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#actually i don't think this really counts as character analysis
lord-squiggletits · 2 months
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I know there are as many religious good guys as there are religious bad guys in IDW, but I think I pinned down the reason why it feels like the most prominent religious figures are all bad guys and it's pretty much due to the worldbuilding.
Maybe my memory of the comics is just really bad, but the religious worldbuilding in IDW is....kind of trash honestly. I'm not sure there's a single religion or religious custom that doesn't exist solely to further the plot along. Like, it's one thing for the Camiens to worship the Primes and that causes a lot of stuff in exRID/OP, but what does that worship actually look like? What are their holidays, customs, religious texts? What about "spectralism" which basically the only thing we know about is the Festival of the Lost Light and some hippie color coding and aura shit? Like sure, there are characters who are religious and their beliefs come into play sometimes, but it honestly feels (especially in MTMTE) more like their religiousness only exists when it's relevant to the plot and it's just kinda. Disappointing eh. Lacking in worldbuilding. Plus the more religious a character is the more it's written as their entire personality and the driving force making them evil so it just kinda made me cringe to read honestly.
#squiggposting#i think there might be more 'religious moments' than i remember since it's been a hot minute since i read#but i remember during my first read/while liveblogging it was something that disappointed me#i know it's probably unfair or whatever but it still makes me cringe so hard#that the reason tyrest suddenly became a religious zealot was because he got shot with a brain altering bullet#and his religious fervor is almost literally just a product of him being brain damaged and delusional#like oooooooooooooooooooooooof it's so fucking cringe lol#i'm not sure if i'm making sense honestly. it's not so much the NUMBER of evil vs non evil religious characters#but it's more like. the more prominently religion is part of a character's personality or motivation#the odds of them just being an evil guy shoots up to almost 100%#also then there's dr/ft who's a fucking clown and 'spectralism' is just some half baked hippie shit i can't take seriously#guess my problem isn't with IDW so much as it is with JRO lol#anyways not an objective analysis i might be wrong on some counts that was just my feelings as i read#and also i just don't like it when the worldbuilding around culture only exists when it comes to plot related stuff#it really makes the world feel less lived in/realistic when it's established that there are multiple religions#but then as far as actual customs- beliefs- texts- philosophies- etc there's hardly anything#so the good guys may be religious but there's not much about what their beliefs actually entail and how they impact their daily life#and on the other hand the bad guys are screaming about how they're god's chosen all over the place
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lightning-hawke · 17 days
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Leon Kennedy Mommy Kink Headcanons
Ummm I don't know what happened here. I don't even think I'm into it but Leon saying it???? Sign me up!! I wrote it with re6 Leon in mind because. It's me. and yeah. Though it really could go for any era but any older Leon is definitely the one in my mind for this. Just something to post while I'm working the long fic <3 word count: 912 warnings: more character analysis than smut but still smutty, mommy kink obviously, like a small paragraph about a daddy kink, Leon being pathetic <3
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Leon just isn’t all that ‘smart’ when it comes to anything sexual that he has to put any amount of thought into.
He just doesn't think about it – he's got too much shit going on in his life to really think about sex. Does it feel good? Yeah? Okay great, on to the next thing. He just doesn't think about himself (and really, if it weren't for you he's probably so caught up in everything he'd forget he even had a dick if it weren't attached to him). Kinda hard to think about anything sexual when he doesn't know if today's his last. Not like anything in his life – besides you – ever lent to having a healthy sex drive.
He's not stupid about it per say, sure he thinks certain positions are better when he's with you but the moment he's actually with you, his brain shuts off. Why bother thinking about anything else when the best thing that's ever happened to him is right in front of him, begging for him? Nothing beats that, why would he even try? If there are any thoughts in his head, it’s all about what will make you feel better. Think too much and it leads back into the dark places he definitely doesn’t want to go to while fucking you – better to just shut his mind off.
So the moment you ask for something it might take a moment for his mind to catch up – especially if it's something you guys have never tried before. He'll just be laying there, blank as he tries to figure out if you're joking.
The words leave your lips and despite all his attention on you, it still takes him by surprise.
Mommy? Really?
Sure there’s the small thought at the back of his mind about you calling him daddy but really, even he knows he couldn’t actually keep up the image. He’d give it his best damn effort to try, he’d do practically anything if it made you happy but he really wasn’t able to keep up the role as much as he liked. He can act but you already know him – is he really going to keep it up when he’s one slip up away from having you laughing until you’re crying because he just can’t keep his mouth shut when he thinks of some stupid quip? No. He’s not.
But if you were going to take that role? Well, he’s already on his aching knees, ignoring everything and ready to do whatever you want – once his mind actually catches up.
"What's that, sweetheart?"
"C'mon, don't you want to try?" you coo, your hands going to his face, holding his chin gently as you towered over him. It takes a moment longer then he likes to even be able to respond; it’s downright cruel for you to even be asking him more then simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions while standing over him, looking like that.
"Never thought about it."
It's not a lie, though the moment the words left your lips, that's almost the only thing he's thinking about.
"Don't you want mommy to take care of you?" the honeyed words leaving him weaker then he'd like to admit, your voice sending him melting into a puddle at your feet. "Gonna give you everything you deserve."
The word really shouldn't leave him melting in your hands, cock feeling like it was about to explode and leaving him wondering just how badly pent up he truly was. Though, you just had that kind of hold on him. Could get him to do anything with a soft spoken word and hand, even if the words themselves were teasing.
What could he possibly lose? You might laugh at him? Classic nighttime routine, might as well make it even better. And if it helps you both get off... well why not?
He looks up at you, resting the weight of his head in the palms of your hands. "Okay... mommy."
You smirk at him, thumbs ghosting over his cheekbones. "Good boy," the words leave shivers running down his spine and he melts even more into your hands. "Relax, baby," you coo as you leaned down, lips inches away from his face.
Maybe this wasn't that bad after all.
It never takes much for him to be a complete and utter mess around you, but somehow calling you mommy just leaves him a disaster.
Whether you’re on top or not, he’s a drooling mess, tears in his eyes and hands clawing at you or the blankets. If he had any way to even think past mommy fucking him, he would feel utterly pathetic – but you wanted it, so that’s what you got. Shame doesn’t mean fuck all if it makes you happy – and the more it goes on, the less he cares.
All it ever takes is a soft hand and he’s almost cumming in his pants but somehow you’ve got him utterly broken just by calling you mommy. He can’t even think about cumming or making you feel good or anything.
Words kept failing him, only quiet whining and “mommy please-” as he tries to hold it all back.
You’re god at always making him feel good yet the moment you sink down on his cock, he’s utterly ruined.
There’s somehow even less going on in his mind. It’s all about how good his mommy is making him feel, everything else can just wait.
Maybe you really were onto something.
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silverstar-8 · 2 months
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Lucifer's Headcanons!
I decided to write some headcanons for Luci. There will be sfw as well as nsfw ones! I'll might create more, but for now there will be only one part.
Also, I think you could say Lucifer x Reader, because I'm talking about "you" while describing some of his interactions. But most of the time, I think about my self-insert. Just letting you know!
SFW (Some random, but also romantic ones. They are NOT in the order):
Of course, he loves making his little ducks in his workshop, but he can create other things too! I have a feeling that he would make toys for Charlie and also jewellery. He is really creative with them.
He moved in to the hotel and the apple tower is his. I know it's more like prediction for a future season, but it isn't 100% confirmed, so still counts as a headcanon.
He is autistic. Yes, I know he has depression, but for me he is depressed autistic.
If he is around someone he loves (romantically) his tail shows up. It might even wag! Really fast!
And also, his tail would totally hug his lover's leg. And he wouldn't even notice.
He is a little bit more social than he was before. He's still struggling, but visiting more Charlie and helping her with a lot of stuff is still a big step!
When he's sad and alone, he is hugging himself with his wings. He's in wings' town. It's his way to comfort himself.
About wings, he can also do this if his loved one feel sad. He will literally hug with arms and wings. Really comfy.
Also, his feathers are really, REALLY soft. Great for petting. (He loves when someone is petting them)
If you feel sad, he would probably hum a melody or even literally sing for you. As well as playing an instrument, because why not. He can do all of this.
When he was alone, he talked with his clones. They are connected to his thought, so the conversations were interesting. He still sometimes talks with them, but most of the time he's using them for helping him with stuff, like makeup.
He likes to jump in the pile of rubber ducks. It is comforting for him.
He's pansexual. I don't have an explanation for this, I just feel he's so fruity XD
He has dark gray arms AND legs.
He has also hooves.
He is that short, because he actually like this height. He was like that since he was created and it would be really weird for him to change height.
But also! He loves to be carried!
And carry others!
NSFW below! (Time to be more wild, hehe)
First, I want to share my personal favourite nsfw headcanon I created. I've seen that most people assume that he has a dick. And of course, it's valid! Everyone can have their own headcanons, but I decided to think more about his design and what he is. So, he is an angel. Fallen, but still an angel. And he looks like a doll. What I mean to say is that he isn't human. He might look like one, but he doesn't even have ears or nose. So after this analysis, I've thought to give him... nothing! Yes! He is like a doll! He has nothing down here. No dick, no anus, none. BUT, remember everyone that he is a shapeshifter! He can adjust! So even if he doesn't have anything down here, he can create anything he or his partner wants. Dick? Sure! Pussy? Of course! Both? Why not?! Maybe something more crazy, like tentacles? We can go wild as fuck! I love inhuman characters like Lucifer, because you can actually create something really crazy like that! And it makes sense! I mean, think about it! Why angels would need anything down here? It just makes sense that they don't have anything here!
So, as I said, he can create anything he wants, but what is happening with him when he doesn't have anything? I've thought about this too! So, when he doesn't have reproductive organs, few spots on his body are becoming more sensitive when he's horny. They are: Hands, hooves, tail, around his horns, few spots on his wings. If you massage those places, he can have orgasm. It is a little different experience than what we, human can achieve, but it's as intense, if not even more sometimes, as our orgasm.
About horns... if you pull them during sex, he can come just from this. But you have to do this strong! Don't worry, you won't hurt him.
He fucked with his clones for sure. He is the fucking sin of Pride, of course he had to have fun time with himself. But it is kinda like advanced masturbation, because he controls them.
But it also means, that with a partner, he could use his clones, so you could have a literal gangbang with just Lucifer.
He prefers folks with pussies. It is just his personal favourite, but he wouldn't mind if his loved one had different thing! He would eat you anyway.
He is a total switch. He is the literal definition of this. He feels comfortable in being sub, dom, top and bottom.
As a power bottom, he is a little shit, because he is challenging your dominance. He loves it.
I can imagine that in dominant role, he would be really caring or more aggressive, depending what you wanted.
He talks a lot during sex. He would say a lot of dirty things with his deep voice.
He can growl when he is close to the climax.
He has totally a kink that is connected to him being a king.
And also daddy kink. I can totally imagine that he would have this.
His demonic side might appear during sex. He thinks that it's too scary, but if he sees that you like it, he will show it more.
For now it's all! Those are my headcanons, so I hope you had fun reading them!
See ya! ~ Silver
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biracy · 4 months
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I actually find the binarism of a lot of the "female characters vs male characters" Thing extremely exhausting for like, all the reasons I put in the tags of the last rb lol and it's basically impossible to have people take that seriously. I dislike how a trans read is delegated to the realm of "silly nonsense headcanon that doesn't Actually Mean Anything", I hate how trans reads and/or headcanons are expected to only exist as "textually cis woman is actually trans woman, textually cis man is actually trans man" which I think really isn't fair at all to the trans experience and is another example of how trans people are expected to disavow any sort of identification with our "birth sex" and even completely refuse to acknowledge that we were once "the opposite gender", and I hate what the "pathetic meowmeow babygirl who's actually a man but isn't it funny that I compared him to a woman and/or implied he has a vagina even though he's a grown man with dick and balls" "fandom culture", so to speak, has done to the perception of trans analysis and interpretation and projection. I don't wanna say that's the Only reason people will hear about a transfem headcanon and go "well this Must be unserious, because this character is clearly A Biological Male in the source and thus can never count as A Female Character" but it's definitely not helping lol
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maxphilippa · 7 months
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An small Knife Character Analysis.
"There's more than one ways to be an jerk."
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Haven't been too focused on this guy due to my brain going bonkers on Mic, but I had some thoughts right now and I want to share them with you.
Kind of a long post but! It is worth it!
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Something about him just wanting intimacy- craving it, wanting to be able to communicate his true feelings without being seen as a weakling or even as an hypocrite of sorts. Thinking how he really is deep down insecure (according to the ii site) and used to project that on the contestants. How he takes so much distance from them but still shows that he really cares about those who are vulnerable.
But no one has, ever listened to him. Perhaps because they're too into their own problems.
Perhaps because he never let anyone get to his heart.
Not even to Pickle.
