#also- the animation is referencing a scene from 'everything everywhere all at once' !!! (<- feeling a little insane ^_^)

[terracottakore]

in another life

[inspired from "wind back the clock" by @sarioh! i loved it so much that i felt like i just had to draw something for it TT (tysm for sharing your wonderful writing with us!!)]

+ still frames under the cut

#tw eyestrain #tw flashing #tw flashing lights #tw blood #not to be dramatic but i think that fic changed the trajectory of my life #also- the animation is referencing a scene from 'everything everywhere all at once' !!! (<- feeling a little insane ^_^) #bdoubleo100 #ethoslab #hermitcraft #life series #terracottaart

[themattress]

Ah, see, a chapter from this crappy book was put online.

Many comments down below argue against it, point out what’s wrong with it, and deconstruct its main thesis....but I feel I can do it better, so that’s what I’m going to use this post to do.

When I played Kingdom Hearts II for the first time, one moment stuck with me above all else.

Wow, OK, so this one moment (the Sora/Riku yaoi bait moment) stood out above all other of the many magnificent, memorable moments in the game to you, did it now? Goes to show where your priorities are, and they are NOT where most KH players’ are. But yeah, you’re such a KH “expert” whom we should totally take seriously. After all, you wrote a book! 

Before the final string of boss battles, after reuniting with Kairi—a brief hug and the murmured words “this is real”—Sora prepares to continue his trek through The World That Never Was to find Xemnas. Ansem, tall and ominous in his black coat, watches this exchange from a dozen feet away. Silently, he turns and begins to walk away, only for Kairi to run after him and demand, “Riku, don’t go.”

LIE! This is NOT how the moment went at all. The hug was not “brief” - Kairi throws herself at Sora out of pure emotion, hugs him, says “this is real”, and then Sora, recovering from the surprise, closes his eyes dramatically and emotionally as she hugs Kairi back, tightly. This shared hug lasts long enough for Donald and Goofy, our resident in-game Sora/Kairi shippers, to nonverbally react to it with happiness. This moment is given respect and weight, and it only falls flat for you because you don’t care about Kairi or Sora/Kairi.  Sora also does NOT “prepare to continue his trek”, he and Kairi both only get snapped out of the hug when “Ansem” tries to leave. Also, let’s see how long it takes for you to gloss over Kairi’s role in making the reunion happen, even when you admit Riku would have left if not for her. 

(Btw, the hug and Sora crying on his knees both lasted the same amount: 20 seconds.)

Sora spends every free moment he has in Kingdom Hearts looking for Riku, inquiring with everyone he meets about his whereabouts and lamenting his absence.

LIE! This is NOT what Sora does with “every free moment” he has. There are other friends he genuinely wants to catch up with, other people he doesn’t particularly need to help but does, mini-games he wants to play...oh, and after Kairi is kidnapped, he also asks about her in addition to Riku, even to the point of getting on his knees and begging Saix to take him to her. Nobody’s arguing that Riku isn’t very important to Sora, but you are very deliberately and dishonestly slanting things to make it look like he’s all he cares about to boost your argument.

But the moment Kairi speaks Riku’s name, Sora’s face twists, displaying a confusion and pain we haven’t seen before. 

LIE! Sora’s face is first one of “WTF!?” surprise, and then of just-plain incredulous confusion - he doesn’t immediately believe that “Ansem” is Riku and is likely wondering if Kairi’s lost her mind. And really? We haven’t seen these expressions from Sora before? You need to replay this game which you believe yourself to be such an expert at that you write a book about it.

A slow, almost mournful song plays in the background as Sora closes his eyes, and looks past Ansem’s guise to Riku, the friend he has so desperately searching for. 

Aaand you neglect to mention that it’s because of Kairi’s powers that he is able to look past Ansem’s guise to Riku, and that as the song plays in the background, we see all three friends joining hands. Heaven forbid you imply that Kairi means anything to Sora and Riku.

Taking Riku’s hand in both of his, Sora falls to his knees. “It’s Riku. Riku’s here!” he cries, weeping and visibly shaking. “I looked for you! I looked everywhere for you!” The scene reminds me of a moment earlier in Kingdom Hearts II, where Saix kidnaps Kairi. Saix calls Kairi “the fire that feeds Sora’s anger,” assuming that harming the girl will rankle Sora, leaving him emotionally vulnerable. This statement is wildly incorrect: Sora’s fervor for Riku far outweighs his fervor for Kairi—or for anyone else in the game. Riku is Sora’s fire.

LIE! The scene it SHOULD have reminded you of is when Saix tells Sora that he has Kairi, at Hollow Bastion. Sora pleads with him to take him to her. Saix asks if she’s that important to him, and he replies “Yeah! More than anything!”  Saix says “Show me how important” and Sora...falls to his knees, pathetically prostrating himself before Saix, whimpering “Please.” 

When Saix then replies “No”, Sora jumps up, visibly shaking and with a sob in his voice as he yells “YOU ROTTEN...!” Very clearly, Kairi IS Sora’s fire just as much as Riku is, and harming her WILL rankle him and leave him emotionally vulnerable, which it did seeing as he had to fight his way through Heartless, despite knowing the consequences of doing so at this point, in order to reach her, and when he saw Kairi again he got distracted and was ambushed by Heartless that Kairi has to rescue him from. Leaving this info out is dishonest as fuck.

Sora and Riku’s reunion is the big emotional payoff of Kingdom Hearts II, while meeting up with Kairi doesn’t even get a fraction of this attention.

Because Sora and Kairi’s reunion in the original Kingdom Hearts was already ITS big emotional payoff. It receiving as much attention this time around would make no narrative sense given that Kairi was only until recently safe and sound, whereas Riku has been missing and presumed dead for a long time, and Sora never got to fully reconcile with him before this happened. You need to consider the context when making your conclusions.

That’s because there is no traditional romance in Kingdom Hearts.

LIE! See here. Note that it includes Sora/Kairi and Roxas/Namine.

Rather, we get a picture of intimacy between two young men, two best friends. It’s exceedingly rare that any kind of media portrays non-romantic love between two boys so deeply

Except for literally almost every shonen manga/anime/game in existence ever, you clod.

As Kingdom Hearts’s main storywriter, Tetsuya Nomura seems keen on positive portrayals of male intimacy. He worked on the main premise of Final Fantasy VII, which featured a handful of close and complicated relationships between male characters. Cloud’s relationships with Zack and Sephiroth—two former brothers in arms—color our experience in his shoes. In Final Fantasy VIII, the rivalry between Seifer and Squall is borderline flirtatious, with Seifer’s antagonism towards Squall nearing obsessive. These male relationships would continue to play a role in future Final Fantasy games even without Nomura’s involvement—the camaraderie between Braska, Auron, and Jecht in Final Fantasy X, for instance, or the budding mutual reliance and respect between Snow and Hope in Final Fantasy XIII.

Nomura DID have involvement in Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII, you CLOD!

The relationship between Sora and Riku is not the only intimate male friendship featured prominently in Kingdom Hearts II. There is also the bond between Axel and Roxas.

Oh, boy. Now you open up THIS can of worms. Why am I not surprised?

Throughout Kingdom Hearts II, we see the same flashback a handful of times: Roxas walking away from Axel and saying, “No one would miss me.” “That’s not true!” Axel shouts behind him, then drops his voice and murmurs, “I would.”

Um, we literally only see that flashback twice, and the part you referenced just once.

After encountering a brainwashed Roxas in Twilight Town, he is saddened to hear that his friend does not remember him. He becomes increasingly upset when Roxas continues not to cooperate with him, and in Roxas’s second fight with him it feels as though his anger is turned more on himself than on his former comrade. 

You just point out that Axel becomes increasingly upset when Roxas does not do what he, Axel, wants / needs of him, without considering at all whether it’s what Roxas himself wants / needs. That’s not a good thing. And no, Axel’s anger is absolutely on Roxas in the second fight. There is a glimpse of self-loathing as well, but he is able to overcome it and perform his duty as an assassin, willing to kill his friend so that he can avoid punishment from Xemnas. 

When we watch Roxas’s flashbacks of Axel pleading with him not to leave the Organization, we hear the sorrow in the latter’s voice as he says he’ll miss Roxas. Counter to everything the Organization has been led to believe, Roxas inspires true emotion in Axel: friendship, sorrow, understanding, compassion, love. If Nobodies can regrow their hearts, what emotion more powerful than love can jumpstart their reconstruction? Roxas is the driving force behind Axel and influences his every decision, even when Roxas no longer exists as a separate, complete human being.

First off, who said Nobodies can regrow their hearts? That’s not part of KH2.

Secondly, while it’s true that Roxas inspired those feelings in Axel, the fact that Axel lacks a heart means that he still is completely self-centered about them. Roxas himself is not Axel’s driving force, AXEL is Axel’s driving force. That’s the fundamental point of his character: that he pursues his own agenda above all else, and Roxas now being the main component of that agenda doesn’t change this. Your romanticized, whitewashed view of Axel is not canon.

While he calmly accepts responsibility for Naminé from DiZ

He accepted responsibility from RIKU, not DiZ, who wanted them dead. Clod, clod, CLOD!

Axel’s behavior shows that he sees his self-worth only within the context of his friendship with Roxas. Without Roxas, Axel does not value himself or his own existence, as evidenced by his readiness to sacrifice himself to save Sora.

This is partly true, but you’re a little off the mark. Axel doesn’t value himself only because of Roxas personally, but because of how Roxas makes him feel. Roxas inspiring feelings within him makes him feel like a complete being, like he has a heart. And like he says, Sora makes him feel the same way, so if he wanted to, he could have just stayed alive and stayed with Sora in order to get his feelings fix. The reason he sacrificed himself was because he had realized at last that his selfishness was wrong, that friendship is a two-way street, and after having screwed up with Roxas to the point of trying to kill him, he now wanted to redeem himself by giving to Roxas (and thus Sora): giving his life. This was a redemption, yet you’re skewing it to be “There’s no reason to live if I can’t have my boyfriend Roxas back!”

We never see this level of emotion in Sora’s reunion with Kairi.

You do remember that Sora pretty much killed himself to save Kairi in the first KH, right?

Roxas, who you were just talking about, wouldn’t have been a thing without that happening?

Are you that misogynistically averse to Kairi that you zone out whenever she’s a factor?

