internet is probably going to go insane over it, and the dead way Sebastian Stan delivered the line. Good shit. Buuut what I love about CATWS is the way Bucky never, ever ever, mouths Hydra rethoric, and even when Pierce tries to gaslight him with it, it's just an empty effort. The Winter Soldier isn't doing anything because of ideological loyalty to Hydra, even if it's product of brainwashing, it's just sheer dehumanization. They don’t need him to say the words because he’s just An Asset. There are people who have put it more eloquently but yeah, I rather go with the fanon interpretation of that aspect.

The music growing louder with the shot of the keys. GOD.

I'm fine this is fine.

#2 cry with the therapy scene of fucking course.

The government monitoring Bucky is noooot going to end well lmao.

"We need to know that you're not gonna * slowmo stabbing motions *

Bucky: * nodding along slowly *

I laughed out loud.

"It's passive agressive" I love him.

The way this scene just sucker punched me in the face, made me weep and then had me cracking up. Amazing.

Therapist: You can't do anything illegal

Bucky: yup yup check checkity check. What IS considered illegal tho?

*aggresive tablet finger pressing *

"Then why isn't it rule number one?" Bucky your Steve is showing.

I love the close up shot. I'll keep saying it. It's so good.

"I'm James Bucky Barnes" yeah you are🥺

That smile is nightmare fuel LMFAO I love it.

Uhm the way I'm kinning Bucky it's not funny anymore damn

That whole “are you lashing out at me” rambling is really reminiscent of the bar scene in CATFA and how he lashed out at Steve after Peggy left. Uhm yeah fuck.

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?" "Peace"

"That is UTTER BULLSHIT" "You're a terrible shrink"

yeah ugly crying to ugly laughing speedrun for me

"You're free" "To do what?" jesus. That entire scene. #3 and #4 and #5 cries for moi.

Ugh that Brooklyn shot. Someone needs to do a gifset compairing it to the one in CATFA asap.

"It's like Monique but it's got a "U" in there for uniqueness" "That's absurd" LMAO

"You can't keep fighting with your neighbors" uHM * redacted redacted i'm shifting into 1940s mode abort abort *

"Nobody passed 90" "So young. Such a shame" FGADHGA

🥺🥺 yes flex those flirting skills good for you

"It's a dance to this things. You can't… you gotta warm up and I haven't danced since 1943. Feels like." #6 cry I completely broke down into tears with that.

This Yori storyline is going to punch me in the face with a metal fist. Great!

The TWS theme when he looks at Yori fuuuuuck.

GREAT LET'S GO TO LOUISIANA THAT WAS GETTING HEAVY.

Those shots of Sam in the car. Immaculate. Showstoping. Yes.

Marvel, what if instead of promoting the military industrial complex you put a lot of publicity about cars?

"Uncle Sam!" LMAO subtle.

Everyone trying to have the wings lmao same.

I've only had Sarah for a day but etc. Brooklyn 99 meme

Good mirroring about Steve and Sam family's legacy. Good shit. Goooood shit.

Sam is trying so hard ouch my heart. I can't imagine how painful the scene with them reuniting must have been. He 100% still feels a lot of guilt about being gone for those 5 years (and even longer before that).

"Maybe it is time for us to move on" uuuuuuuuuuh

"To the rescue" "Always" 🥺🥺 i love them so much already

That shot outside the restaurant is so beautiful. Can't wait to see the night scenes in Madripoor tbh.

"I tried the whole online dating thing. It's pretty crazy". Uhm well that is something that Bucky Barnes has now said. In canon. Damn.

"It's a lot" "You sound like my dad" LMAO

Every Bucky fanfic trope speedrun with this scene

"Wow you really can drink" OH you have no idea

Just realized we don't even know her name, well.

"You have any siblings?" "I have a sister" THE WAY I SCREECHED. We're definitely getting Becca

Well that escalated quickly. The important thing is to try?

I can't deal with this BUCKY SWEETIE #8 cry right there fuck

The wardrobe department is KILLING IT, there's such a difference between the outfits of the shows vs how ugly and generic it usually is.

"ThEre is NO such thiNg as on time. You're either EARLY or LATE . picK One" lmao the way he delivered that line

At first I thought the flag smashers had thrown two cars out of a window LMAO

"I don't know how jurisdiction works here, but I'mma have to place you under arrest" uhm yikes. The way they changed Joaquín Torres backstory to just random army nice guy #1 is not sitting well with me, what can I say.

Sam's wings motions I LOVE HIM YOUR HONOR

Fuuuuck this guy.

"Funny how thing's always thighten around us" "Look, I'm on your side. After all, he's a hero". This script is C R I S P as hell, great fucking job.

"I don't care, I'm not gonna quit" "What are you trying to prove? And who you trying to prove it to" SHIT HSIT SHIT!!! UGH amazing. Look it's not necessary to say the show's questions out loud but how they flow between the conversations is still very satisfactory without feeling in your face about it. Inner conflicts have been set up fucking perfectly everyone * claps *

Ugh here we fucking go. I knew this was how the episode was going to end but my stomach still dropped like a rollercoster. God.

The score is on point. Damn. Damn.

God, Sam.🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺

The captain america franchise's visuals in the credits are always so amazing.

Also, does anybody know why Mackie isn't first in the billing? Uhm what's that about?

ANYWAY CONCLUSION THAT EPISODE WAS SO FUCKING GOOD LIKE HOLY SHIT. I love them so much. The balance between the personal conflicts and the political aspect (although the military aspect is still very much yikes) was on point and it was overall a joy to watch.

#tfatws #tfatws spoilers #i'm so happy rn #sorry for the ramblings i just wanted to have it all written down #sam wilson #bucky barnes #captain america #tfatws commentary

27 notes · View notes

mintory-jar · 3 years

Text

(from the om official insta)

holy shit it's coming (I wanted to post a while ago what groupings and songs they would have when they first announced it but I forgot about it lol) I have to wait until June to hear satan.... but at least the first song with mammon, Levi and asmo will come quite soon, actually. I'm pretty excited about this!

and so, since they asked what songs they might sing, I shall answer with speculative word vomit that absolutely no one asked for. why am I doing this when I could just wait for the actual songs to come out? eh, I dunno, for fun.

take note: this is entirely speculation, I just want to put my thoughts out there.

Unit #0235 — Mammon, Leviathan, Asmodeus

I had a feeling that mammon and levi would get grouped together (and that they would have a rap battle lmao) since they argue quite a bit. so now that there's asmo, I'm not really sure what they all have in common, other than the fact that they're all softies. since the individual songs were about the character's love for (supposedly) MC, I guess the song would be about how they approach MC and their attraction to them differently? anyways, I like this more uncommon grouping. I'm very excited to see what they'll do.

I imagine levi and asmo will be singing together (iirc Levi's va said on the levi radio that he would like to sing with asmo's va one day) and mammon would rap. mammon gets to rap the bridge. now that I'm writing this, I have a feeling that it might be like the song 'bang bang' where there's 3 different people, each showing off 3 different personalities. (I've suddenly thought of the 3 of them singing bang bang, and lemme tell you they fit so well I started laughing to myself. go listen to that song, and tell me they don't fit haha)

Unit #0067 — Beelzebub, Belphegor

well, them getting group together is a no-brainer. I think it would be a slow, lullaby- like song, much like Satan's solo song (but less... intense?) it will most definitely be a duet. as for song content, I can't think of a solid theme other than 'hey, we're twins and our connection is pretty deep' (I know there's definitely more to their relationship, but I'm trying to keep this relatively spoiler-free) just saying how much they love and care for each other might get boring very fast. again I'm excited and very curious to see what they'll do.

Unit #0014 — Lucifer, Satan

remember I said I thought mammon and levi were going to have a rap battle, forget that, THIS is where the rap battle is. it's Issues Daddy vs. Daddy Issues — and I cannot wait to watch insanity ensue. they are absolutely going to chew each other out over hard rock music. (ok, kind of unrelated, but if you know hypmic, you know death respect? MTC is rough and dirty, while matenrou is refined and clean, but they still have that final boss badass vibe. now imagine satan as MTC and Lucifer as matenrou. THAT is the kind of battle I'm hoping for.)

i have a thought that as they get to the bridge they realise how useless their fighting was (and the music gets more melodic). they don't exactly forgive each other, more like reach a comfortable agree to disagree kind of middle ground. they learn to just tolerate each other (well satan does) and Lucifer will slowly end off the song by saying how proud he is of satan for growing into his own person. (just imagine: satan and Lucifer fight, and as satan leaves the room, Lucifer is of course angry, but in his heart, he is wholly proud of satan for developing his own views, feelings and thoughts, so that he could even argue with lucifer in the first place. so he just... lets satan disturb him as he pleases. he loosens his grip on him.)

Bonus Idea — All Brothers?

ok I know this won't happen, but lemme just put it out there. you know how in those music franchises in Japan (hypmic, paralive, d4dj, etc) they have a song showcasing all characters and the style of music that their group has? what I'm thinking of is basically that, just with less transitional choruses in between. if it was going to happen, I'd be very interested to see how all the bros' styles meld together into one cohesive song. but the production process of this kind of song would be quite hard, considering you have to account for 7 differing personalities and styles of music, and write and arrange it so that it flows nicely. I can see why they didn't plan to do that.

#obey me #obey me shall we date #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor

23 notes · View notes

morwensteelsheen · 3 years

Text

WIP wednesday thoughts:

willow cabin is utterly fucked because i changed my intended ~moral~ halfway through and now im stuck trying to integrate this shitty political intrigue plot into what should’ve been a more interesting story about éowyn adapting to life in gondor. hugely fucking annoyed by it and just totally unsure how to proceed. i could significantly increase the chapter count, but im worried that because the initial framing device was this bandits shit that closing out that plot and then still going for ages afterwards would be really shitty? i honestly don’t know, it’s so difficult. really i just need someone to read my outline and tell me if im being a dumb twat about it lol

meanwhile I know exactly where I want to go with AFTA but for some unaccountable reason im stressed that my ass is gonna get roasted for the direction i want to take it in. it’s all based in both tolkien’s personal politics and (some) historical precedent, but im worried people are gonna see it as a marysue-ification? but also im hoping to do sthg of a sequel to afta to practice the political intrigue writing so i don’t make the same mistakes i did in wc, and to do that it would require this specific set up in AFTA. im gonna put my AFTA thing under the cut so don’t click read more unless you’re gucci with potential AFTA spoilers!!

this royal affair au is definitely gonna get published at some point but im trying to decide if i want to do ~tasteful~ smut that drives a longer narrative or if im really just gonna do a whole 3,000 word build up to some run of the mill, old fashioned PWP lmao

okay so i have spent a Lot of time thinking about what impact i think éowyn and faramir would have on each other in a pre-ring war setting, and the honest to god conclusion ive come to is that they would somewhat inadvertently egg on each other’s (wildly divergent) idealism.

faramir’s an idealist politically in ways that, as Big D rightly points out, are not super productive in a wartime scenario. but so far as im concerned, the war doesn’t feel as warlike until they have to blow the bridge at osgiliath. until that point, there’s not really anything to say that faramir’s whole throwback optimism isn’t a perfectly justifiable position to have.

but what that idealism is and how it manifests are two really important considerations. the crux of his idealistic politics is that he looks at númenor and sees something valuable in it, and looks at gondor and sees a lot that he thinks is fucked up. outside of articulating a general angst towards the glory hunting, it’s not like he’s spending time talking about his specific policy prescriptions. however, we do know a few things that can guide us to a more coherent reconstruction of his politics:

he’s pretty rigidly hierarchical (when it’s convenient for him). as seen in: him basically telling sam to fuck off and stay in his lane in WOTW, and in how and when he chooses to refer to his father as ‘father’ vs ‘my lord’ or ‘lord of the city’ in the aftermath of the osgiliath retreat and then before he gets his ass sent back there. i don’t want to go into too much detail here but if i go with this i’ll definitely justify it more thoroughly in the footnotes.

so we’ve got faramir’s emphasis on hierarchy and his occasional (when convenient) belief that the upper echelons of a hierarchy are there because they’re intellectually and/or morally better. or, maybe to remove the causation from that instance, because they are in those upper echelons, they have an obligation to be more morally/intellectually upstanding, and the people in the structure below them have an obligation to show deference. unless you’re faramir and you’re dealing with denethor in which case that all goes out the window. classic.

we know there is some sort of nascent pseudo-democratic tradition of popular sovereignty in gondor. we know this because faramir asks the masses at aragorn’s coronation if they’ll accept him as king. faramir is a lot of things, but he is certainly not a progressive political radical, and i cannot imagine any situation in which he cooked up that rigmarole himself. that then implies to me that it’s building on some sort of political/cultural expectation in gondor. so: some sort of relationship to popular legitimacy. the people of gondor are subjects, but perhaps not as totally passive and unconsidered in the power structure as we might assume given the comparability to feudal europe/asia.

given those two things, i want to use AFTA to argue:

that faramir, in looking to assign blame for the faults he sees in gondor, would not directly assign blame to the lower classes, but rather to the aristocracy, because he will have seen them as failing in their moral obligations to the people they rule over. this is not to say that he isn’t fucked off about The People™ valorising war, but i think he’d take the position that they couldn’t possibly be expected to form those values and opinions of their own volition, and the fault lies in their rules. faramir: not gramscian.

faramir lacks any power that is non-military, and even that is of questionable worth because the rangers seem to be fairly distinct to the general structure of the army, and are not exactly a huge force.

faramir lacking any political power isn’t necessarily a huge concern for him (as in, he’s not actively trying to change that), because he knows he’s not going to lead a moral revolution and isn’t interested in taking up the responsibilities having political capital would engender because he’s stuck dealing with this war, that he fucking hates btw has he mentioned that he hates it?

however, given that he is apparently eminently versed in lore and scholarship, he is probably keenly aware that there is this incipient notion of popular legitimacy somewhere in gondor’s culture. it’s not, for most of his life, knowledge that actually does anything for him, but it is there.