Of course he softened up to him and shows his most genuine self when it comes to both Pickle & Mic, but...
He wasn't able at all to be vulnerable completely.
But. It's also how he does show that weakness with Mic-
He tells her that what Trophy did to him hurted his feelings. Hurting a jerk's feelings is a very big thing. But here's the thing; Knife represses those feelings and keeps the act no matter what.
But he still failed himself.
"I won't get involved", he got involved with Microphone and told her his own pains.
The whole talk he had with Suitcase- the "bunch of jerks" part. How he seems to be even angrier than Suitcase was at how Nickel was acting towards her.
How bitter he was with Trophy when he said "You're a jock and I'm a jerk" once BB defended him.
How hurt he was when Microphone still defended Taco.
How... how he told Pickle that if he held onto the past, he would never be able to grow and get better on the end.
In a way, Knife is a really good friend, a very smart player and a very clever guy.
He's too emotionally aware to let his feelings weight him down or interfere on his game- even if he's hurt by those whom he thought of as close (Microphone), even if he messed up things for someone he cared about (Suitcase).
In a way. I think that Knife does mean what he says to them. He does mean it a lot.
But, I also think that he may be saying what he wanted to hear when he needed that same type of comfort.
He feels alone. And he hasn't connected with anyone properly to say the least. Sure, cracking jokes, being teammates and encouraging them is something. But actual friendships?
Knife doesn't really. Have them. At all, at least.
You could also argue that it is because most people at the hotel are jerks- which made things more difficult for him. But having Pickle made things easier too.
If it were on canon terms- the good relationships he does have are with three guys, and he stopped talking properly with one of them, and two of them are at the Hotel now
He cared, but now they're not there anymore.
He cares so so much about everyone, but they're all so self centered- too into their own for him to actually get around their heads. He can't get that connection at all.
But.
Do you also realize how Knife's friendships are all with emotionally driven, emotionally vulnerable characters?
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Whether they're good or bad emotions doesn't matter. But they don't truly think before acting. Which is the complete opposite of what Knife does.
But the best relationships he has are just so sad.
Nickel? He thinks too much and won't take in count the feelings of others- thinks too much on what could be the best for his team instead of what they truly want. He's shit at emotional stuff. Not like Knife.
Suitcase? Too emotion driven. Always wanting to make excuses- always wanting to be on good terms with everyone. Thinks with her heart most of times, and is scared to speak up her mind.
Microphone? ... She's his complete opposite. Loud, vulnerable and wants to be recognized for who she is. She's selfless. She's always thinking on what is best for others, and then thinks of herself. Heart driven.
Pickle? A sweetheart, naive but kind. Thinks of his friendships too highly, and is unable to let go of the past since it still hurts like hell. But he does want to get better. Heart driven.
Knife truly only got intimacy with Pickle and Mic.
But.
Who's to say that he isn't longing to be his true self?
Who's to say that he just doesn't want to cry his heart out and scream for days in the end?
Who's to say that he doesn't feel responsible to some degree?
He was always there for others.
But he never let himself be the one to be taken care of.
And I think that's just very important for his whole arc.
He is so emotionally repressed that he just wants to be there for those that need help too- he doesn't want them to feel alone. Even if they're stubborn as fuck.
So that's ALSO why Taco and Knife CAN'T even stand eachother.
Not only because of what Taco did to Pickle.
Knife is too emotionally aware.
Taco isn't.
Taco made both Pickle and Microphone like they were worthless due to her lack of understanding at emotions and such.
And you know what Knife did? He made them FEEL better.
He made sure they knew that they weren't broken- that they're not a mess, that they're not pathetic or a failure. That they're okay. That they will be okay with time.
That they should be kind to themselves.
Knife isn't kind to himself by any means.
So that's why he calls himself a jerk! He's being a jerk to himself in many ways!
Not letting himself form true friendships at all (he only truly did form one with Mic at the end since, she was out of the game and such), not letting himself show that he is in fact hurt, covering his sadness/pain with frustration or anger, doesn't let himself be vulnerable in the slighest, hides his own feelings all the time, doesn't show that he does also infact feel out of place on his team
Doesn't let himself show how much he craves company.
Because that's not what a jerk is.
But there's only so much he can truly do about it.
End of Analysis.
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prince-liest · 2 months
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Omg, I just wanted to say I ADORE your characterization of Al and Vox! I don't even have the words to express how much I love reading your stuff, especially the Anon responses you post on here. The behind the scenes thoughts are literally my food, lifesource, its so good when people not only write characters IN CHARACTER, but also include stuff about their analysis/understanding of the character too.. I'm literally obsessed with breaking down characters and yk, cracking their chrome domes open to see how they work (which admittedly, I am not the best at <_< but I love reading them). Just wanted to say how much I love your writing. I had maybe 2 questions, please don't feel pressured to answer them :>
What in your mind (in reference to the 66.6 fics) would motivate Alastor to let Val get close to him in the first place? Or was that more you picking these two characters up by the scruff of their necks and plopping them into a hypothetical scenario to explore their character and write some fun intimate thingsTM?
What do you think of the dynamic of Vox and Al vs something like Lucifer and Al? Personally I've noticed that something Alastor craves, behind the mask of his static smiling persona, is attention. He's (at least how I saw it) usually peeved when people don't care about his absence, and seems especially bothered by the King of Hell refusing to really acknowledge him, so he goes out of his way to push Lucifers buttons (like calling himself a father figure to Charlie, IN FRONT OF HER ACTUAL FATHER LOL) whereas with Vox, Vox is literally CONSTANTLY thinking about Alastor. Man literally interrupted his regular TV program to do a segment about how much he totally didn't at ALL care about Alastors dissapearance or the fact that he returned (suree buddy). So Alastor can have more fun with him and annoy him by ignoring and messing with him on purpose.
ty if you do respond to this, sorry if it was hard to understand, sometimes I forget how to put the thoughts in my brain into coherent words!
Ahhhh, thank you very much, anon! I'm especially happy that you're enjoying my commentary on Tumblr, haha - I spent a while on Twitter because that's where all the fandom zines I was in were being hosted, but nothing beats Tumblr for giving me a nigh-unlimited word count and a captive audience for my rambling! >:D <3 I'm back to cocooning myself on the OG hell site.
Thank you for this ask, it really brightened my day! :D
As for your questions:
1. I'm assuming that was a typo and that you mean Vox (but in case you did mean Val: that was just a funny accident of him walking by the room! Alastor wasn't paying enough attention until it was too late), and to that I say:
I think Alastor allows Vox to take a go at him in canon because he finds Vox's obsession with him to be entertaining, but also because Alastor is kind of a narcissist and that same obsession massively feeds his ego, especially in a political climate that otherwise forgot about Alastor. Vox's whole "Who gives a shit about Alastor coming back?! Haha, now let me have a public meltdown and short out power to the whole city about it! Oh, fuck, why is he back, though?? Can we send a spy in to find out??" is exactly the reaction that Alastor wants every time he mentions his mysterious absence and gets brushed off.
At the same time, Alastor doesn't seem to register Vox as a sincere and genuine threat. He's a big enough fish in the Pride Ring pond that his obsession with Alastor is gratifying, but Alastor's self-absorption also doesn't really allow him to treat Vox as a threat tier above "annoying in a funny way, and also television is stupid." (Perhaps this will change in season 2... :eyes: (or perhaps Alastor will get Even Worse) (please god let him get even worse))
So those two things in combination make Vox the perfect candidate for Alastor to experiment with while maintaining his ego and not feeling particularly threatened. Despite Vox's Safeword 101 talk, Alastor would never put stock into that system with Vox unless he was certain that he himself would be able to back up a 'no' with overwhelming force. Him even considering safewords in the Live On Air! series is less for his own sake and more a politesse he offers on Vox's request to warn Vox to slow the fuck down before Alastor tries to put his insides on the outside.
2. And in direct contrast, we have Lucifer...
... Who Alastor obviously actually cares quite a bit about, because he's a whole nother power tier from both Vox and Alastor, and furthermore and possibly even more importantly, a credible threat to Alastor's relationships and standing in the hotel. I think a lot of discussion I see about Alastor prodding Lucifer seems to talk about how quickly he got annoyed about Lucifer's comments, but that misses the fact that he was pissed off before Lucifer even showed up. He got pissy the moment he saw the welcome sign, actually! And I wager that he was narratively absent for the scene where Charlie actually calls Lucifer because he would have done his best to manipulate her out of doing so had be been there.
And given that the two clearly haven't met before (though obviously Alastor knows of Lucifer - and hates that the inverse isn't true, hah), it's not 100% clear exactly why he's immediately so annoyed, but in my personal view of things and barring something like "he's projecting onto Lucifer because his contract is with Lilith," I think that what we know of Alastor's personality points most strongly to "he liked being the hotel's benefactor and sees it as His Project, and doesn't like the idea that Charlie called daddy for something that she thought mysterious, powerful Alastor couldn't handle." He distracts a lot with obviously-goading comments about practically being Charlie's dad in his duet with Lucifer, but underneath that he puts a lot of emphasis on the work he's done for the hotel and the fact that he's been supporting Charlie and the hotel from the start, so why the fuck is this deadbeat asshole suddenly turning up?!
Tl;dr: Charlie missed her insight roll on Alastor's personal investments and he's sooooo offended - and taking it out on Lucifer!
I think one of my favorite things about both Lucifer and Alastor is that they both sooo obviously belong in the Pride Ring, hahaha.
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Dazai Likes People
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Ok. So this is probably not the analysis you think it is. I'm not going to talk Dazai's dynamics with specific characters - I think that's better suited to personal interpretation and I've kind of already gone over my thoughts on Dazai's close relationships starting with this analysis here.
Instead, this is more about Dazai's thoughts on human beings in general, which, admittedly, can be a little hard to parse. There's a variety of thoughts on this amongst the fandom, ranging from the one extreme of "he loves people" to the other "he doesn't care at all".
This is merely my own thoughts on the matter. I don't know if this fully counts as an analysis, but I hope it at least sparks some discussion or helps piece some things together.
As you might've gathered from the title, I lean towards the idea that he likes people. There's always been things he's liked about people, as a matter of fact, but I think the nature of what he likes about them has changed across his development.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that Dazai's development as a character is, rather than a behavioural shift, instead based on his changing perception of human nature, and the value found in human connection. His methods are largely similar, however, the thought behind them and the direction they're given is different.
I'm going to be jumping around a bit with the timeline, so here's the core ideas in advance just so it's easier to follow.
Belief #1: "People are stronger in groups than individually." This has not changed across his character arc.
Belief #2: "There is a divide between myself and humanity that cannot be broached." to "Some of that divide may not be as wide as it seems." This development is still ongoing and key to his overall character conflict.
Belief #3: "Attachment is an incomprehensible motivator." to "Attachment is a reliable human drive." Take a close look at how his plans change as he ages.
Belief #4: "People just can't stop killing each other." to "There is beauty in the fighting human spirit." This one is a bit more conjecture based on hints in the story, but I think it holds some weight.
Belief #1: Groups over Individuals
This point requires very little explanation. If you look at the intro to the DHC conflict, linked here, you’ll find that he actually says it outright.
"What's more, you underestimated the power found in organizations. Humans are stronger in groups than they are as individuals. That's just the undeniable truth, Mr. One Man Army."
Again, in Stormbringer, Dazai confidently says the following:
"This is how the world works. It's an absolute truth no matter when or where you go. Groups are stronger than individuals...There's strength in numbers."
This is a canonical belief of his that he holds very strongly to, and at a young age at that. This is a primarily logical value to place on others. It's interesting though, because it goes beyond just "strength in numbers".
His further dialogue in the DHC prologue has him go on to respond to Shibusawa asking if the reason he joined the Mafia had to do with the strength in a group affirmatively. It ties in quite interestingly with what he tells Odasaku in The Day I Picked Up Dazai as the reason he should consider joining the Mafia, and Oda's own thoughts on the organization.
If one of their members is attacked by an outsider, they will turn into a row of fangs and bite the enemies.
"If you join, you will no longer be bothered by anything from your past. Because no past can touch that place."
He's said to speak with some pride about the organization in this scene. It's not just about strength. It's about safety. It's about knowing someone has your back. It is, ultimately, about trust.
So, really, it's no wonder that Dazai thrives in, and is honestly at his best, when working in partnerships.
The comfort in partnerships appears to have come rather quickly to Dazai in Fifteen; he works seamlessly with Chuuya after only a few minutes planning and is much more "alive" than in the previous scenes. We see a similar level of confidence, even unusually brazen cockiness, when working with him again in chapter 31. Dazai also works fluidly and has incredible faith in Kunikida, which explains their flawless teamwork in Entrance Exam.
He appears to be at his most confident when he is working with someone else. Look at these facial expressions.
