#acting like she’s not a performative rich girl who is devastating the environment with her private jet’s co2 emissions | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ask-spiderglass · 4 years

Text

🕸SPIDER-SONA AU: VILLIANS PART 2/???🕸

Wow more Villains? Yes ma’am! This time we’ll focus on the members of the Sinister Six!

Lizard/Martha Connors: Amari’s AP biology teacher, middle aged Florida Woman, and the widowed mother of her teenage son Billy. In 2005, her late husband, Dr. Curt Connors, had been found suspiciously dead off the side of the Everglades Parkway. Leaving behind his life’s research and work on cryptid magic for a Miami based PLEA, Martha would come across classified documents that he had stolen from his workplace detailing a method of accessing cryptid magic. Believing that her beloved husband was murdered by PLEA officers, she decides to avenge his death by using cryptid magic. However, due to her inexperience with magic and the vengeance in her heart, she was turned into vicious humanoid albino alligator. Going into a rampage at sundown, she would kill a couple PLEA officers, regular law enforcement, and anyone else who got in her way. Upon sunrise the following day, she reverted back into a human woman, though the things she did as a monster haunted her. While she wasn’t deemed a suspect, Martha ultimately decides to leave Florida with Billy, moving to New York to become a mild mannered but strict AP teacher in 2010. While she hasn’t since looked at that document for a decade, the gratifying rage of the Lizard beckons her every night, begging to be released once more...

Sandman aka “Sandy”: The Guardian of Coney Island and the unwanted son of a sand elemental and a boogeyman. Born on the beaches of Coney Island in 1880, Sandman grew up loving his home and due his parents being absent from his life, he ended up seeing the humans who visited Coney Island as his own family. For most of his life, he dedicated his life to making Coney Island a safe place for everyone from the shadows, especially the children, protecting the area and it’s patrons from the unseen and malicious. However as the years go by, Sandman began to feel unappreciated and overlooked by the people who protects. While he doesn’t harbor ill will towards all the humans, he feels incredibly upset with how he’s been treated by the people in power who carelessly polluting his environment. While he hasn’t really tapped into his boogeyman abilities in nearly a century, there are times he feels that it is necessary...

Mysterio/Quinlan Beck: The Lich of Broadway. Once a struggling Hollywood starlet and stage magician’s assistant in the 1920s, Quinlan was often overshadowed by her magician boss on the stage. Always feeling resentment towards him for being cruel towards her, she would end up stumbling upon a secret occult society in the underbelly of the glitzy city. Once she managed to convince a member to let her join, she climbed up the social ladder within the society in order to learn more about their teachings on magic. Upon learning a method of achieving immortality, she would make a plan to “deal with” her boss. On one fateful performance, her and boss were performing the Bullet Catch Trick, with Quinlan holding the gun. Unbeknownst to the magician, Quinlan would end up switching the wax bullet out for a real bullet at the last moment before showtime. She would end up shooting him in the lung, killing him in front of a horrified audience. Using her acting chops to manipulate others into thinking that this was nothing more than a tragic accident, she would manage to convince others that she was devastated by his “untimely” death. Once the press died down, she would fake her death, transform herself into a Lich, and start a new “life” on the east side of the country, taking interest in Broadway as the Lich known as Mysterio....

Kraven the Hunter/Sergi Kravinoff: The Patriarch of the Kravinoff Family, an Ex-PLEA Officer, and current Mercenary. Sergi was the son of Russian Aristocrats who fled from St. Petersburg to London during the Bolshevik Revolution. Born in 1957 and raised within an old family of monster hunters with deeply embedded traditions, Kraven grew up taking great pride in his family’s trade, hoping to one day recapture the wealth and glory his family once had. While he was the favored son of his harshly critical father, Kraven never felt like he quite measured up to his dad’s achievements, and he would overcompensate for this by masking it with vicious machismo. Once turning 18, he would begin traveling abroad to seek out opportunities to get more experience with monster hunting, growing more infamous as a hunter as decades passed. Eventually, he would be contacted by an American based PLEA to serve as an enforcement agent. But, due to multiple workplace disagreements and Kraven’s open disapproval of their “modern methods” he would be dishonorably discharged from his position. Even at the age of 63, Kraven still seeks out glory and riches, coming to reside in NYC for merc reasons and to continue his hunt even in the concrete jungle of the city...

Chameleon/Dmitri Smerdyakov: The Illegitimate Member of the Kravinoff Family, Half-Brother to Kraven, and Double Agent. Dmitri was the illegitimate son of Kraven’s father and a Nopperabō woman, born in London in 1962. Often ignored by his father who preferred “his own son” over him, Dmitri spent most of his time as a child honing his shapeshifting skills he got from from his mother’s side. His older brother Sergi used to bully him, mostly consisting of Sergi mocking him for “acting too much like a girl” and for being “too weak to be a real Kravinoff”. Once Sergi began to travel abroad, the two would go their separate ways and lose contact with each other for years. In the meantime, Dmitry decided to use his talent to become a spy, with his career bringing him to various places worldwide. Eventually he would become a double agent spying on a PLEA known as the Avengers and meet with his brother again, becoming a new resident of the supernaturally criminal underworld of NYC...