éowyn, meanwhile, doesn’t really have many strong political convictions (yet). not because she’s a dumbass or whatever, but because she looks at court politics as kind of a farce, and doesn’t believe that power legitimately emanates from anywhere that isn’t a Big Fucking Army. and why, strictly speaking, would she not think that? the event that brought about the creation of her kingdom was not careful, soft spoken negotiation, it was her ancestors being in the right place at the right time with a Big Fucking Army.

and the internal politics of the Riddermark actually seem to be fairly stable, all things considered. i sincerely doubt that Théoden or Théodred are having to negotiate complex politicking in the way Denethor and Boromir are. so where, then, would éowyn see that kind of political behaviour outside gondor? with gríma.

éowyn, then, will see the immediate contrast between gríma (backroom dealer, manipulator extraordinaire) and théoden (owner of Big Fucking Army). and gríma goes and fucking wins that fight. that forces éowyn to confront the fact that, jesus christ, maybe there are different types of power.

at the same time, she’s going to be in minas tirith and needing to cover for théoden letting his shit get wrecked. not just because she’s prideful, which of course she is, but because if denethor/gondor think that théoden is too weak to hold up his end of the bargain, why would they ever go help the Mark? éowyn, seeing that théoden’s f-f-fucked, knows that there’s a very very good chance the Mark will need help.

against her feelings about courtly politics, she starts to accept that she’s going to need to do something to get power in gondor. not anything substantial, it’s not like she’s trying to overthrow anybody, but enough that when push comes to shove she can force denethor to help out the Mark (if he doesn’t do so willingly).

but, as ive sort of already shown in AFTA, she’s a bit of a dogshit diplomat. good for a little big-brawny-enforcer stuff, but not exactly brimming with cultural sensitivity. by the time she realises théoden + the Mark are fucked, she’ll have burnt quite a few bridges with the gondorrim nobles, and it’s not like she’s the sort of person to go running cap-in-hand begging for mercy.

so: she has to look elsewhere. and wow! a chance for faramir to do his favourite thing — talk about his opinions! and by god, his weird idealistic politics are… actually kind of helpful? because he’s like, look, you’re never gonna be a diplomat, but there are other ways of consolidating power. and one of those ways is by appealing to The People™. so why not work that angle?

and actually, we know that this is a viable route for éowyn because hama, in arguing for her to take up the mantle of théoden’s heir when théoden and éomer fuck off to helm’s deep, basically says that The People™ love her and would have willingly chosen her to lead them.

we also know, based on faramir’s middle men speech, that the people of gondor and the mark have grown alike in nature. not totally unreasonable to then think that the people of gondor would take to her like the people of the mark did.

éowyn, then, in various ways begins to try to win over the people of minas tirith. i need to do a little more research on this bc what ive got on the practicalities of that so far are a bit, uhhh, sketchy, but the least jargony way to describe this is to point to when natalie dormer’s character in GOT gets out of the carriage to go hug and kiss some babies. (marc bloch, eat your heart out)

this would later segue into a potential sequel where, while trying to secure the way for aragorn’s coronation, éowyn actually plays an interesting role because she’s fallen into this incidental Diana, People’s Princess™ role and so is better positioned than almost anyone to go advocate on his behalf. wow! cool! éowyn getting to be politically useful in more ways than just getting hitched!

so yeah. that’s how i am thinking it might play out. this would obviously have a rolling impact on the remainder of AFTA and how certain (🔥) events pan out later, but i think that building up part has to begin pretty much now, narratively. also this lets me get in a reference to “and then her heart changed, or else at last she understood it” and have it not be almost entirely about wanting to shag faramir, but actually about her gradual evolution from valorising war above all else to being like, hmm, maybe there are other ways of being powerful. which i think still largely captures the “no longer I will vie with the great riders” stuff, but more subtly and without feeling quite so… deferential, I guess? Like it’s not that she’s swapping one form of power (violence) for nothing (gardening?? healing?? tolkien accidental articulation of necropolitics??) but swapping violence for a different type of more sustainable power.

yeah. that’s the take, basically. who fucking knows.

#e writes

6 notes · View notes

miaxeu · 4 years

Text

though the mist might prevent some from seeing it, MIA STOEGER is actually a descendent of DIONYSUS. it’s still a question of whether or not the TWENTY-ONE year old MYTHOLOGICAL STUDIES MAJOR from LOS ANGELES, USA has taken after HER godly parent completely, but the demigod is still known to be quite CHARISMATIC & DUPLICITOUS.

( y’all dont deserve this real messy intro but im workin w half a bwain cell at 4am so i beg thee 4 mercy. nywyy im the excited new girl who’s hella pumped to meet all ur charas : katya ! feel free to hop in my ims to plot or drop a like and i’ll hop in urs ! x )

POWERS

natural acting abilities — her ma’s a hollywoo agent so she started actin real early & now shes a big shot actress. there r more deetz on her career below !

chlorokinesis — it wasnt as natural as acting n she only started working on it when she turned 13 n started going to camps. b4 she just noticed shes good w plants but it wasnt super crazy or nything. its p good now tho ! shes prioritizing vine binding and manipulation 4 the self defense bc awards r cool n all but they dont rlly protecc from monsters ykwim

levitation — shes trying her best ur honor

alcokinesis — she cant conjure it or anything, she’s just immune to it ffff

BIO POINTS — cw: drug use ( full biography here )

her mom raised her by herself bc dionysus the party god was out of the picture immediately. she never told mia she’s a demigod & it was always just “ wow ur so talented ” or “ aww u got a green thumb ! ” but when she saw him claim 13 y/o mia by placing a weird hologram over her head while she slept, she knew she had to spill da beanz & tell her kid

ofc mia thought her mom was jus playing sum weird acting exercise w her bc her powers r so lowkey she could highkey just be a Mortal but insert sad whistle, the realizashun & the claiming meant heightened monster threat !! so yea ,,, one ended up chasing her a couple days later rip

aside from the trauma, mia was ok. mostly bc she ended up cryin for dionysus like any child would n lo & behold he came & helped !!! as he should. nywy she made sure to go to summer camps every year after that but mostly just for protection purposes

she lowkey rlly hates this whole god business esp now that shes grown lmfao deadass thinks she got a bad deal bc life threats arent sexy !!! went to eonia eventually bc its Too Much Man. she just wants to go back to work and her life w the mortals w/o worryin for her life. would deadass fade her father if she could. may or may not be majoring in greek mythology to figure out the logistics of it all out of spite, who knows !

PERSONALITY

not ! a Drama Queen — dont get me wrong, shes hella Extra in the way she moves n acts sorta like shes always bein captured on film. is quick-witted & playful & can be a huge tease/flirt if she feels like it, but miss her w Real Feelings ! totally not sentimental. srsly she will try to rationalize away everything and is just,.,., not good w it. so soz folks, we just keepin it breezy here

ugh, she’s an Actress — aka she can act like she cares tho ! shes very much into keeping ppl on her good side. shes friendly n palatable to everyone bc its how shes been trained & while it doesnt seem fake, its def diff when its genuine

The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known — lemme circle back to the first one, ok so shes good w emotions but only in theory. does intense character work with her roles so she thinks that counts as her having eq when rlly shes just emotionally stunted, projecting n repressing like an idiot

blonde, skinny, rich, & a lil bit of a Bitch — shes only a bitch inwardly or to ppl she trusts enuff to let in on the gossip. if anyone full on opposes her or becomes real emotional, then this lil diva will rear its superiority complex head n snap a lil. will most probably do it v underhandedly n w a smile but it will be Brutal

girls just wanna have FUN ! — shes the child of da party god, so ofc she a true party girl. officially off the rails when she parties. inhibitions ? we dk her. can be insensitive in that case bc smtms its truly no strings attached, tis all abt the fun. likes company a lot & it doesnt even have 2 be loud or particularly abt her, she just likes having people around n the escapism of it all. will make friends with everyone n make sure they have a jolly fun time guaranteed at dionysus parties

Work Hard, Play Hard — real responsible when it comes to work and commitments and if she trusts/likes u enough, she’ll give it 2 u straight, no bs. def thinks Calling Out is an act of love but maybe does it a lil too harshly smtms. v much into efficiency, sentiments be damned. not the feely words type. will sit next to u or party w u or even pay 4 ur therapist if u need sum1 to talk to. she will Be There while u work thru it, so long as u dont expect her to change n be all emotional n stuff

if she seems a lil contradictory thats bc she kinda is. tis the good ol nurture vs nature. her ma’s a real no nonsense chick n her pops is a frat guy drama geek greek god whos rlly into cottagecore so u get this lil blonde bitch whos sorta teetering on the edges

OTHER INFO — cw: drug use ( full headcanons here )

re her career, she achieved pegot status when she was 18 aka she truly b dat bitch. shes not super mainstream famous tho, more like indie sweetheart, film snobs/critics fave typa gal. if ya want a trajectory she started w baby commercials then a sitcom from 4-10 ( think modern fam’s lily ) then it was off to the big screen & the stage !

mia has a lil bit of a drug habit. its not abusive or dependent, but it is a staple whenever shes parties bc alcohol is useless 2 her. started a lil young too bc hollywoo. primarily uppers/hallucinogens. she smokes weed a lil more liberally but the rest is mostly just an on occasion thing ( which, ngl, is a still a lil problematic when u party a lot rip )

after she got claimed, mia ended up going to demigod camps in a lot of diff places n countries, depending on where production would take her. there was never an established place, more like wherever was nearest when they wrapped up shooting bc monsters afoot n wutnot

she was always homeschooled but she still managed to go to a prom and homecoming bc party is life. that makes eonia uni p much her first chance at having a normal educational environment & experience and even then its anything but. still tho this is her moment !!! im lit rally begging her to get a personality that isnt her internally rolling her eyes going “ its not that deep ”

might put up a bio/stats page if im feelin sxc but i wud jus like the records to show that mia stoeger is a bi sxc babe bc me ? write a het ? no grassy ass.

POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS — cw: drug use ( full connections here )

omg danny devito i love ur work !