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So, it's no surprise that his response to crafting a way to protect Yokohama... is to create another partnership - this time between Atsushi and Akutagawa. And it's clearly not just for ability complements, but also some kind of genuine belief they have what it takes to support each other, if Chapter 84 and Beast are any indication.
It's about trust, in your partner and in your group. It always has been.
Belief #2: The Divide from Humanity
This divide comprises much of the fundamental core and conflict of Dazai's character - his disconnect and alienation from "humanity".
Again, this is not something I really have to defend - this becomes readily apparent to anyone who is the least bit familiar with the author's actual work, No Longer Human, from a cursory read through the manga, and is really quite obvious in the light novels, especially Dark Era, Fifteen and Stormbringer. As of now, it's still an ongoing aspect to his character, and if Oda's words are to be believed, he will likely always struggle with this disconnect to some extent.
However, there's a difference in how this aspect manifests in his dynamics with others across time.
Initially, it is a little like Dazai is unclear on how he differs from others; he only knows that he does in some way. He responds to Mori asking him why he wants to die with genuinely innocent confusion on why one would find worth in living, and responds to Chuuya stopping him from shooting the body with surprise and a simple admittance that not doing such a thing would be the "normal" way to think, before laughing it off.
By Stormbringer and Dark Era, Dazai is all too aware of what is "different" about him - that is, his apparent inability to connect with others in a meaningful way. However, I need to stress that this distance is also at least partially self-imposed. Dazai has internalized his differences from others, his lack of humanity, and decided to put up a front of being some inhuman mafia monster. Think "I am a man hated by righteousness" before repeatedly firing at Akutagawa.
Even with this initial uncertainty, there's one thing he's been quite clear on as different since the beginning: his high intellect, and he wields it like a weapon, appearing somewhat proud of at least this aspect of his distance from others. He's almost cocky about it, complains of boredom, and usually becomes interested in people when they sidestep or outright defy his predictions. It's something we see quite a lot of in his Mafia days and also a little in Entrance Exam. While he appears to grow more attached to people who live their lives in the midst of seeming meaninglessness than those who observe from the sidelines the way he does, he also comes off a bit envious in the same respect, especially when younger.
In some way, I wonder if this doesn't mirror Mykola's envy of those who "don't know they're stuck in a cage", in that sort of ‘how do people not see what I see’ kind of way, or 'if they do, then how can they deal with it'. Dazai’s intellect is rather like a double-edged sword - while it allows him a distinct advantage in prediction he enjoys, it’s likely also a strong contributor to his loneliness and separation from others, much like Ranpo. However, while Ranpo externalized his issues and thought there was something wrong with everyone else, Dazai internalized his and believed there was something wrong with him, which unfortunately caused him to isolate himself even further, rather as a self-fulfilling prophecy regarding the next point.
Dazai is a bit odd about his perceived inhumanity, because on one hand, he wields it when necessary much like his intellect, but on the other, he is almost dismayed by any reminders of his differences from "normal" people, even a bit hurt. A prime example of this is in the Dead Apple prologue, at Chuuya's "no one would believe that" line, but can also be found to a lesser extent in certain interactions in Fifteen, Dark Era, and Stormbringer. A lot of the complexity in Dazai's character comes from this juxtaposition - the mental superiority vs the human inferiority. So, he feels isolated in two ways: one is intellectually, which he tends to see as an advantage, and two is a bit harder to narrow down, but roughly has to do with the nature of the human self and its connections, for which he feels lacking.
Interestingly, Dazai seems to regard people with similarities to himself as threatening, and even gets uncharacteristically direct about how he is going to stop/kill them (Fyodor, Q). An interesting case occurs in Entrance Exam. Entrance Exam is really valuable for looking at Dazai's character because it is very much a transitory period for him, and there is one part in particular close to the end that gives me chills, both in the action and the implications of the action.
I am, of course, talking about the part where Dazai arranges Sasaki's death.
I'm going to expand on this later on once I do my analysis focusing on Sasaki herself, but her and Dazai have some pretty notable similarities between them that I heavily believe Dazai was aware of close to the end. For now, the most important similarity is the way they manipulate others - Sasaki's selective distribution of and often misleading info created situations that encouraged most of the people she contacted to act entirely on their own accord but also in the exact way she intended, without her having to do anything herself. This is quite eerily similar to the way Dazai tends to operate (though I'd say in his case with a bit more finesse that comes from Mori's strategic training).
And Dazai... he arranges her death using this same method. He kicks the gun, Rokuzou picks it up and shoots her out of revenge - and Dazai didn't have to do a single thing.
"She killed too many people."
So have you.
"That was the only way to save her. This was the best we could've hoped for."
........
I think I'll just leave it at that. There's a lot more to this complicated situation that deserves a thorough analysis of it's own, but I do think that the only means in his mind to save an empty, apathetic person who was responsible for too many deaths was to kill her says quite a bit about his mentality at that point.
But that appears to be changing.
I loved that Asagiri confirmed that Dazai's words to Kyouka in Chapters 34 to 36 are genuine. He's being probably as close to honest as we've ever seen. And we know this, because who shows up?
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Why hello, Odasaku silhouette. Dazai knows full well how similar Kyouka and Odasaku are - their situations, even their dispositions, I'd say, and the way the both of them seem to unwittingly trigger character development in the people around them lol. But there's more to it than just that.
"Every person has their good and bad points, and your bad point happens to be killing. That's why you think you can't become an Agency member. That's just stupid."
"No one can know everything. That's what possibility is."
"You are not the only person with this kind of distress."
"Why do we fight? How should we live on? There is no one who can tell you the answer. All we have is our right to waver."
None of this is something I'd expect Mafia Dazai, or even Entrance Exam Dazai to say. This is someone who, from my perspective, has the barest, slightest will to live on.
"No one can know everything." In spite of his intelligence, in spite of his eerily accurate predictions, this admittance means that his perception of that intellectual distance is likely somewhat decreasing. He's still on a tier far above most other people... but he's closer to them than he is to a god. He cannot know everything.
It's similar to what he tells Sigma in Chapter 105.
"It's all a play of hands. I'm not a superhuman beyond the limits of human wisdom."
The emotional gap may also be closing a little. I think fondly of Dazai's dry "Don't you have any friends?" to Shibusawa in Dead Apple, then following up Shibusawa's dramatic 'I understand everyone so much that everyone bores me but don't understand myself' spiel with "You wouldn't be saying that if you had friends." Dazai really said friendless behaviour, pfft.
There's also his "I wonder how Kunikida-kun is doing~!" in the prison and his internal (and I thought oddly fond) comparison of Sigma to Atsushi.
Still, though, there is a significant gap in the way he removes himself from other people. Even as Dazai affirms his belief that it is the people who fight through uncertainty and live and breathe within it that create the greatest change, he still excludes himself from that category, placing himself, alongside Fyodor, above all others yet paradoxically inferior in the ability to enact real influence, sitting alone in a prison at the end of the world.
Belief #3: Attachment as a Motive
"I see... so it's all for your partner. Betraying the Mafia, spreading rumours about the old boss's resurrection, this fight we're in now... it's kind of hard to believe, to be honest."
Dazai, in his earliest appearances, seems to underestimate the drastic lengths people will go to in the name of the people they care about. The above line to Rimbaud, after he reveals he did all that he did to find out what happened to Verlaine, indicates that while he does understand bonds between others, he fails to grasp how that could be so incredibly motivating - whereas by contrast, Chuuya understands it instantly.
In fact, earlier in Fifteen, Chuuya's assistance is assured by Mori's capture of the Sheep members, which prevents Chuuya from harming anyone - Mori weaponizes this attachment and responsibility Chuuya has to great effect, and points it out to a bemused Dazai, who doesn't... really care. Dazai seems much more intrigued by the growing strife between the Sheep and their leader, and amusedly pinpoints Chuuya as a "sheep getting stared down by a wolf", before intentionally ramping up the tension. Dazai weaponized the cracks that were already showing between them, and while he seems to have started to acknowledge the importance of attachment as a powerful motivator, unlike Chuuya who sees it as honourable, Dazai at this point seems to regard it as a weakness to be exploited.
While Dazai absolutely shows budding signs of attachment himself in Fifteen and Stormbringer, it's nowhere near enough for it to be a key motivator of his own. He runs on logic. His plans are practical, precise and take no chances; a logical strategist much like Mori.
But that all changes with Odasaku. Odasaku's impact on Dazai was undeniably the strongest motivator for change he's had, but I want to talk a little about Dazai's side of things, and his unusual devotion towards his friend. For as much as Dazai is evasive, incredibly concerning, and apparently added some kind of stimulant to a dish he made for the trio without telling them (!?? bro.), when it comes down to it and things get serious, Dazai is, surprisingly enough, an objectively good friend to Odasaku. He gets panicked when he realizes Odasaku happened on Shibusawa during the DHC. He tells him immediately he doesn't need to use the Silver Oracle to ask for his help. He apologizes for killing the snipers in front of him because he knows Odasaku doesn't like killing (even if, at this point, he doesn't know why he holds this philosophy). He arranges for the kids to be hidden in a safe location once it becomes obvious Gide is targeting Odasaku. He tries to convince Odasaku he can find a reason to live, even though he doesn't, at that point, have one himself. He runs to him at the end, even when it is pointless, even when it is not logical, all because that's his friend. And this isn't even touching Beast Dazai, who wasn't even friends with the guy but saw that another him was, and decided he would do everything he did to protect that one person's dream (thereby missing what Odasaku wanted for him, which also, incidentally, was for his friend to live on, but I digress). Dazai is a surprisingly incredibly devoted friend to him. This guy experienced close friendship and it completely changed his perspective, because he'd never had anything like that before. Connection and understanding are extremely powerful motivators. He knows this now. It's in everything he does. The person is gone, but the bond remains, and it drives him to this day.
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It's also important to point out that while we haven't seen the turning point in Double Black's dynamic where they went from uneasy partnership to that intense trust, Chuuya is the poster boy for attachment as a ridiculously strong motive for living. His decision to risk everything for the sake of those he has sworn to protect means that Chuuya is reliable. So, suddenly, Dazai doesn't need to make such stringent plans with him - they can be more loose about it, yet still perfectly in sync. "Chuuya is a reliable partner" is not an opinion to Dazai, it's a fact. Attachment as strength, not weakness. I feel reasonably confident in saying he likely learned this first from Chuuya. It gives him the power to persevere through the pain. It's not always fragile. It can be relied on. Chuuya struggles through his life and finds purpose in his bonds with others, and Dazai, both envious and admiring, picks up that he can utilize this in his plans.
Dazai making plans in the Agency is a little different to how he makes them in the Mafia. While there is still hefty reliance on logic and trickery, there's now an extra caveat of social and moral expectation. Dazai makes plans, knowing that people will carry them out because of the kind of people they are. He's making character judgements, not purely logical ones.
While Mori and Fyodor are also capable of much the same, it's rather unlike their methods, as they use attachment, often by leveraging it. Dazai can and does do this too, but notably, Dazai's allies are also regularly left to act in accordance to what they believe to be right without much direct interference - Dazai uses but also relies on this attachment to people and morality. It's odd, because in a sense, it's both an accurate logical prediction and a form of trust. Many of his plans in the present involve people doing what they would have done anyways given their character, but in a narrowed scope that comes from Dazai's influencing of them and the situation. He knows Ranpo will take charge when the Agency is threatened. He knows Atsushi will risk it all for his friends and family and people who remind him of his younger self. He knows Kunikida will never accept lives being lost if there is something he can do about it. He, highly unfortunately, knows Akutagawa will do anything to gain the recognition he seeks.
It's odd, because while undoubtedly still a manipulative tactic, he also has to know, for certain, that these people will act on their morals, drives, and bonds, otherwise it quite literally would not work. Is it manipulation? Is it trust? I lean towards both. Whatever the case may be, it is clear that Dazai finds at least some value in attachment (even if he, again, still largely detaches himself from pure expressions of this kind of motive - Odasaku was the major exception).
When Fyodor says people are sinful and can't help killing each other even when they know they're being manipulated to it and Dazai replies with yes, and? "What's so wrong with that?"
The way Chuuya wins against Verlaine, because he cared for people and Verlaine, in spite of everything, had at least one person he didn't want to let die. The way Gab might not have met such a tragic end if he'd had the chance to connect the way Atsushi had. The way the isolated Sigma ultimately falls, and Tachihara finds new purpose and drive from his conflicting bonds that should've weakened him but instead gave him conviction.
Attachment can be a foolish thing. It can be logically irrational, and in certain cases leaves one vulnerable, but it's not inherently a weakness. It can also be the source of incredible strength and perseverance. Human connection is the beating, bleeding heart of this series. The Agency barely took a breath after being framed before they were preparing to hold their own and prove their innocence - because the Agency meant something more to them than just a workplace. It's their place to belong. They rally to protect it and each other, just as Dazai knew they would, and he, too, is taking great risks to protect it.