Sora crying for Riku, Axel crying for Roxas. The boys are the only ones who cry because their vulnerability is tied up with their dependence on each other. These are the believable relationships. These are the characters whose relationships players are never supposed to doubt. The emotion is raw and crystal clear in both of these scenes. We never see this level of emotion in Sora’s reunion with Kairi. It just isn’t there.

So boys crying ultimately places these relationships above all others, and every other relationship in the game (Sora/Kairi, Roxas/Namine, Roxas/Hayner,/Pence/Olette, Sora/Donald/Goofy, Mickey/Donald/Goofy, Mickey/Riku) can all be swept aside as irrelevant, doubtful and not believable because no visible tears are shed? That’s your argument?

Part of what makes Roxas and Axel’s relationship so beautiful is this outright rejection of their Nobody nature—they feel for each other and they let each other know it.

Here’s the problem - aside from that Axel crying scene which was not in the original version of the game, we actually NEVER see Roxas truly let Axel know that he feels for him. We literally NEVER see their friendship. It is a totally informed statement. We only see Roxas leaving and coldly saying “no-one will miss me” to Axel, and Roxas fully remembering Axel and being touched but still surprisingly blasé over what looks like (and originally WAS) Axel’s death in front of him. Yet this one-sided relationship is one of “the believable ones” to you?

And OK, let’s move away from KH2 and bring 358/2 Days into the equation. Even in that game, Roxas’ feelings of friendship toward Axel, while undeniably sincere, are nowhere close to the intensity of Axel’s feelings of friendship toward Roxas. Roxas actually has stronger feelings for Xion, and is willing to sever all ties with Axel, TWICE, because of something bad he does to him and Xion. This is not the paragon of m/m love you fangirls make it out to be!

Also, Roxas is 15. Axel is in his 20s. Just pointing that out.

Which is why the game’s ham-fisted implications of a romantic love triangle between Riku, Sora, and Kairi are so unconvincing. 

WHAT romantic love triangle!? There isn’t one at all in KH2, and in fact there never was one in the original game! It was always Sora and Kairi who liked each other that way. The official Character Report book confirmed that Riku did not like Kairi that way, knew Sora did and teased him about it, often acting as a potential romantic rival just to push Sora further and make Sora stronger - he’s the big-brother figure, it’s what he does. He only became posessive of Kairi and fought with Sora over her after he thought Sora abandoned him for Donald and Goofy (and the Keyblade). It was basically his way of saying “you throw away our friendship, then I take away your friendship / romance with Kairi, and she’ll stay MY friend!”

The implications are unconvincing because they’re a product of your deranged mind!

While the narrative wants you to believe these two are destined to become lovers, any implied Sora/Kairi mutual affection comes off simply as friends bound together by happy childhood memories. 

Right, because the Paupu Fruit (called “so romantic” by Selphie) is totally just a friendship thing, Sora killing himself in order to save Kairi and Kairi being able to bring him back because they are that close (in the present, not just in “happy childhood memories”) is totally just a friendship thing, the whole plot of CoM hinging on Kairi as Sora’s most important person (which he later re-iterates to Saix) is totally just a friendship thing, Sora imagining himself and Kairi in place of Jack and Sally slow-dancing is totally just a friendship thing, Sora and Kairi’s connection being able to bring Sora and Riku back home is totally just a friendship thing, Xion having Kairi’s face because Kairi is Sora’s most precious memory is totally just a friendship thing, this is totally just a friendship thing...I could go on. You. Are. DELUSIONAL.

Riku and Sora spend all of the first Kingdom Hearts looking for this girl, but at the start of Kingdom Hearts II it’s clear they are more invested in one another.

Which is probably because their goal in the first game was completed and Kairi is safe and sound on Destiny Islands at the start of KH2, while Sora and Riku are still in precarious situations. Once Kairi is put BACK in danger, Sora and Riku both become invested in her as well. Your constant lies by omission are bordering on sociopathic now!

Kingdom Hearts II begins with Kairi on Destiny Islands without Sora and Riku. Despite Sora’s promise during the ending events of the first Kingdom Hearts that he would find her again, he has still not returned home or even bothered to contact Kairi. 

LIE! His promise was NOT “to find her again”, he knows where she is, his promise was to come back to her with Riku, something she agreed to since, contrary to hateful fangirls’ portrayals of her, she cares about Riku too. At the end of KH2, he is finally able to keep that promise, plus the other promise of returning her lucky charm to her once his task was complete. Why the fuck would he return home without Riku, thus breaking his promise?

Instead, his search for Riku led him to Castle Oblivion and the events of Chain of Memories

Which, as mentioned above, his feelings for Kairi were instrumental to.

Meanwhile, that someone else is hopping from world to world looking for Riku, taking no time to stop by Destiny Islands to let Kairi know he’s okay. Everywhere he stops on his journey, he asks the same question: Has anyone seen Riku? Why not ask for directions back home to Kairi? Despite the game’s flashbacks and shoddily shoehorned-in visions of Kairi, she’s just not Sora’s priority.

Because, again, he KNOWS Kairi is safe on the islands so she’s not a priority, and his promise was to bring Riku back home so that the three of them could live happily together again. Why the fuck would he ask for directions back home when he’s made it repeatedly clear that his objective is only to return once he has Riku back, since that’s what Kairi wants as well? Also, once Kairi is kidnapped, she DOES become his priority and he asks about her / a way into the Nobodies’ world to rescue her just as much as he asks about where Riku is.

Sora’s constant search for Riku makes it clear that this is the relationship we need to be paying attention to. 

No, it’s ONE of them. Kingdom Hearts is made of MANY important relationships. His constant search for Kairi in addition to Riku once she’s kidnapped shows that his relationship with her is another one, and Donald and Goofy’s continuing quest for King Mickey shows that their relationship with him is another one. And let’s not forget the core one of Sora! Donald! Goofy!

You pushing Sora/Riku as the end-all, be-all is your agenda, not the game’s.

If there is supposed to be romantic love between Sora and Kairi, it’s not present in the writing. 

LIE! I’ve already pointed out why.

Their reunion is brief, and their conversation is clipped and bland. Kairi tells Sora she came looking for him because he never came home, and Sora’s reaction lets us know that he knows he screwed up. Sora apologizes to Kairi, and even as she hugs him, his response to her presence is anemic compared to the complete emotional breakdown he has when Riku is revealed.

This is your take on it, not a fact like you are presenting it as. Other views may differ.

Even after Riku’s abominable behavior, and even as he spends a majority of Kingdom Hearts II desperately avoiding Sora, his friend is still overcome to the point of tears when they meet. Sora does not rebuke Riku, he simply asks him why he has been avoiding him.

Um, yeah. That’s Sora. That’s his character, very easily forgiving. So what?

Sora is a benevolent guy throughout these games, but it’s not like him to give a free pass to his opponents.

LIE! See Maleficent and Pete, Axel, Beast when he’s under Xaldin’s control, Riku in the first game, Riku Replica in CoM, “Ansem” at the end of KH2...heck, he’s even OK going up and talking to Hades to sign up for the Paradox Cup even after all the shit Hades has pulled. He also is known to give opponents chances to back off and survive, like Vexen and Demyx.

Despite the atrocities committed at Riku’s hand in the first Kingdom Hearts, Sora still sets out in Kingdom Hearts II passionately searching for the lost Riku. He is the only one who gets Sora’s all-encompassing forgiveness.

Yeah, because they’re best friends, close as brothers. And they already had the start of a reconciliation at the end of the original game, when they closed the Door to Darkness. Exactly what’s your argument here? That if Kairi was to inexplicably go evil, Sora wouldn’t give her a pass or forgive her? Because if you believe that, then you’re a (bigger) dumbass!

The final boss sequence of Kingdom Hearts II could have easily pitted Sora solo against Xemnas.

Um, why? The previous final bosses didn’t have him go solo. Why would this?

One of Xemnas’s most common attacks involves grabbing Sora with an electrical field and holding him in place while he slowly drains the boy’s health. During these segments, players are given full control over Riku as he makes his way across the battlefield to rescue his friend. “Rescue” is even the word used for the command you must input to free Sora. It’s one thing to have these boys tell each other how they feel; it’s quite another to see them act it out in a climactic battle sequence.

Rescuing your friend is now apparently a big, earth-shattering deal. Um, OK.

You realize any character can rescue one another in battle, right?

The team-up offers an insight into the dynamics of their friendship. Giving Riku more of the heavy lifting in their combo attacks—breaking the buildings and hurling them at Xemnas as well as having to rescue Sora from the electrical attack—sets him up as the more protective of the two. Sora is active while Riku is reactive, and in the same way he spends all of the game trying to avoid Sora, he spends the final battle allowing Sora to set up powerful attacks for Riku to execute. And by having Sora be incapacitated and requiring rescue says something about how the developers want players to view their relationship. In the end, Sora will always need Riku. Riku’s presence makes Sora more confident, makes him stronger and more sure of himself. We see more of this feeling in Dream Drop Distance, where Sora fails his mission and needs Riku to bail him out, but the first seeds sprout in Kingdom Hearts II.

FUCK OFF. You’re falling into the common “seme/uke” yaoi stereotype for Riku and Sora here. For as much as you disparge Kairi for needing saving by Sora (while ignoring the times she saves him), you seem to actually get off on the idea that Sora always needs saving by Riku. I highly doubt the developers wanted you to think about the relationship like this, Nomura even said the main reason it happened was just because a lot of fans back then wanted to play as Riku, the same reason Reverse/Rebirth mode happened in CoM. Ironically, by the time of 3D, Riku’s popularity in Japan had died out, and the game didn’t sell so well.

Setting the boys up as partners in the final boss fight—literally your final act as a player—telegraphs to us that the game is about Sora and Riku’s friendship.

No. It’s one of the big themes of the game and what takes precedence in the last act, but to say that the ENTIRE GAME is about it and ignore all the other rich content that is packed into the game does it a disservice. I again ask why you even wrote a book about this game. Was it just to push your personal fangirl fantasies? We already have Tomoco Kanemaki for that!

You can’t tell either boy’s story without the other.

Tell that to CoM and 358/2 Days...or this game, where we hardly see a “story” for Riku.

Their friendship, Sora’s desire to find Riku, and Riku’s desire to protect Sora by only helping him from the shadows, is what drives the story forward and what lays down the game’s emotional foundation.