,,, p self explanatory sdkjfs sum1 who loves her work ! it can be lowkey/highkey fangirl to a civil admiration

OR alternatively, y/m can Not Be a fan of her work. they might think the storyline of the projects she takes on r too out of touch n highbrow yada yada yada, but yes, we love to see either of it !

summer camp sweetheart !

someone she met when at camp when they were teens ? doesnt matter in what country/city, but mia was only visiting so it was truly a one summer romance typa thing. bc she was younger, im thinkin 13-17 or w/e she was probably sweeter n a lot more emotional then. was it either’s first puppy love ? first kiss ? first “ relationship ? ” idk, do yk ? truly, so many possibilities. nothin set in stone just hmu bub

summer camp pals !

p much the same as above but make it Platonic

party buddies !

or druggie pals. either way works but she wud luv it if theyre both xoxo

friends w benefits !

most probably ( but not limited to ) sum1 she met at a party skdjhsjk is it exclusive ? is any1 starting to develop feelings ? im down 4 nthing n evrything

alexa play true friend by hannah montana !

give mia her college bestie ! her confidant who knows her feels and can call each other out viciously with no ounce of resentment. we stan the friendships !

omg i love ur skirt !

that is the ugliest effing skirt i've ever seen. lmao basically sum1 mia pretends to like or acts civil w but rlly ,,,, Cannot Stand for w/e rzn

im p much braindead rn but those are just sum ideas !!! ofc the usual staples like the pals, enemies, wutnots are also v welcome we love to see it. if u also have a wc that u think mia would fit in, id luv to know more ! there are also a couple more detailed ones here, but pls feel free to shoot me a msg n we can get 2 plotting x

( * wipes brow * how did i type so much n say so little rip. mia is also a completely new muse so pls b patient n if i fuq up from time to time, pretend u do not see >.< nywy thnx 4 readin, sweets ! feel free to hmu here or at discord if ya wanna <3333 )

FULL INFO || EONIA TASKS

20 notes · View notes

bigskydreaming · 3 years

Note

So just out of curiosity, what inspired the whole Beacon Bay idea? What kind of sharks and dolphins are they? This entire thing is very intriguing to me and I can't wait to see more.

So first off, anyone who’s ever played soundingboard to my original stuff like Moukie or Adam can attest to the fact that I’m ocean obsessed, so there’s pretty much nothing I’m interested in that isn’t a mere two or three steps removed from an ocean/merfolk/sea witch AU in my head. Gimme anything and like, five minutes, and I can make it ocean themed. Space operas included. I grew up near the ocean, been surfing for ages though of course I haven’t in years, blah, but like. I’m a big fan of the deep blue sea. Its just....neat. ghaskfhalkfhla

So I’ve always had a bunch of ocean-set concepts. This particular AU came about from like, smashing a couple of them together to preserve them when my plans for doing original stuff with them fizzled out, at least for the time being. Cuz the other thing about me is the way some people like, take their fanfic and file off the serial numbers to turn it into original novels, I more often do the reverse, lmao. When I have something I can no longer do something with original-content-wise, for whatever reason, but I still like the idea, I turn it into fanfic so I can still play around with it whenever I want and like, have purpose to that, so I don’t feel like I’m wasting time by still ‘indulging’ in that concept or whatever.

Like my Batfandom fic By Lost Ways, as I’ve mentioned before....that actually started out as an original high fantasy novel set in my ‘Tales of the Citadel’ shared universe. BUT the setting ended up being similar enough to a sci-fi project I wanted I to move forward with, ‘Waveriders’ (the one with the sky pirates and the ATLA-style benders only instead of evoking the four classical elements, waveriders could each ‘hack’ a different kind of wavelength, that one) like....basically, the projects FELT similar enough in setting and various superficial elements that I started to feel derivative of myself moving forward with both, so I picked Waveriders and then recycled the setting and a lot of the plot of the sky-set fantasy novel for fanfic, just for fun.

Same thing here, though Beacon Bay is basically the mash-up of two different shelved original projects. Basically, its the plot of a CW-style show about teen sirens and the sea witch making like the Fagin to their Oliver Twists, from a pilot I wrote years ago.....it got some interest but I refused to make it less gay because lol have you met me, so it ultimately never went anywhere but I still liked the plot.

And then remember the werewolf books I mentioned awhile back, that had the mongoose shifters in them? LOL. Yeah, so I’d written two and a half novels in that series and had this whole expansive worldbuilding of twelve different shifter clans each with their own innate magic, patron deity/creator, etc, but all my agent and editor contacts at the time were like yeah sorry, shifters are over for now, and I was like wow, can’t believe cancel culture’s real and publishing cancelled werewolves, wtf, rude, and then I was like eh, still wanna play in this universe especially with the dolphins and shark shifters which I never even really got to in those books, so I’m just gonna air-lift them out of that and drop them smack in the middle of my CW siren plot and fanfic away to my heart’s content and call that ‘being productive’ when I feel like it.

Anyway, found family was a big theme of those books and the world-building I did there in general, because again, have you met me, I’m not predictable or anything (shhh, the word is consistent), and one of my initial things there was I wanted the various shifter types to all have innate magic, because for literally no real reason that I can discern other than Whimsy, I have always been Team Werewolf in vampires vs werewolves, and I was tired of werewolves always being by default the underdogs in those narratives. Even if that does make for a good pun.

SO, I wanted to come up with werewolf magic that felt natural and organic to werewolves, like nothing too flashy or obscure, but that would make them a legitimate threat even to other supernatural creatures. And I made it so each of the shifter types were granted an active and a passive magic by the god that created their type of shifter, and with werewolves, their active magic was that of the pack gestalt. I took the idea of ‘their whole is greater than the sum of their parts’ that TW kinda briefly touched on when presenting (but never really doing much with) the idea that the more wolves in a pack, the stronger that pack was.....and I decided okay what if being part of a pack upped stats all across the board AND all shifters have a SLIGHT innate resistance to magic, being innately magical beings themselves?

So a werewolf pack, with enough pack members, would thus not only be formidable in strength, speed, senses and speed of healing....but compound that innate shifter resistance to magic, which in a single shifter is negligible, like, just enough to make them slightly harder to track with magic or curse or whatever.....but in a whole werewolf pack, that adds up to make the pack effectively immune to foreign magic. Vampires can’t compel them, demons can’t possess them, witches can’t curse them, etc. So a lone werewolf, not part of a pack, is formidable, but nothing another supernatural being can’t take on. But a lone werewolf who IS part of a pack....different story entirely, because now most other supernatural beings, no matter what their USUAL strengths, are reduced to taking on that werewolf hand to hand, as their own supernatural gifts or spells or whatever, like, aren’t gonna do them any good against these particular foes. And werewolves are USED to fighting with just brute physical strength and attributes, which gives them the edge against opponents who are more used to being able to fall back on magic in battle.

But as much as I like sticking to a theme, I like to diversify that theme where possible, so when it came to the other shifter types, I wanted to similarly come up with ways where ‘the whole would be greater than the sum of their parts’ but in like, entirely different ways.

So with dolphin shifters, their ‘passive magic’ (in quotes cuz that’s not quite the right word for it but whatever) is that they’re all empaths, with their more active magic being weather manipulation. Their empathy is a two-way street....they project emotions as well as just feel other peoples’, which ties into the fact that their patron deity was Dionysus. Dolphin parties....legendary. But in an extremely wild, dangerous and Bacchanalian kinda way. In terms of Beacon Bay specifically, this is a bit of a problem for the BB dolphins, as the closest thing they had to an official Triton (the dolphin shifter version of an Alpha) was Peter, but they were like nope, not loving this guy, and kinda drove him out of town in the AU S1 backstory of this ‘verse, which means Scott and the others are kinda just making it up as they go along, and don’t really know the ins and outs of BEING dolphin shifters. (Derek is....elsewhere, in this. Mostly).

So bottom line is they have reputations around school for being loud obnoxious goofs and trouble-makers, constantly playing hooky and such, but its because they don’t really know HOW to safeguard against spilling their emotions onto everyone around them so they try and err on the side of being the life of the party whenever possible, as that’s better than the alternatives in their opinion. And when they’re just having bad days and bumming hard, the whole pod will just skip school and glomp around the bumming pod member whilst self-caring, rather than like, accidentally bum out the entire school.

But their weather manipulation magic is where the gestalt idea comes into play with them, as I love weather manipulating powers, but I didn’t want to make them all Ororo Munroe, y’know? Only Ororo Munroe can be Ororo Munroe. Don’t make me scoff. I’ll do it. I’ll scoff so hard. SO I went with the idea of weather control married to manipulating storms via song and was like, okay what if a dolphin pod is like, a symphony of shifters.

Basically, its like each individual dolphin shifter is a single voice in a chorus, and there’s magical equivalents of being a baritone, an alto, etc. Like, none of them can whip up a storm on their own. Its more that each of them can summon or conjure a PIECE of a storm with their song, with it being different for each of them....symptomatic of their magic as an expression of them as an individual. So for instance, Scott’s song is ‘tuned’ to lightning. He can call down a bolt of lightning from a clear blue sky.....but he can’t summon so much as a drop of rain to save his life. Literally. Its an actual plot point at one point. Whereas Isaac’s song is all about calling down rain, Boyd’s is more of an arctic wind, and Erica’s kinda summons a pressure front that in harmony with the two of theirs can whip up a mean waterspout. And then Corey’s all about conjuring fog banks with low visibility while Liam can whistle up a strong, gale-force wind but sucks at using his song as a precision instrument. Etc, etc. But the real magic is when they all use their voices and magic in concert....as a group, they can summon huge magical thunderstorms.

Also, one thing I love about using different kinds of shifters is the opportunity to explore enhanced supernatural senses that aren’t just keen sight, smell or hearing. So the dolphin shifters aren’t like wolf shifters in being able to detect chemosignals or anything like that....in fact, their sense of smell isn’t much different from anyone else’s. But they do have an ability to use what’s effectively supernatural echolocation even above water, and their sight is adapted for optimal viewing underwater, making them particularly good at seeing in the darkness even on land.

(Also, related but somewhat tangential to both the shifter senses and dolphin ‘voices’....all dolphin shifters have a strong talent for mimicry, but this isn’t technically a form of magic, more just a combination of their control over their voice and their keen senses of pitch, etc).

The shark shifters, on the other hand, have some of the keenest senses of all shifters. Not only is their sense of smell even better than a werewolf’s, they’re sensitive to changes in pressure, for one thing. Which means on land, they can even feel changes in atmospheric pressure.....so like, the shark shifters of Beacon Bay could be in math class and then ‘feel’ a sudden drop in air pressure and thus even before some strange weather phenomenon occurs, they’re groaning like ugh fucking A, what the hell did the damn dolphins do now.

Also, their magnetic field perception is such that they can kinda ‘sense’ when people are around, just by being aware of the approaching magnetic field of another living being.

And then with the sharks, I was looking for ways to lean into the associations we have with sharks and blood, but subvert them to be less macabre and more communal. And another big theme of mine in general is like, I am DETERMINED to go to my grave shouting at the top of my lungs “Its THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT IS THICKER THAN THE WATER OF THE WOMB, NOT BLOOD IS THICKER THAN WATER, HOW DID PEOPLE GET THAT SO BACKWARDS ITS SUPPOSED TO BE THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF HOW ITS USUALLY STATED!”

Like, that’s just...HUGE pet peeve of mine. Its like nails on a chalkboard, lmfao, that drives me nuts. That phrase is usually cited by people using it to express like, the idea that there’s no greater force than family, specifically BIOLOGICAL, ‘blood’ relations, but its literally meant to be the exact opposite, that the blood of CHOSEN bonds, of covenants, of vows or promises, is a greater force than the water of the womb, ie being born of the same womb, as in biological siblings. The entire point of the phrase is biology ain’t shit, family is what we choose. And somehow it got turned ENTIRELY around.

(Note: Okay, so for the record, its not ‘somehow’, there’s actually a very clear reason for why that particular interpretation gained so much momentum, and that’s because for a long time it was conflated with an old German proverb from like a thousand years ago that basically translates to “kin-blood is not spoiled by water.” Which basically was meant to mean that nothing can ‘dilute’ blood relations, not time, not distance, not water. So that phrase DOES correspond to the idea that ‘blood is thicker than water.’ Problem is, there isn’t a direct trace from that particular proverb TO most USAGES of ‘blood is thicker than water,’ which when you throw in the OTHER phrase, which in its entirety is “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb,” what you end up with is a lot of people SAYING that one when they actually MEAN to say ‘kin-blood is not spoiled by water’ and that’s where the meanings get switched. But I fucking digress. Per usual).

Anyway. So combine that particular pet peeve with my found family fixation AND the fact that this is about magic and magic means I can do whatever the hell I want, fuck your biological connections mwahahaha.....I decided to base shark magic on the idea of the blood-ties of family....but CHOSEN blood-ties, as in blood of the covenant ties.

What I mean is okay, so it first of all just made sense to me to have shark shifter communities be heavily focused around adoption, because like....let’s be real, shark shifters going around biting people to change them into shifters, and then people magically healing from....shark bites....was going to attract a lot more attention than people turning after being attacked by other types of shifters. Not to mention the fact that not only are shark attacks always big news, part of why they’re big news is because they’re actually pretty rare.