Which brings me to the last point.
Belief #4: Beauty in the Fight
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Fyodor and Dazai are foil characters - they are intellectual equals, and their methods of thinking and planning tend to be very similar. However, motivation-wise, they are very different - Fyodor says things like the above, clearly with a low opinion on most others. While Dazai agrees with the statement, he disagrees with the sentiment.
"What's so wrong with that?"
But I'll be honest: I don't think he always felt that way. In fact, I suspect he used to feel similarly to Fyodor when he was younger.
In Fifteen, Dazai describes the situation with the Sheep as similar to the "Undercooked Meat Theory" to Rimbaud, which acts as an analogy for violence - everyone wants to eat more of the meat, so one takes it earlier to get more than everyone else, then another takes it even earlier to get more than that guy, and so on and so forth until they are all eating undercooked meat. Here are some key points from that conversation:
Dazai: "If one person stops, he alone will end up with less meat than the other two. Therefore, each of them is trapped, forced to eat the undercooked meat and nothing else, even though all three know that perfectly cooked meat tastes much better."
Dazai: "It explains at least half the misery in the entire world."
Rimbaud: "I see... in other words, since everyone pursued what was best for them, they couldn't achieve what was best for the group..."
Rimbaud: "Violence and war are not necessary for survival... if everyone agreed to stop fighting and banned all weapons - then violence would be no more. But that isn't realistic. No matter what, someone will break the rules to get ahead of the rest... everyone else... would have to maintain their stance on fighting back only when provoked."
Although Dazai expresses his interest in the criminal underworld as a "thrill", there's cause to believe this dog-eat-dog world is something that Dazai himself personally does not like. After all, shortly afterwards, when Chuuya crashes onto the scene and proclaims that "the strongest always win", Dazai disgustedly says,
"It's people like you who turn the world into undercooked meat."
In a way, it almost reminds me a bit of what Teruko proclaims about what a rubbish society it would be if those with the strongest violence always ended up on top. That's her purpose, as a Hunting Dog - to use violence to stop criminals - but violence to maintain order is still violence. Violence begets violence, but you can't just not defend yourself in a world that wants to hurt you. And so the world goes round, and people still kill each other, often quite needlessly.
It seems both Fyodor and Dazai shared the mentality that people are all the same, self-centered and out to protect themselves at the cost of others; sinful, boring beings. Except Fyodor, a more proactive person, decided he was going to try and fix the problem. Dazai, prone to inaction, did not... and saw nothing interesting in the world worth living for.
"It explains at least half the misery in the world." I wonder, does it explain some of Dazai's misery too? He appears to be drawn to the Mafia, not because of the violence in itself, but because of the honesty with which it is approached. You know what you're getting, with organized crime - there's going to be crime, and death, and murder. The proximity to death is a removal of the veil of social acceptability; the mask over the world - Dazai is hoping that by getting closer to the cruel world's "reality", he'll be able to find that something that the people around him would kill for in order to live.
Unlike Fyodor though, who still sees people as boring for their foolishness, Dazai apparently seems to find them interesting by this point. What changed?
It's worth noting that even though Dazai genuinely thought Chuuya was just an arrogant, violent kid before the confrontation with Rimbaud, in an earlier fight scene, Dazai goes breathless at Chuuya's battle prowess. That sheer display of life and energy and raw destruction is something captivating to him. And that's interesting, because that fight there was one he had just previously been deriding Chuuya for starting - it was pointless violence, to him - and yet, he can't help but watch.
So, when the Arahabaki reveal happens and Dazai suddenly realizes he'd been mistaken about Chuuya, it triggers a shift. Chuuya wasn't looking for power. Chuuya was looking for himself.
In Fifteen, Dazai is intrigued by Chuuya's situation. In Stormbringer, Dazai is invested in Chuuya's story.
Once again, Dazai watches Chuuya fight as he relinquishes control to use the full power of Corruption, carefully watching the progression of it all. When Chuuya turns fallen angel, Dazai says to himself, "That's Arahabaki's - that's Chuuya's true form." This incredible show of strength is not just the result of a raw power. This is the will of a human who has something worth fighting for. Chuuya is not a blank vessel for Arahabaki. Arahabaki is Chuuya's to wield. This is all Chuuya, through and through.
Chuuya, caught in the act of dying, in a last-ditch play that could easily be a self-sacrificial one, surrounded by death and destruction, is nonetheless fighting with all the life within him to defend the lives of his people, with the symbol of his stubborn will to survive (that is, Arahabaki, the singularity that should've killed him) on full wrath and display. To the death-obsessed kid who wanted a reason to live, who did not see why people would fight so hard to live on, such a sight would be breathtaking.
Dazai is drawn to the people who struggle through hardship, and the ones who rebel in the name of valuing life. He becomes interested in Ango when he finds the reports he made on the DHC dead, that he made to preserve their lives even without Mori's permission. Dazai does not want to compromise Odasaku's morals, and is deeply fascinated by the juxtaposition of his Mafia status and his no killing rule, though he doesn't pry for the reason. With Kunikida, much as Dazai does not care much for ideals, he sees how Kunikida keeps on pushing through against every setback and horribly cruel reality check, and I honestly think he respects that.
Then there's this bit when Atsushi has just succeeded in getting Q's doll safely to Dazai after the curse on Yokohama.
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"It was your spirit that emerged victorious."
He likes it when people succeed. He wants to see people triumph, against all odds.
I find it fascinating because Dazai becomes most invested in the aspects of the characters that we tend to get invested in - we, the readers, which makes a lot of sense given his consistent observer status. The story is never actively about Dazai, but he's always there, watching others' stories unfold, growing fascinated with the struggles they face and the development they undergo, and feeling pride and admiration when they learn to overcome.
But the tragedy in Dark Era in part was a vicious reminder that the story impacts him too, no matter how much he tries to detach himself - to become invested and connected is to open yourself up to the inevitability of getting hurt. But it's also in this struggle to find balance that we are open to make change, and to live.
Fighting to save a life - even and especially when that life is just your own - there is beauty to be found in that fight.
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diasdelfuego · 1 year
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Could you feel me in about the “the lack of metaphor is striking” and why some people lose their minds over it. Like is it super pretentious or something? Cuz idk it didn’t seem like that big a deal to me but some people call it out as the most annoying thing louis has ever said lmao
oh, anon, i am so sorry in advance for this answer, but that is truly one of my favorite lines in the whole season, and i think it's incredibly rich. usually the more metanarrative moments happen in present day dubai, with louis and daniel (and, to a lesser degree, armand) cluing us in as to what questions to ask, what to expect, or even how to interpret some things, but this is one of the rare occasions in which, while the dialogue is placed firmly inside one of the flashbacks, you can actually hear the writers speaking through past!louis' mouth.
now, i do understand why people who are not particularly fond of the language of academic literary analysis may dislike this line. it's the kind of thing you write in a critical essay, not necessarily something you would randomly comment to your boyfriend who you know for a fact rarely reads a book all the way through. but, since it's about one of my favorite books, and i, too, think that the lack of metaphor is striking, well, i guess i'm among the annoying snobs!
now, since i have the opportunity, let me tell you a bit about the several different ways in which i interpret this line.
but, first, in case you missed that detail, let me point out what book exactly louis is reading. it took me a bit to figure this out, since the title isn't really clear, but louis tells us the author and, if you count the characters and squint at the shape of the letters, the book in his hands can only be gustave flaubert's madame bovary.
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i'm answering as if you hadn't read bovary because, honestly, who in their right mind has read that book? bovary is an absolute brick of a novel and, like louis says, flaubert's style is very dense. it took me more than half a year to read it, and while i would love to go over it a thousand times, i will probably save the re-read for the day i retire (plus, i would love to read it in the original french, and my command of the language isn't anywhere good enough for me to read a poem, much less a whole book). it's one of those novels, alongside carpentier's los pasos perdidos, morrison's sula, garcía márquez's el general en su laberinto and mcewan's atonement, that left me reeling for weeks, that pushed me to reconsider what can be achieved with the medium, that made me want to change my life. if indeed you haven't read it, i truly cannot recommend it enough.
now, i don't want to summarize the whole book but bovary is, in the broadest of terms, the story of emma, a beautiful young woman from rural france who dreams of a life of luxury and romance, and finds herself increasingly disappointed and dissatisfied with her mundane, boring life as a small-town doctor's wife and as a mother. her hunger for pleasure, wealth and freedom leads her to two affairs, both of which end badly, and to increasing debt, pushing her finally to suicide.
as i mentioned, i think louis' line can be interpreted in at least four different ways:
1
on the most surface level, louis is making a very appropriate literary observation, if not a particularly original one. bovary is considered a foundational work of literary realism. the lack of metaphor was, when it was first published in the 1850s, literally striking. flaubert purposefully set aside the folkloric and religious symbolism that was predominant in the literature of the time, and disregarded the careful and strict moralizing that was conventional then to such a degree that he was brought to trial for obscenity. emma's ambitions and desires, her actions and the terrible consequences brought by them are depicted in the clearest and most literal terms. her sexual liaisons, her financial schemes, her blackmailing and her suicide are laid out on the page in a way that the "mainstream" audiences and "polite" society of the time could not even conceive, much less accept.
2
on a more personal level, i think louis meant the line as an insult to lestat, one he knew that lestat wouldn't understand because, as louis well says, he "read[s] the first 10 pages of every book, [to] pass [him]self off as cultured" and probably never even made it to emma's first appearance in the novel. if he had, lestat might have seen in emma bovary a terrible mirror of himself. emma is a french rural girl who was educated in a convent, and leaves the countryside with dreams of a cosmopolitan life. she's an infamously unlikable protagonist: shallow, self-centered, selfish, hedonistic, not to mention a cheating wife and neglectful mother. her insatiable lust for luxury and passion and pleasure leads not only her, but her lovers, husband, daughter and several other people to ruin. lestat is the doctor in iolanta, he is don pasquale in the homonymous opera, but the parallel goes over his head, too shrouded in symbolism for lestat's too shallow reading. so, in this interpretation, louis is saying here, if you actually read past the tenth page of this book, you would see yourself just as you are, no metaphor obscuring the message.
just to give you an idea of why louis could see lestat in emma:
She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification — for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.
Everything immediately surrounding her — boring countryside, inane petty bourgeois, the mediocrity of daily life — seemed to her the exception rather than the rule. She had been caught in it all by some accident: out beyond, there stretched as far as the eye could see the immense territory of rapture and passions. In her longing she made no difference between the pleasures of luxury and the joys of the heart, between elegant living and sensitive feeling.
...her eyes, once so covetous of all earthly luxuries; then her nostrils, so gluttonous of caressing breezes and amorous scents; then her mouth, so prompt to lie, so defiant in pride, so loud in lust; then her hands that had thrilled to voluptuous contacts; and finally the soles of her feet, once so swift when she had hastened to slake her desires...
3
but, either on a subconscious level for the louis of the past, or as a conscious or unconscious metanarrative choice from the louis of the future, who is putting in his retelling this book in his past self's hands and these words in his past self's mouth, i think louis might also see himself in emma: a woman trapped in an unhappy marriage with a dull husband who she thought would understand and love her, but who instead takes her for granted and doesn't appreciate her in the way she wants. and even her affairs with rodolphe and leon have interesting parallels to lestat: rodolphe makes big promises but balks at the idea of taking emma's daughter with them, leon tries hard to write poems that could impress her but he's not smart or cultured enough to live up to her expectations. not to mention the fact that emma eventually dies by suicide, and that her actions lead to her daughter's misery.
again, this is no blind princess magically cured who opens her eyes to an ugly reality, but a very "real" woman who literally has her dreams destroyed by the real world.
some choice quotes to support this interpretation:
Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn't come, she supposed she must have been mistaken. And Emma tried to imagine just what was meant, in life, by the words "bliss," "passion," and "rapture" — words that had seemed so beautiful to her in books.
This man could teach you nothing; he knew nothing, he wished for nothing. He took it for granted that she was content; and she resented his settled calm, his serene dullness, the very happiness she herself brought to him.
