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justmenoworries · 17 days

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Alright, original anon is back. Sorry for the delay, and for the wall of words I'm sending your way, lol. I'm going to split it in two, with the second part being my thoughts on Smith-Bravern as a character.

When it comes to the overall arc, this is the crux of things for me: there is no version of this show where Smith is not Bravern. It's the central conceit of the entire story, and every decision about how it was structured and framed was made with it in mind. If it wasn't literally the original idea that led to everything else, it was at the very least an extremely early decision in the writing process.

They wanted to tell a story about a human guy being transformed into his ideal robot hero through the power of love in order to be piloted by his most important person, who is another man. That's a specific concept, and it's not one that's any more common than human/robot romance. It's its own fantasy with its own appeal, and I'm glad that story was able to be told.

Wishing Smith wasn't Bravern isn't suggesting a way to make the show Bravern better, it's saying "I wanted a different show that isn't Bravern at all." Which is fine! That kind of disappointment is one of the most powerful drivers of innovation in popular art. I would be overjoyed if a few years from now we get a sudden burst of gay super robot media responding to Bravern. I just don't believe what Bravern did was inherently shallower or less interesting than that hypothetical other show, or that they were in any way taking the easy way out.

And, well… A show with a similar opening to Bravern where he was never a human is unfortunately not guaranteed to talk about any of the deeper subjects you mentioned in your post, like working through internalized homophobia. It could just as easily never take the relationship further, playing it off as a joke about the robot not knowing what sex is.

(I admit that part of your post made me raise an eyebrow, both because I think the story we actually got was very much about internalized homophobia– for Smith– and because I don't think Isami's discomfort was ever really framed that way? He was struggling because a bunch of confusing, traumatizing stuff happened to him in quick succession, and he didn't have a choice in any of it. Whatever feelings he had about his attraction to men only became obviously relevant to his relationship with Bravern after Smith died, imo.)

I get what you're saying and I politely disagree.

Personally I always saw Bravern as sort of a deconstruction-reconstruction of the Super Robot genre by using the Real Robot genre's often pessimistic and nihilistic approach to mecha as a contrast to the embodiment of robot hero shows that is Bravern.

It would be easy to paint Bravern as a naive idiot whose ideals about heroism and understanding the people you're fighting get crushed by the harsh realities of war. But the show doesn't do that. Bravern's heroism is flashy and not in the least bit grounded. It doesn't fit and it irritates the military and (at the beginning) Isami that Bravern seems to treat this conflict like a stage show. But that's not what Bravern is doing. He's being overly hammy and larger than life to give the people around them someone to look to for hope. And it works. It's Bravern with his impractical flaming swords who defeats soldats and death drives. It's thanks to Bravern that the heroes are able to communicate with and in the end gain an ally in Superbia.

Bravern is for all intends and purposes a war machine like the death drives, but he isn't motivated by a selfish desire to die. He's motivated by a selfless desire to protect life and especially the life of the one he loves. His love for Isami is literally what makes him stronger. And Isami accepting him is what saves them both. Yes, Bravern still messes up, both in battle and when it comes to his relationship with Isami. But it's made clear that hurting Isami in any way is the last thing Bravern would want.

But why?

That's the driving question for most of the show before The Twist.

Why isn't Bravern like the Deathdrives? Why does he want to protect Earth? Why does he love Isami?

We could've had all sorts of interesting answers to that.

What we got was... eh, he's just a guy who became a robot.

Okay.

Also, I have to add: the way that the show never makes it explicitly clear whether Bravern's feelings for Isami were really Smith romantically loving another man or just Knuth being an overly horny weirdo and influencing Bravern's behavior annoyed me. It's very telling that the deathdrive that would become Bravern/Smith is the only female deathdrive of the bunch with an established Yandere personality. It gives the writers a very easy out that isn't "a guy loves another guy romantically".

#bang bravern spoilers

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hulahoopsoupgroup · 10 months

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sometimes i feel like during the process of my deconstruction, i've dismantled so much of my old religion that i've gone too deep and dismantled my own identity.

i've thrown out the whole "put your identity in the church" stuff, and i feel like i've been left with nothing, like i'm floating through a void, so to speak. i was taught so much to put all of myself into god and into the church that when i left, i left myself behind as well.

i'm a nihilist atheist, and that's all i've really got going for me. i don't feel as though i have any specific identity or meaning. i don't really know if i'll ever get that back, and i don't really know how i feel about that prospect.

have i ever expressed how furious i am at the church for making so many people feel this way after they leave?

#ex fundamentalist #exvangelical #atheist #deconstruction #deconversion #nihilism #nihilist #ex christian #ex religious

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gornackeaterofworlds · 3 months

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Know that I am gently batting you around for being amazing!

How about number 37 and 10 for any oc or oc’s of your choosing! ^W^

Know that I am consuming you whole in one big bite btw

10. If your character is an antagonist or something of the like, do they self-justify their actions? If so, how?

Marvel OCs:

Eva: She doesn't necessarily cross that territory once the lab holding her prisoner dissipated, but during training she did anything it took to make them happy, crossing any lines. When first brought into the program she'd refused, and so they found that if they hurt Evan, they could convince her to do what they wanted. So that's how she justifies any deed she feels guilty about throughout her life, that it's for Evan, to protect Evan, she gets to shuck the blame of the choice if it's for Evan.

Evan: He is a lot more intentionally morally grey than Eva. He was a terrified little boy before, but after learning about his dimension(9591), seeing Eva cause so much pain for his sake, spending years as a prisoner, he gets a very nihilistic streak. His mindset is that everything he does is just for his own survival, his own gain, and while it causes a little guilt, he rationalizes his actions with "it's worse for people in my/other dimension(s), so people here shouldn't complain." Refusing to allow empathy helps also.

TMNT OCs:

Anni: Huge antagonistic streak, but she swears nothing is her fault! It's all for a purpose, for the end goal! Illegal activities galore. Her defense? "The government sucks anyway." Emotional manipulation? "I simply had to, it's the only way to do/get [object]!" I don't think I made it very clear in my fic, and part of that was intentional, but she's a very manipulative, sly person. Though I'm taking a break, in one of the two posted chapters she manipulates Donnie into getting his phone number and getting to come over another day. Also outright coerces April into seeing the turtles, but that's worded more obviously. Barely thinks about the repercussions of these things until later, and it leads to deconstructing her child abuse.

Millie: It's all her traumatic past, promise!! Not a very big bad girl side, most of her "antagonistic" actions are more like lies by omission. Hiding things. Stealing. Doesn't like to burden others, especially her friends, with things that are so petty in comparison to their issues. Also slightly manipulative, but more of a "pulling very small specific strings to get the reaction she wants" way, like Anni's smaller manipulations. Rationalizes by playing dumb/ignoring it or just thinking that it's very small, inconsequential, but also doesn't want to haunt them.

37. What does your character want to change about themselves?

Marvel OCs:

Eva: Pre-main battle, slightly guiltily wishes she wasn't a mutant. Though for her, it's more about "if I wasn't special, I wouldn't have been brought to this dimension, and Evan wouldn't have gotten hurt because of me." Post-main battle, there's not a lot she'd change. Still holds onto that past sentiment, but in regards to the deceased 616 Eva instead of Evan. During this arc, she tries a lot of things and explores herself a lot, so there's a lot of self-love there.

Evan: Doesn't want to be a mutant, and this is very consistent throughout his life. He never goes back to 9591, but he's heard about it from other dimension-travelers and from Eva, who visited one time(and was veeery careful not to use her powers there). Terrified every day that the curse of that dimension will still affect him, so he's very hesitant to use his powers. Thankfully it doesn't affect his looks, so he can pretend, but because he's stuck by Eva's side, he's a little forced to use his powers on the team(though that ends after the main battle, since she's in the hospital, he kinda does whatever he wants and really likes being an average person)

TMNT OCs:

Anni: Her childhood her childhood her childhood. PLAGUED by "what if I was a normal civilian". Without getting into spoilers, she does eventually tone down the international criminal persona, even brokering a deal to go into witness protection while staying in New York(it helps that her main partner in crime(literally), her father, is dead)

Millie: Kinda...everything? In most iterations of Millie I've made, like for Rise, she doubles as a spidersona, and in those iterations she wishes she had been a normal human so she could've died with the rest of her dimension(she's a little stuck wandering the multiverse to find a dimension where the Krang lose..) In the iterations where she's typically not spiderman, like Bay, she'd probably change her looks or entire lifestyle to be prettier or more interesting. I'll admit she's a self insert bc I'm cringe shush. And that's what I'd change, so it applies to her as well.

#rottmnt #gornack text tag #gornack ask tag #marvel #marvel ocs #marvel oc #tmnt oc #tmnt ocs #rottmnt oc #gornack mouse tag #ask game #ask gornack

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sunilification · 4 months

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Michael Corleone as Ubermensch?