So, shark shifter communities were never really gonna propagate via lots of random shark shifter attacks turning people. So the way they DO expand and grow is by, well, family. Both biological AND adoption...as well as of course shark shifter communities taking in people who ARE attacked by rogue shark shifters, when that does happen.

But bottom line is, there’s an additional element in play in shark shifter communities, beyond just the gene pool....and that’s like, a magical tidepool of talents, let’s call it. Because I do love me some alliteration. But also tidepool of talents is just a cool phrase, IMO.

Anyway, the main part of shark shifter magic, and how THEIR whole is greater than the sum of their parts, is that any shark shifter can draw upon or channel the talents, skillsets or knowledge of anyone else in their communal family. And whenever that family gets added to, the talents, skillsets and knowledge of the new addition gets added to the pot, so to speak. So shark shifters are kinda all like Rogue, if Rogue’s focus was less on the superpowers of other people and more on things like Beast’s scientific knowledge, Cyclops’ strategic skills or Cable’s weapons expertise.

And then their ‘passive magic’ is a form of psychometry whenever they come into contact with blood. By touching even just a drop of someone’s blood, they can get a vision of how that blood was spilled or even get a sense of where the person who spilled it is now.

As to the types of sharks and dolphins they all are, for that I went with the thing about the shape you take reflects the person you are.....all the shifters here are full shifters, and there’s no genetic component to their shifting, its purely magical, so like....just because Peter turned the various dolphins of BB doesn’t mean they all turn into the same kind of dolphin he was. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of dolphin he was on account of I don’t really care tbh, lol. Whereas Erica’s an Atlantic spotted dolphin, Liam’s a pygmy killer whale which looks like an orca just tiny in comparison and is actually a dolphin, and I found that combination of factors hilarious, etc, etc.

Same thing with the shark shifters. Even among biological relations, there’s a ton of variety of shark types. Like the twins aren’t even the same type...Ethan’s a blue shark and Aiden’s a bull shark, Tracy’s a tiger shark and Hayden’s an angel shark. Danny’s actually a throwback to an unnamed prehistoric shark, not Megalodon big but big enough to shut up Jackson when he goes on about being a great white shark. Shark and crocodile shifters are the two oldest shifter clans, old enough that literal dinosaurs fall under the umbrella of their shifter type, and thus occasionally show up even in modern generations.

13 notes · View notes

mistergrass · 5 years

Note

Do you think there are differences in how the 2019 anime portrays Kyo's and Yuki's relationship as compared to the 2001 anime?

Oh man oh man oh man, I love this ask. Because YEAH tbh I do think there’s a bit of a difference in how their relationship is portrayed! THANKS FOR LETTIN’ ME TALK ABOUT IT BECAUSE APPARENTLY I HAVE A LOT TO SAY.

I’m gonna start up top though and say I think there are definite pros and cons to both anime adaptations, but I am a fan of both! So this is NOT gonna be me saying one is better than the other by any means! It will simply be a side-to-side look at how the animes have portrayed The Boys. And I think both can definitely be enjoyed and loved without having to compete with each other!

ANYWAY.

I ofc will get to the obvious which is the difference between the endings, but I think we gotta work our way up to that first! Honestly, I really think the differences of their relationships in 2001 vs 2019 comes down to the structure and intent of each production.

2001 was made to be a self-sufficient tale and was definitely a simplification of the source material. In part this is because the manga hadn’t finished yet and hadn’t really gotten that far, and on the flip side I’m sure there’s that other part where the production team wasn’t too,,, caring with Sensei’s wishes for what she wanted the anime to be.

SIDE NOTE: I will say this, as someone who does genuinely enjoy 2001 — I think Takaya made something really remarkable that even in a very simplified form, it still has the ability to be enjoyable and touching and charming!

So 2001 decides that it needs to create a narrative that doesn’t leave behind any real loose ends. It doesn’t go into the mechanisms of the curse, it doesn’t introduce characters and relationships from later in the manga, and it cuts away certain foreshadowing moments that at the time had no pay-off and hadn’t been explained yet. So when you take those moments away, what you’re really left with—ESPECIALLY with just the first few chapters of the manga—is kind of a found-family story.

2001 is a lot slower in its pace and takes its time (for better or for worse) with each chapter. Because of that, there’s a lot of time to fill, and that time always ends up getting fed back into the main trio or into moments within Shigure’s house. The production team of 01 WAS smart in realizing that the main trio’s dynamic really has a wonderful appeal and really staying in that zone when they needed to pad time. And so most filler really just went back to creating extra moments in between them all. Between that and the slower pace, we just get a lot of extra moments with them – some perfectly passive, and some more direct:

They just interact more. Even if they’re kind of throw away moments. Because 01 chose its focus to be on this household and very little outside of that universe.

2001 ALSO DID SOMETHING KIND OF INTERESTING. The ONE, ONE critique I’ve been somewhat public about in terms of the 2019 anime has been its lack of close ups. Which really gives us a very good look and a very needed insight on how a character is feeling/reacting to a moment.

01 had this very interesting habit of not only going nuts with their close ups (mainly, I’m gonna guess, because backgrounds were NOT A FORTE LMAO), but actually putting a lot of close-ups of Yuki and Kyo side by side. Here are a few examples:

What this does is not only give us insight into what they’re feeling, but also tells us that what they’re feeling is ultimately the same emotion. This happens MULTIPLE times throughout the anime—for both serious and comedic effect. And what it does is plant and nourish that seed that they really aren’t so different from each other. A lot of how they react to their family and the world around them is very similar (which is also something true in the manga, it’s just very interesting how 01 chose to illustrate that via screen).

We unwittingly get this feeling that they’re closer than even they realize. Something that gets illustrated even without close-ups, but in blocking, voice over, and posture at times too — they just… share a lot of shots together:

(I have more but I’m realizing I need to chill out LOL)

The slow pace also meant that certain scenes from the manga really got to shine through lIKE THIS LITTLE MOMENT THAT I SO WISH HAD BEEN IN 2019:

ALSO I DON’T THINK THIS WAS IN THE MANGA BUT FUCKING HEY WHAT THE FUCK I MEAN COME ON SKDJFHSKDF:

LIKE COME ON JUST LET ME HAVE THIS ONE THING IN LIFE I JUST SKDFJHSKDF

ANYWAY

I know this probably looks like I’m all in for the 01 version of their relationship bUT let’s go more into some 2019 stuff.

Yuki and Kyo’s dynamic in the manga is incredible and it’s obviously something I’ve really spent a lot of time…. Thinking about…. What’s amazing about the 2019 anime is that its goal is to stay as true to the manga as possible and to tell the story in its ENTIRETY.

That means getting the real real honest details about Yuki and Kyo’s relationship that were sorely missed in the 01 anime. At its core, Fruits Basket is the DEFINITION of a slow burn. Not just with its romantic relationships, but with all its different dynamics. Where Yuki and Kyo start at the beginning of the story is so far from where they end. And they almost act as these living breathing measuring sticks for each other that monitor and illustrate where they’re at each point in their personal journeys. IT’S SO GOOD.

If 2019’s goal is to cover the manga, then this is something that will inevitably be included. We can see that in some of its foreshadowing — we’re going to get things like an explanation on the hat which is a huge part in Yuki’s perspective of Kyo.

We’re going to get a much much deeper look at Kyo using Yuki as an outlet for his hatred and anger and self-loathing.

THIS HASN’T BEEN FORESHADOWED BUT WE’RE MOST LIKELY GONNA GET YUKI BEATIN THE SHIT OUTTA KYO, TOO.

So in a way it seems almost unfair to compare the two right now?

Mainly because the anime has promised to animate the entirety of the manga, but HAS done some rearranging of the order of the earlier chapters. The manga is so RICH and has so much information, that there are less moments of being able to just sit with the characters, because there is so much information that needs to be shown. Every moment in 2019 feels like it’s doing its best to be meaningful with its time and to tell as much as it can as closely as it can to the manga. But because of that their relationship isn’t as “””””close”””””??? (If that’s even the right word to use) as it was in 01.

For instance, we’ve gotten things like Uo’s backstory and Hana’s backstory earlier on, certain chapters have been fit into half an episode instead of a full one, and we spend much more time with the zodiacs themselves when they’re introduced rather than the main trio REACTING to new zodiacs. Basically, we’ve not spent as much “alone time” with the trio or Yuki & Kyo because there are other things to focus on. The found-family isn’t the default aspect of the anime as it was in 01, because they’re trying to tell a complete story. And the beginning chapters that 01 exclusively covered were never meant to be the whole story — it was just meant to be, basically, a really long set up to a much deeper narrative (and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think even Takaya says that the story really kickstarts after the true form, too).

SO because of that in season one, Yuki & Kyo do seem a little more far apart. They seem kind of as if they don’t know how to be around each other, and that Tohru is the one and only buffer to which they can tolerate each other at all. Even filler moments with them that we see are centered completely around Tohru, rather than them just — idk, cleaning the house, or doing mundane domestic things.

It’s like, they’re only allowed in this “demilitarized zone” of each other’s lives, and that zone is Tohru. (Which, AGAIN is not a bad thing — it’s very much a set-up to a slow burn, and with a lot more time to tell the story, there’s no need to rush their dynamic right away even if I do miss some of the moments LOL).

BUT because of that — say if Yuki were to go after Kyo in 2019 like he did in the end of 01, it would make NO goddamn sense. That dynamic between them hasn’t been built yet. AND IT’S A DYNAMIC THAT DOES EVENTUALLY EXIST. When Kyo runs away after Tohru’s confession, Yuki’s first reaction is to run after Kyo:

And his confrontation of Kyo at the end is a basically well-earned, paid off, richer version of how he goes after Kyo at the end of 01:

BUT that being said, in the 01 anime — tbh? I buy it. It goes against the manga, but it stays true to its own version of logic and narrative. And the idea of all three of them trying to preserve this family and home that they’ve built between them is something that’s earned because that’s basically been the only focus. But ultimately, because they’ve foregone so much of the manga’s foreshadowing and set-ups, their relationship in 01 cannot go any deeper than it does.

In 2019 and the manga, Yuki doesn’t go after Kyo because their relationship still needs to be sorted out. They still have SO MUCH to learn about themselves and each other. Their issues with one another directly stem to deeply rooted problems that they eventually have to face head-on throughout the ENTIRETY of the manga. And that is what is being SET UP in 2019.

My tl;dr analogy is this: 01 can be seen like a really good fan fiction that was impatient to see the canon dynamics develop and decided to make its own version while it waited for the story to continue. While 2019 is an adaptation that is setting up for a real slow-burn of developing relationships — and the 1st season is barely scratching the surface of that.

#Fruits Basket #Yuki Sohma #Kyo Sohma #asks #anonymous #grassy's meta tag #anon this question breathed LIFE into me #ALSO I KNEW THE READ MORE WOULD FUCK UP SORRY TO WHOEVER SAW THIS WHOLE ASS THING ON YOUR DASH FOR LIKE A SECOND #I really hope the desperation in my tone comes across #as I think I always sound somewhat desperate when these two are the point of focus for me #also I'm tempted to put this in my ship tag BUT ALSO BE PROUD OF ME I ACTUALLY DIDN'T MAKE IT TOO SHIPPY #though if you know me you know what's in my heart of hearts #oh jesus

256 notes · View notes

horde-princess · 5 years

Note

I honestly can see a very korrasami-esque ending for Catra and Adora. It’s totally obvious by now that Noelle meant for them to be romantic and that she would like to end with them on a romantic route. Unfortunately, I don’t know if DW will be onboard for something very “in your face”. So I can totally see them doing a korrasami ending but making it a bit more obvious that it’s romantic.

i know ive always said “they will definitely absolutely kiss no doubt in mind” but now that we’re at the end i think i should actually take the time to discuss this more… i’m what you might a call a realistic optimist because i choose to have faith but i’m not ignorant to the realities of the situation you know? so buckle up this is going to be a long and probably unpleasant ride lmao

to be real, going into the last season I’m trying to not let myself have too many expectations with catradora. I do 100% fully expect that their relationship will be shown to be explicitly romantic by the end, but unfortunately, yes, its possible that they may not kiss. i’m at peace with that and i hope this post helps you guys see my thinking and come to terms with it too

obviously i dont understand all the underlying mechanisms of producing a tv show. i do know that dreamworks has hardly been a progressive studio in terms of lgbt representation. there are a lot of factors that would go into a decision about whether to allow a lesbian kiss in one of their projects, not least the fact that She-Ra is a reboot. having said all that, i’m still optimistic and there IS evidence in favor of a kiss that i think is worth talking about!

thinking about where to start with this discussion on Dreamworks vs. lgbt representation, Voltron came to mind. i’ve never seen the show but a quick google search brought me to this Geekdad article from an interviewer who did an investigation into Voltron’s lgbt rep failure and Dreamworks’ role in that. he argues that a lot of the blame belongs with the showrunners, because Dreamworks does at least provide resources and diversity consultants to help showrunners make respectful lgbt content, but the Voltron crew didn’t make use of them. the issue was not that Dreamworks actively blocked lgbt rep but rather that the studio did not work to ensure quality representation from the showrunners. which is a huge difference.

i dug a little deeper and found a transcript of an interview with the showrunners where they talk about the red tape they encountered, and what they say seems to implicate Voltron’s intellectual property holder as opposed to the Dreamworks studio itself. it sounds like Dreamworks’ hands were tied because the showrunners did not hold all the legal rights to the story.

of course we know IP is also an issue with She-Ra. however, correct me if i’m wrong, but I believe Mattel (the Masters of the Universe toy line) sold its property rights to NBCUniversal (Dreamworks’ parent company) a couple of years ago. this doesn’t mean all ties are cut with the original IP holder, but i think its safe to assume that She-Ra has some more wiggle room than Voltron did when it comes to the showrunners’ vision/creativity. especially because Mattel has been known to be pro-lgbt.

an interesting quote from Joaquim Dos Santos (voltron producer) was that after season 7, “She-Ra was in development within the studio and I think the studio was just sort of beginning to open its eyes to the possibilities of there being [lgbt] representation in their shows and there not being a huge public backlash for it.”