How happy she had been in those days! How free! How full of hope! How rich in illusions! There were no illusions left now. She had had to part with some each time she had ventured on a new path, in each of her successive conditions — as virgin, as wife, as mistress; all along the course of her life she had been losing them, like a traveler leaving a bit of his fortune in every inn along the road.
and i want to bring up a wonderful bit of analysis from mario varga llosa's la orgía perpetua, his critical book on bovary. vargas llosa is a conservative shithead but this book bangs severely, and i think this passage really highlights why louis might, in his present narration, set up this parallel to position himself in a similar role as emma, that is, as an anti-hero who is willing to admit to his personal failures and the negative consequences of his actions, as long as we the audience are willing to empathize with his brave pursuit of freedom. (see this post for a fantastic related take.)
forgive the rough translation, i couldn't find a download of the english version so i machine-translated the original spanish and did a bit of post-editing:
Rebellion, in the case of Emma, does not have the epic face of the manly heroes of the nineteenth-century novel, but it is no less heroic. It is an individual rebellion and, apparently, selfish: she violates the codes of her society, fueled by her own issues, not in the name of humanity, of a certain ethics or ideology. It is because her fantasy and her body, her dreams and her appetites, feel fettered by society, that Emma suffers, she is adulterous, lies, steals, and, finally, commits suicide. Her defeat does not prove that she was wrong and the bourgeois of Yonville-l'Abbaye were right, that God punishes her for her crime (…) but simply that the fight was unequal: Emma was alone, and, because she was impulsive and sentimental, she usually took the wrong path, committing herself to actions that, ultimately, favored her enemy (…) That defeat, fateful due to the conditions in which the combat took place, has edges of tragedy and soap opera (…) But it is not only the fact that Emma is able to confront her milieu—family, class, society— but the causes of her confrontation that forces my admiration for her elusive figure (…) The ambitions for which Emma sins and dies are those that Western religion and morality have fought most barbarously throughout history. Emma wants to enjoy herself, she does not resign herself to repressing in herself that deep sensual demand that Charles cannot satisfy because he does not even know it exists, and she also wants to surround her life with superfluous and pleasant elements, elegance, refinement, materializing in objects the appetite for beauty that her imagination, her sensitivity and her reading have given rise to in her. Emma wants to get to know other worlds, other people, she does not accept that her life passes to the end within the obtuse horizon of Yonville, and she also wants her existence to be diverse and exhilarating, one of adventure and risk, of theatrical gestures and magnificent scenes of generosity and sacrifice. Emma's rebellion stems from this conviction, the root of all her actions: I am not resigned to my fate, the dubious compensation of the afterlife does not matter to me, I want my life to be fulfilled fully and completely here and now.
4
last, but not least, i think that the writers are speaking to us through louis. several people have made this analysis before, and i think this post might have been the very first one, but the thing is, for all that this is a vampire story, and vampirism is such a rich theme loaded with dozens of different metaphors, interview with the vampire refuses to shroud its message in genre. this is the creative team, through louis' mouth, telling us not to get distracted by immortality and fangs, reminding us that these are ultimately "real" people with "real" problems.
one of the most common images of the vampire is the feudal lord feeding on his subjects, vampire as a metaphor for the ruling elite that "sucks the blood" from an underprivileged majority. but there's no metaphor, the evil of capitalism is literally laid out before our eyes: louis opens his narration by telling us that his fortune is "capital accrued from plantations of sugar and the blood of men who looked like my great grandfather but did not have his standing." in the modern day, we are in a luxury tower in dubai where louis tells us outright that the men he pays for their blood are addicts and refugees.
vampirism is, of course, a metaphor for sexuality, queer sexuality at that! but, while the original interview with the vampire makes a point of the vampire's inability to have "real" sex, the show disregards the metaphor entirely by making this explicitly a romance. vampirism is a metaphor for power and freedom, but the show tells us that genre ends where the real world begins, and vampirism doesn't free louis from systemic racism, or claudia from racialized misogyny. louis and lestat are first shunned for being a gay, interracial couple; long before they are ever suspected of vampirism. and yes, louis says that he took lestat back because they are tied by the "vampire bond" but that's not what we are shown. on the contrary, we see louis reading edward carpenter's marriage in a free society, and the message is clear: this isn't a magical tie, it's the reality of domestic abuse and intimate partner violence, of unequal systemic power structures reproduced in the institution of marriage.
additionally, the vampire in western media has often been a metaphor for the jewish and/or asian "plague" or "invader" and we have yet to see how the show will address these themes, particularly given how orientalist and particularly islamophobic some of the books in the vampire chronicles have gotten, but the choice to make armand a brown muslim suggests that they are willing to tackle some of these topics head on. vampirism as a disease is also a common metaphor (e.g. del toro's the strain), and with the context of covid and the ever-growing sinophobia permeating public discourse, the fact that they brought up the pandemic in episode two hints at a similar direction, which i admit i am a little wary about. the fact that daniel's introduction places him firmly at the heart of the aids crisis also suggests that they will touch on this.
of course, these are my interpretations, and who knows how much of this is actually something that the writers intended to put in there and how much i'm bringing in, and how much more i'm missing. but to dismiss the line as simply louis being a pretentious snob seems to me a disservice to the very smart, very mindful playwrights who are writing these scripts and clearly putting a lot of thought and care into every single word.
i hope you found some of this useful, or convincing, or at least fun to read! i definitely had a lot of fun putting together this answer, so thank you so much for the chance to rant a bit about this absolute gem of a line.
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themisteriousentity · 8 months
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You know, people forget that Soldier, Poet, King is a Christian song depicting different aspects of Jesus, but it sure is interesting to see that the fandom almost universally makes Dimitri the Soldier, Claude the Poet, and Edelgard the King
However, I argue a different order
*le gaspu*
Dimitri is still the soldier, but I think Claude and Edelgard should switch. I think Edelgard is the Poet and Claude is the King
Hear me out
Dimitri, we all know why he's the Soldier. I don't think we need to explain that. I don't need to get into the bible analysis, man LITERALLY tears cities down, oh lei oh lai oh lord
Edelgard is a very well spoken person. When she's actually given room to voice her ideas, despite being wrong because she's got just the tip of the iceberg of the true history, she can managed to convince almost anyone. In both games, she manages to convince most of her empire, which is FULL of very devout followers of Seiros and Sothis, to attack the Central Church and follow her lead. For a person who doesn't know much better, she's very damn convincing. She just doesn't do it very often, and she's terrible at listening when people try to counter her ideas (her argument with Dimitri and Azure Moon really highlights this when he tries to open a dialogue). But the important thing there is also that this is a role she chooses to take on in both games. If you look at the Poet, this easily relates to the start of Jesus's ministry in the bible, taking down establishments left and right on his word alone. Edelgard convinces her country to follow her on her accusations alone (as she was only 18 when she started the war and even as emperor she had to talk many ministers into following her lead or nothing would've happened without ministers like Count Bergliez and Count Hevring that she convinced), slaying the church with her tongue
Meanwhile, the King easily relates far more to Claude than the Poet. Claude doesn't really spend a lot of time convincing people of his ideals or talking them into anything aside from explaining his ambitions to Byleth and Shez, and depending on your supports in some ways to Leonie and Lorenz. Unlike Edelgard, Claude is in a situation he didn't ask for. He has a war thrust upon him and a conflict with a massive religious body that breeds prejudice to contend with. As an outsider who is deeply untrusted, he has to fight tooth and nail just to keep the Alliance whole. All the meanwhile he's constantly having insults thrust upon him by his own people, and in certain routes he's completely abandoned by one of the largest political players in his nation. The crown of thorns was not a burden Jesus chose to accept, like the burden of war Edelgard created and thrust upon the world, but was something thrusted upon him that he then had to deal with. It's easy to see that Claude never wanted to contend with this war and only stays because he HAS to, for the sake of both Almyra and Fódlan, despite knowing all he's doing is keeping things stable while not fixing the situation. But in the end he's still prepared to sacrifice everything to try and make the world better. In Houses, he even plans for his own death to protect the people of the Alliance, the people who fought against him and rejected him the most. In Hopes, he settles on working with people he fundamentally disagrees with and dislikes for the sake of protecting Fódlan. With a character progression like that, it just feels like the ruler who his brow laid in thorn, anointed in oil, that tracks to Claude much better than Edelgard
But hey, that's just my opinion. Wow, who knew being dragged to church kicking and screaming against my will would come in handy for a strategy JRPG
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transmutationisms · 11 months
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I feel like this is likely a bat to a hornet's nest topic but I deeply respect your takes and thoughts overall a lot so here goes: I really appreciate that the show frankly goes out of its way to not pathologize its characters and lets the audience sit with them in the context of their own lives. So I'm kind of baffled that so much focus is given to "diagnosing" them in fan discussions, the vast brunt of which Kendall gets. I don't understand how you can watch this show and understand him as someone who's been heavily abused and had his reactions to being abused weaponized against him and come away being like "wow it's so cringe he acts like that, he must have a brain disease and is just too stupid to understand that. every action he takes is because he is manic/depressed/letting the disease manifest. if only he took the good moral Legal drugs that I do instead of the ontologically bad ones that are Illegal and for dirty addicts. hopefully one day he will Get Help and Receive Treatment so he will be more palatable (no whatever he's done up to this point doesn't count because it didn't work which must inherently be due to his own moral failings)." How did a show like this attract so many Reganites??
bat at a hornets' nest yes. yeah i've said before that i dislike diagnosing fictional characters as a general rule. it's tautological ("they do [x] because they have [y], and they have [y] because they do [x]") and abrogates further analysis of their motives or the meanings of their actions. and it's doubly irksome to me with succession, because unlike a lot of tv, i genuinely don't think that it's written within the weltanschauung of dsm neurobio determinism. ie, it's not a show where the answer to "why did he do that?" is ever supposed to be "his brain is just like that"—these actions are supposed to mean something about what the character wants and needs, and the effect of the capitalist milieu on those things. it's psychological, not psychiatric (& of course, psychoanalytic approaches are common in formal literary studies, whereas blunt psychiatric diagnosis is decidedly less so).
with kendall's drug use there are some particularly irritating ways this all plays out. i've been fiddling with my own reading emphasising the context of logan's demands on kendall and the construction of bourgeois masculinity, and have tried to place kendall's drug use as a response to neoliberal control mechanisms à la deleuze or foucault. i could certainly be challenged on elements of this reading, but what i see on this website is generally just an endless slog of very biomedicalised reads that seem to have no awareness of the particular historical and social baggage present in that model. i do agree there's an element of reactionary DARE-esque moralising going on here (stg if i have to read one more post written by someone who, like, has never so much as met a coke user and thinks all drugs instantaneously give you irreversible morally weighted heart damage, lmao), but it's honestly not just that.
i think most of the time when people do this they're not trying to be reactionary or regressive, and often they not only don't believe themselves to be moralising affective distress, but actually think the dsm diagnosis is the way to avoid that type of moralisation. this is essentially the "it's a discrete disease entity, so they have no control over it and can't help it, so it's not their fault" argument. in practice this fails on many levels. for one thing, it often implicitly assumes that 'ending the stigma' requires any kind of mental disability or affective distress to be treated analogously to physical disability or illness, as though those latter are not also consistently stigmatised and moralised—because ableism is actually more complex than that and has to do with the fact that capitalism values people on the basis of the 'use' it can make of them and their bodies, etc etc. it is also, again, a wildly decontextualised understanding of affective distress, the reasons why people use drugs—including in a manner that feels compulsive and out of control—and so forth.
i'll add also that wrt succession, i actually do see a LOT of pathologisation thrown at roman as well, and more than an incidental amount directed at connor, tom, shiv, and logan. which is to say, i don't think this is solely about people's discomfort with addicts. there's a broad tendency among fans, echoing the even broader social tendency, to see medical diagnosis as personally liberatory, and medicine and psychiatry as passing 'objective' judgments that are necessary in order for a person to 'get better.' this is essentially positivism and is very much a status that the medical profession has fought to obtain (in france you can trace certain 18th-century discourses on national decline, aristocratic luxury, and the corrupting influence of the city -> the birth of clinical medicine after the first revolution -> social hygiene and the pathologisation of the parisian urban poor -> the third republic's 'physician-legislators' and the general class status and professionalisation of medicine; i know less about the gory details of the american and british cases simply by dint of what i do professionally).
we tend to forget these histories when talking about science; it presents itself as a set of timeless, incontrovertible truths that are simply waiting to be uncovered, and we have entire industries of science communication and journalism that propagate this view. which is to say, circling back to succession, i don't believe that most people diagnosing and pathologising these characters are trying to be reactionary or are aware that there are reactionary and moralising elements inherently built into these discourses. i think they're largely people who have not been given the tools to see alternatives, like the perspectives dominant in the history and sociology of science, which are very much kept paywalled and inaccessible on purpose because this is profitable for the academe.
this type of popular literary analysis is simply not going to go anywhere as long as this is still the status and the moral resonance of medicine (and psychiatry by extension because it gained its professional independence without sacrificing the appeal to medico-scientific epistemological authority). i don't think succession viewers are any more or less prone to this type of thinking than the general population they exist amongst. i firmly disagree with this attitude, obviously, and like i said, i don't actually think succession is written 'psychiatrically,' which cannot be said for all tv lol. but i more or less expect to encounter this type of deference to medico-psychiatric judgments in 95% of social interactions and contexts, again because of a combination of institutional control of information, other forms of inaccessibility, and physicians' and psychiatrists' advocacy for their own class and professional interests, both historically and ongoing today.