Another one overdue, settling all old scores--

An entire century was a single seed of thought for Nietzsche. Sigmund Freud , Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Oswald Spengler, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Rainer Maria Rilke, André Gide, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, George Bernhard Shaw, WB Yeats, one cursory glance through the streets of 20th century intellect and the influence of Nietzsche is undeniable. Some men indeed are born posthumously.

With all due respect for his gifted ability for original and innate insights, it would be unjust to credit Nietzsche alone for such remarkably widespread influence. For, he had the privilege and the premise to take his aim standing on the shoulders of giants: From Plato to Dostoevsky, he had systematically drawn from and dissected all schools and thoughts before him. What he came up with the confluence of such a comprehension was an abstract and fragmented ideology that would go on to define the direction of the 20th century starting from Freud in the early part to the deconstructive post-modern movement during its later quarter.

Anyone who is acquainted with the works of Nietzsche would know that there is no single defining principle in his thought unlike most of the schools that preceded him. In Nietzsche, one encounters abstract planks which are hard to be understood and thereby are only open to interpretations. Yet they are recognised as a salient signposts in the journey of human thought. One such major plank is that of Ubermensch.

Nietzsche alludes to the Ubermensch in the opening segment of Thus spake zarathustra and only vaguely without much elaboration . This unfortunately has lead to the often misconceived notion that Ubermensch is an ideal man superior to any other average human. A mistake even balanced thinkers like Santayana couldn’t escape. I think an easier, although agreeably a tedious attempt to understand Nietzsche’s Ubermensch is to follow his thought process through his complete works beginning from The birth of Tragedy to Ecce Homo as one single entity. But alas! Even then, just like life, all one gets is to make only an interpretation. I have, since being introduced to Ubermensch tried to peel layer after abstract layer to understand this concept at different times and from different perspectives. I saw that such efforts led me to form a core of a concept often wrapped by other changing satellite-ideas. Naturally the next step was to find the match for the concept amongst famous people known. I found weirder and obscure matches but a popular and a compelling one would come from a fiction. And the more I ponder I about him(character) and his life the more I’m convinced he has come to be the valueless nihilistic icon that Nietzsche had written nearly hundred years back. He is Michael Corleone , conceived by Mario Puzo but imprinted in our memories by the genius of Coppola in the form of the talented Al Pacino. Yes, very few men in the history of humanity for what it is now and what is to be written, would supersede Michael Corleone as an example for Ubermensch.

I initially had thought of writing this post by alternatively comparing Nietzsche’s writings with the character of Michael corleone and sketch out the similarities/differences. But it made me realise that it is too intricate and also perhaps quite demanding on the reader if s/he is not well acquainted with either or both. Hence to avoid the risk of that free floatingness I have decided in favour of just presenting a summary of Michael Corleone’s character. Hopefully this would encourage the readers to find out more on Nietzsche ‘s idea of Ubermensch and make their own judgement.I have restricted only to film and not the charecter in the book on which it was based. Again, such a task being a product of individual taste and perception naturally it precludes any logical consistency and objectivity. Therefore dear reader, proceed with utmost prejudice.

Michael is almost like any man, brought up in a protected culture, loving and loved by his family, starry eyed at the ideals , proud of his nation and privileged to make his conscientious choices. He aspires to lead himself and his wife to be into a civil domestic life. One, that promises respect and comfort that any man seeks. Yet Michael appears like a man who hasn’t made his peace. Underneath all , there is a mild air of chastened sadness around him that is presumably imagined to have come from an underlying conflict. On one hand, as an intelligent being he feels strongly for his values that define him, on the other he understands that the family he loves so much and is a part of is not legitimate and is contrary to the very values he cherishes. In this sense of understanding he departs from any average hero. He is not a Christ, Gandhi or Spartacus who symbolise a moral struggle in a value conflict with the extant inimical premises. On the contrary, Michael, born into a paradox, is in conflict with himself. He starts out as the militant attacking himself under peaceful conditions. His yearning to pull himself away from the family shall always be overcome by the fact that he is born into it. As perhaps you would expect Michael to have done all his growing years- the more he reflects about himself and the family, the more he is wants to pull away. Yet is convinced that a respite eludes him , a sad realisation which perhaps renders him so cold, mean and calculative. Unlike a few other protagonists known, it must be noted that Michael chooses to be dedicated to the family out of his own volition. He is not prodded into it. Or there is no personal identification with the pathos that he chooses to lead. Nothing he does is impetuous or precedent. Doesn’t a man hurt worst when punished for his virtues?

Soon, this split devotion to his family is moulded and given form leading him to make desperate choices and share the repercussions of the sins he isn’t personally responsible for but the ones he fully understands and vows his allegiance to. He lets go of his cherished values just like how Ulysses departed from Nausicaa, blessing it rather than loving it. As he says, it is all business. Nothing personal!! So all of this is done with disturbing ease. Thereby, he ensures the personal suffering ensuing from the change in his value system is smooth and well concealed. From his individual aspirations to his family and love, he renews himself in newer values every time he fails himself. And since each of the value is further apart from his real wish he copes by making himself emotionally inaccessible to others and more harrowingly to himself. His anger is the smoke arising off the cold ice. He never grieves in spite of one bereavement after another befalling upon him. As a being, he erases himself. One can only speculate what were his own thoughts about deserting his girl friend and marrying another woman elsewhere, losing her and then after return resuming the old relationship blithely. And in this whole process of alienation that is coupled with personal expectation to fulfil his responsibilities, he departs further away. And away.[1] From everything. Slowly he loses personal desire, value, identity. He will because he ought to. His life is slowly ushered into decadence.

But it must be noted this is only in principle but not in phenomenon. He successfully manages to evade any affective identification towards him and also he is totally in control of his acts and hence is prepared to be accountable for the consequences.

An illustration would help- in the last scene, when Kay questions Michael if he really killed Carlo (Brother in law)? He lividly raises his voice warning her not to question him about his business. This scene evokes two type of principal responses from the audience-- 1.To worship Michael as a symbol of power(and dominance) 2. To sympathise with Kay. But, mostly it is forgotten that he was the same young man dressed in an Marines? uniform who had sat and conversed softly with her at the marriage in the first scene.

Far more importantly, no one would hate him or feel for him. Although it is known that he himself who has consciously willed his destiny (or decadence) he successfully evades hatred and sympathy. That is the elegance of the whole mechanism. Within Michael, a man dies and other is born every time. With this being sustained as a means of preserving himself , his worth as a value(self) ceases and a process begins[1].

If the first part was alienation and initiation of the process, second would be the inevitable direction it had to take. Of power, will and its callousness. He has now learnt very well that the greatest juncture of life is when we gain courage to rebaptise our badness as the best in us. There is no such thing as a moral phenomenon. There is only desire and will. And the rest lies in the great ocean of contempt to be concealed in the heart. In this duties that he has reached out for himself, we see that his fears are validated again - that even a slightest carelessness on his part would mean doom to his successful efforts so far. Similar to the making of Plato’s philosopher king, he battles against everything in the world. Against unidentified enemies, against the state, against his wife (who seems be growing distant), disloyal friends, family, and most notably against himself.

This is symbolised in what I regard as one of the greatest scenes ever captured for the motion picture[2]. I think it runs for about a full minute and a half or two at the beginning of the second DVD. Michael in the heart of the senate enquiry with a failed attempt on his life behind him returns in a car to his Brooklyn mansion. It is winter in New York and one can notice the sullen skies and the overnight snow trodden all around. His car is let in and a solemn looking Michael dressed in a dark suit, a long overcoat and a bowler hat carrying a briefcase gets down and walks slowly towards the door dragging himself in heavy steps. He pauses to look at a small toy car of his child. He comes into the house moving about the study and the dining room, glancing intently at the belongings before he rests his suitcase and takes off the hat. Finally he stands before one of the rooms and finds Kay absorbed in tailoring. The background music is aptly kept minimal. Not a single word is uttered.

It is the pain and the possibilities that adds depth to the character of this scene. Bound to his family, he realises the ultimate of all the truths that in spite of everything, he is alone and doomed to be prepossessed in fundamental doubts. The ones he cant share with others or make peace within himself. At this juncture, he supersedes his desires as responsibility/duty into an abstract attribute, beyond good and evil that takes control and care of him passively into the future. It all comes naturally now, with no emotion or thought underneath. There is no family now, it is him and a world that wants to be without him. And the consequences.

Not everyone, I just want to wipe off my enemies, that is all. Even if the enemy is supposedly his own brother he is pushed aside, mercilessly. A demonstration of exercise of will naked without any form of draped morality. Or even pretension of. He survives. His family survives. But in his efforts to survive he has created a world of its own new values, successful and productive to many lives but built on personal losses, including his own -- his children and family as his wife separates from him. Now,expectedly, The apollonian is slowly parted with to make way of growing Dionysian.