Also, in a different interview they said “to Dreamworks’ credit, I think the tide started changing internally” regarding the studio’s outlook on lgbt rep around the time that seasons 7/8 were in production.

so in addition to potential IP issues, Dreamworks is obviously concerned about their reputation and losing money. however we can gather from these quotations that (due to recent cultural shifts in the U.S.) Dreamworks has felt comfortable making efforts in the last few years to distribute more/better lgbt rep.

you also have to consider that Dreamworks KNEW what they were getting into with hiring Noelle. it’s hard to know whether lgbt representation was the vision for the show from the beginning or whether Noelle brought it with her (tho it seems like the latter). but either way, the studio must have been actively seeking to improve their lgbt representation because i’m sure she made her vision clear from the very beginning.

There’s a great article where Noelle talks about the fight to include lgbt rep in She-Ra:

“When you’re aiming to tell a story like that, you have to get everyone who’s working on the show, whether on the crew, or at the executive level, to believe in that world as well. It’s all part of trying to create the type of world in real life that you’re creating in the show. While I hope it comes across in a natural way in the show, it’s something you have to constantly fight for. You can’t take it for granted. I never take it for granted. It’s a really important thing to fight for, and a lot of it is just, “Trust me, this is gonna work. Believe in me. I can pull this off.” I am really fortunate to work with executives who do believe in me and who have allowed me to do a lot with this show. I’m very fortunate for that.”

So that is awesome to hear!! It wasn’t a tug-of-war situation with Noelle having to make concessions for execs who didn’t believe in her vision. She says the studio was supportive. But I think only time will tell us what the definition of “a lot” is.

Okay so, whew, that was a lot of information. i’ll be amazed if anyone actually reads this far lmaoo 😂 anyway i wanna move away from logistical stuff and talk about some other things Noelle has said about her show.

geekdad did another great interview with Noelle (and a Dreamworks PR representative!! it’s a good read) where he asked “if you wanted to depict a same gender relationship with foreground characters, do you think we’re at that stage yet in children’s animation where you could? Or do you think we still have a ways to go?”

Noelle replies “I think that remains to be seen, and I think… that’s something that–you should watch the show. You should see the storylines that we pursue in the future.”

When asked about catradora’s romantic undertones, “just keep watching” is something Noelle has said repeatedly in many different interviews. She wouldn’t say that if there wasn’t going to be a payoff at the end. It’s obvious she’s not at liberty to discuss the ending of the show, you can tell she’s always extremely careful with her wording when she’s faced with questions like this. But she consistently expresses, as a lesbian herself, that she has created a show she expects her own community will be excited about. Whatever actually happens, Noelle doesn’t believe that She-Ra will let us down 😌

Shes also mentioned that she’s grateful for shows like Steven Universe and Adventure Time that were trailblazers before She-Ra, because every successive show has the opportunity to be a little bit more progressive than the shows that came before it. We all have to continually strive to push the envelope and demand more inclusivity. If it turns out that that’s all She-Ra is–a small step towards quality representation–then yes of course it will feel like a massive waste (just because this story Noelle created is so incredible), but we’ll have to remember that the show is still playing a very important role in the history of children’s media. Even without a kiss, She-Ra has made incredible strides in lgbt rep. what i would hate to see is people complaining (god forbid calling it “queer baiting”) if there isn’t a kiss. Noelle and the crew have worked on this show tirelessly and passionately and we can’t yell at them for something they had no control over. the only people we should hold accountable are Dreamworks/Mattel. so i agree with you there anon.

Personally, at this point, I’m just here for the ride because i trust Noelle Stevenson with my life and She-Ra is the best show i’ve EVER seen. and i’m gonna keep talking about catradora kissing because

#she ra #asks/replies #this actually turned into a whole ass research article i'm insane for writing this lakjdlfs #no one can EVER doubt how seriously i take catradora

97 notes · View notes

purplesurveys · 4 years

Text

659

Mosquitoes find you particularly delicious. The rainy season where I live is essentially equivalent to mosquito season, so there is definitely a certain period in a year where they are more than usual; and because I like having just my windows open when I sleep (I find the aircon too cold most of the time), the mosquitoes find their way to my room and so there’d be days I’d wake up filled with new bites. I’m lucky enough to have never had dengue. You cheated on Heads Up 7 Up in elementary school. We don’t play that here. We do have a game called 7 Up and it *may* be a variation of that, but 7 Up involves running and chasing haha. You had a favorite Spice Girl. I’m definitely not old enough to have reached Spice Girls’ peak, and out of all of them I only know Victoria Beckham. You remember watching the first episode of SpongeBob when it came out. I was only a year old when Spongebob first came out, so I didn’t watch it by then. I do know what episode you’re talking about, though – Spongebob was pretty much all I ever watched as a kid. You like to draw. I was never any good at drawing, so I hate every bit of it.

You wish you had a car. Sort of? I have my own car bought by my parents, but I am aiming to get my own car when I could afford it. My dream car is the Mini Cooper Clubman. You used to want to be a model. I’m embarrassed by it now, but it was a legitimate dream of mine before, so much so that I let my dad know of my intention (then) of becoming a runway model. Idk, I had a past friend who was into VS models and reblogged them all the time, so her interest rubbed off on me and I wanted to be like them as well. I cringe every time I remember, lmao. You wanted to be on the show All That. I wanted to be on all the Nickelodeon shows that had the same theme as All That. You enjoy public speaking. I’m good at it and can enjoy it on a good day, but sometimes I’ll get anxious. You have witnessed something supernatural. Nope. I’ve had friends tell me their stories and I believe them, but I can’t say the same for myself. You believe in the supernatural. Just ghosts. I don’t believe in folk creatures, like the ones we have in our native culture. You aren't heterosexual. My survey answers in the last six or so years have made this very blatant. You think the whole transgender thing is stupid. That’s twisted and sad and pitiful. You own a dreamcatcher. Two – one mini dreamcatcher and another giant one. I’ve had an attachment to them since seeing New Moon of the Twilight Saga – there’s a part where Jacob gives Bella her own dreamcatcher at a time when she got depressed and was having nightmares every night, and I know there had been many times when I was like Bella, so I wanted one for myself as well. You'd want a boho wedding. So not my style. My wedding’s going to be minimalist and at most, pastel-themed. You think pink is the best color for cars. Not for me, no. Simple is better; I like my cars white. You've been called a free spirit. Nope, and rightfully so. I wouldn’t call myself a free spirit either. I like trying out new things, but I also like having security blankets and safety nets around. You're the same height as your mom. Yeah pretty much. She’s just a tiny bit taller. You grew up watching Nickelodean. I grew up watching Nickelodeon*, but this works too. My cousins and I just flipped among three channels – Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network.

You have a sibling who looks like you. Nah we all have our own distinct looks. There are angles and expressions wherein we look more similar, but generally it’s easy to tell us apart. You like to write in a journal. This account is pretty much like my journal, and I love using this blog for my thoughts and ramblings. You're tired. It’s Friday, it’s the end of the week, and I’m so, so, SO tired. And of course I’m celebrating by drinking two cups of coffee and staying up as late as I want, lol. You felt sick today. The last time this happened was late last year. I felt feverish while I was out for dinner with Gab, but the weird thing about it was that I felt better and as if nothing happened literally a half hour later. You're very creative. That is the LAST word I would use to describe myself. You can be disorganized. I’m organized about a lot of things, but I’m also disorganized about a lot of things. I could never maintain my closet no matter how much I put an effort to fold everything neatly and start from square one. You have a fever right now. Nope.

You've enjoyed babysitting. We never explicitly used this term but I was always the go-to elder kid to look out for my baby cousins, especially when we still lived under the same roof as an extended family, and I loved every bit of it. I was okay with being the motherly figure while everyone else played games or with toys. You want to go to New York City to visit. Yeah. I like bustling cities, so I feel like NYC would be right up my alley. I don’t care much for Times Square though and I would probably spend most of my time going to their museums. You love tea. I’m not obsessed with it; I can take it or leave it. And I don’t like the teas that come with a teabag; I drink either the traditional Chinese tea or just sweet, unhealthy iced tea altogether. You don't play an instrument. Yeah and I get sad about this like two times a day lmao. I wish I could play just a tiny bit of piano and/or violin. You used to want Taylor Swift's hair. I never actively wanted to be anything like her. You enjoyed High School Musical. Of course. I was THERE when it came out, and I stayed for every bit of the first film, High School Musical 2, and High School Musical 3. I was right smack in the middle of the HSM frenzy and it’s one of the more cherishable moments of my childhood haha. Everybody knew the songs, the steps to We’re All In This Together, and had HSM shirts, bags, pencil cases, and notebooks. You watched The Rugrats Movie in the theater. I barely remember that it had a movie, and I don’t think I ever saw it. Definitely not in the cinemas. You've performed on stage in a musical. I’ve performed on stage (as part of a big group) for annual school productions, but I think they were all plays. Hated every second of it. You've had the lead role in a musical. Certainly not. You've had cramps so bad you threw up. No, but close. A few weeks ago I had a headache SO bad I actually had to run to the toilet only to dry heave. It’s never happened to me before so I got scared and I just slept it off to see what happened the next day. You've never had Nutella. 2010 Tumblr pressured everybody to get Nutella because it was all the rage at the time and all the cool kids were having it, so I also did at some point. You have a favorite blanket. The one Gabie gave me two Christmases ago is my favorite. You own family heirlooms. I’m sure we have some but they haven’t been passed on to me yet.

You have carved and painted pumpkins before. No, pumpkins aren’t really a thing here. As far as I know, coloring/painting on Easter eggs is a more common activity. You have colored Easter eggs. Yes, I used to do this with my (second) cousins when they were younger.

You've walked through a haunted house. I always say I’m into horror stuff, but tbh I think horror movies are the furthest I can go HAHAHA. I’ve never been in a haunted house whether day or night, and I think the only time you’d get me to do it is if I got paid for it. You've dressed up on Halloween. Plenty times. I was Dora the Explorer last year :D :D You've tried to kill yourself. You've had a false rumor spread about you. In Grade 6 I had a rumor come back to me saying I was bi and was seeing my friend Andi (who, to be fair, I had a crush on at the time but I didn’t realize it yet). I just found it cool at all that I had a rumor about me considering I wasn’t a popular kid and had literally 2 friends, so I didn’t let it bother me haaaaah. You've been kicked out of a store (whether for a good or bad reason.) It was at a McDonald’s lmao. My friends were playing a card game and were yelling every five seconds; I knew people were going to get pissed so I distanced myself as much as possible even though I was at the same table jkfghdgh. Eventually an old man had had enough and asked us to leave, which I was GLAD to do. You have a favorite stove burner that you always use. I don’t have a favorite...the one I use often just happens to be my regular one. You enjoy eating at fast food restaurants. I find them dirty and nasty so I only eat there if I absolutely have to, but I do like getting takeout and enjoy fast food in general. You like arrows and feathers and peace signs. Ugh cringe, this SCREAMS 2010 Tumblr hahahahaha. I mean I liked all of these at some point, but not now. You want to wear a flower crown for your wedding. Hell no. It was cute for a while, but not anymore. You have signed someone else's yearbook. We don’t do that here. We pay tons of money for our yearbooks that it’s practically destroying them if we ever wrote on them lmao. You were shy in high school. For the first half, I was shy and pretty unpopular. By the latter part of high school I managed to gain friends and end up in the ~popular~ circle, but I was still shy compared to my peers. I didn’t take up a lot of extracurriculars (which is what the popu kids tended to do) but I managed to stay within the circle until the end of it. You're shy when first getting to know someone. Of course, as most would be I would imagine. I can warm up fast, though. You've gotten all A's in a class before. In high school, this was me with English and history. In college, this would be me with my history electives.