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therainscene · 5 months
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Crazy together: Byler, Cthulhu, and cosmic horror
Cthulhu is a queer horror film from 2007 that I've always been fond of. I rewatched it recently and was struck by some of its similarities to Stranger Things: small town vibes, conformity themes, cosmic horror as queer allegory, a gay protagonist with a childhood best friend slash love interest named Mike...
The film has an ambiguously villainous ending for its main character, Russ Marsh, and it's an ending that suits this story pretty well, imo -- so given how much it reminds me of Will's story, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two.
[Content warning for rape and (bloody) attempted suicide, both depicted in the movie and mentioned below the cut.]
youtube
👆 [That's the entire movie available for free on YouTube, courtesy of its director. You don't need to watch it to understand this analysis tho. Spoilers ahead.]
Cthulhu is a (very) loose adaptation of The Shadow over Innsmouth, a cosmic horror story about an outsider who arrives in a small fishing town and unearths a cult that interbreeds with immortal sea-dwelling monsters. He ends up making the horrifying discovery that he's descended from the cult's founder and thus doomed to turn into a monster himself.
The film uses this premise to talk about queerness: As an openly gay man, Russ has always been an outsider and was never going to participate in his hometown's, uh, traditions. Unfortunately, his father is the cult's leader and his sister is infertile -- Russ must participate.
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[Yes, that's Cara Buono. If you enjoyed her portrayal of Karen as a loving but deeply conformist family member who does a better job of supporting the status quo than supporting her loved one, but just wished her character was more one-dimensional -- then this is the movie for you!]
Russ doesn't actually know much about the cult at the start of the film -- he fled to the city in his teens and dismisses his father's proselytizing as "Joseph Smith frontier horseshit" -- so it isn't until he returns for his mother's funeral that he begins to unravel the truth.
It's a good metaphor for how it feels to look back on a bigoted or abusive upbringing and realize: wow, that was a lot more fucked up than I thought it was.
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As you might expect from cosmic horror though, this isn't a healing or empowering process for Russ.
Rather, he just keeps running into brutal reminders of how powerless he is in the face of the town's overwhelming, ingrained homophobia: at one point he's raped to satisfy his father's need for an heir; at another he's falsely jailed for the rape and murder of a boy he was trying to rescue from the cult.
It's similar to the torture Will endures in S1 and S2: he's kidnapped and symbolically raped, reflecting Troy's coded "killed by some other queer" comment, then bullied for having the audacity to survive it. He even stands up to a literal eldritch monstrosity and is rewarded for his bravery with yet more loss of autonomy.
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You might be wondering if these stories even count as cosmic horror. Cthulhu only ever vaguely hints at the existence of, well, Cthulhu, and Stranger Things (which deliberately tweaks its genre every season) reveals that the Mind Flayer was basically just some guy all along.
But I think it's a bit of a misconception that cosmic horror is about star-sized masses of eyeballs and tentacles that drive you insane with their inhuman incomprehensibility.
Really, cosmic horror is about powerlessness, inevitability, and comprehending all too well. To know that horrors exist beyond the everyday facade of human existence -- whether they take the form of unknowable monstrosities from the void or of violent bigotry in an otherwise pleasant town -- is to know that your existence is nothing more than a delicate soap bubble floating in a vast, uncaring universe made exclusively of sharp edges. Even if you return to the everyday world, you can never return to blissful ignorance.
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And that’s what drives you insane.
Will has something of a knowledge motif following him around: He's a wizard named Will the Wise. He illuminates. He has True Sight. He's a super-spy. He's part of the hive mind. He was studied in the lab. He was violated at school and in a library. His neck prickles when Vecna is close. He knows what Vecna is thinking.
It's too much cursed knowledge for one little boy to bear.
But he doesn't have to bear it alone.
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Will is lucky to have a bunch of loving friends and family, and their support does a lot to help him cope... but even his fiercest supporters, Joyce and Jonathan, tend to be absent for long swathes of time. There's only one character who can be consistently found by Will's side through the majority of every season, and that's the boy who promised to go crazy with him.
[Strictly speaking Mike wasn't by his side in S1... but he fought hard to bring him home the whole time they were apart. Tomayto tomahto.]
Russ has a Mike too. (Literally -- his name is Michael Shields lol.) His childhood best friend reconnects with him soon after he arrives back in town and pretty much immediately becomes his sole trusted confidant as Russ falls down the cultist rabbit hole.
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A quick aside -- Russ's past with Mike is a glimpse into a possible future for Byler.
Russ and Will have both been saved by their Mikes from giving in to the despair of being treated so brutally by their towns: Russ's Mike caught him mid-suicide attempt when they were teenagers--
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--and Will's Mike, of course, helped rescue him from the Upside Down and sat patiently with him the whole time he was possessed.
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Unfortunately, both Mikes are also conformists who are unwilling to leave the safety of comphet. Russ ran away to a more liberal environment where he could exist in peace, but Mike stayed behind and married a woman. This could easily end up being Byler's fate too.
So while Russ and Will might be alive thanks to their Mikes, they now have to live the rest of their lives without the love of the boy who gave them the drive to face it in the first place.
And it isn't as though the boy doesn't want to love him back.
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The jury is officially still out on Byler, but Russ's backstory is very much not about a sad gay boy having to get over his sad gay crush on his straight best friend -- it's about a pair of would-be lovers getting torn apart by a town that refuses to let them be themselves.
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I want to emphasize that both of these pairings consist of a visibly gay guy and a straight-passing guy.
In both stories it's typically the visibly queer one who actually interacts with the horrors, while the straight-passing one tends to observe from a position of relative safety, either escaping before anything too nasty happens to him, or more often, simply learning about the horrors second-hand from the visible one.
(There's one key exception at the end of Cthulhu -- but we'll come back to that.)
This is such an important dynamic that it's even unsubtly foreshadowed in Byler's first scene together:
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This informs the way the characters support each other. We've already seen the obvious the safe one acts as a mental tether for the endangered one so he doesn't go insane with despair dynamic, but there's a reversal too: the authentic one inspires the conformist to join him in what was never really insanity so much as a different way of looking at the world.
Russ doesn't have any designs on seducing Mike -- much like Will, all he expects is some support from his best friend -- but his dogged questioning of the town's status quo still leads directly to Mike breaking out of comphet and admitting to what he's always really wanted:
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[Learn from your elders, Byers: this is the proper way to respond when your love interest says that home just isn't the same without you.]
But Cthulhu's protagonists are confident adults who know how to quickly resolve their romantic tension. Byler are frightened kids in a five-act coming-of-age story -- their version is a little messier.
Mike has always been inspired by Will, right from the very first episode -- he decided to risk looking for him in the woods because he figured that's what his brave and kind friend Will would do.
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The first two seasons thus show us Byler's dynamic at its best: an endless feedback loop of Will's strength and insight inspires Mike and Mike's devotion supports Will. (Very cleric and paladin of them.) But they're still children at this point, and don't really notice the blossoming queerness in their relationship yet.
S3 adds puberty to the mix and oh boy do they notice the queerness now. Too scary no thank you cancel unsubscribe uninstall. Will's bravery falters. Mike devotes himself to the grim duty of having a girlfriend. The loop breaks under the pressure.
They fight about it in the same location that introduced us to their dynamic and call each other out on failing to hold up their respective ends of the bargain:
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"Why aren't you there for me anymore?"
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"Why are you refusing to face reality all of a sudden?"
Note that Will's knowledge motif makes a return here -- just before the fight, he dresses up in his Will the Wise costume in an effort to inspire Mike again. But the tone of the scene is silly and cringey -- as correct as Will is to point out that they don't need to abandon their childhood dynamic just because they're growing up, pretending that it isn't going to mature as they age is, um. Unsustainable.
Deep down, Will knows that he'll eventually have to address the terrifying truth that keeps tapping insistently at the back of his neck.
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By S4, Mike is starting to come around -- he's still deep in comphet, but he at least recognizes that it's making him unhappy, so he reaches out to Will the Wise for advice. Unfortunately, Will learned the wrong lesson in S3, and all the advice he offers is designed to push Mike back into the arms of comphet.
By the end of the season, Will has even orchestrated a grand heterosexual love confession in the foolish hope that sacrificing his heart on the altar of heteronormativity might finally make the horrors go away. (How's that working out for you, Byers?)
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And so we've arrived at that ambiguously villainous ending.
By the climax of Cthulhu, Russ has uncovered the awful truth: his mother was murdered by his father to lure him home, extract offspring from him, and trigger the apocalypse. It's already begun; there's no stopping it. Shambling horrors -- his ancestors -- emerge from the rising sea. Russ is expected to become the immortal leader of this sunken new world.
He and Mike make plans to flee town together, but Russ runs into his father. He's brought to the shore to admire his kingdom before being handed a weapon and commanded to make sacrifice to Cthulhu:
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Russ glances between Mike and his father, assessing his options. Soon even the cities will be consumed; he can't Smalltown Boy his way out of this again.
He raises his weapon--
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--cut to black, roll credits.
All too often, queer villainy is shown from a straight perspective, presenting queerness as inherently threatening. This is the type of villainy embodied by Vecna: he's a vengeful and predatory outcast who forces his version of reality on others (especially children) and refuses to compromise his dangerous nature.
Cthulhu shows us queer villainy from a queer perspective. Russ, like Will, is harmless: he's kind, has no interest in vengeance, and just wants to live his life in peace. What drives him to villainy is the temptation to throw queerness under the bus in the twisted belief that appeasing the majority is the key to escaping homophobia.
Of course, there is no escape. Sacrificing the man who trusted him to guide him gently into the reality of queerness just means he's succumbed to the madness and become a homophobe himself.
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S4 concludes with Will in a similar position to Russ: teetering on the precipice of madness as he helplessly watches the world fall apart at the hands of the villain who would stop at nothing to force him to join his cause.
But where their situations differ is in what cause that villain represents.
Russ's antagonist is a straight homophobe, representing societal homophobia -- far too powerful a force for one man and his lover to have any hope of defeating. But Will's antagonist is that offensively queer-coded-for-straights villain, representing internalized homophobia -- all along, the prickling at the back of Will's neck has been his own instincts warning him of what happens when you allow bigots and abusers to have a say in how you define yourself.
True love can certainly defeat that.
Unlike Russ, Will hasn't reached the end of his story yet--
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--and unlike his older namesake, Mike isn't kneeling on the sacrificial altar, but standing by the side of the boy he promised to go crazy with, ready to face the horrors of Hawkins -- together.
[@bylerween2023 day 4 🐙]
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darthpastry · 2 months
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*Slaps Michael on the head* This strange creature can fit so much trauma.
It's time for a character analysis of one of the protagonists of all time! Because what do I do if not overanalyze things and characters we only have crumbs of?
So, childhood. We have pretty few things confirmed about his childhood.
Both he and Evan were tormented with the fear gas from who knows how young.
He bullied Evan.
He killed Evan.
Foxy was his chosen animatronic.
Yep, that's all we have to work with. But that's more than enough!
First of all, shout out to Evan for dealing with the most bullshit and never doing anything wrong in his life (next game comes out and reveals that if he lived, he would've been worse than William or smth and this whole post ages like milk) or afterlife unless you count the Golden Freddy jumpscares, but those feel justified, and this post isn't about him.
Back to Michael. Since all three Afton children were abused, it does make sense why Michael would act out the way he does towards Evan. Heavy emphasis on the fact that reasons are not excuses and that just because reasons behind his actions can be found does not mean it wasn't any less horrible.
Besides that, I don't really have much to say about the bite of 83, it's already gotten a ton attention, so I don't feel the need to analyze it either. It's interesting that we don't what the dynamic between Elizabeth and Michael was, I do like the theory that Elizabeth wasn't around until after the bite, but that's an entirely separate post.
Yeah... that's about all I have to say about his childhood. So, let's just skip ahead for years to FNaF 2's events!
I'm going to be honest and say it's unlikely Jeremy and Michael met during this right off the bat. Sorry, but with how much Mike is treated as a punching bag in canon, it's unlikely he had any friends at this point. The bully gang probably just drifted apart without any hard feelings against each other.
I'm curious about what exactly Michael's age would be at this point, minimum working age is the same, at 14 and considering the workers are paid exactly the minimum wage at the time ($3.35 an hour), I don't doubt William would put Michael to work as soon as possible, and at ten years old the bully group probably would've been able to lift Evan to shove him in Fredbear's mouth, I would say between Michael was probably 14 and at oldest 18, just because due to the sprite design of the bullies and he appears in earlies 20s in SL, which I'm placing 1993, but I'll save that for later.
Sheesh. First time really thinking William just plopping 14-year-olds in that situation for minimum wage. Nothing in comparison to being a serial killer of children, but, still, yikes.
Why was he there? I don't know, actually. I do think he's Fritz Smith, but why he would need a pseudonym or want to work there I haven't a clue. Unless he ran/moved in with Henry (doubt) and was trying spare cash and maybe track down William after hearing about how his sister died and it was six years before he actually caught up to William and that was because William had figured the only way to get Michael off his back was to get rid of him.