The criminally underrated third part is completion of the harmony[3] . With age and failing health Michael has grown soft. The powers are distributed and fragmented throughout in return for much sought legitamacy. He is shown to be socially humorous, something he wasn’t before( I was listening to Tony Bennett songs). It is all about reminiscing and a Dionysian accounting himself for the past within. He understands his acts- the inevitability and responsibility of it all. (remember the Pope’s words it is only just for him to suffer) But still he is neck deep in the consequences of his own making. He continues in another conflict to complete the promise he made to his father and also unable to restrain his own need for security and power. As he remorses (not repent) for his deeds, he tries to-- cut off his children from his business , mend his relationship with his wife and for the last time he takes one final half hearted plunge at more power -all small steps to pave way for his descent as he himself understands very well.(The more I want to get out, the more they pull me in) And consequently, he ends up paying a heavy ransom for his life, the one he never owned in a full sense anytime. He fails to protect his daughter and his son does not share the lineage of his dreams.

Understandably, for Michael life has come full circle. It is here one might start identifying with his futility and take him for a version of a tragic hero.I think casting him into the mould of tragic hero would be imposing a self presumptous role on his life, a life that has not been open to us in the first place.Although his life has been tragic in a sense there are huge issues that separates him from a conventional tragic hero.

One could easily as well imagine Michael to be taking his son to a baseball game on a Saturday noon or retiring as a senator too dignified to use a walking stick in public. But then, knowing Michael, he would have known well at the bottom that he had more to offer and effect world better. And still, the irony of it all is that if given the choice he still would have been compelled himself to choose the life he did.

Again and again. Eternally. because that is what makes his pain, glory, legacy, himself.

The concluding shot is a deserving tribute-a frail, dust-beaten image of the old Michael Corleone stooped in a chair, open to the sun, slowly falls unto the earth lifeless; him a moral idealist, son, brother, lover, father, and above all Don corleone, breathes his last - lonely and alone, resigned and trodden like a common man. He has lost his father, brothers, wives, friends, mother , daughter and the grand empire he constructed, in fact everything that he ever valued. He has no more to offer, accept, refuse or bargain. His entire life has amounted to neither individual glory nor personal love that could be cherished. He is not a successful hero , not even a failed martyr. Yet he has changed the world around him irrevocably as such and given every possible chance he would continue to do the same. And In that-- he has transcended himself, history, and humanity thus transforming himself into an idea, into an abstraction , into Ubermensch.

At the end, despite everything , what he represents beside a caution is hope and power of will and a constant attempt to be better eternally against everything, however futile that such a venture is in itself, that being the nature and the inclination of us all as humans , in different shades of desires and varying resources at disposal he becomes the essence and embodiment of humanity.

That is the tragedy and the beauty of it all.

Where you see ideal things, I see what is --

human, alas, all-too-human. I know man better.

~Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo

[1] It is this process that Coppola has beautifully captured on the film. Notice the lack of subtitles in the restaurant shooting scene for Italian but when Michael is in Italy subtitles are used while he speaks to Apollonia’s father . It is this smooth flow in transformation in values that Nietzsche alluded to so abstractly.

[2]That scene is unbearably haunting. The first time I watched it I was too occupied with the story and missed it under my nose, but the second time around I was almost choked. Every drop of ink spilled from Freud , Mann, Sartre, to Camus, et al has been so gracefully captured in one cinematic moment. Beside its conceptual bearings it not only shows how coppola has understood the character of Michael but also is a stamp on Al Pacino’s talent. In my view only two actors could have pulled it off as convincingly Al Pacino did- Herr Humphrey Bogart and that cute Cossack named Sean Penn. The latter perhaps would have needed a tighter director. The scene also is an excellent reference for film techniques, for e.g. lighting and sound , music. Et al. Pure mad genius.

Trivia -Coppola suffers from Bipolar affective disorder which my friend considers as a role of living a playful god and pained human in one life.

[3] Although not widely agreed, I’ve never felt the series would have been complete without part 3. The scenes in the third part are in a unique way mirrored with the first-The function, hospital scene, the conversations(with Kay, Mancini, his son Anthony with his own in part1 ) the assassinations. Etc.

PS- Having not said all and with the length of the post, I am not quite happy but the Glasgow London train doesn’t run indefinitely.

#random #personal #philosophy #books #literature #cinema #cinematography #michael corleone #al pacino #the godfather #francis ford coppola #mario puzo #nietzsche #anti hero

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noa-ciharu · 2 years

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Was it possible for Subaru to win the bet?

So, about the TB bet, I was wondering if it was possible for Subaru to "win" at all, given that he knew nothing about it. We can look at it from two perspectives: narrative and psychological(Seishirou's POV).

Boy here we go again with those two, I had to reread vol7 for this :<

Since it's a long post I'll keep the analysis under cut.

Narrative perspective:

At its core, Tokyo Babylon is about isolation, loneliness and tragedy. It's a deconstruction of countless coming of age stories where character enters the world caring, motivated and wishing to help those around him, but in Subaru's case, world (Tokyo) is unbothered by his efforts (Why are you crying, things like this happen in Tokyo everyday). He falls in love with the city, and Seishirou, but both of them are unable to love him in return. He can't stop crimes from happening, discriminations, social injustices, suicides and all the suffering ghosts and people he meets have gone through. He can't change the corruption and disconnection, as roots run deep, and in the same manner he can't change Seishirou, who in some way represents the metaphor for whole "beautiful larger than life Tokyo which you came to love but ends up destroying you". I think what he says here sums up the thematic really well:

Subaru's tragedy is inseparable from all the tragedies we see prior in manga. It's the whole "Do you know how cherry blossom became pink? They drank the blood": being tainted by the harsh reality around you as none is moved by your efforts. It's the wolves and sheep, you can't invite both, you'll end up only with wolves. Tbh alot can be said here but my primary aim is next section.

Emotional / psychological perspective:

So was it possible for Seishirou to feel something for Subaru within that year, and be not only conscious of it but accept it as well? Let's break down the levels of connection/ attachment:

Seishirou sees Subaru as different from others?

This one was set in stone the moment bet was made, as we don't see Seishirou willing to form a bond with anyone else in TB/X. By choosing not to kill Subaru when, by all means he should have, he separated him from the "rest". But why?

I think that moment came out of two things: first, Seishirou's observation that he's "unable" to feel love for others and connection. If he's unable to feel it in a "normal way" or literally(pathological issues?) or subconsciously represses himself to even try in order to protect himself, it's debatable. But that doesn't mean he doesn't, in rather conflicting way, unconsciously crave connection with someone who'll accept him as he is. That brings me to the second point: if someone as pure, unjudging and kind as Subaru can't accept and love him then who would? That's why he chooses Subaru exactly. Of course, I don't think he's aware of any of said conflicts (if he is at some point, it is after Subaru's blinded in X).

If we go by this definition of bet then Seishirou lost it the moment he made the bet.

Forms the connection/bond with Subaru (and is unconsciously of it):

Okay, I think this is the level it came to in TB since they did have some sort of connection, which was perceived as "fake" from Seishirou's side. I do think he developed some sort of casual platonic connection with Hokuto as well, at least from her POV. However Seishirou didn't bat an eye when killing her but when he was about to kill Subaru he dragged it on and on and even when interrupted could still kill him but chose not to. Why so, if Subaru was like the rest to him he should have killed him as swiftly as he did his sister. I'll come back to that one.

It can be said that they formed an intellectual connection (from Subaru's perspective it is emotional as well) because whenever Seishirou is speaking in detached, nihilistic way (with intellectualization and rationalization) it is him talking, not persona. Also it is only type of intimacy he can be comfortable with (beside maybe sexual, given how he behaves sometimes) as he perceives it as "safe": not involving any emotions and attachments. About emotions (not slight ones like "ah car splashed me" irritation), they are signals that something important is happening to us, so it makes sense he doesn't feel them as he doesn't see anything as "important". It's both interesting and absurd that Seishirou said this:

Is he lonely then? It's debatable because he might be on subconscious level be, but then again how can he be sure? It won't be a lie to say "no, I'm not lonely". Following similar pattern it's also not a lie "I don't feel anything for you". Here, it's Seishirou telling something that "stands as true for others" but he does not apply to himself (it's like x!Subaru encouraging Kamui to take care of himself and then self destructing himself).

So, I don't think he perceives having emotions as something "safe" for himself. It's sort of a dilemma: wish for connection but in fear of it: where fear comes from potential strong emotions (both positive and negative ones) as he might become "enslaved by them" and lose sense of self. It's danger in both bold and italic. Now, there's a lot to unpack here, but it is an extreme form of self preservation which starts early in life (mainly due to child not feeling understood or neglected in emotional way). What's more, when one doesn't experience emotions in a long time they lose the ability to not only recognize them but also difference them. That is something seen in alexithymia, which is more common in males. But when person finally feels something, anything strong enough so defense mechanisms can't numb it out or hold back, it's terrifying because they're overwhelmed and confused as they have no idea what's happening to them (Metaphor nails on chalkboard is fitting well). If it sounds complicated, think in these terms: imagine you open the fridge and put everything you see in soup, then taste it, can you list every ingredient you've tasted? Would it taste foul? Not a pleasant experience.