Really? Because it had nothing to do with Roxas’ story, or Axel’s story. Or the story of the Hollow Bastion Restoration Committee. Or Organization XIII’s plans. Or Mickey’s own quest and connection with Ansem the Wise. Or many events in the Disney worlds. Or...yeah, you get the message. Once again, you simplify a wonderfully complex, multi-layered game and boil it down to a yaoi story. I doubt you’d BE a KH fan if not for the yaoi-bait given this pattern of behavior. I hate to play the “True Fan” card, but...you’re not a True Fan. You don’t get it.

Following the final battle, as they sit on the edge of oblivion, Sora and Riku confess their feelings to each other.

And you deliberately phrase it romantically. More lying.

This climactic scene isn’t Sora and Kairi confessing their love

You realize that 1.) There’s still a series to go for that to happen, 2.) Nomura doesn’t want romance and shipping to be the main focus, and 3.) We actually get a credits scene where Sora sees that Kairi has returned his feelings with the chalk drawing on the cave wall.

We see her again in the very last scene welcoming Sora back to Destiny Islands, but the sweetness of her homecoming words is outshined by this exchange between the boys on a dark beach.

Which is a fact, not at all an opinion. And this is not sarcasm, not at all!

They’ve won the fight, and they don’t know if they’ll be able to return home. 

And who ends up being the catalyst for them coming home and not dying? KAIRI.

While Riku and Sora are not in love, the boys’ friendship is one of the deepest and most moving relationships of any kind that I’ve seen in a video game. And part of why it works is because it’s not a romance. Without sexual tension or expressed desire of any kind, these relationships appear as the deepest forms of male intimacy: mutual dependence, connectedness, and respect.

LMAO! After all this, you’re now trying to claim you’re not a yaoi fangirl and that you understand and accept that Sora and Riku are not in love and their feelings not sexual!? 

You aren’t fooling anyone, Alexa. You’re the typical obnoxious, toxic KH yaoi fangirl. Own it.

Kingdom Hearts II is the tale of these broken bonds becoming whole and being used as power against the creeping darkness. As Sora says in the first Kingdom Hearts, “My friends are my power.” Kingdom Hearts II proves that for Sora and Riku, this will always be the case.

And for Sora and Kairi, and Riku and Kairi, and Sora, Donald and Goofy, and Mickey, Donald and Goofy, and Mickey and Riku, and Riku and DiZ, and Roxas and Hayner, Pence, and Olette, and Roxas and Axel, and...OK, I’ve already made this point before, I’m done now.

Bottom line: this so-called fan lies with reckless abandon, omits key facts, presents her opinions as truth, and completely maligns the entire rest of the game just to prop up the one aspect she feels dominates all others and that other players should feel the same way about it as she does. To all True KH Fans, avoid her, her book, and future writings like the Plague!

#Disney #Square Enix #Kingdom Hearts #Sora #Riku #Kairi #Alexa Ray Corriea #Yaoi Shipping #Fandumb #Stupidity #Hypocrite #Analysis #Objection #Correction #Anti-Alexa Ray Corriea

[solastia]

Kitten Addition  | 2

Read This Part First: My Puppy [1] [2] [3]

Kitten Addition: [1]

Pairing: Taehyung x Reader, Jimin x Reader, Taehyung x Jimin

Word Count: 3,571

Genre & Warnings: Mentions of cancer, referenced smut. 

Notes: Ok, so this chapter is mostly plot building, so there’s no dirty smut. There is a scene I was thinking about going back and adding some time, so you may have an excuse to reread eventually. I’ll let you guys know when I get around to doing that. There are bits of teasing and hints of smuttish activity, but yeah, this is Y/N going through some shit. Also, it turned out more Jungkook centric than planned, but it’s still good. I just know how much you guys have been wanting to read this so after rewriting it like five times, I’m rushing it out. Don’t worry. The next chapter is all about Jimin and his peach ;)

“Rise and shine, Y/N!”

A deep and overly excited voice rumbled in my ear before I felt him move down to bury his nose in my neck. He places sweet little kisses there, making all thoughts of beating him with a pillow flee my mind. With a groan I manage to crack my eyes open, sunlight from the opened window practically blinding me. The offensive light is thankfully blocked when Taehyung’s shaggy head moves into my view, his boxy smile wide and happy. 

“Fine, I’m rising. I refuse to shine until I’ve had my coffee though.” I manage to croak out, voice still thick from sleep. 

“I bet if I rise I can make you shine,” Taehyung smirked, leaning down to peck me on the lips. 

“Ugh, it’s too early to be a greaseball. Now I need incentive to get up because you may have just ruined my morning entirely.” I tease as I wrap my legs around his waist and suck on the already fading bruise I’d put on his jaw the night before. 

“You make me so happy,” I whisper, nosing his face playfully. 

Taehyung lets out a low growl and nips at my neck, moving down slowly. Both of us freeze in shock as we are disrupted by the doorbell. 

“Who the hell would disturb us at eight in the morning?” I whine, getting off the bed reluctantly to put on my robe. Taehyung rushes to answer the door with me behind him mumbling under my breath. 

“I didn’t think he’d be here until later since he knows our schedules, but it’s Jimin’s move-in day, remember?!” Taehyung reminds me as we travel to the front door. 

“Why is everyone always moving in here? Why don’t you guys buy me a mansion and move me in there for once? And didn’t I give Jimin a key already?” I mutter and Taehyung laughs. 

“Do you want a mansion, my grumpy Princess? We’ll set you up good.”

“No, I don’t actually want a mansion. All of our staff would quit within a week after seeing us naked 90% of the time, and then I would be the one stuck cleaning the place.” 

Taehyung waggles his eyebrows then looks at the camera. He turns to me with confusion in his eyes. 

“It’s a lady.”

“A lady? Like, someone selling something? Let me see.” I peer at the door camera.

“Are you fucking kidding me? Shit.” What the hell is she doing here?

I take a deep breath, double check that Taehyung is wearing pants, then fling the door open violently. 

“What do you want?” I ask coldly, eyeing the elegantly dressed woman before me as she scrutinizes my pajamas with her judgemental gaze. 

“Can’t a Mother visit her daughter without wanting something?” 

I hear the quiet gasp on the side of me as Taehyung learns the mystery woman’s identity. There’s a reason I don’t ever talk about her, even to Taehyung. 

I observe the painted and botoxed woman in disdain. 

“I hear that’s the done thing with normal family members, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t describe you. I repeat, what do you want, Clara?”

“First names, darling? I didn’t realize we were so progressive. If you’ll step aside and let me in, I’m happy to discuss everything. I’d rather not wage war in the hallway, it’s rather tacky.” She pushed past me and stopped in the entryway, observing her surroundings. When her eyes found Taehyung smiling sheepishly to the side of me, her eyebrow cocked as she looked him over. 

“You have a plaything? You picked a handsome one. Hello there, Sweetheart.”  The flirty grin that she no doubt thought was irresistible filled you with disgust. 

“Fine. Mother dear, whatever are you doing here? Did you get dumped again by chance? Need money? Had some sixth sense that I was feeling Happy and decided to come fix that?” I sarcastically drawl, crossing my arms in front of my chest and stepping in front of Taehyung to block him from her view. 

My mother released a loud, exaggerated sigh, flapping her hand in the air. “Yes, Charles and I are getting a divorce. He knocked up his little mistress and decided to marry her. I’m going to stay with you until the house I made him give me is renovated. I always hated all the animal trophies everywhere.” She declares, setting her purse on the counter and setting up on a bar stool like she owned the place. 

“Mother, I really don’t think...” I began, only to be interrupted by the doorbell again. I watch in horror as Taehyung opens the door, as I already know it could just be one other person. 

“Good morning, my Goddess. Morning, Tae! I have some bags here if you wanted to help me with them. Just essential stuff, but the rest of my boxes will be delivered by the movers...oh, hello.” Jimin stops midway through his spiel when he finally set down the bags he was carrying and noticed my Mother. 

Her eagle eyes scoured him from head to toe and back before flicking my way, an almost evil grin appearing on her face. 

“My Goddess? Either you’re very close to your friends, or you have two playthings at once, my darling. I’m impressed.” 

“What I do or don’t do is none of your business. Please leave.” I manage to say as politely as possible, hoping that she would leave before she started a real fight or said something to the boys. 

“Fine, I just think it’s funny that all those years of you treating me like I was trash because I liked playing around, and now here you are with two at once. Hypocrite much, sweetheart?” 

“Get the fuck out of my house.” I grind out, retraining myself from physically throwing her out. 

“I’m going, there’s no need to be a bitch, darling. I can see you have a full house already. I’ll just put myself up in a nice hotel. Just don’t expect any money from what I get from Charles.” She spat as she grabbed her bag and made her way to the front door. 

“I never expect any money. I put myself through college. I paid for my own apartment, car, everything else in my life. I need nothing from you. Quit bothering me every time you get a divorce. Stay out of my life for the last fucking time.” I yelled as I slammed the door behind her. 

I lean my head against the door and listen to the sound of her heels stomping down the hallway and wait until I hear the elevator door open and close before I release my breath. 

A hand starts stroking my back, and I’m suddenly enveloped in Taehyung’s comforting presence as he back hugs me and props his chin on my shoulder. 

“So...that was your Mother.” He says, humor tinting his voice. 

Releasing a bitter laugh, I turn and bury my face in his chest. “Yup. That was Mother.” 

“Lovely woman.” Jimin snorts as he strolls forward and kisses the side of my neck and leans his head on mine. 

“Well, she was about two seconds away from deciding which of you she’d steal from me this time, so if you’re interested, she couldn’t have gotten far,” I mutter as I kiss Jimin and walk towards the kitchen to start my coffee. 

“Wait, this time?” Taehyung asks in disbelief as the boys set up on the counter. 

“Her last ex-husband was my boyfriend, once upon a time. She’d decided to stay with me while her divorce from the other one was getting finalized and managed to seduce him while I was working. I think she liked lording it over me a little too much since she managed to stay married to him for two whole years. A record.” 

“How many times has she been married?” Jimin asks, thanking you when you set some pastries down in front of them. 

“Oh, good question. Let's see, with this last one...six times? I think the only person she’s been with for an extended period of time was Dad. They were married for ten years before he passed away.” 

“How did that happen?” Taehyung asks softly, and I pour all of us coffee in silence for a minute as I reminisce. 

“Cancer. Cliche, right? He was a lawyer too, worked like crazy and still managed to make me feel like a princess, and treated my Mother well. Which is why I still hate her for what she did.” I clear my throat and stir my coffee, ugly memories of screaming matches and tears filling my mind. 