And this is already a horribly long post, so if I expound upon this anymore it'll definitely be a part two talking about SL, Springtrap, and the thirty-year time gap. FNaF 3, Pizzeria Sim, and theories about how he could still be around and what he'd be doing in modern FNaF would probably have to be a part three, knowing me.
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inkblackorchid · 8 months
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I was gonna try to keep my mouth shut, but I can't. I just can't. I have to go on another Aki rant because I feel like I'm going to explode. It's about this scene:
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This drives me insane and I'm putting this under a readmore. Expect incoherent screaming, all ye who enter here.
Ok. Ok. I have so many issues with this scene. Specifically, with the way it develops later, when Aki's busy trying to figure out how to save a child from being swept up by a storm:
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And I just. Look, I think the fact that I already wrote a fic that basically completely turns Aki's reaction here on its head should basically tell you everything. But! But. Allow me to defend why I think this whole scene is one big heap of horseshit, with a bit of analysis of canon and actual evidence to back up my claims and shit.
The thing is, I have seen people give this scene a charitable read. I've seen people be happy for Aki to enjoy freedom from the psychic powers that have given her so much trouble in her life. And the thing is, if this were season one or season two Aki, I would be completely on board with that take. Unfortunately, this scene is preceded by the pre-WRGP arc. But more on that below.
Moreover, I can make an educated guess about what they were going for here (in terms of messaging, because this is a kids' show at the end of the day and messaging is something you have to be properly concerned with when it comes to these). I can imagine it running somewhere along the lines of "you don't need special powers to be a hero". Or even "you can grow past the hurt and/or the mistakes in your life and still become a good person or even a hero". And really, I wish I could believe that take. It's just. The writing simply doesn't add up. I wish it did, but it doesn't.
This is where we get back to the pre-WRGP arc. And not just that, actually, but the timeskip between the dark signers and pre-WRGP arc, too. Because the thing is, the last time we have seen Aki in anguish about her powers on-screen by the time the episodes above (108-109) arrive was during the DS arc, during the duel with her father, which happened during episodes 40-41. 40. to. 41. This was over sixty episodes ago at this point. And after that, that's it. As far as the DS arc is concerned, Aki's conflict about her powers is resolved the second she controls them for the first time when her father tries to interfere in her second duel against Yusei.
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(Yeah, remember this moment? That was literally the last time we saw Aki in conflict with her powers.)
And I know some people would argue "but what about the dark signer duel with Misty?". And yes, I get it. Misty does accuse her of having murdered her brother with her powers and Aki gets incredibly (understandably) upset about it. But the thing is, we know that's fake, and during the duel, Aki knows that, too. She goes as far as insisting that there were no casualties at the duel where Misty thinks Toby died.
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(Yes, I have screenshot proof for literally every dumb little thing in this show, why do you ask?)
It's only after Misty keeps pushing and backing her into a corner during their duel (and literally gaslighting her) that she begins to believe Misty's version of the events. Which is why this doesn't "count" as Aki being in conflict with her powers the way her second duel with Yusei does. At least not to me, feel free to debate me over this if you wanna.
Okay, but what am I driving at here? Fair question. Let me hop back to after the dark signers' defeat.
So, we know there's a half-year timeskip between the DS and the pre-WRGP arc (which was allegedly enough for NDC to connect the city and Satellite, deal with all the social issues that entailed, and also build a giant duel network, which I will never believe but I digress). Unfortunately, what exactly our main characters did during that timeskip is never addressed, it's just kind of there to segway immediately into the WRGP setup. So the only thing we can do is guess at what they got up to based on where they are as people by the time we get back to them during the start of the pre-WRGP arc. So where's Aki at when we see her again after the dark signers' defeat then?
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Oh, she's attending duel academy again now! That's nice. So that probably means the student body isn't scared shitless of her anymore and she's not being ostracised anymore.
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Wow, she's an exceptional student! That means she must be a really good duellist. So she got the hang of her powers, then?
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...Ah.
Do you start to see my problem? Past the DS arc, we are not being given any indication that Aki is still struggling with her powers or still resents them or herself like she used to. You could be forgiven for thinking that she's healed in the meantime. She's fine. She has accepted herself and can now use her powers safely. Which makes her later claiming "she no longer needs that cursed power" a bit... hmmm. And another thing. The fact that she refers to it as "cursed" rubs me the wrong way. After the defeat of the dark signers, she literally never does that even a single time before the moment in the hospital during the storm. (I'd post all the screenshots to prove it here but for one, tumblr doesn't allow it, and for two, I hope you'll believe I did my due diligence without it.)
And it just irks me. If the powers are still a "curse" to Aki by episodes 108-109, why give us the moment above?
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And why give us this moment, where she saves Sherry, Yusei, and herself with those powers?
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And why give us this moment, where she literally uses her powers at a public event to protect people, and is evidently not cussed out as a witch for it? Neither of these moments do anything to indicate that Aki still hates her powers. They don't indicate that she sees them as a "beast of burden" or necessary evil of a sort, either. On the contrary, I don't think it would be too out there to claim all these moments make her look rather badass. Like a small celebration of "hey, now she can finally use these powers for cool and not evil things!".
Yet, somehow, we still end up with episodes 108-109, where the writers expect the audience to buy that Aki was secretly still hoping she might eventually be rid of these powers after all. And maybe this would be easier to swallow if there weren't also the fact that they later literally go back on it to add to this confusing mess. Because the thing is, we all know the finale scene after the three-way duel with Sherry where Aki protects them with her powers (which have suddenly reappeared, aha!) again and also finds out she can use these powers to heal. So not only is the framing of Aki suddenly being glad to have lost her powers extremely weird, it's also temporary anyway!
So my question is. What was the point. What was the point of all this if the writers ended up going back on it anyway? Because I want to believe there's a reasonable, charitable explanation that also makes sense with what they show us in terms of Aki's characterisation past the DS arc, but if there is, I cannot for the life of me find it. If anything, this whole thing feels like it completely contradicts itself.
First, they tie up Aki's conflict with her powers with a neat bow after she manages not to hurt her father anymore. Then, they launch into the pre-WRGP arc and blatantly tell us that she can now control them. No questions asked. Indisputable fact, and we get nothing that contradicts that, either. Then, we get a bunch of setup showing her using her powers, too, and what's more, we get other significant players in the cast taking notice of it, too, as though it might become relevant. Because Sherry isn't the only one who gets curious about Aki's powers.
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(I will never understand how Placido's hood works together with his horn-thingies and have stopped trying at this point.)
The literal, central antagonists of season 3-4 also take notice of it. Like that means something. Like it'll come up again later. But, well. We know it doesn't.
Instead, she suddenly loses her powers out of nowhere (and we are never given a reason for it, either, which does nothing to make this writing decision seem anymore understandable). And, look. The thing that upsets me most about this isn't even the fact that it feels a little inconsistent with Aki's character post DS arc. If that were the only problem, I could still suspend my disbelief far enough to go along with the idea that she secretly still hated her powers quietly in the background and wanted them gone anyway. What really pisses me off is that it reeks of zero setup and knee-jerk decisions in the writing room ten miles against the wind. If they wanted us to believe Aki's glad to be rid of her powers, why give absolutely no indication that she's at odds with them past episode 41 anymore? Why let her state outright that she can now control them? Why show her on several occasions using them to her own and other people's benefit, the way a hero would? And if her powers are supposed to vanish and it's supposed to make sense, why is there no reason for it? They already used cyborg timetravel at that point, they could have literally come up with any nonsense related to that and it would have probably made at least more sense than just letting her powers vanish for no reason at all. Also, if the message behind all this is supposed to be either of the things I mentioned way above—if the idea the audience is supposed to be getting is either "you don't need special powers to be a hero" or "your past and/or your mistakes don't define you and you can heal and grow past them"—why reintroduce the powers, which, in this reading, would be a symbol of Aki's pain, of her mistakes and her dreaded past, at the very end, during the finale, then? It just doesn't add up, and it frustrates me to no end.
The writers wanted to make the moment Aki realises she can help people (well, one person, a child) without her powers seem triumphant so bad, but every time I watch it, it just completely falls flat for me. This isn't a triumph, this is a hot mess of bad writing decisions. All I'm saying is, if they wanted me to buy that Aki would be happy about losing her powers here, they were missing a hefty amount of setup and also shouldn't actually have given them back to her during the finale (no, not even as healing powers).
Moreover... I'll freely admit I also have a personal problem with this scene. I've seen this show and these episodes several times by now, and during my last rewatch and my current one, something about this scene has been creeping up on me, and I think I've figured out what that is now. So I talked about the possible message behind this scene already, and the reading I've given so far was fairly forgiving. But the thing is, there is another reading that has occurred to me that I can't unsee anymore. As much as you could make a valid case that this scene is trying to say that people don't need to be special to be heroes and save others, that past mistakes don't define us, and yadda yadda, there's also a much, much less pleasant way to interpret this scene: "You're better off if you don't stand out." And I'll freely admit, this interpretation probably occurs to me specifically because I was considered a "weird kid" at school, singled out by bullies, and avoided by "popular" kids (take a wild guess why I relate to Aki so much!). And over the years, you learn to downplay that "weirdness" because you become desperate to be accepted by someone, anyone. And given everything the show gives us about Aki's relationship with her powers, it'd make sense that this idea would be buried somewhere in her head, too. It's better not to stand out. Don't be weird. Sand down your edges so there's no chance people could get upset about them. You're better off being whatever everyone else considers "normal" than being whoever you are. It doesn't matter if this is a part of who you are, just become someone else. Someone who's easier to accept. Who's easier to love. You don't need your "weirdness".
You don't need this cursed power.
You know, the "cursed power" that Aki had from the beginning of the show, that was a part of her for years, and that the show didn't give any indication could vanish. The power that we were led to believe would just be there forever, because it was simply a part of Aki, not a conscious thing she (or the narrative) could choose. The power that we were, for all intents and purposes, led to believe she had mastered and maybe even accepted along the way. But sure, let's get rid of that. It's better if she's """normal""". And more convenient for the writers, too! After all, if she doesn't have powers anymore, they can't cause plotholes (of which the WRGP already has enough) and can't possibly give Aki any more badass moments, which makes it that much easier to sideline her. And let's package this weird, shittily set-up moment in a message about how she's better off without her powers anyway. She's happy! It makes complete sense that she's happy. She's finally normal like everyone else. Ignore the way people who might relate to the character could possibly interpret this moment differently. And ignore how none of the writing surrounding this moment makes sense.
...Sigh.
Okay, I think I've let off enough steam. I just. Yeah. I'm sorry, but I cannot for the life of me view this scene in a favourable way and watching it today made me want to chew glass tbh. My only solace is that they went back on this trainwreck writing decision in the finale. Which, really, just makes this whole mess really, really pointless, doesn't it?
For anyone who stuck around this long, thanks for reading. Sorry if this got extra-rant-y. Idk man, I just think “it’s worth the effort to accept yourself as you are, even with all the bits you might not like at first” would have been a better message than whatever this turned out to be.
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ultraviolet-cello · 2 months
Text
I'm gonna be honest guys, I looked at today's episode and was like Oh No because Episode 9 is my Achilles heel. not that there's nothing to say about it. But that there's so much To say abt it lmao. While 6 & 7 are my favourites, Knives is a character that I see soooooo much like. I need to put him under my microscope.
Anyway, today's analysis/detail watch/@tristampparty is episode 9 - Millions Knives.
Spoilers for Trimax and Tristamp, CW for uh. Knives in general, and enjoy!
It's probably just the angle here, but Knives does look marginally shorter in this shot, and it's extremely funny to me
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Okay I did just get jumpscared by being in dub for some reason I was looking for the subtitles and heard English and had The Most dramatic reaction. okay we're normal now.
Knives,,,, Knives Knives Knives,,,, so I, once again, think that the narrative is working against him. It's interesting, then, I guess, that he's the only main character in Tristamp who doesn't get the portrayed-as-younger treatment in Tristamp.
Knives here is experiencing things that Trimax Knives only did way way later; the last run in particular. Trimax Knives witnesses a last run and starts fusing with other Plants midway through Trimax. This scene in Tristamp, however, takes place just 5 years after the Big Fall.
Trimax Knives ends up like he does by spiraling very very quickly after he starts fusing (And he was dead/in a coma for 20 years!); Tristamp Knives, however, has had at least 145 years to build up his power, build up his hatred, go down that spiral. No 20 years of being dead, just alllll that.
In that respect, Tristamp Knives is Trimax Knives taken to the end of that spiral, the extremist endpoint that Trimax Knives never quite achieved because of Vash - he never really had the time to reach the end of the spiral and settle in it, whereas Tristamp Knives has had that going for again, 145 years.