So in that way he's disconnected from emotions and only way he understands them is by observation (as I said before, emotions are meant to be felt, not "thought"; introspection is one thing but intellectualization another), so he can mimic them. Empathy and remorse go out of the window as well. Also if you think about it, his emotional disconnection and lack of empathy and remorse is quite suitable for a government assassin, actually it is needed in order for him to be efficient at it. Some degree of said dissociation is seen in doctors, firefighters etc. in order to stay focused under pressure. Obviously the whole dilemma is not something that can be "fixed" so easily, if at all. It takes months even years to be aware of such things, yet alone do something about them.

In this chapter for instance, thematic of "wanting to be special" is bought up and while Subaru is special by design (powers and personality) I do think Seishirou as well sees himself different from others. There's also an idea of "would you wish to be normal, live normally if you could" and i can't help but wonder if/how much it applies to them as well.

Of course, all of that above is below and below level of consciousness. That is all beyond regular defense mechanisms (such as dissociation, rationalization and intellectualization) as it became a pathological behavior pattern. But it serves its role as a protection barrier for a very good reason, to prevent ego from being wounded and destroying itself in proces. Nevertheless, that is a possible explanation, not justification because Seishirou is solely responsible for his own actions and well, bastard moves and decisions. What I'm aiming for here is that it is possible for him to form connection with another human being, but extremely difficult to the point where it's more theory than practice. That person would have to "not raise alarm and signal danger" in any way and for that connection to not be so perceivable from Seishirou's POV. And I think Subaru managed to do that to some degree since he's reserved, not demanding and unpushy in any way, as well as many more things.

What would it take for Seishirou to become aware of the connection?

Now this is a tricky part, because I think several things would be needed for this to happen which could be summed up by: Seishirou's self protection mechanisms conclude it's "safe" for him to be aware there's attraction towards Subaru or he becomes aware by extreme situation(which I think happened in X vol12). First one won't be happening because of sole reason: Subaru never showed that he loves him, and even if he did it'd be vet persona, not him (which is totally understandable because not only is he young, but has no prior experience with love).

Not only does Subaru realise his feelings too late, but is excruciatingly repressed and anxious that even if he expressed his affection, it won't be in a way Seishirou perceives as "genuine". Plus in TB (and later X) Seishirou never concluded Subaru sees him as special, even when Hokuto told him so he dismisses it by "everyone's special to him". To the readers it's obvious, but to him not so much, for few reasons. Subaru does, in a way, treat everyone with kindness and forms some sort of "temporarily bonds" with strangers (for an instance grandpa in a park). Responds to physical contact very briefly and doesn't take confessions seriously (self conscious/ sensed it's fake). So it's not a way of loving Seishirou understands. Also he, in his mind, can't form a concept that his real self is lovable in any way, so even if Subaru confessed it'd be a confirmation for Seishirou that he's lovable only if he plays pretend.

So there'll be a question in his head "ah he saw a persona, not real me", while line does blur sometimes within bet year. It could be said he plays with fire sometimes when it comes to whole Sakurazukamori thing because he's barely hiding it at all (killing a woman in front of Subaru, explaining sakanagi and other magical things, and saying bunch of bs to be blunt; almost like subconsciously wanting to be found out). Here's also this:

But it is true, Subaru would be horrified as he would come to a serious conflict of beliefs and values: the person he came to love halfly never existed at all and is, in fact, a "monster" devoid of emotions. Subaru would not come out of that conflict without losing himself in process, if he would arrive to any resolution at all. So no, not even is it "unsafe" for Seishirou to be aware of attachment in a sense for his inner values and defences, but also in reality since there's a very good chance Subaru won't desire him back if he knew the truth. And even if he did there would still be negative emotions attached to it, something Seishirou has no business experiencing. So power won't be in his hands anymore, at least not interely. It's interesting to note that in hospital scene in vol6 he asks Subaru would he "do anything he asks for?", and while yes, it is a joke (possible sexual innuendo by how panels were presented) but it's also a way of knowing if he has total power over Subaru, even if it's due to his empathy and compassion. Kinda seems like he wanted to check on that one, I've talked about that scene before so let's move on.

So power would be out if his hands, which is unacceptable. There's also whole self-fulfilling prophecy that he'll be killed by the one he loves, said by no other than his mother who claimed to experienced the same thing he did then. It's interesting that Seishirou doesn't protest about being killed but about loving someone. Tbh I don't think it's a rule for Sakurazukamori to be killed by loved ones or something similar but more like this: you're so devoid of emotions and love that once someone passes all those emotional barriers the intensity of mixed emotions and not being the only one in power of yourself, it would kill you. In a way that person would kill you, loving them would. On a bonus note, when Hokuto told him with her dying breath that she believes he's capable of love, he seems slightly shocked. It could be attributed to "she still sees good in me" but I think it's something more personal as he never really cared for other's opinions much.

Care/love/conflicting emotions kick in:

In TB, I can see this happening only in one way: instead of Seishirou losing his eye Subaru gets stabbed. (The second option I mentioned in paragraph above)

So he becomes aware that something floats below the surface, something outside his power and will. Which is unacceptable for him as a person. Here, let's note this: Seishirou sees "love" in a way it's shown in pop culture, in amatonormative way, but doesn't experience it in that way (nor does Subaru; also it's no wonder Seishirou can't realize some things about himself): always present, overwhelming, unwavering romantic feelings and constant pursuit regardless of love not being returned. It's fitting tbh, because his only reference is the world outside of himself, since he's never experienced it before. And even if he did not in such way. I don't know what he really expected when making the bet, for "kindness and purity to work its magic" and transform him into whole new person? Probably not (since it's impossible) but more likely to have some fun and prove to himself once and for all that he's superior to others(can't be hurt in not only physical but also emotional manner since he can't form conections/experience feelings; once again love = danger).

So I think Seishirou would be disturbed at best, angered at worst. Subaru would be at receiving end once again. But Seishirou won't accept the lost most likely due to reasons stated above, and his own pride and ego, so I can see two possibilities here: Bet end repeats but "you're worthless to me but I'm a man of word and I failed to protect you so for that sole reason I won't kill you, but if I see you again I will". Or he sees the need to get rid of a problem and kills Subaru, because now he sees a real need to do so, sees him as a threat (x!Subaru wished for it but in a physical terms not emotional). You matter to me now unfortunately, so you're in power over some of my emotional responses, over myself, so I'd rather take control back and end it all, kill you.

So here, Seishirou is puzzled why Subaru won't fight back (he really doesn't understand huh) but I have a feeling if Subaru did he'd be killed on spot. I think Subaru would end up being killed if not for his grandmother's interruption but what I also think stands as true is that, beside Seishirou taking pleasure in prolonging things and destroying Subaru on psychological level, also on a deep deep subconscious level is delaying things. You get the implication.

Is it even possible for Seishirou to accept and be okay about losing bet/loving/caring about Subaru?

Tough question, within bet year I'd say no, but if it was prolonged then it's a possibility. Cognitive changes can't and don't come overnight and alot would have to change within his psyche, ego and general view on world for that to happen. For a man who saw emotions as weakness his whole life it be... well, alot. But change can't come if one doesn't wishes for it and I don't see why he'd do so, when he connects love with danger. There's also this:

This is a future Subaru sees for them. Seishirou, he can't, won't have this, as this isn't himself. He's the farthest thing from a kind person, why would he accept something that's not only is not on his terms but also causes him problems and displeasure. Nor he nor Subaru can have that reality, because it's an illusion. Seishirou can't accept and be okay with love/care/ attachment to Subaru before Subaru's receptive and okay with his true personality, which can't happen in TB because of Subaru's whole personality (as I said before), which is what attracted Seishirou in first place. Full circle of absurd and tragedy.

In conclusion:

Seishirou can't accept his attachment to Subaru on both subconscious and conscious level, not without destroying himself in process. Whether it's love or not it's debatable if even he can define it himself but something exists (at least in X). On similar note, Subaru ends up destroying himself in process, one of the reasons being his attachment to Seishirou.

So what's the most tragic is that no matter what universe, what circumstances, in spite of being two sides of a same coin, the worst obstacle to their own relationship would be themselves.

#simultaneously hell and pleasure to write #tokyo babylon #seisub #analysis #seishirou sakurazuka #subaru sumeragi #I'm curious what you guys think

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takerfoxx · 3 years

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So I was thinking about Wonder Egg Priority the other day while delivering pizzas when I had something of an epiphany.

WEP is, in many way, sort of the anti-Madoka Magica.

Now, by that I don’t mean it’s intended as an answer, attack, response, or counter to PMMM. It’s obviously a show doing its own thing, and being compared to PMMM probably wasn’t on the creator’s mind. Also, I don’t mean it’s a reconstruction intended to rebuild the genre that PMMM broke apart, much like Gurren Laagan did to the Giant Mecha genre after Evangelion happened. Rather, it feels like, whether intentional or not, to be Madoka Magica in reverse.

Let me explain.