You had a favorite class and a favorite teacher in high school. Sure! Our biology teacher in sophomore year was evvvvverybody’s crush. She was so pretty and kind and smart; when we went to a beach for our field trip, I tried getting stung by a jellyfish just so she’d treat the bite on my leg cos she was one out of two faculty members who knew how to treat stings HAHAHAH. I didn’t get the highest marks in her class, but I enjoyed nonetheless. You were a teacher's favorite. BY NO MEANS. Gabie was, though. We were total polar opposites when it came to how we acted in class. You've won a costume contest. I...don’t think I ever did, but my mom did go all out when it came to coming up with our costumes as kids. You have a favorite Disney princess. It used to be Ariel, then I found her annoying. My present favorite is Rapunzel. You get carsick. Only if I excessively do something while in a moving vehicle, like text or read. You've flown first class. Never have. You hate inequality and wish life were more fair. Don’t we all? You've had a bad neighbor. They weren’t bad per se. Just a bit chaotic and the kids (a little older than I was at the time) clearly had behavioral issues. I was so relieved when they moved out. You've done a cannonball. I don’t think so. You have fallen and hit your head. Nope, and that sounds like the literal worst thing. You like sunflowers. Sure! It’s a popular UP symbol – every year, a few weeks before the university-wide graduation, they’d plant huuundreds of sunflowers to line up the entire road leading to my school :) We usually refer to sunflowers as a sign of encouragement to keep on keeping on, so that one day the sunflowers will bloom for us as well. You like the name Skylar. It’s alright. I like it because it’s the name of the badass mom in Breaking Bad, but otherwise it’s nothing too special for me. You've had a friend named Sarah. I have acquaintances with the name Sarah but they’re not my friends. You have an Aunt Robin. Nope. I would end up being the Aunt Robyn in a few years, hahahaha. You have an Uncle Rick. I’ve never heard of an Uncle/Tito Rick, but with how big Filipino families are I wouldn’t be surprised if I turned out to have one. You have a cousin Annabelle. No, but close. I have an Auntie Bel whose whole name is Amabel. You think flying a kite is boring. I never had fun doing it, or whenever we had to do it as a school activity. You were born in the year of the Dragon. Tiger, yo. You like your Chinese zodiac sign better than your American one. I don’t care for either. Your laptop has shut off because it got too hot. It’s never done this before, thank goodness. I try not to overwork it either. You've accidentally caught something on fire. Nope, I don’t think this has happened to me before. You make your bed every day. Aside from my mom requires me to, a neat bed makes the entire room feel much cleaner so I do it anyway. You wear a digital watch. I have a bad record of losing watches, so I never like wearing them. You have a favorite park. We don’t have a lot of parks here to even pick favorites from to begin with, which is a shame. You've hiked a mountain. I want to sooooo bad. It’s just never happened before/yet. You want to hike a mountain again. ^ You've been a slave. What the fuck. You feel like you've had your free will stolen from you. My parents were quite strict before but it never felt this bad. You speak in tongues. If you mean I can speak more than one language, then sure. You enjoy medieval festivals. Never been interested in anything medieval. Your favorite fair ride is the pirate ship. I don’t ride rides. Cotton candy isn't that good. It’s a cute concept but I wouldn’t always pay for it. Men look good in pink. Men – and anybody – would look good in any color so long as they’re comfortable with it lol. You went to youth group. Hell no. I’m glad my mom never forced me either. You were baptized in a lake. No. Just in a church. You were on Color Guard. I have no idea what this means. You went to your senior prom. We had a junior prom that I went to, and that was it for my school; but I was also asked to go to a senior ball of another school. Your first kiss was just an experiment. No, it was a legit kiss. You dated a guy you didn't like. Almost did, though. You have fallen asleep in class. Never. I never want this to happen, either. You have won an award. A few times. You type fast. Yeah, you get used to it through the years. You have a lot of dreams for your future. I still want to do a lot, yes. You've gone camping in the woods. Never, but it’d be a cool experience. I wouldn’t want to be alone though. You love to sleep under the stars. I don’t get to do this but it sounds like a lovely time. You've gone camping in the fall. I haven’t gone camping at allllllll. You own a pair of slipper socks. That sounds way too hot for where I live lmao.

#survey #surveys

2 notes · View notes

comicteaparty · 4 years

Text

April 4th-April 10th, 2020 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from April 4th, 2020 to April 10th, 2020. The chat focused on the following question:

What is something you’ve improved with in regards to writing or comic creation thanks to working on your story?

carcarchu

Oh this one i can answer definitively. it's 100% lineart. forcing myself to have to do lineart for hours everyday is definitely a way to force yourself to get better at it while i still don't like it it's something that i can do now without being scared about it

shadowhood (SunnyxRain)

Colouring. I had to get really creative in expressing emotion and hinting plot devices with colour. Also got much better with drawing gesture drawings due to looking at a lot of references!

Cronaj (Whispers of the Past)

Either writing dialogue or drawing/painting backgrounds... I used to be particularly awful at writing dialogue. It was too stiff and formal, and sounded a lot like old prose. Now, because of writing a comic and going through several scripts, the dialogue is a lot more natural, and the pacing is more realistic to actual conversations. And the other: backgrounds. I really used to not even draw them at all, and doing a comic forced me to have to think about environments in scenes. So I went from drawing floating characters to having to consider where they are and how it affects the story/mood.(edited)

Feather J. Fern

Paneling! That was my main focus to figure out how to do good paneling to have clearer pages

Deo101 [Millennium]

Honestly? Everything. It's all gotten better and I've learned so much. I would say my biggest improvement is probably in my time management, and art wise is probably composition and layouts. But it's hard to pick because I've grown so much in every aspect!

chalcara [Nyx+Nyssa]

Biggest thing I learned was to keep the story small and focused - and that the smaller, more human struggles are much better in creating tension than the whole default "the world's gonna end!" thing. Mind you, I still love a good "world's ending" story, but you gotta make people CARE about the people in that world first!

Holmeaa - working on WAYFINDERS

ohohohoooo I have done more drawing in photoshop in this short time I have worked on Wayfinders, than the rest of my life! That has given me some skills for sure! Coloring is another one, and generally just efficiency and flow in a comic

Nutty (Court of Roses)

For me it's been my use of color, and getting more confident in experimenting with it to really drive home a scene's mood!

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

The clearest improvement I always notice is my layouts - I’ve gotten more adventurous with panel shapes and placement as time has gone on, experimenting with more interesting designs for the whole page. Some of those experiments haven’t been totally successful but it always feels like a worthwhile try. I’ve gotten some really, REALLY cool layouts out of these experiments, and I love seeing how dynamic the panels have become compared to my first chapter. Also speed. I’m so much faster now. Thank gooooooodness (edited)

Eightfish (Puppeteer)

@LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) I've definitely noticed the experimental panel layouts! They're really cool.

AntiBunny

Planning. Book 2 is when I started using sketchbook thumbnails to plan ahead. The luxury of that first draft meant I could rethink panel layouts and how to best express the events happening if I first had an idea of what was happening laid out.

Also digital art by necessity since I switched to digital during the current arc. I was decent at lineart already, but other aspects have really challenged me to grow as an artist. I had to totally rethink the way I create backgrounds for instance. During this time the background quality actually declined a little while I got used to a new method, but experience has improved my skills greatly as I force myself into new methods.

DanitheCarutor

Hmmm maybe paneling, speechbubbles and backgrounds? My current project is my second real attempt at doing a comic, but I have learned a lot of stuff from the community and general art and story tutorials. Backgrounds and bubbles were the worst for me when first starting out, I only read manga before starting so the speechbubble shapes did not fit with how English is written. Plus I've only drawn wooded fantasy settings before making my comic, so using a ruler, figuring out perspective points and drawing buildings was very new to me. I still hate drawing cities and such, but I've gotten a lot better at it and it is easier to do now. Since I mostly stuck with B&W before my current project, coloring also kind of improved? Depending on who's looking at it. Lmao If I were to think about story/characters/dialogue, I have no idea if I've improved. Honestly, I don't pay much attention to the quality. Also my brain kinda says it's all bad regardless of what I make.(edited)

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

For my Improvements: I'm getting better at my comic panels, as I adjust to the vertical style. Before I've always drawn the standard format. It's more than just boxes, I try to keep a variety of sizes. I'm picking up roughly how much 'gutter space' I need per 2-3 panels.etc I'm also improving on choosing colors that fits my love of detailed linework.(edited)

OH! I'm also learning about Clip studio shortcuts, how to use the assets they provide which makes the process, abit easier on me. Things I need to change, is I want to get a good speedy coloring style, without referring to my usual coloring.(edited)

Tuyetnhi (Only In Your Dreams!)

the more I worked on the comic, the more I feel ambitious in making different angles and perspective. So it's really hitting me out of my comfort zone which is good! lol Though I'm trying to keep in mind of my speed, what I feel like I've improved a bit is trying to keep in mind of paneling and dialogue.

FeatherNotes(Krispy)

Process! Space and i have definitely figured out the most productive way to produce content at the rate and quality that also provides us with time for our own projects. Comics are a useful tool that helps you discover ways to better organize your creative workflow for sure!

sssfrs (JOE IS DEAD)

I think probably scenery. I used to dread drawing inanimate objects but now I feel more confident in filling in a scene & even look forward to it sometimes. Maybe also page composition and paneling but I still have a lot to learn there

eli [a winged tale]

One of the reasons I embarked on the webcomic journey is to push myself to improve not only storytelling but also utilizing art to create a reader experience that would be difficult to replicate with just words. I’d like to think that 9 months into making A Winged Tale, I’ve improved on deciding when is a good opportunity to invest more into backgrounds vs character dynamics and when should be focused more on sequences of panels and composition. While the comic is written in a four panel format, more and more I’m finding areas where the story could be told by breaking those rules (attached pic). It’s a balance and I hope going forward I will improve more in pushing the limits of panels and find ways to express the story in fun and interesting ways.(edited)

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

Wow that's a very good description @eli [a winged tale] I look forward to reading more of your story journey

eli [a winged tale]

Thanks so much Joichi! I’m eager to keep learning~

Capitania do Azar

I'm gonna go with planning and actually getting it done. I'm so much faster because now the process is much more streamlined to me

kayotics

My whole comic was started s an exercise to just get better at comics generally so I’d probably say every part I’ve improved at? The biggest things are probably colors and the upfront planning process

Phin (Heirs of the Veil)

Ooof hard question. I think my main improvement lies with page and speechballoon layouts and writing natural feeling dialouge. I'd say maybe also character acting?

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

I'm slowly learning how to create more engaging comic narrative. I read and research in the polished prem webcomics to see what makes them engaging? Like I'm going to challenge myself by creating a series of short stories with a reoccurring set of characters. Every new comic series I create is an experience, trial and error. Sometimes I skip the writeup and just go in blind, trust my own instincts. I'm glad to reach out and talk about it than in my own head. I hope by this year, I'll have at least 2 chapters of Hybrid Dolls out.(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I've definitely gotten better at planning/ outlining multiple chapters ahead of time. I did not even do this when I was doing the first 10 something chapters. (I did attempt an outline before I began the comic, but the story changed significantly from the outline by the time I started the comic, and I did not try to do it again for a long while.) I can't remember when I started, but I do recall having a lot of trouble the first time I tried to do it. It's gotten a little easier each time, though. In fact, I just spent the past few days outlining the next few very important chapters, de-tangling some big tangles. I'm really glad my outlining (and overall writing) skills had leveled up, because HOO boy, I don't think my 2014-2015 self could have done this!