“She was cheating on him the whole time he was in the hospital with one of his firm’s hotshot associates. Worst still, my Father knew because someone else had told him about it. I hated seeing his sad, resigned face whenever she came in to play the loving wife role. I asked him about it once, and he said that while it made him sad, he understood since he wasn’t going to be around anymore. That she was a woman that needs a lot of love. I didn’t care. I thought, and still do, that it was disrespectful and just plain malicious to do that to someone that loved and cared for you for ten years. His last fucking memories on earth are of his wife cheating on him while he was lying there in pain and dying. Fuck her.” I choked back my angry tears, distracting myself with making myself eat. The boys each grabbed a hand and placed a kiss on the backs of them, the pity in their eyes making it hard for me to swallow as I struggled to contain myself. 

“I’m too sober for this,” I mumble, swirling my coffee before I take a sip. 

Jimin wraps himself around me, lips ghosting down my neck as he slides his hands under my shirt. His dick was hard and poking me in the back. Apparently, he thought he’d distract me or cheer me up a certain way, but I felt too guilty to let him touch me right now. 

“Anyway, I think I’m going to head into the office. I need to work on some stuff for next week, and then I’ll be worry free for the rest of the weekend.” I push myself away from the counter and hurry to get ready. I try not to notice the boys watching me flutter around the house with matching worried expressions. I just needed to get my head on straight, that’s all.

I kiss them both on the cheek on my way to the door. “Be sure to call me if you guys need anything. I’ll probably be awhile. Let me know what you guys want for dinner, and I’ll pick something up.” With a wave I shut the door behind me and head out, blocking their confused faces from my memory with the unwelcome thoughts swirling in my head. 

I throw my pen onto my desk and bury my face in my hands, groaning softly. Distracting yourself with work only works when it’s actually distracting. Writing letters and briefs, answering emails, all the dumb busy work that I usually saved until the last minute was not enough to clear my head. 

The same fucking thought kept harassing me ever since Mother left. I was just like her. I was sleeping around with two men at once. The fact that we all had genuine feelings involved felt more like an excuse than validation.

 My thumb caressed the picture the boys had sent me a couple of hours ago. The two of them had taken our dog Winston to the park and posed with him, the sun shining down and making them look like freaking angels with their happy smiles and good looks. They were all so cute and so sweet. What am I doing? She was right. I was a hypocrite. And the boys deserved so much more than the messed up person I am. They deserved the entire fucking world. It would be best for everyone if I let them go. I’m better off alone, really...

“I thought I was depressed, but you are actually in your office during the weekend, crying.” A soft voice interrupts my thoughts, and I look up in surprise to find Jungkook lounging in the chair in front of my desk. 

I reach up and wipe at my cheek, staring at the wet spot on my hand in shock as I see that I was actually crying. I hadn’t even noticed. 

“What’s the matter, Noona?” Jungkook laid his head on his arms, cocking it cutely as he leaned against my desk. The little shit pulled out the Noona card very rarely, usually saving it to get something he wants. He seemed to be using it now to get me to talk to him, which was adorable, I had to admit. 

“I just...” I clear my throat and try to summarize my fears into a tangible sentence, only to blurt out, “Jungkook, am I a whore?”

“What? What the hell would make you say that?” He sits up straight and practically glares at me, his bunny nose wrinkling in a way that usually would have made me laugh.

“What do you think? I’m literally living with two men. I can’t even remember the last time I went even a day without a single sexual act. I feel like I'm selfish and dirty.” I mumble as I push around my pen with a finger. 

“Are you saying I’m a whore then?” Jungkook asked wryly, and he cocked his eyebrow when you glanced up. 

“What? No, of course not.” I exclaimed, not sure why he would ask that. 

“Because you forget I’ve been in an open relationship with Jimin for years. I agreed to it in the first place because Jimin needs lots of love and attention, and frankly, I was exhausted on my own.” Jungkook laughs and ruffles his hair cutely.  

“Jimin, Tae, and I were together quite a lot. Jimin and I even got serious with Min Yoongi a few years back, and all three of us lived together. Yoongi had a girlfriend that would join in on occasion as well. I did the exact same thing as you, and then some. So why are you a whore and not me?” He leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms as he waited for me to collect my thoughts. I opened and closed my mouth several times, my mind coming up blank on why it was different. 

“There’s no reason to be ashamed for loving someone, Noona. Instead of focusing on what society thinks, focus on how you feel. I know that sex is only half of the equation, and that you all love each other. You’re all very easy to love.” Jungkooks says with a soft smile, a light blush tinting his cheeks. 

He walks around the desk and crouches down next to my chair, grabbing my hand and rubbing circles into the back of it with his thumb. 

“I was like this at first too, you know. I was already struggling with the taboo of just being with a guy in the first place, then one thing led to another, and Tae started getting added into the mix. I mean, you know how he is. He just kinda...makes everything perfect. Pulls everything together. I started out thinking everything was so wrong, and we were a bunch of perverts, but we all genuinely love each other, so how is that actually wrong? Love is love.” 

“If it was so perfect, why was Tae not officially your partner?” I ask, intrigued to hear things from his point of view. Taehyung talked about their past all of the time, but in his head, everything is common sense, and everyone should know, but I didn’t know specifics. 

“Ah, because there was one thing holding us all back. You. Taehyung has been so hung up on you for years, and he wanted to leave himself an open chance. We’ve suggested hinting things to you over the years since he wasn’t the only one attracted to you, but he didn’t want to scare you off. Now though...” His grip on my hand tightened, and I observed with interest as his eyes fell to my lips. 

He dropped my hand and smiled shyly as he stood back up and leaned his back against the desk. “Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s still this arranged marriage business to take care of. Don’t mind me, I’m just...a little lonely.”

“You could always try to come by. Whoever your father has watching you couldn’t possibly know that Jimin lives with me now.” 

Jungkook shakes his head morosely, his shaggy bangs swaying cutely as he did so. “No. I don’t want to chance it. If we get caught even once, that’s Jimin’s entire future on the line. Besides, that message you sent the other day said you had a plan?” 

“Oh, yes, I do. I won’t go into it too much now but rest assured I will be your Knight in shining skirt suit.” I giggle, glad the mood in the room has lightened a bit. I feel a lot better because Jungkook is right. It’s love, and as long as we’re happy and not hurting anyone, it’s not wrong. 

“Thank you, Noona. Just do me a favor? Next time you feel this way, I want you to try something that helped me. I want you to think about all the things you’d miss if you broke up with them. Like Taehyung’s cuddles or Jimin’s singing in the shower, little things like that.” 

“Or Taehyung making me tea and serving it in a soup bowl.” 

“Yes, or Jimin’s juicy peach ass. God, I miss his ass.” Jungkook groaned dramatically, making me laugh. 

“Fuck, I would too.” I chuckle. I glance at my cell that was suddenly ringing, wiggling my eyebrows at Jungkook when I read the caller ID. Speak of the devil...

I set the phone in the middle of us and press speaker as I grin at Jungkook.

“Jimin honey, what’s up?” I ask, laughing internally as I can practically see him throwing a fit with all the frustrated sighs he’s making. 

“Y/N, when are you coming home? It’s my move-in night; I want to cuddle and watch this anime with you.” He whines, his manipulative little ass using his drunk Diminie aegyo voice. 

“I’m coming home now, baby. What do you want me to pick up for dinner?”

“Tae says junk food, so probably burgers and fries. And a milkshake.” 

“Ok, I’ll pick it up and come right home, alright?”

“Okay! Hurry! I miss you.” He was so fucking cute.

“Jungkook, say hi to Jimin,” I tell him softly, observing him as he clears his throat and nervously leans over the phone. 

“Hi, baby. Noona was sad today, so make sure you guys take good care of her.” 

“...okay, Kookie.” Came the soft reply, and I nodded at Jungkook encouragingly when he quickly looked at me in surprise, obviously not expecting Jimin to still want to use his nickname. I’ve not told Jimin the whole issue yet, but I had told him that Jungkook was trying to protect him from something and not to be sad. 

“I’m going to kiss Noona goodbye, is that alright?” Jungkook asked, smiling at my startled expression. 

“Yeah. She likes more lips than tongue.” He giggles. 

“Alright, love you, I’ll be home soon.” I rush out as I quickly end the call. I stand up and grab my bag and put on my jacket. Jungkook hasn’t moved yet, just watching me with amusement, his stupid bunny smirk wide. 

“Noooonaaa....” He quietly sing songs as he strolls towards me once I’ve reached the door. “This is just to say thank you. Thank you for taking care of Jimin, thank you for helping me. Thank you for being you.” He lays his hand on my shoulder lightly, his fingers stroking like he was trying to comfort me as he leans in. 

His lips softly press against mine, testing my reactions. When I didn’t hit him or freak out, he deepens the kiss, moaning softly into my mouth. When he pulls away, his eyes flutter open, and he smiles down at me. 

“Now go home and take care of our needy kitten.” He mutters as he ushers me out of my own office with a pat on my ass. I glare over my shoulder playfully and send him one last wave before I leave. 

#kkreationsnet #kwriterskollection #kpopwritingnet #btswriters #bts #bts smut #bts fanfiction #bts fanfic #taehyung fic #Jimin fic #Jungkook fic #kpop fanfiction #taehyung #jimin #jungkook #bts kim taehyung #bts park jimin #bts fanfics

[alexanderessex190973ba2bcollab]

Collab Project - Second and Third Animatic and the copious amount of modelling and colouring for the Final Piece

For the last week on the collaboration piece, I really went all out on trying to make this piece something fantastic to watch as I spent so much time trying to make everything as detailed as possible. That’s not to say that I didn’t do a lot of animation though as I felt I really refined the Spirit’s animation as well as Anng’s movement respectfully.

Starting with the modelling of the environment, I followed a few tutorials learning how to make tree's specifically low poly ones so I could stay on theme with the islands I’ve made around the world I’ve made. There were two types of trees I ended up making, I very low poly (which is the video tutorial here) and one a  more complicated low poly that involved multiple types of faces. Between the two, the tutorial trees were so much easier to do and probaley easier to make as well. However, the more detailed low polygon trees were tricky but they were really worth it as I made some really interesting janky trees that help varied up the really easy to do trees in my scenery. 