I’ve already gone into detail how PMMM became the hand grenade to the Magical Girl Warrior genre that it was, how carefully it was crafted to utterly deconstruct the genre and did it so well that it was completely changed. Just look at all those dark magical girl shows, comics, and whatnot that sprung up in its wake, all trying to recapture that same magic, and practically all failing. And while it wasn’t the death of cute and optimistic magical girl shows, the genre as a whole was definitely altered by PMMM, taking themes and ideas originally brought up by Utena and Bokurano and building upon them to create a surgical knife that dissected the whole genre and changed it forever.

And one of the methods it used was to show that each and every one of the main character was left in a much worse state than she was in thanks to the contracts.

Think about it. Each of the five girls was basically ruined by becoming a magical girl. Sayaka fell into despair and was destroyed. Madoka straight up died in the original timeline and ended up erasing herself. Mami spiraled into loneliness and depression until she was killed. Kyoko lost her whole family because of her contract, became a heartless nihilist, and when she tried to redeem herself, she realized the futility of it and decided to go down in a blaze of glory. Homura was cursed to relive the same trauma over and over again and eventually lost the person she was fighting for. Even the ones already in a bad place ended up worse off because of it. Hell, Mami only managed to delay her own death by a couple years, and in the end, her end was even more gruesome.

And that was the point. The wish/contract system is intended to chew these girls up as fodder and just move onto the next one. Just by making a wish you’ve doomed yourself, and there is no escaping your fate. At best you can delay it, and so few can. The best Madoka could do with her universe altering wish was make the girls’ ends a little less cruel. And the movie broke them down even more.

But WEP seems to take the opposite route. Here, when each of our mains are introduced, they’re already at their worse, all four of them traumatized by losing someone close to them while dealing with a multitude of other issues. Ai was bullied heavily due to her appearance, found one friend that could understand, let that friend down, and was deeply wounded when that friend killed herself, leading to Ai becoming a hikikomori. Rika grew up with an absent father and a neglectful mother, got pushed into the toxic idol world way too young, drove off the one person that cared about her and eventually caused her death, leading to her to develop her weirdly cheerful/abrasive personality and self harm as a means of coping with the guilt. Momoe was devastated when her rejection of her friend’s advances led to her friend’s suicide (as far as she knows, anyway), leading to her having a major complex about her appearance and gender identity as a result. And Neiru...well, her situation is really weird and kinda sci-fi, but being a genius test tube baby who was nearly murdered by her sister and left with horrific scars can’t be fun.

Point is, each of these girls is already broken inside when they’re introduced, and the whole wonder egg thing means they spend their nights fighting violent battles against horrific monsters and suffering a lot of pain and even more trauma, and unlike PMMM, this isn’t shown as being fun or cool at all. There is no false sense of security. You’re shown what a brutal affair it is up front, and the show seems to go out of its way to throw a whole bunch of serious and uncomfortable topics right into the spotlight, from bullying to suicide to sexual abuse to self harm to eating disorders to parental neglect, and the list goes on. It’s a very hard show to watch sometimes because of it.

And yet, unlike the PMMM girls, who only grew worse the longer they were in the system, the WEP girls only seem to be getting more emotionally and mentally healthy from the battles they fight. Protecting the Wonder Eggs, as violent as it might get, seems to be acting as a form of therapy for them, a way for them to confront their pent-up emotions and let them out. And the friendship they’ve built together, while sometimes messy and contentious, is shown to be incredibly healthy for them. They’re basically each other’s support group, and their get-togethers often become group therapy sessions as they confide their true feelings about their lives with each other and discuss their issues out in the open. And as a result, we see the bond that they’ve formed help them heal. Ai becomes more confident, more outgoing, and more brave, to the point that she’s not afraid to go to school anymore. Rika comes to terms with her own guilt and feelings of neglect and realizes that she doesn’t have to risk her life if she doesn’t want to, and even starts to forgive her mother. Momoe starts to come to terms with her feelings of discomfort around her femininity. Even Neiru has started to learn to open up to others and act like a kid for once. All four of them are better off for having met the others, and for fighting to restore their lost ones.

Now granted, the show’s not over yet, and I’m sure there’s a twist on the way, especially with what we’re learning about the Accas and Neiru’s secretary. But even so, the inverse mirror images the two shows seem to make of each other was very interesting to me.

#wonder egg priority #puella magi madoka magica #ai ohto #rika kawai #momoe sawaki #neiru aonuma

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wearepaladin · 3 years

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Personally, I'm most interested in your "Paladin: The Redemption" story :). Is the Static and Silence a cancerous evil force itself or is it a material used by those who would do evil?

According to Paladin Lore, there is serious debate on the nature of either force, or indeed if they are one and the same. Static, after all, is a relatively modern term, and the Silence is a more universal concept not reliant upon modern technology to make sense of. The older notion, the Silence, tends to project an ideology that resembles nihilism in the cosmic sense, but active in its intent to render the universe into a place with no meaning rather than simply envisioning it as such. The forces empowered by and echoing the Silence are thus usually destructive to bring about the ideal nothingness, but a spiritual infection that brings about a void in others is a common tactic as well.

The Static on the other hand doesn’t remove meaning so much as deconstructs it into the most despairing or corrosive interpretation imaginable. If the Silence is a living Nihilistic force trying to remove meaning from life, the Static is a Cynical one that is not content to just believe in the worst of others, but bring them about, making a fire lightless and without gentle warmth, water freezing and poisonous to drink, air a corrosion to the lungs, etc.

The Paladins that face these powers find it in monsters and mankind both, often with these beings unaware of the powers that empower them, ranging from subtle Magics to dark incarnations of terrible power.

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elegantwoes · 4 years

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What are the parallels between Sansa and Disney Princesses?

That’s a good question, dear anon. Now we know that GRRM has said he was inspired by the stories of medieval France and Burgundy for Sansa, a story that in return inspired Walt Disney to create the Disney princess archetype. That is the first connection Sansa Stark has to Disney Princesses.

As to who she has parallels with? Well with many but the first one that comes to mind is obviously Princess Ariel from The Little Mermaid and the similarities are uncanny:

red hair and blue eyes

half fish

wants to leave her home

defies her father

Another princess that Sansa has similarities with is Princess Belle from Beauty and the Beast:

bookworm

romantic

beautiful*

wants more in life than staying at home

*Sansa is the character who is called beautiful the most in ASOIAF.

Also, Sansa’s romantic storyline is deeply connected with the tale as old as time. Throughout her arc, Sansa meets many beast-like figures who have some similarities with the Beast: Joffrey, Sandor Clegane, and Tyrion Lannister. However, at the end of the day, these characters are not the beast to Sansa’s beauty. Who Sansa’s true beast is, is yet to be revealed.

There are other princesses that Sansa has strong similarities with. I am talking about the three classical princesses: Snow White, Cinderella, and Aurora. Sansa has the natural charm and innocence of Snow White, the compassion and resourcefulness of Cinderella, and the elegant and graceful bearing of Aurora.

However there’s another aspect that Sansa shares with these three princesses, especially Cinderella and Snow White, and it’s their ability to hope that things will get better for them and that they will one day experience love. This is something Sansa does from her first chapter in AGOT to her TWOW sample chapter. She never loses the hope that life will get better for her and that she will one day experience love:

This time her eyes met Harry's. She smiled just for him, and said a silent prayer to the Maiden. Please, he doesn't need to love me, just make him like me, just a little, that would be enough for now. (TWOW, Alayne I).

That will be enough for now

THAT WILL BE ENOUGH FOR NOW.

Even though Sansa knows this is a political match and that Harry doesn’t like her in that way a part of her still hopes their political marriage can grow into something more.

Despite everything Sansa has endured, the sexual trauma, death of her family members, never knowing whether she will go home, she still never loses hope that life will get better for her and that she will experience true love. The fact that Sansa hasn’t lost this hope and dream of hers well into the second last book in this series proves to me she will never lose that hope.

Honestly why do people even want her to lose this hope? This is what makes Sansa a hero in her own right. GRRM wants us to admire and root for Sansa because she never stops hoping. Just like he admired Snow White, Cinderella and Aurora, as a child. After all these are the Disney heroines he grew up with. No doubt he has an emotional attachment to these three princesses. The fact he designed Sansa Stark so similar them says a lot. It shows that no matter how much antis want to deny it, Sansa Stark is a heroine in the eyes of GRRM.

The only difference is that, unlike the classical Disney princesses, Sansa’s dreams, hopes, morals and beliefs are genuinely put into question by characters like Joffrey, Cersei, and Sandor. There are times where it seems Sansa loses her hope but in the end she never does. The trauma that Sansa endures is raw, messy, and frankly, very depressing, rather than designed in the careful and clean way that Disney does (and in Disney’s defense, their primary audience is children, so of course they will never delve into the heavy topics GRRM does with ASOIAF).