It's a fun inversion of what's going on in Trimax actually - the 20 years between July and the present are what gives most of the main cast their development and personality - They've had the time to develop those coping mechanisms, trauma responses, their characterizations past all the traumatic things that have happened.
Trimax Knives isn't present for those 20 years, he's down and out for the count. So that 20 years of Important development does not apply to him, making him the least Progressed character in Trimax actually.
So to have Tristamp Knives be the inversion of that is really fascinating, because it applies to how extremist he's willing to go, and how,,,, Bad[tm] the actions he takes are.
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Some Knives characterization things that I see criminally overlooked are that,,, well, Vash struggles with empathy sometimes, but Knives often feels things far too much, as in a hyper-emotive or overstimulated state (he's autistic ur honour), which is what contributes to his overall spiral - he's so emotionally driven that he doesn't recognize the emotional weight behind his decisions anymore. I don't think he knows quite how much his grief and anger contributes to how he says he hates Rem. He doesn't really explore that but instead just turns it into motivation for himself.
Anyway him feeling things Way too hard is an entire mood and Studio Orange did an incredible job with his expressions.
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Like for example, in this sequence he looks like he's about to physically Gag in response to seeing the Plant die
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Or this one, where he looks like he's about to cry but shoves his hood over his face hurriedly in case he does. Daily reminder that Knives was the kid who cried a lot
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So Vash steps in in the middle of Knives' little breakdown, but he hasn't really Seen that breakdown. To him, Knives is immediately just spouting about how humans are so bad, but from Knives' POV he just watched his sister die while the humans who surround him are unapologetic and uncaring. And that's gotta be devastating for Knives, because Vash really does not understand the context of the situation here. I think that gets to Knives a little bit, and unpauses his breakdown.
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The other thing that really cements the Absolutely God Awful Time that Knives is happening is the guards going to grab him. We've already seen Knives be relatively adverse to touch (looking uncomfortable when Rem grabs him), and now he's having a really bad day, he's experiencing Trauma^2, and people just Grab him? Not to be dramatic but I understand the urge to start killing
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But he also,,,, doesn't resort to violence first. He literally appeals to everyone's sense of heart, he points out that the Plants are crying out, can't you hear it? And then nobody listens, nobody comes to help him, and at this point there's probably a lot of fear.
A bunch of humans have turned up who are,,, apparently happy to exploit plants, conrad knows he's a plant, and he's being restrained by several people. That's a really scary position to be in, especially if you happen to have seen what happened to, oh, I don't know, Tesla?
Self-defense, in this case, would surely be justified to him.
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Also the scene of Knives attempting to get Vash to shoot someone with a gun is a 98-only detail which I love actually - 98 has its moments, even if it's only 3rd in my Top Triguns list! (I love 98 to be clear, I just like Trimax and Tristamp more)
Vash tells Knives that he lost Rem because Rem was protecting Vash, and That's Not A Great Thing To Hear. Knives loved Rem very much and now Vash is telling him that yeah, she's dead because of him. Which he'd definitely known before, but it's such a gut punch to hear your own brother say that, scream it in your face even. Your mother is dead because of you. She was only protecting Vash.
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And again, that too much emotion spills over into just inescapable grief and rage that goes into violence and taking it out on Luida which. Yeah. Yeah.
Tristamp fascinates me in that Knives actually has a genuinely good reason to amputate Vash's arm - he's in a haze, and he needs to think quickly, nobody else can do anything, and if that arm goes off it could evaporate everything in the immediate vicinity. So yeah chop chop. It's not a great solution, of course, but it's the quickest one he's got, and also starts desensitizing Knives to violence he commits against Vash. Because, of course, if this one piece of harm had saved Vash's life (which it probably did), then everything else that Knives does is also saving him, right? Right?!
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Why does Vash get like. B cups in this scene and only this scene. Top ten questions science can't answer /j
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Godddd okay Meryl and Roberto's reaction to seeing plants is,,,, It's nice, actually. I like that Roberto gets to see hope and flora before he dies. I like that the last positive, lovely thing that he gets to experience is the hope of the world. Even if he denies it.
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God, Knives telling Vash that he's the reason for the big fall really did a number on him huh. The man is powered on 17 guilt complexes, CPTSD, and bisexuality
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worms took her tights can't have shit in noman's land
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Roberto also cracks a lot of jokes all the time I miss him. He's so deeply unserious half the time and the other half he's mysterious as fuck. Love this guy. But also the fact that he does try to,,, make the situation better for Meryl by joking with her is very sweet.
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Wolfwood has. 0 experience in riding a Thomas because he was never given transport again,,, Why waste fuel and animals when the Punisher can just walk the desert himself? He's not human enough to die of it. ghrngrhgnrgrngrnnnnn
God that's gonna be so good when he gets Angelina though. His own transport,,,,
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Zazie doing the lord's work by putting Aotearoa New Zealand front on the Worm Globe, we're so often left out of maps lmao
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Alright I have spent some time condensing that Knives rant and it's still. a Lot lmao. Anyway that was my Normal-About-Knives episode, next is my Normal-About-Roberto episode, which I'm super hyped for! yippee!! yay!!!
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cerealandchoccymilk · 10 months
Text
Trigun Bookclub: Trigun Vol.1, Chapters #00-01
all | next
lets fucking do this
I'm annotating every chapter of trigun, both the Japanese original print (reread) and Overhaul 1.0 (first read). Literally just writing down everything I notice about details, version differences, translation notes, etc. and also being gay about the characters. happy pride month
I had other stuff to do today yesterday so I only got through a little bit but pace will pick up tomorrow today (1 volume/week is faster than i thought...)
Here are the beloved non-analysis sillies...
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And there are just so many annotation images so I just put the rest under the cut <3 read my notes boy
[edit: why aren't the images not being side by side like i want them to i hate this. here's the url for my blog page with correct formatting] [edit 2: i guess it's only on desktop, not on mobile. so that's good]
First thing I noticed was the difference in the number of volumes, or the number of chapters in each volume. In my JP copy, volume 1 ends at Chapter #07: Rem, while Overhaul (and I assume every version after the first JP print) ends at #12: River of Life.
Anyways onto the actual images
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21st of July - !! didn't notice [that the July incident actually happened in July] during 1st read b/c months are only numbers in Japanese 11 hours after destruction - July incident was 2am
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For some reason I thought he was standing this whole time. unneccesary details georg
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Estimated age: 24 - Official age for his appearance? dang he's young Appearance - "Place of origin/birth," not "what he looks like" The worst kind of outlaw, and an unrivalled killer. - Added in a later version? (not in my JP copy but the phrase is familiar)
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This blank space originally had the Japanese translation for the board.
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We see his serious expression already! I don't remember '98 doing so this early on so it's pretty notable to me...
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Just thinking about how Vash counted each individual gunshot being fired during all that chaos... dear god.... During my first read/watch I thought it was just silly Rule of Cool protagonist moment but not really. This guy actually has Insane perception, either from being a plant or sheer practice. Or both.
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Also immediately after all that, I really love the way the aftermath is shown here. The only things you can hear are the creaks of the light and the crying boy. It really brings out the tension in the atmosphere.
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Finally, something other than unneccesary bits! If you look at the flooring under the toy gun, the perspective lines are pointing SW-NE. This corresponds to the flooring on Vash's right, whose right arm is also suspiciously out-of-frame... This is definitely the moment he took the toy gun. I can't express the amount of Holy Shit I felt when I realized this. The detail!!!!! man!!!!!!!!!
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There's a little translation error here - it should be something like "Even if he were still alive, he wouldn't be able to move an inch!"
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One of my favorite Vash moves with one of my favorite Tumblr heritage posts.
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This is not really based on any drawn details, but I think this is the moment that Vash readies the toy gun, puts it in his pocket, and picks up the ketchup. Do Not trust this man when his arm is not visible. Also finger still in gun <3 doing his part blocking one bullet at a time
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And here we have Vash's first COOL cool moment!!!!!! cue my homo screaming. goddddddddd im so mentally unwell about him. agh I also absolutely love when Nightow does that thing where he screen-tones a character's skin just because. It pops!! It's unique!! I love it!! I eat it up every time!!!
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Here's where I realize that Vash's hair antennae are pointing straight up. I should be on the lookout for when he makes the transition to the M-shaped antennae we know and love.
Also, a little untranslatable joke from the Japanese version. In Japanese, this guy calls out at Vash like "And you, don't provoke him!" except it's written with the kanji for "Hunter" (狩人 karyūdo), with a ruby pronunciation note saying "you" (おまえも omaemo). These kanji/ruby mismatch jokes are never not funny and it's so sad that there's no way to keep them in without doing...this lol
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The "I counted!" reveal never fails to get me. holy shit. I love the little boy's expression when he gets his gun back :) You helped!!! and you don't have to have the real deal to be cool as balls!!!
Just lumping this with the previous two because it's a tall image, but another small translation error. Rather than being about doing harm, he's talking about recieving it (~~はゴメンだ is a hard-to-catch phrasing/idiom; it's already been discussed with the translator on a different instance). It should be more like "[...But] nobody likes getting hurt, right?"
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THE GIRLIES YIPPEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Not including the dialogue because. y'know. At least they get (accidentally) Bonked by Millie :) get their asses
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Here, the order suggestion is made by somebody off-screen, but in the first edition, it was made by the cook himself. (left image annotation says "the storekeeper(cook) is so nice!")
That's it for chapters #00-01! I'm going to keep having Category 5 Autism Events every day aren't I.
It's literally 1:20am as of finishing this post because my computer won't stop crashing. Posting this first thing in the morning tomorrow <3
Also, the Japanese copy of the annotations will be in the reblogs for anyone who wants to see them. The emotions are Rawer and they're phrased way less awkwardly... if you can read them lol
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mj-ackerman · 9 months
Note
Sorry if you already made a post about it but what are your thoughts on the "Anya loves Loid more than Yor" thing? I personally don't agree with it at all. I think Anya does try harder with Loid because she knows about Strix but not necessarily because she loves him a lot more than Yor.
Hello, yes I already made a post about this but only on Twitter hehe.
Regarding my thoughts about the "Anya loves Loid more than Yor" thing, I don't agree with it AT ALL. I believe Anya loves them both equally, there's was no competition and it SHOULDN'T be a competition as to who she loves the most. Anya also said it herself, she loves both her mama and papa because they're fun to be together and gave them BOTH a 100 perfect score
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She even said that she likes it the best when she can be together with the both of them.
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That's why she likes and enjoys their little family "ootings" so much because it's the time where she can spend time with both her mama and papa together.
I also didn't like how the post claimed that Anya is much closer to Loid just because he was the one who adopted her because that's not entirely true. While it's true that it was Loid who got Anya out of the orphanage, Anya quickly got along with Yor the day she became her mama, she was even comfortable enough to ask her if she wants to hold hands with her, it's just that Yor's thoughts about how she broke Yuri's ribs from hugging too tightly had scared her.
I also didn't like how OP reduced Yor's role and made it sounds like she was only chosen by Anya because of the fact that she was aware that Loid was looking for a wife when it wasn't the case. She chose Yor to be her mother because the idea of having a spy father and an assassin mother excites her. She was entertained by the thought of what adventures a spy and an assassin could bring in her life.
She loves head pats - Why yes, she do loves head pats, especially head pats from her papa because it's the only genuine sign of affection that he could afford to give her as of the moment.
And yes, Anya does try harder with Loid but it's not because she loves him more than she loves Yor. It's because she thinks that she gotta do her best and try harder in order to keep Loid and have him stay with her, with their family.
Anya doesn't really have to try hard for Yor's affection or to put an act to impress her because she knows very well that her mama will accept her and love her no matter what but it's different for Loid. While she's also aware that despite Twilight's cold demeanor, he's actually a big softie for her, she doesn't really understand what he feels about her because right now he's in a lot of denial. She even canonically questioned whether Loid loves/cares for her or not.
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But with Yor, she already had that security to the point where she immediately even became her safe place, but again, she loves them both EQUALLY, it's just that for that reasons I mentioned, she gotta try harder for Loid.
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I love the user's post & metas, they give good insights and character analysis and I do think it's not their intention to start a discourse regarding this matter, they were simply giving their opinion about it, it's just that the way they worded it was really bad. I think if they didn't said "Not even close" or had put the unnecessary add up of "there's a reason why anya let yor holds her hand but it's loid who hold and hug her" (I was disappointed by that statement because that's not true AT ALL, and for the record Loid haven't hug Anya yet, picking her up and holding her doesn't count as a hug btw) I think people wouldn't react the way they did.
It's actually fine if people likes Loid more than Yor, there's nothing wrong with that. I just hope whenever they praise him or build him up to be as a good father figure, they wouldn't need to tear Yor down, because it's really sad to see Loid being praised of doing the same things that Yor is also doing but she's being hated for it or they don't think it's something admirable because it's something expected of her because she's a mother and wife :/
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