How To Create A Low Poly Tree In Maya | Ep. 4 A Simple Tree

In addition to making trees in Maya, I also made some leaves to go around the Monk character as well as debris across the islands. Weirdly enough, this was the hardest thing to model due to how many creases you needed to make in the leaf as well as angling it just right so that it realistically looked like a leaf. The first time I made the leaf I made it way too thick to be counted as a leaf which is what led to me sticking to the tutorial so closely so I wouldn't stray off too much. Whilst the leaf was really tricky to model just right, the whole repetition process was still really fun to do which I can say the same for when I was modelling the trees too.

Alongside the leaves that I made as foliage across muy scene, i also made a couple of smooth rocks to differentiate the rocks that are keeping Anng in to help resent these rocks are very special. In addition to this, I also made patches of grass with sounds really easy to mold and make which you would be right. However, its’s the placement of these grass patches that are so important as this is an overlooked detail that’s just forgotten bout when looking at the environment. I felt like I was specifically putting patches of grass like I was individually placing the min a Plasticine collage with the amount of attention of detail I took. Sure people might overlook the grass patches when they watch my sequence. But i’m just happy that if someone was to look at one of my islands individually, they would see how much craft I’d put into the scenery which that in itself could be showing of ‘Passion’. 

How to model a leaf in MAYA2017

Old Leaf vs New Leaf

I think this next part was just in general the trickiest thing I had to this week due to how many steps was included to even try and make it let alone have the chance to animate. I am of course talking about the flower ornament that symbolises passion within the Monk as he emerges from the rock formation. 

Before I get into the process on how I managed to make the flower animation, I realised at the time that I wasn’t using the right flower as a passion flower doesn't always technically symbolise passion. The flower that more symbolises passion is the yellow Iris flower. A three petal flora with 3 small little tendral petals inside of the flower. Once I realized this was the right flower that I needed to symbolise passion  for my Principle Piece, I followed the tutorial online detailing how to create this flower petal design animation into Maya. Al;though on top of that, Jon was kind enough to make a special tutorial just for me to make the tutorial that I’ve been referencing since the start I saw that video.

The way I made the flower petal animation was through making the petal size and selection in Photohsop and then I painted over the selection in another layer creating my fresh layered petal almost ready for Maya. Before I could export them to Maya, I had to export both a colored version and a black and white version so that Maya could register how bright the image will be as well as evaluating the transparency of the image too.

Once they’re in Maya, you need to got to the Hypershade tool and create two texture files and connect it the same way its shown it to an a empty aistandardsurface plane. After all of these steps, you should be able to see the petal in Maya. Whats really cool now is that if you adjust the d point towards the center of the petal and move to the right most angle, you’ll be able to spin the petals around in a 360 degrees fashion.

Iris Flower Petal Colour and Black and White Design

Tendrals Petal Colour and Black and White Design

Getting the petals into Maya wasn’t actually too bad in retrospec, I think for the animation side of things I seemed to really struggle due to the object plane really not wanting to behave itself as it just likes to either move its own way or just do it’s own thing when I’m not even touching the flower as some playbacks of the flower sprouting, it would glitch and gitter across the playback. Although despite theses problems, I think the sequence was really worth it as it allowed you to create some really pretty flower blooms which I wish could of explored more in the project. 

Combining the Petals together to create the Flower

I think overall the flora I created for the scenery will most likely be overlooked from the everyday viewer when they watch my sequence but like I said before, even if there’s one person that takes interest into the work I’ve created, that would mean the world to me.

The Landscape of the Scene

With the sky lighting for the animation, I always imagined it to be a very autumn setting with a pink and yellow sky as it emits very warm feelings to me as well onto the character too. Plus I think there’s a range of coulours on offer atm that ‘s happening in the render scene and going through the colour palettes we already have, these choice of colours just seemed so perfect to me especially the kind of mood it gives off too. 

One render I did want to talk about here was the 3rd render I produced as instead of ornage/yellow lighting inside of the cave, I’ve gone for a more purpley interior from the firefilies. This colour change was because of how too similar the colour inside would be to the outside and really wanted to go for something in contrast instead to make it feel you’ve been taken to a new world. Personally looking at the render, I feel it really achieves at that perspective a lot especially when Spirit peeps inside the rock and you see the dark purples everywhere with some of the fireflies illuminating you.

Rendered Image 1

Rendered Image 2

Rendered Image 3

First Animation Sequence

Watching back on the first animation sequence I did with this detailed scenery is an immediate step-up from the previous animation that I did in the last blog post as this is an immediate upgrade. I guess the things I feel critical about if that the flower bloom isn’t very natural and acts way too soft (but don’t get me wrong looked really cool), I’m not too sure of the fast spinning of the Spirit as I may cut that out to make it more suttle and less fast to watch. In addition to that, i plan to add in additional animation into the Spirit's face as it’s very static looking with its face always staring like a blank slate. But other than these changes and maybe a couple of small ones I say here, the sequence is looking really good so far which I can only improve from here personally.

Second Animation Sequence for Submission

This is a much updated and refined piece of animation I did also in the last week till hand-in. Here I involved a lot more character and emotion into the Spirit as he moves from scene to scene making him more alive and joyful to look at which I was really happy with in addition to improving the animation to Anng’s shoulders as he breathes in and out. Honestly there’s really not too many gripes I have with this animation compared to the previous one as this feels so good to watch in comparison. 

#CollabBA2B

[aion-rsa]

Army of the Dead: How Zack Snyder Is Revolutionizing Zombie Movies

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Since long before Zack Snyder or Army of the Dead, zombie movies have proven to be one of the most surprisingly versatile subgenres in film. George A. Romero pioneered the form with the incisive, socially conscious Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, and since then we’ve seen an ever-growing menagerie of zombies and zombie movies. More than a few times, the undead ghouls have been reinvented to frighten and fascinate audiences across the world.

So it’s probably fair to wonder at this point whether we’ve just about seen it all when it comes to zombie flicks. Innovative takes on the genre like Shaun of the Dead, Train to Busan, and Warm Bodies have taken the zombie myth and twisted it in unexpected ways. And Zack Snyder’s own remake of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead was an amplified homage to the original with a wry sense of humor. It received praise from fans of the genre, and to this day is considered to be one of the best efforts in Snyder’s oeuvre.

Now, 16 years later and after an eight-year stretch of superhero movies for Warner Bros., Snyder is returning to his zombie roots by partnering with Netflix for Army of the Dead, a heist/zombie movie mash-up that he hopes will take the genre to new heights in several ways.

The story is set in a zombie apocalypse that originated in Area 51. Six years after the outbreak, Las Vegas is essentially quarantined, with a wall built around it to contain the zombie hordes that have taken over the city. The government plans to nuke Vegas to end the zombie outbreak for good. In this time of chaos, a former casino boss, Bly Tanaka (Hiroyuki Sanada), hires a group of mercenaries led by zombie war hero Scott Ward (Dave Bautista) to infiltrate the city and extract $200 million that’s sitting in his vault underneath the strip before the city is pancaked by the government. The team should have plenty of time to get in and out before the bomb drops, but once they’re inside, they learn that the president has moved up the drop date to appease his supporters, giving the team little time to get out of the drop zone before the city is blown sky high.

Worse, while on their way to the vault the team will have to fight off a massive army of undead led by Zeus, a highly intelligent and combat-savvy “alpha” zombie who started the outbreak at Area 51. When Zeus bites someone, they become a deadly alpha like him; when an alpha other than Zeus bites someone, they become a more traditional “shambler” zombie.

Netflix invited Den of Geek to the set of Army of the Dead back in 2019 where we had the chance to sit with Snyder and the cast to get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie.

“From the first conceptualization of the movie, [we knew] there were going to be these evolved zombies,” Snyder explains as he sits with members of the press on his lunch break. “I thought it would be cool if there was a way to have a little bit of sympathy for the bad guy. It’s hard to have sympathy for a normal zombie. In a way, the guys who kill them seem like they’re doing them a favor. I thought if we were able to create this other class of zombie that was semi-conscious, treating them like a wolf or dog, like, they can’t talk, but they can organize.”

This highly evolved class of zombie gave Snyder and co-writer Shay Hatten more creative opportunities when laying out the story, lending emotional depth to the traditionally one-sided human-zombie conflict. The government feels that they’ve imprisoned the zombies in Vegas, but perhaps the alphas and their shambler offspring would rather just be left alone.

Alphas aren’t the only new form of zombie that you’ll see in the movie. Las Vegas is home to all manner of bizarre creatures, both animal and human, and you can expect to see a wide variety of gruesome undead versions of Vegas oddities and eccentrics as the mercs battle their way to the center of the strip. Zombie Elvis impersonators, zombie male dancers, zombie tigers, zombie brides… it’s all very Vegas, and reflective of just how much fun Snyder had making the movie.

“Zeus rides a horse!” Snyder gushes. “He’s the smartest of all of them. Whether he has hopes and dreams, I’m not sure. But our humans give zero fucks about his world. It’s kind of a fun relationship between him and the team.”

As for the team’s interactions with each other, Snyder assured us that while the movie is as fun and bombastic as you would expect, the character work is the spine of the film and informs all of the action. 

Bautista’s Scott begrudgingly lets his estranged, activist daughter Kate (Ella Purcell) join his crew in the film, and they’re forced to work out their issues as they carry out the mission. Joining them are Scott’s friend and adept mechanic Cruz (Ana de la Reguera), helicopter pilot Marianne (Tig Notaro), expert zombie-killer Vanderohe (Omari Hardwick), reckless social media influencer Guzman (Raúl Castillo), the casino’s head of security Martin (Garret Dillahunt), and Scott’s “ride-or-die” compatriot, Chambers (Samantha Win). The film also stars Nora Arnezeder, Theo Rossi, Huma S. Qureshi, and Matthias Schweighöfer

“At its heart, it’s a relationship movie,” Snyder says. “[Scott] and his daughter are trying to mend their relationship over the course of the movie. She shouldn’t have been on the mission but she kind of tricks him. It’s this small relationship movie inside of it all about a father who kind of abandons his child and tries to make it right. On top of that, it’s pure genre insanity.”

From what we were shown on set that day, the movie certainly looks to deliver on the genre goodness, for both the zombie and heist fronts. Snyder and company had rented out the entire casino floor at the Showboat hotel in Atlantic City, and they spent several days filming frantic zombie-killing action scenes involving a ton of wire work and big, loud guns (which Snyder test-fired himself with childlike giddiness). There were dozens of zombie extras running around, and the casino floor was so littered with inanimate zombie bodies that we had to watch our step virtually everywhere we went. Rest assured, the movie will be action-packed.