However challenging her world view is not the only way GRRM is deconstructing the Disney princess archetype with Sansa. He is also showing the one inevitable journey of the Disney princesses we never see: becoming a queen. In her AFFC arc Sansa takes on the role of Lady of the Eyrie. Anyone who understands how medieval society works knows that running a large castle is not that different from running a country. Sansa’s journey to become queen does not stop here. Once she reaches the North Sansa will no doubt take on the role Lady of Winterfell and there she will:

earn the love of Northerners (both noble and small folk alike)

hone her skills in soft power

learn how hard power and governing works

Once the wall falls and the white walkers come marching down Winterfell will most likely bear most of the onslaught and Sansa will put every skill she has learned so far into good use. Her role in the battle for Dawn will be a vital one. As lady of Winterfell she will be linchpin that holds the war for humanity together.

Learning how to rule and reclaiming her identity as a Stark are key aspects of Sansa’s narrative arc. In light of that I fully expect her to become either Lady of Winterfell or Queen in the North.

For all the deconstructing and bringing this down to realism that GRRM is doing I fully expect him to reconstruct Sansa’s storyline. After all GRRM is no nihilist and his last book is called a Dream of Spring. Since Sansa is so similar to a Disney princess, especially the classic trio, then her dream of spring will be an end to her suffering and finding true love.

All in all, Sansa isn’t just a Disney Princess. She is the ultimate Disney Princess.

#Answered #Anonymous #ASOIAF #Sansa Stark #GRRM

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ogradyfilm · 2 years

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Recently Viewed: Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

Two swordsmen stare each other down. Wind howls through the empty street. Sweat trickles. Eyes narrow. Limbs tense. Suddenly, steel flashes, and the opponents charge and clash! A suspenseful moment of uncertainty passes. Then, finally, one combatant collapses. The survivor sheathes his blade.

It's a stock scene, instantly familiar to fans of such essential jidaigeki classics as Sanjuro, Harakiri, and Three Outlaw Samurai—but Nikkatsu's Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo fundamentally alters its emotional impact with the addition of a simple punchline:

“Why’s that guy groaning so much?” the victorious duelist's young companion innocently inquires as he emerges from his hiding spot, spared from having to witness the violent encounter.

The ronin merely shrugs, smirks, and replies, “He gambled and lost.”

Although the chanbara genre wouldn’t attain widespread popularity until the 1960s, its basic visual language had already been thoroughly established before the end of the silent era. Still, it’s a bit surprising to learn that the various tropes, clichés, and storytelling conventions of samurai movies were being subverted, deconstructed, and outright parodied as early as 1935. Adopting a tone that more closely resembles the contemporary comedies produced by Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Brothers than it does the cynical source material (much to the original author’s chagrin), director Sadao Yamanaka reimagines Tange Sazen's eponymous one-armed, one-eyed antihero as a lazy, grumpy teddy bear—an uncouth layabout that pretends to be a taciturn nihilist… but in reality can’t stomach the thought of an unhappy child.

The entire film revolves around such humorous juxtapositions. One minor (albeit narratively significant) supporting character, for example, is a penniless junk peddler that masquerades as a wealthy merchant in order to impress the bewitching proprietress of the local archery parlor. The deuteragonist, meanwhile, is the disgruntled second son of the Yagyu clan, who tirelessly searches for the titular teapot—or, more specifically, for the map secretly hidden therein, which leads to a vast buried treasure. That’s what he tells his nagging wife, anyway; in actuality, he quickly discovers that he enjoys aimlessly wandering the city’s bustling red light district, flirting with pretty geisha, and shirking his responsibilities as a fencing instructor. Consequently, he makes every effort to prolong his quest. “After all, Edo is a huge place,” he repeatedly insists. “[Finding the pot] could take ten or twenty years, like vengeance!”

By playing the pulpy premise for laughs instead of melodrama and adding humanity and dimension to traditionally flat archetypes, Yamanaka crafts a work of pop art that feels wholly unique in an otherwise formulaic cinematic landscape. Elevated by razor-sharp editing (including several expertly implemented Gilligan Cuts—seeing our gruff protagonist reluctantly doing exactly what he literally just refused to do is consistently hilarious) and excellent music, Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo is a genuine postmodern masterpiece—even in its current incomplete form.

(Seriously, missing footage has rendered the climactic battle borderline incomprehensible. The fact that the rest of the plot is sturdy enough to compensate for such a glaring omission is nothing short of miraculous.)

#Tange Sazen and the Pot Worth a Million Ryo #Tange Sazen #Sadao Yamanaka #Nikkatsu #Japan Society #Japanese cinema #Japanese film #chanbara #chambara #jidaigeki #jidai-geki #samurai #film #writing #movie review

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grandhotelabyss · 3 years

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This is the public-facing rhetorical move par excellence of the radical academic theorist: revel in your radicalism in the seminar room and peer-reviewed journals, but describe your program in the most bland, banal, who-could-possibly-object way for general audiences. Did you know that Marxism is “a refusal to take things for granted”? Why not “follow your dreams” while we’re at it? Never mind the part where “[w]e shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you,” to quote a poem of Brecht’s. You see this today, too, with the left-identitarians, thinkers who have a nihilistically extensive critique of liberal society—who posit in fact the urgent need to destroy this society—and then, when queried by the public or its representatives, will reply that it’s just about treating people fairly, dude.

But to give the formulation its due, if you truly take nothing for granted, if you never silence the critical intellect, you will in your own mind delegitimize your state and every state, the lives of your neighbors and then your very own life, and you will shoot yourself in the head, as in the aforementioned fictional case of Leo Naphta and the nonfictional one of Mitchell Heisman, possibly after you’ve shot some others à la Brecht or Naptha’s model Lukács, because the critical intellect left to its own devices will annul first the world and then itself. Which is why the profoundest thinkers, i.e., novelists and poets and playwrights, have always suggested a plunge into contact with reality to arrest deconstructive thought processes, from Hamlet to Herzog. Make art, make crafts, have sex, have a child, take a walk, take a drink, dig a garden, plant a tree, get revenge, get a cat—anything at all to remind you that the critical intellect allows itself to be annihilatingly disappointed at the world’s corruption only because it has lost touch with it, literally, and that criticism’s proper service to humanity is as guide and guardrail to action, not as universal solvent.

(Note the details of Hamlet’s example: he only had to kill one person, but deconstructive thought processes made him responsible in whole or part for at least four other deaths and made him suicidal as well; only when he resolved to “let be” could he strike his sole legitimate target, but by then the collateral damage was so great that he forfeited his own life and his country was conquered. A parable for the would-be revolutionary.)

Deconstruction at its best reminded us of these truths, as implied by the quotation from Montaigne that introduces Derrida’s epochal essay on “Structure, Sign, and Play,” but because it was premised on the very purity it set out to debunk—the centered structure organized by neat binary oppositions—it became a very purist argument for impurity. There’s always another binary to undermine over the horizon, always something else and more you could be doing to decenter; so deconstruction finally lent itself to the deranged purity spirals that have marred intellectual life recently. What deconstruction says about strong texts’ essential non-essentialism is basically right, but strong texts achieve this irreducible complexity on tides of emotion that criticism of all sorts has always been bad at capturing, making them elements of reality as well as interpretations of it.

I append all of the above to Leo Robson’s excellent essay-obituary for J. Hillis Miller, from which I draw the opening quotation. This witty catalogue is my favorite paragraph in the piece:

You might say that the effect of deconstruction, in its literary-critical mode, was to augment a presiding canon of largely B-writers (Baudelaire, Benjamin, Borges, Blanchot, etc) with a group of H-figures (Hölderlin, Hegel, Heidegger, Hopkins, to some degree Hawthorne and Hardy), and to replace a set of keywords beginning ‘s’ – structure, sign, signifier, signified, semiotics, the Symbolic, syntagm, Saussure – with a vocabulary based around the letter ‘d’: decentring, displacement, dislocation, discontinuity, dedoublement, dissemination, difference and deferral (Derrida’s coinage ‘différance’ being intended to encompass both). And there was also a growing role for ‘r’: Rousseau, rhetoric, Romanticism (one of de Man’s books was The Rhetoric of Romanticism), Rilke, and above all reading, a word that appeared, as noun and participle, in titles of books by de Man, Hartman, and most prominently Miller: The Ethics of Reading, Reading Narrative, Reading for Our Time, Reading Conrad.

Also this fun fact: “as late as 2012, [Miller] had never read anything by Samuel Richardson.” I am always fascinated by the gaps in brilliant scholars’ reading, and the more time I spent in academe the more I noticed how large the gaps really were. A generalist-dilettante, I try to read a little bit of everything and am consequently bad at being a completist of any one subject or author that a scholar necessarily is. I’ve read Pamela but not Clarissa; for that matter, I’ve read around in Derrida and De Man but, except for his rather psychedelic 2002 primer On Literature, not so much in the late and lamented J. Hillis Miller.

Further reading: my short story, “White Girl,” a dramatization of deconstructive thought processes in action, partially inspired by what I was seeing right here on Tumblr a little less than a decade ago.