Dr. Octopus/Dr. Odyssia Octavius: The Lead Cephalopod Biologist of the New York Aquarium, Visiting Marine Science Scholar of Empire State University, and Vessel of an Ancient God. Odyssia Octavius was born in 1989 as an only child raised in a dysfunctional and emotionally abusive household. As a lonely autistic girl, she often found retreat from daily life in academics and her lifelong main special interest in cephalopods. From the day she first visited an aquarium during a field trip in elementary school, she had her sights firmly set on becoming a marine biologist, seeing the beauty and wonder in discovering new species. Eventually she would reach grad school where she would be involved with a fellow grad student, Mary Alice Anders, whom she would begin dating. However, her parents disapproved of the relationship and forced Odyssia to break up her. Odyssia sadly complies, but would eventually cut herself off from her parents after receiving her doctorate. After getting her job as a cephalopod biologist, she would have a fateful encounter during a research expedition where she and her team would discover a strange cephalopod-like entity in the Atlantic Ocean. While her scientists were deeply disturbed by the creature they saw, Odyssia would become enthralled and fascinated with it, managing to capture it and having it housed in the aquarium research center away from public viewing. While studying it, it began to speak to her. Despite the physical and mental toll it took on her to merely behold it, she was fiercely determined to learn more about it, seeing it was awe inspiring rather than horrifying. The eldritch entity, appeased with her dedication, offers her its power and knowledge in exchange for her service. She, in the name of science, accepts...

#lizard #sandman #mysterio #kraven the hunter #chameleon #odyssia octavius #art #spider man au

23 notes · View notes

curdinway-blog · 6 years

Text

Spirited Away

Spirited Away is the greatest anime film of all time. Its accolades stretch to astonishing heights; it won the Japan Academy Award for Best Picture, is the only foreign film to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and has been widely acclaimed by film critics as one of the finest animated films of the century. It smashed box office records in Japan, overtaking James Cameron’s fabled Titanic. It enjoyed robust box office drawings in the United States and worldwide as well. To this day, it is the most famous work from Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, and one of the most beloved and iconic animated features to ever grace the screen.

If there is any work that invites immediate comparisons, it is MGM’s classic The Wizard of Oz. Like that film, Spirited Away has plenty going on beneath the surface, but is celebrated most for the sheer scope of its imagination, bursts of color, and visual inventiveness. Miyazaki literally births a whole new world, limitless in its possibilities and bizarre to our normal expectations, and utterly rich in wonder. There are absurdly large babies, talking frogs, pieces of soot performing menial labor, and a 6-handed man working a furnace. The principal setting is one of the all-time greats; a dazzling, ritzy bathhouse for wayward spirits where humans are not welcome.

Into this strange new environment drops Chihiro, a girl still struggling to deal with an impending move. A new home and school end up seeming pretty mild by the time the girl’s parents turn into pigs and she is stuck wiling with an unscrupulous witch and a horde of wacky creatures for her freedom and survival. Spirited Away is a growing-up story, and a great one at that. Critics and audience have marveled at the way Chihiro progresses through the movie from apathetic, weak, and frightened to a newly self-reliant and strong person. The movie has also been lauded for its cleverly submerged themes. The problems faced by Haku, one of the resident spirits, and an appallingly gooped-up “stink spirit” are concerned nods at pollution and environmental concerns, while the workers’ lust for gold and Chihiro’s parents’ rude advances at a food stand are condemnations of greed.

The characters are some of Miyazaki’s best, and oh so memorable. Yubaba is a manipulative and opportunistic witch, whom you might hate if she were not so damn good at running that bathhouse. Haku is an amnesiac, whose current condition has him struggling to do good as he grows increasingly cold. Lin is a hilariously sour woman who takes Chihiro on as her protégé. But the best of all is No-Face, a sprite who goes from sad and lonely outcast to absolute blood-curdling nightmare in about zero to sixty, then somehow manages to reverse course again.

Leading and anchoring everything is Chihiro. Surely one of Miyazaki’s finest heroines, Chihiro was reportedly fashioned after the daughter of a friend who visited the director on occasion. As stated previously, her personal growth is remarkable characterization and a true joy. However, I have always been bothered by reviewers’ initial assertions of Chihiro. “Lazy”, “cowardly”, and “whiny” are common adjectives; even Miyazaki seemed to share the sentiment, referring to her and real-life girls her age as “lazy bums.” It is worth noting that the people Chihiro was a stand-in for are now roughly my age. That’s right; Miyazaki, a Baby Boomer, was trashing Millennials before it was cool (joking, of course). It is interesting that my assertion of Chihiro is so much different…and perhaps that is because I identify with Chihiro so much. Kids fear differently than adults do. Irrational fears predominate, and are often not given serious credence by adult figures…such as Chihiro’s parents. Childhood fears are often more deeply intense as well; catastrophic, paralyzing events made worse by the fact that children have not yet developed the emotional maturity and skills to manage them. To me, it is not at all unnatural for Chihiro to be depressed and upset by such an upending life event. I had difficulty managing my various fears well past her age. Chihiro’s apparent apathy may be a side-effect of her emotional struggles; alternatively, they may also simply represent a relative inexperience with work which is not out of place for someone of her years and maturity.