Another way Snyder and his team are attempting to make Army of the Dead a progressive entry in the genre is with its deliberately diverse cast. 

“Something that was really important to us was to have a global cast,” says producer Deborah Snyder. “Being on Netflix, the majority of the audience is international. There’s no reason the cast should be all American, all white. And it was really important for us, and me especially, that the women are as strong as their male counterparts. That’s something that I’ve been striving for, especially in action and genre. Their characters have depth.”

The cast being led by Bautista makes sense in that he’s a big star, but what perhaps goes under the radar in many people’s eyes is that he’s essentially the first Filipino-American to lead a diverse cast in the history of major motion pictures.

“Dave has been amazing. He’s awesome,” Zack says of his leading man. “My movies are pretty popular in the Philippines anyways, so I’m excited about this added bit that’s really going to take it to the stratosphere, I hope. He considers himself this anti-action hero but he can do any of the action! It’s cool. He’s not afraid to be rough and not look good all the time. That’s what’s cool. And he can be vulnerable.”

When sitting down with Bautista on set, the actor describes a deep sense of duty and fulfillment in representing Filipinos on the big screen.

“I’m getting ready to have the Filipino stars tattooed on my chest, front and center, really big!” Bautista shares. “It speaks to where my pride is as far as being a Filipino. I’m half-Filipino, but I embrace it completely. I’ve never been embraced like I was when I went to the Philippines. It means a lot to me. I want to represent something and I want to inspire people. It means everything to me.”

Read more

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In addition to the film’s cast representing a wide range of communities, Snyder harnesses the strength of zombie movies as socio-political commentary by weaving statements about the current state of the United States into the fabric of the narrative.

“There’s zombie-infested Vegas, and then what happened was they built this refugee camp at the outset of the zombie plague to quarantine,” Zack explains. “Six year later, the camp still exists, so now it’s this political tool that the government uses. If you have contradictory political views, they’ll stick you in there. They have a heat gun, and if you’re below 98.6 degrees, that’s probable cause to put you in.”

The director continues, “A lot of the people in the refugee camp are disenfranchised. Whether it’s a statement about immigration or the literal refugee camps around the world, it made sense to me to have an internationally diverse cast because of the centerpiece of the movie. This group that goes in are a mish-mash… they’re mutts. They’re rogue samurai.”

For Snyder, the feel of Army of the Dead was inspired by some of the most classic genre movies from his youth, though as in his previous work, he attempts to build on the concepts they introduced by subverting expectations and putting his own unexpected twists on genre conventions.

“When we did Dawn of the Dead, it was a slightly genre-buster movie in that I was a fan of the original, and I didn’t want to remake the movie, exactly,” Zack says. “I was trying my best to pay homage to the movie but I was always only referencing the original as opposed to a straight remake. I find that to be a fun area to be in.”

He continues, “Army of the Dead was really inspired by Escape From New York, [James] Cameron’s Aliens, Robocop… that world. It’s very much a genre deconstruction in the sense that I love all the genre tropes, and so I’m constantly trying to subvert the tropes by having them not finish as they typically would.”

After spending eight years in the superhero movie making business, Snyder felt that going back to intimate, genre storytelling would be exactly what he needed to reinvigorate his creative mind and passion. He needed a change of pace, and he missed being hands-on with the filmmaking process.

“Your relationship to the photographic process, even the actors… you grow further and further away from it,” he says of making big superhero movies. “I was still drawing the shots, but they were getting made further away. That’s kind of true of all aspects of the movie. This movie, for me, is a 100 percent organic experience where I take hold of it as a filmmaking process, as a writing process, photographically, as a director. It’s a joy to get up and work on. There are no real politics. Just make the movie as cool as you can, that’s it. In that way, it’s super refreshing and inspiring.

Snyder’s proximity to the tactile, hard work of filmmaking was evident from my time on set. In addition to directing, he acted as the movie’s DP and B camera operator and was interacting with the actors constantly, all while quite visibly having a lot of fun. It’s difficult to imagine he was as playful and loose on the sets of his DC movies. According to Snyder, while Army of the Dead certainly took a lot of hard work to make, he was constantly inspired by the material and embraced the challenge.

“Every movie is a struggle, right?” says Snyder. “I love that about moviemaking. The smoothest movie in the world is a shitfight. But with this movie I could make a subversive movie but no one would have to reach for the symbolism. It’s right there. It’s a genre that is about that, right? A good zombie movie, all the great Romero movies, they’re all mirrors. The zombies are us. For me, that was a great place to dig my teeth in.”

And working on a smaller scope means that this is the most personal movie Snyder has made in quite some time.

“It’s a giant movie, but I’ve tried to get at it in a super intimate, personal way,” he says. “This is not a movie that’s made by committee. It’s personal, singular, my eye seeing the movie.”

Army of the Dead hits select theaters on May 14 and Netflix on May 21.

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[murasaki-murasame]

Monogatari Series Rewatch Part 4: Bakemonogatari [Nadeko Snake]

I’m doing it, I’m finally getting around to this, aah. Here we go.

Who else is ready for two episodes of ‘if only you could understand how much drama and pain your superficial understanding of Nadeko’s emotional problems is gonna cause you down the line, Araragi’, cause I sure am.

Thoughts under the cut.

[This got way longer than expected. Can you tell that I really love Nadeko as a character, and love talking about her?]

PART ONE:

-I haven’t talked a whole lot about any art-related things in a while [since I never know how to phrase my praise for this sorta thing without being kinda repetitive and aimless], but I really love the plain colour/gradient effect used for stuff like the bamboo forest. It’s definitely a cost-cutting measure, but for some reason I really like it. I guess, in a weird way, I really like the simple backgrounds that draw more focus to the characters, and make the show feel like even more of a stage play where everything other than the characters themselves are just props.

-It still gives me the warm fuzzies, that Araragi and Kanbaru immediately got back to being friends after the last arc. Their friendship is a wonderful part of the series.

-And here she is! Snake girl! Hoo boy, this is where we get into the start of some of the extended story elements. Though from what I remember, you tend to leave this arc for the first time not thinking that there’s anything deeper to her character and that she won’t show up again. LOLNOPE.

-Just to get it said right off the bat, Nadeko is honestly one of my favourite characters in the entire show, at least from my vague memories of my first time watching the series. I found myself relating to her and understanding her issues way more than I thought I would. I think it wasn’t until Otori that I paid much attention to her, but I feel like that goes for everyone. I totally get why she’s such a divisive character, though. I respect that.

-And here we have one of the single most iconic and memorable anime OPs of all time. Holy shit this song used to be EVERYWHERE. So many parodies and mash-ups and remixes. It’s weird to look back at the original. Especially since there’s so many little elements to it, mostly in the lyrics, that really bluntly hint at her various issues, and the direction her story takes. One of the very first lines in the OP is, more or less, ‘if words will destroy our relationship, then silence is fine’. Though it’s hard not to see this entire OP as being really meaningful when it’s so connected in my head to the Nadeko Medusa OP. I still adore how Renai Circulation is basically Nadeko’s idealized view of herself and her unrequited crush on Araragi, while Mousou Express is a more objective look at how obsessive her feelings actually are. I love it so much. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

-Also, as a side note, I think this OP was my first exposure to the series before I actually sat down and watched it about three or so years ago, and for the longest damn time I seriously thought that Nadeko had green hair. It took me a while to get used to her normal hair colour.

-Oh yeah, this is the first time we see the shrine, as well as the talisman thingy. Huh. I at least thought that the talisman didn’t appear until as far as Nise or SS. Weird. It makes me remember how sorta surprising it was to see the shrine become such a recurring setting, and such a big element of the overall story. But it really does just keep popping up. It’s probably one of the things I have the least of a grasp of, though, especially with how the various goings-on with it fit into the timeline. But I at least remember that the whole deal with the shrine is that it’s like the spiritual hotspot of the town, and that everyone wants to use it for their own purposes, mostly in terms of using it to maintain ‘balance’ in the town.

-Senjougahara continues to be utterly savage even when she’s not part of the scene. NICE.

-Huh, I genuinely forgot that apparently Kanbaru’s arm is gonna heal over the next five years or so. Huh. That’s a pretty major thing to forget. I feel like they never bring it up after this point, though. So that’s probably why. I guess it slightly lessens the whole tragedy of what happened to her, but I guess it was probably a bit too fucked up of a concept for her to be stuck with a monkey arm for the rest of her life.

-For some reason I thought that the shrine was intact by this point in time and just got destroyed in a later arc. Guess not. [[If it’s not clear already I have a surprisingly shit memory of a lot of specific story details with this show. Especially in the early arcs like this. Since I haven’t watched them in several years. Also I’ve only read the LN versions of the first three Bake arcs, and have been procrastinating about the rest, so this is the start of where I truly haven’t really experienced the story in years]]

-Obviously this is a bigger aspect of later arcs, and I’ll discuss it more then, but holy shit does Araragi have the WORST memory possible. It’s almost hilarious how many issues in his life are caused by it. I can’t exactly blame him for not remembering one of his little sisters’ school friends who he hasn’t seen in six years but still. This is just a hint of what’s to come, I guess. And really his issue with Nadeko is less him forgetting her, and more him just not paying that much attention to her or trying to investigate her issues. Which, again, I can’t blame him for. Most of the things Araragi does like this are completely realistic and understandable even if we as the audience can see the dramatic irony involved.

-[Oh man, now that I’m remembering more of Nadeko’s story, it’s just now dawning on me for the first time how similar a lot of her story is to that one character from Umineko who I won’t name because of spoilers. They’re very different characters in general, but wow there’s at least some pretty overt superficial comparisons to be made. Huh. I need to remember to make a post about that character once I’m properly done with Umineko]

-Oh yeah, by this point in the story Nadeko was already going off into the mountains to ritualistically murder small animals. Yep. This sure is a thing that’s already happening. I forget the exact context of this, but yeah in hindsight this is a pretty clear indicator that she has some serious issues. Even if I can at least remember enough to know that she was trying to take the snake curse off herself. Still, stabbing hordes of snakes to a tree is messed up.

-I love all of Hanekawa’s shifty/squinty expressions during the whole scene here at the bookstore. She really does have a way of coming across as really composed, even though you can always tell, especially in hindsight, that she’s not as composed as she might let on.