#j. hillis miller #literary theory #literary criticism #literature #leo robson #deconstruction #marxism

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coolmaycroft · 3 years

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My contrubution to the Madoka Magica discourse

I don't know wether to love or hate Madoka for what it did to the Magical girl genre. On the one hand, I loved the anime and how it deconstructed the genre. After it aired I did watch a few similar animes like Yuki Yuna and Marical Girl Raising Project. But damn, it seems like the majority of all the MG anime that came out after madoka was trying to deconstruct the genre again aind I feel like nobody did it as well as Madoka; the only MG anime I can recall being traditional after Madoka is Whish Upon Pleiades

Imma sound like an old boomer but: remeber how Sakura Cardcaptor balanced grit and high stakes with fluff and optimism? Like burh, I like my existential despair too but I feel like writers of the genre forgot that MG can be compelling by balancing an optimistic outlook on life and mid-to-low stakes without the need to make everything into a nihilistic exploration of human nature that puts our characters thorugh an existential crisis.

Note that I'm not counting animes like Wonder Egg and Flip Flappers as Magical Girl anime since they really don't fullfill all the expected tropes of the genre. I'd call them more like post or neo magical girl anime

#madoka magica #madoka magica rebellion #magical girl #magical girl anime #wonder egg priority

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dearmbti · 4 years

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Hi there, love the insight your blog brings. I have multiple questions, feel free to answer any combo of them, or any individual one... whatever you have time for. - Perspective on an INFP/INTP relationship - Perspective on an ENTP/INTP friendship - What a thriving vs non thriving INTP looks like Thanks!

Hi there, I am glad you say so, so thank you! :)

INFP x INTP relationship: a great relationship to feel relatively well understood by each other in terms of sharing preference for introspection, individualism, and taking life as it comes, all while complimenting each other in judging preferences. For example, INFP might help INTP with understanding emotional motivations, and INTP can help an INFP with seeing the world from a more universal and factual standpoint. The struggle could be that both of you can slip into a rut with little desire or motivation to leave it. When you’ve got two introverts together, they might enable each other to avoid developing their extroverted functions.

ENTP x INTP friendship: I believe I’ve covered it on my blog, so you can search the tags. Great friendship dynamic, overall, as ENTP keeps feeding INTP ideas that INTP gladly deconstructs.

(In all honesty, I can’t give you very much on friendships and relationships because my focus is always on the individual.)

Thriving vs not thriving INTP (if you’re using this instead of “unhealthy”, bless you, haha)... Well, we might begin by looking at Ti.

Like other TPs, they can intellectualise to the point of struggling to grasp the meaning of emotional motivations people have; they can become nihilistic because they assume all answers can be found by objective logic alone, which excludes half of the reality (the feeling world), therefore producing a sense of emptiness; they may take an excessively critical and destructive attitude to things, which leads to self-imposed isolation and unhappiness, when instead they could use their skills and knowledge to contribute/build things (being constructive).

Good Ti understands the limits of where and how it should be used. After all, all of us use 4 functions, so why assume that one function should cover all the ground?

But for INTPs specifically, I can see them simply getting too comfortable with their own routine and then slipping into a rut by failing to exercise their auxiliary Ne, or simply using it to indulge in fruitless fantasy that only leaves them feeling more empty in the end.

Good Ne use is about bringing great ideas into fruition, but it can’t be done if an INTP is using Ti to logically explain why all action is useless, and then back it up with cherry picked Si experience. It’s just comfort seeking behaviour, which is essentially the same as resisting the development of auxiliary function.

As such, if an INTP wants to stop feeling like they are in a rut, they need to open up to the idea that the way they have built up the world to be (in their minds) might be incorrect... as clearly their emotional state indicates. In short, to thrive, an INTP should focus on personal progress instead of using all their mental energy to deconstruct things. It’s a matter of adding to the world vs subtracting from it. Only one of them leads to positivity in all senses of the word.

#healthy intp #unhealthy intp #intp #ti #ne aux #ti dom #mbti #ask #entp x intp #intp x entp #intp x infp #infp x intp #entp #infp #i am sorry about the wall of text #looping intp

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differentnutpeace · 3 years

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'Jupiter's Legacy' Decodes The Superhero Genre Without Subverting It

You'd be forgiven for wondering how Netflix's Jupiter's Legacy compares to other recent entries in the glut of "Wait, what if superheroes ... but, you know, realistic?" content currently หวย บอล เกมส์ คาสิโนออนไลน์

swamping streaming services. (To be fair, this "realistic superheroes" business is something we comics readers have been slogging through for decades; the rest of the culture's just catching up. Welcome, pull up a chair; here's a rag to wipe those supervillain entrails off the seatback before you sit down.)

So here's a cheat sheet. Netflix's Jupiter's Legacy is ...

Less cynical and empty than Amazon's The Boys

Less bright and blood-flecked than Amazon's Invincible

Less weird and imaginative than Netflix's The Umbrella Academy

Less funny and idiosyncratic than HBO Max's Doom Patrol

Less dark and dour than HBO Max's Titans

Less innovative and intriguing than Disney+'s WandaVision

Less dutiful and disappointing than Disney+'s The Falcon and the Winter Soldier

Less thoughtful and substantive than HBO's Watchmen

Less formulaic and procedural than the various CW super-shows (which I include here only out of a sense of completism, not because they're aiming for the same kind of performative faux-realism that drive most of these other series).

It's unfair to make these comparisons, sure. But it's also inevitable, given the crowded landscape of superheroes on TV right now. And in every one of those comparisons, Jupiter's Legacy doesn't necessarily come up short (it's far better than The Boys, especially), but it does come up derivative.

Makes sense: "Derivative" is a word that got slapped on the comics series it's based on, by writer Mark Millar and artist Frank Quitely, which kicked off in 2013. Millar and Quitely would likely prefer the term "homage," of course, and after all, the superhero genre is by nature nostalgic and (too-)deeply self-referential. So the fact that so many story elements, and more than a few images, of Jupiter's Legacy (comics and Netflix series both) echo those found in the 1996 DC Comics mini-series Kingdom Come is something more than coincidental and less than legally actionable.

Showrunner Steven S. DeKnight and his writers' room have carved out only a thin, much more grounded slice of the comic's sprawling multi-generational saga, but they've retained certain elements of family tragedy and Wagnerian recursiveness, wherein the sins of the father get passed to the son. They've also, smartly, retained the multiple-timeline structure of the comic as a whole, though they've pared it down and stretched it out over these eight episodes, clearly hoping for a multi-season pickup.

Readers of the comics will likely grow impatient at how little of the overall saga is dealt with here, but this review is aimed at those coming to the series fresh, who will find more than enough in this season to satisfy — it's a whole story that hints at what's to come without slighting what's happening now.

The now in question switches between two eras. In 1929, immediately before and after the stock market crash, brothers Walter (Ben Daniels) and Sheldon (Josh Duhamel) are the sons of a successful steel magnate. Walter's the diligent numbers guy, Sheldon's the glad-handing optimist. Sheldon's rich, smarmy friend George (Matt Lanter) is going full Gatsby, and muckraking reporter Grace (Leslie Bibb) runs afoul of Walter and Sheldon following a family tragedy.

Sheldon becomes beset by visions that will put him and several other characters on a path to their superhero origin story. Be warned: The series doles this bit out even more slowly than the comic — settle in for seven episodes' worth of Duhamel clutching his head and shouting while trippy images flash by, hinting at his ultimate destiny.

In the present day, Sheldon is the all-powerful hero The Utopian, who is married to Grace, now known as Lady Liberty. Walter is now the telepathic hero Brainwave, and George is ... nowhere to be seen.

The series has fun playing with the disconnect between the two timelines — characters from the 1930s story are either missing, or drastically transformed, in the present day, and while later episodes connect some of the dots, many of the most substantial changes are left to be depicted in future seasons.

The present-day timeline instead focuses on the generational rift between heroes of Sheldon and Grace's generation and those of their children. There's the brooding Brandon (Andrew Horton) who strives to live up to his father's impossible example, and the rebellious Chloe (Elena Kampouris), who rejects a life of noble self-sacrifice and neoprene bodysuits for a hedonistic modeling career.

At issue: Sheldon's refusal to acknowledge that the world has changed, and that the strict superhero code (no killing, no politics, etc.) that he lives by — and forces others to live by — may be obsolete, now that supervillains have escalated from bank robbery to mass slaughter. Younger heroes, including many of Brandon's friends, feel compelled to protect themselves and the world around them through the use of deadly force.

Clearly it's a fraught cultural moment to have fantasy characters who can fly and zap folk with eye-lasers deal with that particular all-too-real real-world issue; several scenes land far differently than they were originally intended.

But unlike other entries in the superhero genre, Jupiter's Legacy is prepared to deal overtly, even explicitly, with something that films like Man of Steel and shows like The Boys too simply and reflexively subvert: The superhero ideal itself.