I also became friends with enviros. I had already become somewhat comfortable drawing perspective when HoK started, but I had a sort of mechanical approach to it, like "oh I need some enviro for these establishing shots, guess I'll draw them." But now I LOVE drawing enviros! (some types anyway...) It's my comfort activity, something I treat myself to after a long day! In the thumbnails for my next few pages, there's a few enviro-heavy panels that I have to remove, because I drew too many of them (and the pacing got too slow as a result). I have to stop myself from drawing too many of these.

My biggest improvement is probably I've come to understand my characters and my themes much better, but that's more of a "I got better at making HoK" than a "I got better at making comics." There's definitely a difference between the two.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

@keii’ii (Heart of Keol) ah I totally understand I tried the outline method before I start but my story changed alot after I drew it. So it start to feel like a waste of time for me, but I'll still write an outline to make sure to plan where my story heads(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Yeah! I needed to draw those first few chapters to understand the direction of my own story.

The drawing part is an essential part of self-reflection, to try to understand what it is that I want out of the story. The answer has always been there in my heart, but I'm not able to see it clearly from the get-go.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

I end up breaking scenes and put them in for future episodes, since I want to get a certain flow in the story.

It could be tricky to see what it is you want out of the story until you are in at least 3 chapters in?

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

I needed way more than 3 chapters -- though granted, my chapters are short, so that could be a part of it

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

I see the early first script as testing the water. like a test to figure out the characters personalities. Unless you are bringing in old characters which you knew before?(edited)

keii’ii (Heart of Keol)

Even if the characters have been with you for a while, unless I have made a comic with them, there is a big chance that the characters will completely change, too.

DanitheCarutor

You know, I was thinking about about this, mostly about how I wouldn't have been happy if I was able to finish my comic the day I started. Then I realized I'm happy that I didn't. The first chapter wasn't the best, I was just learning how to coloring a comic, still fleshing out my characters and was still brainstorming small kinks in the story. I also still didn't have as much of an understanding of perspective, or panel and bubble layout. Even though I still have a lot I need to work on, I've gotten a lot better in all those aspects. Even though my use of color is weird, I've definitely gotten much more confident in it, enough so that I experiment and take a lot more risks with style. Even though my panelling can be boring, I have a much better understanding of how I want a page to look. I've improved a lot with my planning as well, like even though my thumbnailing/storyboarding only takes maybe 30, I've learned to step away for a bit if I don't like a layout, or analyzing why I don't like it and brainstorming ways to make it better. If I had magically finished the comic all at once, it would look really bad and may have been less readable.

Joichi [Hybrid Dolls]

That is inspiring to hear about your improvement @DanitheCarutor

Natsu-no-Hikari

Chiming in! Just this week, Miko (my co-creator) and I were discussing how far we've come from when we started our first comic (https://liarsgotoparadise.com/) vs. where we are now. I think there have been a lot of learn experiences, such as art, dialogue, general editing - but especially with pacing and character interaction. We regret that we didn't stop to focus more on that interaction, as we wanted to move ahead in the story...and now we can't change that, except to start now and not allow ourselves to grow impatient. Take our time and enjoy the journey - that's our new motto. There's a time to rush ahead in perilous moments, but there's also definitely a time to catch our breaths and let the characters mingle and speak. It's an improvement that will become more noticeable going forward in Liars and our second comic as well.

#ctarchive #comic #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble #comic tea party #ctp

1 note · View note

shinwhoohoo · 5 years

Text

Contract Megapost

My Honest Thoughts ✍️

With the dozens of asks I’ve received following the initial news that B1A4 was: firstly, extending their 7-year contracts by two additional months, followed by, secondly, WM Entertainment (WM) announcing that Jinyoung and Baro would be leaving the company while CNU, Sandeul, and Gongchan were re-signing to stay with WM, I’ve always tried to remain as neutral as I possibly could when writing my responses, even when I’ve personally felt, and wanted to say, more.

This was done purposely on my part-- with the news still so fresh, I wanted to try and create a ‘safe space’ of sorts, where people could come and fully express how they felt without judgement. Also, I didn’t want to contribute any additional negative thoughts or energy then what was already out there, since many were so sensitive, hurt, and confused by the entire situation. I was certainly part of this crowd, but I did my best to keep (most) of my feelings at bay, instead just answering or commenting on what was directly submitted in my asks.

With months having passed, each of the five boys involved in their own projects, and the fandom seemingly much more calm about what transpired, I’d like to now actually take the time to fully write out my thoughts and opinions without feeling like I need to hold back. This isn’t to say what I had previously written wasn’t what I felt, but now it is just... complete.

(likely unnecessary but putting it here anyway #1) DISCLAIMER: Everything from here on out is 100% my opinions and thoughts and by no means accurate. While I appreciate many of you coming to me for my opinions, I by no means am more qualified than anyone else here-- in other words, my guesses as to what happened are as good as yours.

(likely unnecessary but putting it here anyway #2) WARNING: Major, MAJOR word vomit ahead. So, apologies in advance for those who aren’t able to make it all the way through 😅

I’m going to attempt to write this in the most chronologically-sound way, since that format makes the most sense in my mind. With that said, let’s start at the beginning (or at least, the beginning of what matters in relation to all of this):

One side of the equation we need to look at was WM’s management. From B1A4′s debut up until WM debuted Oh My Girl (OMG), 100% of the attention was given to the boys. And it showed in the appropriate choices management made, allowing the boys to promote in a timely manner without ever overdoing it, giving them health breaks when needed if they were sick or injured (for example, when Baro injured his leg during What’s Happening promotions-- they decided to cut promos short), as well as allowing them to individually try out acting, composing, and guesting on variety shows, and having the boys star in their own variety shows. The timing seemed great when they ventured into the Japanese market, putting a focus on just releasing translated versions of their Korean singles before expending the resources to actually create new J-songs/singles.

Another side that is important to note in this is the boys’ inner relationships, not only with WM but amongst themselves. B1A4 were never shy in describing how good their communication with one another were. They detailed about their meetings they conducted the end of each week, to go over the ups and downs of what transpired. They admitted that this was a big contributor in preventing them from having legitimate arguments vs. normal disagreements that everyone has. And this closeness showed-- I know many non-fans who would comment (to me or otherwise) on how real their relationships seemed, that it wasn’t just a ‘show’ for the fans or for ‘business’. The boys would even comment about how they wanted to last a long time and be like ‘Shinhwa’. So with these two main points addressed, what happened to cause a shift? When did these shifts actually happen?

Let’s look at WM’s management first, because in all honesty it’s the easier of the two and I’ve admittedly already ranted a good deal about it, so my thoughts are more organized and collected.

To quickly go through my thoughts about the downfall of good management choices at WM, I’ll summarize points I find note-worthy from the last few years:

Following ‘Solo Day’ in 2014, the boys go on their longest hiatus (up until that point in time) of a full year with no real news of updates on the next comeback cycle.

With the debut of OMG in 2015, it is noticeable that there is a lack of focus with B1A4′s next promotional cycle of ‘Sweet Girl’. This is reflected in basically no promotions leading up to it, as well as little to no appearances during the actual promotional cycle.

Not specifically related to management in an of itself, but also at this time, the boys find themselves in a bit of a conflict regarding their stage and concert outfits; they had resembled SHINee’s outfits too much.

When it came time for their 5th anniversary celebrations in 2016, WM makes the choice to host a venue in Korea but specifically only for J-BANAs to attend (with a guest). K-BANAs start boycotting.

Issues arise with Pony Canyon, and how their Japanese promotions are seemingly given precedence over their Korean promotions (fans were also complaining that their Japanese albums looked cheaply designed and made).

Sandeul is announced (with very short notice) to be given a solo album in October of 2016. Shortly into his promotion cycles, he falls ill and has to skip scheduled shows and appearances. Jinyoung helps fill in, as he has been involved with his biggest tv-role to date, along with producing songs for other girl groups (OMG, I.O.I).

Announcements that B1A4 are coming back with extremely little warning occur in the midst of Sandeul’s promos; their comeback begins at the end of November 2016. While the promotional cycle for ‘A Lie’ is fairly short, it seems to be a bit more organized than what we saw during ‘Sweet Girl’ (which was over a year prior at this point).

The following hiatus between ‘A Lie’ and when ‘Rollin’ is released in the Fall of 2017 sees the least amount of schedules for the boys as a whole. Little to nothing is done as a group following their ‘Four Nights in the US’ and 'Live Space’ concerts; CNU is involved in ‘Hamlet’, Sandeul in ‘Thirty Something’, Jinyoung dabbles more in producing for other groups (such as for the ‘Idol Drama Operation’ team), Baro does a short web-drama and acts in ‘Manhole’ (the latter being not well-received or popular) and Gongchan... chills. Oh! Gongchan did that virtual dating game... thing.

Again, much like with ‘A Lie’ and ‘Sweet Girl’, the comeback for ‘Rollin’ gets announced in a rush, with the boys having not even filmed their MV yet when the news gets dropped this time. They take the flight to Australia, film for the next 48-hours, then fly back. The lack in production quality is evident, myself being witness to many commenting on the seemingly low budget and little to no creativity involved in the MV-- I still agree, it leaves a lot to be desired. Teasers are literally released by the boys themselves, on their instagrams. (And look tacky as hell lmao).

With barely a week into promos, Jinyoung falls ill and has to sit out of promotions and appearances. The promotional cycle ends almost as quickly as it started, with a couple appearances (very few with all five however-- Jinyoung or Baro seem to be absent for some), and very little fanfare as a whole.

Following the end of this last comeback cycle, again we seen very little appearances with all five. They don’t have any concerts for fans (something they did following almost every promotional cycle since their first BABA concert), instead just guesting for a few random concerts.

During this hiatus, we hear the same comments from the boys that we’ve been hearing now the last few years: That they have been working on new music, and that they’d like to comeback as soon as possible.

During one of their few vlives as five, they play a game where they guess what different words are. Confused at one of the hints, a staff behind the camera makes a tasteless joke of the word involving around ‘loli’ or ‘lolita’. This gets picked up by a few news sites.

Other, larger controversies arise when Sandeul’s name get’s wrapped up in a sexual assault conflict which WM (luckily) quickly denies. However, when Baro gets involved in a ‘lovestagram’ conflict, WM stays mostly silent, and Baro instead has to release two letters himself denying it, along with apologizing for his ‘attitude controversy’ that seems to keep resurfacing.

No fan meeting is scheduled for their 7th anniversary when April 2018 comes around; instead, WM announces that their contracts have been temporarily extended for two months and talks of renewals are still up in the air.

A vlive is held. Sandeul cries when he makes his ending statement about their 7th anniversary and ‘moving forward’ as a group. He makes a point to comment that “[B1A4] will always be with you”.

A compilation album of their Japanese singles is released with no promotions or appearances by the boys.

At the end of the two month extension, WM announces that Jinyoung and Baro are leaving the company, not before Jinyoung posts the emotional lyrics of ‘Together’ to his instagram. Jinyoung, and eventually Baro, release statements confirming their departure. Sandeul releases a statement making clear his confusion of what’s going on, and CNU takes almost two months to make his statement, again expressing confusion and a lot of emotion over what happened-- but this we’ll get into more next when talking about their relationships.

So... wow. It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it? I’m of course not remembering every single detail of what happened that was questionable in the last few years. In fact, I’m sure there’s still quite a few moments going back to 2015 and early 2016 that I’m leaving out. But, the point in laying it all out here like this is to show that there has been a decline in the company’s management, and it’s been occurring over the last 3~4 years.

This isn’t out to paint WM as the enemy here, either. They didn’t want this to be how things ended with B1A4. B1A4 was their money maker, their source of income, their ability to purchase a seven-story building. And, looking at it in a less cynical way, B1A4 was the boys that WM founder Wonmin and director Jimni took in as teenagers, having been there since the beginning-- likely acting as foster parents to the boys that moved away from their actual families. Why would they want to disappoint them? Why would they want to do anything but give them all they could to succeed?

It’s in these questions where the real tragedy lies surrounding WM and the boys: WM didn’t want this to happen, but in their goals of continuing to grow, expand, and debut more groups, they let it happen unknowingly. I believe they even tried to right some wrongs towards the end, such as finally dropping Pony Canyon and signing with the more revered Universal for Japanese promotions and productions, literally giving the boys an entire floor to themselves to freely produce, and attempting to extend their contracts in a last-ditch effort to get them all to stay. I could only imagine how hard it was for Wonmin, Jimni, and other senior-leveled staff (as well as their day-to-day managers) to see Baro and Jinyoung walk out the door after 9+ years.