-It’s still interesting to me how Nadeko’s hat makes her look a bit like a snake. Even her loose jacket kinda reminds me of shed snake skin. I know that basically all of the main girls have elements of their oddities incorporated into their designs, but I feel like Nadeko is probably the most subtle about it. Other than maybe Hanekawa. Either way, I really love this outfit of hers. I sometimes feel like wearing a jacket like that, but it always feels a little silly and pointless, and I’d probably worry about it not sitting still properly.

-I just got reminded by this one particular shot where he looks really nice, but, I really do think that Araragi is pretty dang attractive. I only really notice it with certain scenes, though. But when it’s there, it’s there. Obviously I’m sorta alone in feeling this way, lol.

-I appreciate Hanekawa taking the time to try and explain to Araragi that he’s way too wishy washy with his feelings, and way too nice and open with girls in a way that can come across as a lack of faithfulness to his actual girlfriend. It’s a lesson that he really needs to learn, as do many such protagonists. You can really get why Senjougahara is so clingy and distrustful in her own way. [Although I also do feel like Kanbaru is a weird character to use to set up this topic considering that she’s, you know, a lesbian. Oh well. Hanekawa’s point still stands]

-Huh, they’re already bringing up her intentions to travel the world once she graduates. Huh. I thought that only got bought up around Neko:Shiro. It’s also making me even more antsy about waiting for the eventual adaptation of Off Season because I REALLY wanna see that one arc that’s apparently about her travels.

-Oh boy, all these not so subtle hints about Hanekawa’s home life. My heart is not ready for when we actually focus on that.

-I seriously love every scene in this show that has red/orange lighting like this. It looks so fantastic. It really sets the mood.

-Of course the first thing Kanbaru does upon entering Araragi’s room for the first time is to loudly search for his porn while taunting him about how much she’s aware of his kinks and fetishes. Isn’t she the best?

-Yeah this whole scene is just as creepy as ever. Christ. Although I still cannot fucking believe that they reference that one goddamn meme during this scene as well. It’s surreal. Though not quite as surreal as Attack on Titan referencing it for a recent magazine cover spread. I’m still reeling from that one.

-I’m pretty sure that Nadeko is still only like two or three years younger than him, but this whole thing is still . . . iffy. But obviously it’s meant to be iffy and weird.

-Especially in hindsight, it’s really sad seeing Nadeko talk about hating her body, and wanting to be saved by the person she has a crush on. Damn. Though the whole idea of her actively asking to be saved really sets up the big issue with this arc [so to say] and how it sets up Otori. I just feel bad for everyone involved.

PART TWO:

-I’m loving the shadow puppet hands going on that look like snakes. It really adds to the creepy atmosphere. Same with the really stark contrast between the dark shadows and the bright bluish-white lighting. Also, I dunno if I’ve mentioned it yet, but I love how Oshino is just the master of setting up school desks and chairs in increasingly elaborate ways, and sitting on them in increasingly implausible ways. In general I just love the use of props, staging, framing, and body language to construct a scene, in addition to the dialogue that makes up the meat of it. Obviously this is where Shaft’s influence shines through the most, since this is exactly the sort of stuff that’s fundamentally not part of the LNs. It’s really interesting to me how they took something like the basic descriptions of Oshino sleeping on a makeshift bed made of desks and blankets and whatnot, and went completely wild with the imagery of it.

-This is just a matter of the version of the subs I’m reading, but man is it throwing me off how the dialogue subtitles translate certain terms differently than the on-screen text subtitles do. Especially since I can also obviously hear the Japanese term being used and I have a vague idea of it’s inherent meaning, so I wind up with like three separate terms for the same thing being thrown at me at once and it’s sorta disorienting. 

-[On the note of subs, I probably should have mentioned this before but it’s so weird to me seeing Hanekawa’s catchphrase translated any way other than ‘I don’t know everything. I just know what I know’. Anything else feels kinda blasphemous, even though it’s by far the most petty issue I could have translation-wise. I at least feel like any translation of that line should be consistent, to get across the fact that it’s the same line being repeated. I feel like the subs I’m using have translated it inconsistently once or twice, and it bugs me.]

-OK I guess this is another sub note, but I must have glazed over the line of ‘Living without words, no, dying, huh?’ in the OP the first time round. Huh. It comes across slightly mangled in English even though it’s a kinda neat pun in Japanese [it’s basically using ‘shi nuki’ vs ‘shinu ki’. I’d use the actual kanji they use if I knew what they were, but yeah that gets it across well enough]. Either way, it’s one of the various lines in this OP that really bluntly hint at how much of an issue it is for Nadeko to hide her true feelings behind a mask of cuteness and silence. I like how, via puns, it manages to effectively equate silence with death, which is pretty accurate and foreboding, considering that her repressed issues turn into murderous violence.

-It’s one of those things that makes me seriously wonder how much of Nadeko’s character arc Nisioisin had planned from the start. I know that he kinda plays it off as ‘haha, her voice actress wants to play an evil character, let’s make Nadeko into the final boss lol’, but I’d be surprised if it was anything so spontaneous and unplanned. So much of this arc really blatantly hints at how disturbed and unhealthy Nadeko is, and her issues are left so blatantly unresolved in this arc in a way that feels almost counter to the entire theme of the story [which is exactly why it comes back to bite everyone later]. I at least like to think that he was planning it all from the start, and was kinda messing around with stereotypes to try and make both Araragi and the reader glaze over all of Nadeko’s problems, and the logical consequences of this arc, while just seeing her as a cute girl. I dunno. Maybe I’m giving him too much credit. I know that it sometimes bothers me how much the series really, unironically plays up the ‘look what a [superficially] cute and innocent and naive little girl she is! So moe!’ angle at times, even though pretty much the entire idea of her character is how damaging it is to ignore and glaze over a person’s depth and their problems by valuing them solely for their cuteness or youth or purity or whatever, so . . . eh.

-It’s definitely interesting how it looks like Oshino never even sees Nadeko for himself in this arc, and just hears about her problem from Araragi. Given how good he tends to be at noticing when a person isn’t a pure, innocent victim in their whole story. I wonder how things might have gone if he’d seen her up close. I could at least see him noticing the thing she does where she hides behind her hair.

-I just thought after seeing the scene describing the invisible snake that’s constricting her body and about to kill her, but there’s a lot of parts of the story that are interesting to examine if you want to interpret the oddities as mostly just being reflective metaphors for emotional problems. Obviously in the context of the story they’re literally real, but still, I think it’s valid to interpret things this way if only as a way to understand what role each oddity plays, and what they show about each character. [And it seems relevant to bring up with Nadeko in particular, since the entire twist of Otori is that the oddity in that was literally just a reflection of her emotional issues and not even a ‘real supernatural thing’]. It’s interesting to look at how, at least thus far [I forget what else we learn about the snake curse incident later in this episode since I have it paused partway at the moment so I’m probably gonna feel real dumb in a few minutes lol], we’re dealing with a case of Nadeko being bitterly hated by one of her classmates for simply turning down a guy that the other girl liked, and now she’s off in the mountains killing small animals to try and lessen this horrible, constricting pain that makes her feel like she’s about to die, which is making her hate her body, and just want somebody to save her. I mean, I know I’m just literally describing what’s going on at this point, but it’s definitely easy to not quite consider the extent of what’s going on here if you get caught up in the snake curse concept. It’s a bit too easy to get the order of events wrong and assume that this magical curse is the sole cause of her problems and her negative feelings, and that it’ll be totally fine to just exorcise it. And it’s kinda sad how even Nadeko, understandably, sees it that way too. It’s pretty obvious that she doesn’t want to examine her feelings and their root causes and how they affect her life and how she thinks, and as a young, sheltered girl she might not even have any real idea HOW to do that sort of introspection. It’s pretty depressing, really.

-They even point out that ‘the curse’ was mostly caused by Nadeko’s whole ‘killing small animals’ thing, but Araragi of course thinks it’d be totally fine if Nadeko just did the animal-killing in a different place. In terms of the in-universe logic at hand, yes it might have prevented the supernatural curse placed upon her by it, but even with that in mind, we’re still dealing with someone who’s ritualistically killing animals to try and alleviate their psychological pain and the self-loathing tied in with that. The story even implicitly spells out the fact that Nadeko’s actions weren’t caused by the supernatural cause, but by her own emotional pain, when it talks about how the animal-killing caused her curse. So the blindingly obvious issue at hand here really has barely anything to do with the curse itself. The curse isn’t really the cause of anything, it’s the RESULT of everything else. It’s almost physically painful to see Araragi saying all this and obviously not even considering that there’s issues at hand that will persist even after this exorcism. But again, it’s the sort of thing where it’s just dramatically ironic that he isn’t noticing something that we can more easily see as outside readers. Still doesn’t make it any less painful to watch, though.

-I seriously cannot even state enough that the story is really openly talking about how Nadeko was *ritualistically killing small animals* before any sort of a life-threatening snake curse was involved. Again, it’s super hard not to think that the author was totally aware of all this, and was planning her arc out from the start. I mean, the big thing with each arc, especially in Bake, tends to be about Araragi being mistaken about the order of events involved in a case, and/or not letting himself notice something about the girl in question that should be obvious to anyone else. But in each arc he’s usually told about the things he’s about about, and he figures out the truth in the end. So it’s super obvious how in this arc that point just . . . never quite connects. Araragi gets his moment of pointing out that the curse came after the snake-killing, but nobody steps in to push him to consider what that actually MEANS. And honestly I know that I give him a lot of slack for not really trying to get deeper into her problems, but at the same time it feels like you should really look into getting someone actual, non-supernatural help when they start killing animals to cope with their emotions. JUST SAYING.

-And yeah here’s a big reason why I find Araragi’s role in this to be kinda tragically realistic and understandable. He DOES, in his own way, start to consider Nadeko’s own emotional pain and her unhealthy way of repressing her emotions, and he DOES tell her that she doesn’t need to do that, and that she can open up to him if she wants. I think he handles the situation much better than a lot of people might. So I can’t really blame him much. Really, the major issue is just that even after hearing all this, Nadeko still doesn’t really follow his advice. Which is realistic and understandable and tragic in it’s own way. She clearly appreciates his kindness and dependability, but it doesn’t change the fact that she probably barely even knows how to comprehend and vocalize her feelings, and it doesn’t change the fact that she presumably doesn’t want to do anything more to violate her cute-girl image. She probably doesn’t want Araragi hating her, or being grossed out by her, or anything. Which just reminds me how much it also hurt me when she literally started crying when Araragi admitted that he felt kinda dirty seeing her mostly naked body. Like damn. I didn’t really talk about it at the time, but it’s honestly kinda just sad to watch how even when she was at her most exposed and vulnerable, even when she was literally begging Araragi to save her from her pain and self-loathing and how much her body feels constricted and stifling, his and Kanbaru’s reaction was mostly just to talk about Nadeko’s bloomer shorts and whatnot. Again, not really casting any blame here, but . . . damn. I don’t really know if I would have reacted any differently if I was in her shoes.