The notion that an all-powerful being would act with restraint and choose only to lead by example is what separates superheroes from action heroes. Superheroes have codes; that's the contract, the inescapable genre convention, the self-applied restriction that tellers of superhero tales impose upon their characters; navigating those strictures forces storytellers to get creative. Or at least, it should. The minute you do what so many many "gritty, realistic" superhero shows and movies do — dispense with that moral code, or pervert it, or attempt to argue it out of existence by portraying a villain so heinous and a world so fallen that murder is the only option, you're not telling a superhero story anymore. You haven't interrogated or inverted or interpolated the genre, and you certainly haven't deconstructed it. You've abandoned it.

Say this much for Jupiter's Legacy — it's not content to wave the concept of a moral code away, or nihilistically reject it. It instead makes its central theme the need to inspect it, unpack it, and truly and honestly grapple with it.

Which is not to say it doesn't stack the deck by portraying a fallen modern world not worth saving — it does do that, usually through the lens of Sheldon's daughter Chloe, who throws herself into a world of drugs, alcohol, sex and general narcissistic monstrousness. The show attempts to explain her sullen self-destructiveness as a reaction to her father's unrealistic ideals, but in execution, her scenes prove cliche-ridden and bluntly repetitious. It's one of several examples where the show's choice to focus on and pad out one small part of the comic's overall tale results in leaden pacing.

But even though it takes seven full episodes for the characters in the 1930s timeline to get to the (almost literal) fireworks factory of their superhero origin, it's hard to argue that it isn't worth all that extra time, as Duhamel, Bibb, Lanter and especially Daniels have a great time with the period setting. (There are two other actors who get brought into the superhero fold in this timeline, but they 1. aren't allotted nearly enough screentime to really register and 2. represent spoilers.)

The period details of the 1930s timeline (Lanter was made to wear a waistcoat; Daniels' pencil-thin mustache should win its own Hairstyle and Makeup Emmy), and the brewing conflict between the younger selves of Sheldon and Walter can't help but make those scenes much more intriguing to watch than those set in the modern day.

The ultimate effect is a lot like watching the 2009 film Julie and Julia, in that sense. If you imagine that Julia Child could fly and shoot lasers out of her eye-holes.

And, really, who's to say she couldn't, after all?

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Psycho Analysis: Skull Face

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

The Metal Gear franchise is well known for its complex, deep philosophies, and the antagonist of Metal Gear Solid V is absolutely no exception to this. Skull Face, while definitely on the more shallow end of the villain pool in terms of the series, is still one of the most intriguing and even pivotal villains the series introduces. Why is that?

In short, he is responsible for much of the bleakness that plagues Solid Snake’s adventures. But you’re not here for the short version, you’re here for the long one. So how exactly does the mysterious Skull Face fit into the incredibly dense and convoluted mythology of Kojima’s masterpiece of a franchise?

Motivation/Goals: Skull Face has a pretty surface-level motivation at first glance: he wants revenge against both Zero and Big Boss, as Skull Face previously worked for the covert project XOF created by Zero that cleaned up messes left behind by Big Boss during Virtuous Mission and Operation Snake Eater, XOF being the shadow of the FOX program, so to speak. After FOX disbanded in the 70s, XOF became the strike force for Zero’s Cipher. Of course, during all this time, Skull Face became resentful of both Zero and Big Boss alike, weary of being left in the shadows cleaning up the messes of men who would gain more honor than he did. This is the guy who assassinated Stalin in the Metal Gear universe, so it is understandable he’d be a bit miffed.

Of course, as any Metal Gear villain is wont to do, he takes his anger too far, and decides to play Cipher and MSF against each other, and sets into motion the events of The Phantom Pain by kidnapping, torturing, and possibly even raping Paz before having those bombs implanted in her as well as kidnapping and torturing Chico (and perhaps even forcing him to rape Paz). He then destroys Mother Base, which leads into Big Boss going into a coma when his helicopter explodes due to Paz’s bomb.

His ultimate goal from all of this chaos is this: he’ll create nukes only he can stop from detonating and distribute them around the world along with the Metal Gears needed to fire them, upsetting the global power balance in the process while also keeping Skull Face in control. Then, he would unleash the English parasite that kills its host whenever they speak English; when the world is liberated from English, the new world language will be one of nukes and Metal Gears, and the world will be at peace through mass nuclear deterrence, a sentiment similar to that of Hot Coldman of Peace Walker. And if that doesn’t work? Just kill everyone. The plan is ludicrously complicated and seems like it could easily be thrown out of wack by even the slightest of variables, which makes Skull Face a perfect Metal Gear villain.

Really though, everything boils down to his desire for revenge against the sleights he feels Zero and Big Boss dealt against him, be they real or imagined, which fits very nicely into the game’s deconstruction of the idea of vengeance and how ultimately seeking revenge can utterly consume a person and cause far more harm than good. This makes Skull Face thematically gel with the story while also being someone to root against and to, in the end, help Kaz and Venom realize how utterly futile their thirst for vengeance against Skull Face was and how destroying him does not bring back the years of suffering they suffered or all that they lost.

There’s also an element of the fear of being forgotten to his motivations, erased from history by his enemies in an attempt to eradicate any and all legacy he may have; however, in this regard he is far more successful than in his main evil plain, as he managed to pass on his vengeful, nihilistic philosophies to his enemies. Even though his body is burnt away due to housing parasites and even though the Patriots eradicate his existence, and even though the true Big Boss never acknowledged Skull Face or his existence, Venom, Psycho Mantis, Skull Face, Diamond Dogs, and even Cipher are forever warped by his philosophies and in part plays in to how Outer Heaven was created. Even worse, he actually does get his revenge on Zero, causing him to fall into the state he is seen in right before his death at the end of Guns of the Patriots. As special tapes show, Zero truly was remorseful for how things between he and Big Boss had turned out and truly wanted to communicate and reconcile… but because of Skull Face’s desire for revenge, he ended up preventing such a reunion from ever occurring.

“Poor communication kills” is another strong theme in the game, and Skull Face weaponizes such a thing, inadvertently ensuring all the tragedies that would follow in the Metal Gear timeline, all because of his thirst for revenge against two men who never intentionally wished to screw him over… perhaps if he had communicated, things would have turned out a bit better for all parties. Instead, he turned one man into an immobile, barely functioning shell and warped another into someone just like him: a monster who lives only to lash out in anger and vengeance at those he has perceived as wronging him. Even though Skull Face died, he still ultimately was victorious in the sense that Big Boss and Zero were both twisted and destroyed by his actions.

Performance: James Horan does a wonderful job voicing Skull Face, making him sinister, creepy, and hammy whenever the scene calls for it. In fact, his scenery chewing skills are nearly unmatched; Skull Face goes whole hog when it comes to hamminess. He’s certainly not Armstrong levels, but Horan knows what kind of series he’s in and is definitely having a lot of fun.

Final Fate: When Mantis hijacks Sahelanthropus, Skull Face ends up caught in the crossfire and crushed, so Kaz and Venom come up and blast his limbs off as payback for the limbs they lost. But then they realize that killing him is a pointless, hollow victory that won’t bring back their dead comrades or give back all they took from him, so they toss him his gun as he begs them to kill him and tell him to do it himself as they walk away. A powerful moment in the series…

...That Huey immediately ruins by going over, killing him, and then shouting “REVENGE!” in the stupidest manner possible, despite the fact that any grivance Huey could possibly have against Skull Face is petty at best. For such an important villain in the grand scheme of the franchise, he deserved better than being shot by Huey of all people.

Best Scene: It’s pretty hard to pick, as almost any of his disturbing tapes from Ground Zeroes could qualify due to their fantastic voice acting and horrifying content that cements Skull Face as one of the franchise’s most twisted villains. But if we’re talking in-game onscreen appearances, the scene in “Hellbound” where Sahelanthropus is revealed in all its terrifying glory while he poses and gestures in its hand, hamming it up for Huey and Snake, is just a truly golden moment.

Best Quote: “Who is doing this? Such a lust for revenge… WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!??!!?”

Final Thoughts & Score: Skull Face is a really cool villain, even with that dopey face mask. It may be because he continues the proud tradition of ridiculous, over-the-top bad guys that the series is known for, but gives one suited to the Big Boss era of the franchise; Volgin and Hot Coldman are not nearly as hammy or enjoyable as Skull Face is. And much like any great Metal Gear villain, Skull Face has some awkward moments, such as that uncomfortably long car ride and the fact he’s wearing a mask that makes him look like an edgy reimagining of the Hamburglar, but frankly these things just endear him more to me. The whole fun of Metal Gear is that these games have so many poetic, beautiful, poignant, and philosophical scenes juxtaposed against over-the-top absurdity and ridiculous levels of narm; Skull Face fits right in.

Truly this man earns his 9/10. Ultimately I keep him from the perfect score due to being killed by Huey, which is insanely embarrassing for any villain, as well as the fact that he’s a little underutilized and never really beaten in a meaningful way because, again, Huey is incapable of not ruining something. But none of that changes how thematically strong the guy is. He’s a lot of fun, and while it’s a shame he’s killed only about halfway through the game, the shadow he and his actions cast on not only the entire game but the franchise as a whole more than make up for his shortcomings.

#Psycho Analysis #Skull Face #Metal Gear Solid V #The Phantom Pain

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