Moreover, Chihiro has a good heart. She consistently acts with sensitivity, compassion, and generosity throughout the movie, letting in No-Face when he is left outside in the rain, pursuing friendship and meaningful relationships over wealth, and risking her own safety and comfort repeatedly to help loved ones and strangers alike. This is in marked opposition to the characters around her, who manage to be far more efficient, resilient, and self-reliant than her, but are also motivated by empty capital (gold), are consistently self-serving, and lack emotional warmth and compassion. When Miyazaki criticized girls like Chihiro as “lazy bums”, he also added that he knew they had tremendous potential as well. Notice that when the “stink spirit” enters the bathhouse, it is Chihiro who recognizes the problem instead of just trying to get the job over with and the unwanted guest out. Her removal of tangles of garbage from the spirit’s side is symbolic of environmental clean-up; suggesting Miyazaki believes Chihiro and her kind will bring greater emphasis and effort towards meaningful environmental protection. Extrapolate further, and you can say the same for social empathy and non-materialism. If we truly take this analysis to the extreme and consider Chihiro to be a surrogate for Millennials and the bathhouse workers to be a surrogate for Baby Boomers, an interesting dynamic emerges. Chihiro learns from her stewards’ tough love to become an independent, resilient, and confident actor so that she can bring her inner disposition forth to do good in the world. At the same time, Chihiro gradually thaws her teachers, so that they can act more empathetically and selflessly. This successful generational interplay helps both parties to better themselves; perhaps, an applicable lesson for today’s divided society.

One of the finest aspects of Spirited Away is in that it refuses to sugarcoat the process of growing up. There are a lot of joys to be had, for sure; Chihiro has a grand adventure, after all, making new friends, overcoming obstacles, and opening her horizon to beautiful new things. However, there is definitely a darker side towards becoming an adult. Fear and uncertainty are an easy observation in her maturation and in ours; the only way to improve one’s mettle is to test it. Less apparent to me, at least the first time around, was Miyazaki’s less-than-flattering critique of the modern workplace. Essentially, once Chihiro becomes employed at the bathhouse she is treated as an adult, and we become proxy to a fascinating array of observations. First, there is the perception of being trapped. Whether it is Yubaba’s contract, Chihiro’s obligations to her now-pig family, Lin’s lamentations that she would love to leave the place, or the liberation presented by a train ticket away, the bathhouse’s oppressive atmosphere is an easy stand-in for many modern workplaces. There is also notably an aspect of distance and isolation to everyone who works there; in Haku’s case, the longer he has worked there, the colder and more aloof he has become. The necessity to watch out for one’s self as an adult separates us from one another, Miyazaki argues. That effect is a mere trickle into the core vein running throughout the movie: loneliness.

Notice the water which surrounds the bathhouse. On my second viewing, it struck me that the supernatural flooding is not merely a plot device to prevent Chihiro from escaping her situation; it is also a visual representation of the world as viewed by an adult. The infinite horizon of its waters provokes the vast expansion of worldview that comes with growing up, but also an increasing sense of solitude, emptiness, and personal reflection. Joe Hisaishi’s wonderfully sensitive score frequently adopts a longing, minimalist tone, and we feel a certain absence and sadness in the events happening onscreen. Of all Chihiro’s various trials, the impact of loneliness strikes most devastating and realistic of all. Miyazaki’s solution to this common adult malady is friendship. The essential nature of friends to a normal and healthy adult life is driven home by Chihiro’s experiences. Fear, threats, and harsh treatment do not significantly transform Chihiro. It is only when she is approached from a place of support and caring that she finds courage and stability to act with decision, and the confidence in herself to succeed and respond to failures. Even as relationships with family fade, the relationships we form with others can help us reform a socially abundant life so that we can thrive and be happy.

Growing up is a process. Fraught with peril and difficulties, chock-full of excitement and rewards, it is as tumultuous and constant throughout life as it is necessary. The fear we have as children towards change may mute somewhat as we grow older, but it is still ever-present, accompanied by a second, sharper note…nostalgia. The takeaway message of Spirited Away is that we don’t really have to be afraid, because we’ve been there before. By the end of the film, it is not entirely clear what Chihiro will be facing next. She has no guarantee of ever revisiting her friends at the bathhouse, or her friend from her former school. But she has stopped looking backward towards what has been, and is looking down the road to whatever comes next, reassured by the fact that whatever happens, she can handle it. That is what matters.

That is what growing up is all about.

1 note · View note