-On a different topic, I love the shot of the winding path and the river looking like two intersecting black and white snakes when seem from above. It’s a really neat image.

-’I don’t really remember that much from my childhood. My memory’s not that great’. I’m just gonna sit here and keep laughing at this whenever it gets bought up in the story. This is seriously the root of like 50% of his problems in life. It’s hilarious.

-But on a more serious note, we get yet another moment where he makes a vague yet sincere attempt at learning more about her and understanding her situation more accurately, but she doesn’t really tell him the whole truth [since he doesn’t really remember her and it’d just make things awkward if she discussed it openly] and so he obviously doesn’t really have a chance to understand the true overall situation. He clearly just ends up seeing it as something he can forget about and not dig too deeply into because ‘it doesn’t concern him’, but HOO BOY is that so not the case. It’s seriously painful how accurate and relatable it is for Nadeko to be hiding the exact truth from him, though, even if it’s unhealthy. It’s obviously worth pointing out that, just like Araragi, she also isn’t exactly aware how bad things will get for her and how much her own lack of action and communication will mess with her. And so she just continues to be evasive and quiet, while letting herself be happy that Araragi is at least being nice to her, and talking to her, and trying to understand her.

-I can just imagine Nadeko as a little girl, being pretty much alone, and envying the idea of having an older brother. Aww :C Especially when, as we learn way later in Koi, she’s pretty emotionally distant with her parents as well, and they also just mostly see her as being their cute daughter [I’m getting WAY ahead of myself and will discuss this more when we get to Koi itself, but I still vividly remember the moment of Kaiki trying to ask Nadeko’s parents to actually describe her as a person and they just . . . can’t.]

-Along the lines of what I said about the scene at the end of part one, it’s seriously uncomfortable and awkward how Nadeko gets put in a school swimsuit for this whole scene. Seeing her severe self-esteem issues and whatnot be framed through a lens of sexualization is . . . kinda disturbing. Even the fact that, even though she’s clearly not entirely comfortable with the entire situation, she still wants Araragi to look at her is kinda sad.

-Why you gotta twist the knife in my heart with all these flashbacks, anime? :C My heart just hurts so much for Nadeko on so many levels. I can perfectly understand how she so quickly and obsessively developed these feelings of romantic love and a broader desire to be seen and understood and cared for. [[Also this is a really nice instrumental remix of Renai Circulation]]

-Part of me wonders what’s going on in Nadeko’s head while she’s sitting there, praying to have her pain taken away. Part of me thinks it might just make me feel even worse if I knew.

-Oh yeah, right, this ends with them just . . . throwing the snake away and being like ‘eeeeh it’s not our issue anymore’, doesn’t it? And then lo and behold, the snake goes back to it’s sender who then gets manipulated by Ougi into attacking Kaiki. WELP. Like seriously so much of this arc is just ‘well this surely won’t come back to bite us, right???’ it’s hilarious. In a sad way. Also, I forget, but wasn’t the person who attacked Kaiki a boy, implying that the sender of the curse was the guy who confessed to Nadeko and not her friend? I can’t remember, and I forget if it’s ever even discussed. I guess it doesn’t matter that much.

-And then literally thirty seconds after I resume watching the episode, Araragi literally spells out that the guy did indeed send at least one of the snakes. Welp. I sure feel awkward now, lol. I guess I was kinda right, though, even though I forgot that BOTH of the other people sent her curses.

-Yeah this entire scene is just so goddamn uncomfortable to watch. Urgh. Seeing her writhing in pain like that is just disturbing.

-It’s still kinda surprising to me how this series manages to be more graphically violent and bloody than a good amount of anime out there. You really wouldn’t expect it. I always feel so bad for Araragi in these moments where he just gets the ever-loving shit beaten out of him.

-Oh yeah I forgot that Araragi is totally aware that it’s a really bad idea to let the snake go but he has to do it or else it’ll kill him. Huh. I guess it’s yet another thing where Araragi isn’t necessarily stupid about everything going on and the consequences of certain things, but they still turn out in such a dramatically ironic and tragic way. Welp. Though I do also like how it furthers the recurring deal with how the answer is pretty much never for Araragi to just physically beat down or tear away an oddity and solve the problem that way.

-Also, mad props for my girl Kanbaru for stepping in to stop him from getting murdered. He seriously needs people like her around or else his hero complex would have gotten him killed a thousand times over.

-It really is pretty messed up that they’re forced to perpetuate this cycle of curses and pain in order to save themselves and Nadeko. But it’s perfectly fitting for the pretty damn tragic nature of this arc and how the consequences of it play out for all involved.

-So I guess we’re meant to think that the snake sent by the other girl got successfully exorcised, and it was just the snake from the guy that was still around?

-Oh boy, and here we get into Araragi’s own issues with self-loathing. It really is sad seeing him feel undeserving of Nadeko’s gratitude because of how he had basically tried to protect the dude that placed a curse on her, and had almost died in the process. And of course it gets into his issues with being not fully human and how that messes with his self-image/worth. But at the same time I also get why Nadeko is sincerely grateful to him for saving her.

-Of course, this also leads to a really awkward yet understandable scenario where the story just . . . ends here, with Araragi clearly too defeated and depressed to even think about whether or not this actually fixed Nadeko’s root problems. Again, he’s pretty much always entirely understandable and realistic with how he never quite figures out her issues in time or succeeds in getting her to completely open up to him. He doesn’t really have the time or energy to think that he might have stopped short of the truth, so to say. And Nadeko is obviously unwilling to talk about her deeper issues, and wants to just express her genuine gratitude to him for having ‘saved her’, even if it’s pretty much only a temporary measure, as we get oh so brutally shown down the track.

-So that’s it for this arc. Now onto Tsubasa Cat. No idea how long it’ll take me to get around to it at this rate. I’m probably going to split it into two posts, focusing on parts one and two, and then three, four, and five. I’m not about to try and attempt five entire episodes at once, with this sort of set-up.

OVERALL THOUGHTS:

Inaction and miscommunication are pretty horrible, toxic things, but they’re still fundamental parts of human nature that will probably never go away. People will always have things about themselves that they don’t want to share. They’ll always have a constricting pain that’s too much to put into words. A person’s body can become something that they hate, even if it’s only so they can have something to direct their inexpressible, vague frustration and agitation and pain at. Especially when communicating and connecting with others on a deep level can be so painful. When it can lead you to just hurting them and burdening them with your feelings. When it can lead to them not properly understanding you [even if it’s partially because you don’t let yourself be properly understood]. It can be so much easier to wrap yourself in comfortable, romanticized, unchanging silence, even though a life without words is the same as dying. I’ll get more into the topic of Nadeko’s self-image and the concept of ‘being a cute girl’ later on when it becomes a bit more relevant.

This arc is an interesting one, especially in hindsight. But even the first time around, it’s still surprisingly dark and disturbing and uncomfortable to watch in a way that you’d never quite expect from how incredibly fluffy and upbeat of an OP it has [at least on the surface]. I’ve been on the outskirts of the fandom for a few years now, and it’s pretty obvious that this is among people’s most commonly disliked arcs, along with ones like Neko:Kuro and Tsuki. Though I’ve also seen people have issues with some of the pacing/exposition elements of Oni and the second half of Owari S1. But back onto this arc, I totally get why a lot of people dislike this arc. Especially when viewed on it’s own. Considering that it’s mostly interesting to examine as the first section of the overall Nadeko story arc. And obviously it’s not exactly clear to the viewer that there even IS an actual wider story arc for her until we get to about a third of the way into SS. It also doesn’t help that the TV version of this arc was apparently godawful, but I can’t really talk about that since I’ve only ever watched the BD version.

Personally I find this arc to be a fascinating start for Nadeko’s character, even if I probably didn’t like it much the first time around. But in a sense, I like it in hindsight for the same reasons I disliked it at first. Like how it seems to subtly but noticeably go against the structure of the show by having Nadeko’s issues not get truly solved. Especially if we look at it in terms of Nadeko’s perspective of events and where she’s at by the time things end. I imagine I probably also felt that the whole idea of Nadeko killing snakes felt sorta pointless, and that nobody in the story really cared about it. But that’s what makes it so tragic, I guess. It’s another way in which it goes against the grain of how the past arcs worked in a way that feels really subtly dissonant. Even when the characters acknowledge that Nadeko was doing these fucked up, violent things BEFORE she even had a curse placed on her, they don’t really stop to think ‘what exactly would lead to someone doing that?’ or ‘will those sorts of feelings and thoughts truly go away if we just get rid of this curse?’. You can’t really blame Araragi or Kanbaru for not properly understanding, for not realizing how much is going on in Nadeko’s head, and how much is festering in there and waiting to burst out in the most unhealthy way possible. She only lets people see a certain, relatively superficial side of her. And so this arc ends with the true issue not even being solved, and with only a temporary bandage put over it. And even then, the curse plaguing Nadeko just ends up stuck on it’s sender, so even that’s barely solved or gotten rid of. And obviously we end specifically on the note of Araragi being depressed and unable to accept any praise for what genuine good he did, and Nadeko being genuinely grateful for what he did, while not even fully understanding for herself what’s in store.

So basically this arc doesn’t resolve anything, it simply introduces Nadeko and her problems, and sets the stage for how these issues become so much more serious and lethal later on. And in that sense it’s pretty fascinating, even if it’s divisive.

Nadeko is one of my favourite characters in the show and I’m really happy to have a chance to talk about her. Even if I worry that I might end up repeating myself a lot when the story gets back to her, since I covered so much here already.

#murasaki rambles #monogatari series #bakemonogatari #this was only two episodes long but it feels like this post is even longer than the last one #I think this took about four hours to do in full #maybe a bit more than that #I'm basically giving up hope on catching up in time for Owari S2 #when each post takes this much time and effort #oh well #I'm genuinely happy to have a chance to ramble about how good this series is