But the fact of the matter still stands that WM dropped the ball. To dive into my own personal opinions of what happened behind the scenes, nothing seemed more apparent regarding the lack of management when looking towards appearances and gigs outside of the company. I feel that a good majority of the acting roles that Jinyoung and Baro landed (barring maybe their initial roles) they got based on their own merit and networking. I have a hard time believing that they had the support of the company behind them in helping them land these jobs. If they had, I think there would have been more articles and interviews lined up helping them promote their roles. I point out these things particularly that WM could have done and not necessary more roles because I also can believe that WM didn’t have that much pull in being able to do that (i.e., land them bigger roles). Which just subtracts another point towards them, especially where Baro and Jinyoung would be concerned. But in other words, WM did have the power, and could have, promoted them better in the roles they did land.

Additionally, it was apparent that there was some unhappiness with the organization surrounding comebacks, and the planning for their comebacks. To have the boys themselves point out so often how they wished they could comeback sooner, and that they were always in the studio making more songs-- what happened to prevent these comebacks from happening (or happening sooner)? Where did all these songs, and the time spent on them, go? With a group as involved in their productions and compositions as B1A4, I’m sure this was a big annoyance to them, and Jinyoung, in particular. With Jinyoung, he quickly was given charge in the groups’ musical sound and direction. Initially, I’m sure this was seen as a huge gift to him that would not likely have been allowed if he had been in a larger company; But what happens when the same company that once gave you the freedom to compose the groups’ songs now makes it a challenge to let these songs see the light of day? I bet there was a bitterness that began to build up, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he began to question how much more more well-off he could be if WM backed him up more in composing (and going back to my prior paragraph, in his acting).

Jinyoung got his first tastes of popularity when his songs ‘What’s Happening’ and ‘Lonely’ became hits. This coincided with his movie ‘Miss Granny’ doing quite well, but following ‘Solo Day’, seen in the events listed above, he (along with the others) fell into a bit of a lull for a while. I personally think this could have been a bit of a turning point for Jinyoung, catalyzed even more when he did get back out there with ‘Moonlight Drawn By Clouds’ and guesting/producing for ‘Produce 101′. I think once he saw that the public was interested in seeing what more he could do, it was a no-brainer for him to begin reaching out and drafting what would soon be the beginnings of ‘LINK8 Entertainment’ (LINK8). He wanted the freedom to do what he wanted, on his own terms, and he created that with LINK8... which I’ll talk about more later.

Moving on to Baro, admittedly his shift was a bit harder to pin down. While I may be going out on a limb here, I wouldn’t be surprised if Baro’s true interests never quite lied with rapping, or even being part of an idol group. While he was a natural from the very beginning at being on stage, his always seemed to shine brightest on shows or acting. I’ve always felt that Baro was actually the best actor out of the boys, and would at times find myself questioning why WM wasn’t putting him in more roles. Looking back, and like I already mentioned, it was just likely because they didn’t have the pull to get him roles. But I also think that Baro would have really benefitted from WM at least promoting his roles more than they did. When we found out Baro was moving to an acting-centric company (Hodu&U Entertainment (Hodu) ), I wasn’t surprised at all, and in fact, thought that this was what Baro likely wanted from the beginning.

Something I’d also like to point out about Hodu is that they seem to be a bit of a mystery, kind of like a fortress in a way compared to WM. And I think this is important because they seem like they’ll offer a bit of ‘protection’ compared to WM from critics/trolls. And I think this is important because I feel that Baro was deeply affected by all the comments that were made about him and his ‘attitude’, and the fact that those comments seemed to resurface every few months with WM not releasing a statement that was good enough to quell them. Add to this that WM literally said nothing when his next ‘controversy’ broke about his alleged girlfriend with his own ‘fans’ attacking him... I’m sure this was a last straw. When I read the letters he posted, I can remember how sad I was, with his disappointment and pain quite tangible. At the time, I thought it was just disappointment in himself, but looking at it now from a broader perspective, I think he was just 100% ready to move on and shed his past image (and company).

In discussing the relationships between Baro and Jinyoung (Bayoung) with the others, I’m going to begin by making the (possibly polarizing) statement that I do not think they let CNU, Sandeul, or Gongchan know ahead of time that they were planning on leaving WM. I believe this is apparent in the tidbits of information that was hinted at in Sandeul’s statement to the fans immediately following the news, and later reiterated by CNU when he finally made his post weeks later, in that they were surprised, confused, and overall upset over the whole situation.

Going back to what I said in the introduction, this is an alarming shift from the group that would hold their weekly meetings to discuss and air everything out between one another. I can’t say I have an exact idea of what lead Bayoung to not openly discuss it, but I’m sure relationships started to shift and change going back to when they first moved out into their own apartments by the end of 2015. Factoring in the mismanagement of what I explained in the previous section, I’m sure this also caused possible issues between the members, particularly when it came time for recording together. I don’t think any actual fights happened, but I could see possible strains between Jinyoung and CNU over what, and when, they wanted to record (with CNU pushing to try to get into the studio more, whereas Jinyoung starting to focus on producing for other groups and being involved in ‘Moonlight’ around this time); And of course with Baro, his natural progression of falling out of interest with the lifestyle would affect his relationships with likely all the members, to differing degrees.

I’d like to think Baro still keeps in some contact with Sandeul-- I don’t think for a second that their relationship was nothing but a true friendship. I’ve talked about all the member’s strongest points before, with Sandeul’s being forgiveness, and this above all else is likely what would allow him to see past the secrecy of Baro’s final few months with the company and not let it get in the way of their friendship. As far as Baro with Gongchan or CNU, I’ve also said before I never personally felt that he was particularly that close with Gongchan, so I’d doubt if they keep in regular communication. As far as with CNU, I think time will be their biggest helper in moving past this awkward rift they probably feel. In an older post I made a comment that Bayoung possibly spoke to each other in the weeks leading up to contracts ending, but as time has passed, the more I feel that this was not likely either, with instead them both just announcing it for the first time to each other, and everyone else, during negotiations back in April.

Jinyoung’s current relationships are a bit trickier for me to try and guess... honestly, I could see him trying to stay in touch with them all, even if it’s just a text here or there, but I also could see the communication being severed, which, if true, would be unfortunate and I know very upsetting for us to accept. But the relationship between Jinyoung and the rest of the members wasn’t quite the same as Baro’s was. Jinyoung had his role as their leader, which always put him on slightly different grounds than the rest. Plus, as the main musical composer of their sound, it also followed that he was very important to the group’s central style and vibe. Which would be why, if he did not say anything to the others, it’d be all the more shocking and hurtful for the members to swallow. As someone who had always acted as the pillar of the group, it of course would be upsetting for them to comes to terms with, and accept. If I had to pick between the two, I’d hate to say it but I don’t think Jinyoung is in much contact with them at this point in time.

Also worth mentioning here is CNU’s newest comments he made during the BANA 5th fanmeet about the situation-- he made it clear he felt a lot of blame in not being able to keep all five together. While we know he was always one to shoulder the responsibility, being the eldest member and titular ‘mom’ of the group, I think it’s worth questioning if there’s a bit more to it. I think CNU knows he’s not really to blame in regards to the split... but, I think, maybe reading between the lines a bit, that it was possible that when Bayoung announced their disinterest in staying with WM back last April, CNU may have tried to personally talk with them, to get them to reconsider. Obviously, I think Bayoung’s decisions were already made and the extension as I had mentioned in posts before was likely just due to the release of their final Japanese album; But, CNU maybe had seen this extension as a true last chance to keep B1A4 together, and with Bayoung going their separate ways in June, saw this as a failure on his part.

I feel like at the time of the split, and when I was receiving the bulk of messages regarding the event and Bayoung, I was legitimately more optimistic of them all still being communicative and on decent terms. But as the months have passed with not so much as a mention of each other (admittedly, I don’t think WM would be mentioning Bayoung, but I also don’t think WM would prohibit A3 at this point from doing so, even if it was just liking or commenting on each other’s posts) my optimism has waned. I suppose it’s realistic after all; I’m sure none of us would be too happy if someone we’ve known for 10 years and shared such hardships and memories with decided to leave so suddenly. Gongchan’s recent instagram erasure (and unfollowing of everyone) could be something that hints of this.

To take it a step further in my thoughts, I’d also have to be honest and say time has not been as kind to Jinyoung for me as it has been to Baro. By this I mean, initially I felt equally supportive of them both, and respectful in their decisions and paths they chose. While I still respect their choices, and understand full well that they had every right to choose what they did, I suppose my support now, particularly for Jinyoung, has started to falter. I guess the reasons that I felt Baro may have left (i.e., sick of being an idol), seem to coincide with his choice to sign with a non-idol, acting company. Jinyoung’s reasons... don’t seem quite to fit as much. At this point, it seems that he just wanted the power and control that starting and heading a new company would bring. He wants to be able to create the music he wants, without having to necessarily confer with four other members and staff, plus the ability to choose what acting projects he wants, when he wants them. Is it a bit selfish? Yeah, if I’m being honest, I do feel that it is. There was a good possibility he could have haggled with WM enough to be given what he wanted instead of just leaving. But again, he fulfilled the duties he had under his contract with WM, so it is his every right to do what he wants, even if it comes off as transparent.

I think this ‘transparency’ is where my main issues with Jinyoung come in. With every post of his or LINK8′s, every video, every ‘#wewillnotstaysilent’, I just find myself reading right through it. Their motives seem to be very obvious, in wanting to make sure they make it known that they are pushing Jinyoung every single day as much as they can, e.g., giving him the fanmeet very soon after he officially left WM, making him a Season’s Greetings, all the acting gigs he’s been a part of in the few short months they started, the whole ‘J.GROUND’... It’s A LOT. Almost so much, that it can come across as a bit competitive towards WM and A3 in what they post and do. While I hope this isn’t the case as this would just eventually cause more of a divide, there has yet to be any reaching out between the two parties to placate any thoughts over this.

One last point I’d like to make towards Jinyoung and LINK8 is that companies just don’t sprout up (excuse the BANA pun) overnight. Jinyoung didn’t decide to finally leave WM in June, and in the span of a week (or however short of time it was before it was announced he ‘joined’ LINK8) create this new company; he had to have been putting this in the works for months, if not the better part of a year prior to leaving WM. He had to find staff to work with, find a building, create a whole image/vibe he was going for, create and file the name and logo... and a lot more. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt that people approached him, he still would have been involved in getting LINK8 off the ground for quite some time. And, pairing this with the likely idea that he hadn’t told the other members? ...Imagine not only find out your leader has decided to leave the company, but has also been putting all his time and resources into creating this entirely new company behind the scenes instead of working to try and keep B1A4 together. I can only speak for myself but shit, I’d be hurt. Again, it is a striking contrast to Baro, who just cleanly left and joined an already established company (whom had likely just approached him around the time of contract negotiations).

It’s difficult still for me to quite wrap my feelings around Jinyoung in the months that have passed. I am hurt by his actions, and the possibility that some shady things may have went down behind the scenes. While this hasn’t (or may never be) confirmed, I think the fact that a good majority of us feel the same way, speaks for itself.

That being said, I do support him. I always will. Jinyoung will always be the goofy, dorky leader that I first stumbled upon seven and a half years ago. Nothing will change those soft feelings I hold for him. He did a great job as a leader, just as Baro did a great job as their rapper and mood-maker. I’ll always adore them, and wish them nothing but the best as they venture into their new life paths.

As for the remaining members that stayed to carry on B1A4′s legacy, my heart goes out to them. To CNU, Sandeul and Gongchan, I am so grateful that they continued on. It is heartbreaking in many ways to see that this was the outcome after seven years: two members leaving, with three staying to try and continue on, except another member suddenly getting pulled away via a draft sentence from the army. But it’s also important to note that this isn’t the end. Regardless of how long I still stay in kpop, I always know that I’ll be able to come back and see these three together. And of course, I’ll always be able to look back at the years that I did spend with them, together as five, as some of the fondest memories I have. I’ll always be so thankful and appreciative to them all for making me happy each and every day.

At this point, I’d like to thank anyone who took the time to read this. It’s been a difficult past couple months, with the recent news of CNU’s draft notice not making anything easier. But I’m proud we have such a tight unit here that we can turn to each other during hard times, and discuss our feelings so freely and openly. So as always, I encourage anyone to share their thoughts, and look forward to hearing from you all~ ♡

82 notes · View notes