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#and mai in general translated really well into the series and she and suki were definitely my favorites to write
andromeda3116 · 3 years
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god but looking back at stuff you wrote ten years ago and seeing the casual internalized misogyny is... grating
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bemused-writer · 5 years
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VNC Chapter 39 Analysis
This chapter immediately got off to a good start. With the return of Roland to the series the tone immediately takes a more energetic, urgent vibe. We also see that Noé has a pretty good understanding of Vanitas’s feelings both about Roland and hugs:
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In other words, Vanitas can’t stand either and Noé is willing to be the body shield for the occasion. Probably doesn’t hurt that Noé likes both Roland and hugs, so it’s not like he’s making a huge sacrifice here....
Regardless, his efforts are for naught! Roland shields them both from the chasseur ships and we get an interesting tidbit as well:
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They were heading to Saugues? I’ll admit I have no first-hand knowledge of France, so if anyone knows better please let me know, but looking at a modern map indicates Saugues is quite a bit further away than Gévaudan! From Paris to Saugues is 533 km while Paris to Gévaudan is 575 km. All this time, I was assuming they were heading for Gévaudan but Roland is making it sound like they ended up at Gévaudan purely by accident.
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Chapter 24 never outright said where they were going, just that they were going somewhere. Gano was supposed to meet up with Astolfo, but so far we haven’t seen this Gano whatsoever.
So, Roland might be lying and I wouldn’t put it past him. Maybe they were heading for Gévaudan but he doesn’t want Noé or Vanitas to know that just yet. But he might also be telling the truth, which raises three interesting questions: Where is Gano? Why were they heading to Saugues? What was the incident in Carcassonne? Also, if you’re wondering (like I was), Carcassonne isn’t exactly close to Gévaudan either; it’s 301 km away. 8D Regardless of whatever else we learn in this chapter, we know the chasseurs are used to long-distance assignments all over France. I suppose this makes sense; they seem to have a limited amount of paladins and they’re keeping tabs on the whole country.
Getting back to Roland, he has immediately made himself Noé and Vanitas’s co-conspirator and I love it.
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Noé looks slightly enchanted, which fits in with his general attitude twoard Roland at all times and Vanitas looks like his soul might depart from his body at any moment, which is also consistent to his reactions toward Roland. XD
What’s really great is the reason Roland gives them for why he’s helping them in the first place:
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This is... technically not a lie, but Roland is omitting a lot of the truth here as well. Roland does like Noé, there’s no doubt about that, but a big part of why he’s helping them is because he no longer fully trusts the Church. He suspects they’re hiding something and he’s entirely correct. He’s been researching the Beast of Gévaudan since volume 5, chapter 22.
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Even then he wasn’t seeking out banned books. He’s toeing the line remarkably well. Furthermore, the fact he isn’t telling this to Noé or Vanitas shows he still has enough loyalty to the Church that he isn’t about to voice his criticisms to outsiders; he wants to learn the truth of it for himself.
All of this is in interesting contrast to his namesake. The Roland from “The Song of Roland” never questioned the Church, his Christian morals, or whether their foe was someone they should defeat. He was a stalwart warrior who was loyal to an extreme. This Roland is loyal but he has no problem asking questions or adjusting his belief system.
Noé doesn’t suspect he’s not being given the whole truth, however, and confesses he likes Roland as well. I double checked the Japanese for this and they’re both using “suki” to describe their affection. With the reactions on display I had almost wondered if they were using “daisuki.” XD If they had, it would have been essentially a love confession and the ship would have been sailing freely, but as it is it’s a little toned down. This has done nothing to appease Vanitas, however:
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Vanitas’s anger could be for two separate things (or both!): 
1) He can’t stand Roland, so the insinuation that Noé’s little declaration somehow counts for him as well is disgusting.
2) Noé is getting along with Roland exceedingly well. Arguably better than he gets along with Vanitas and he’s focusing all his attention on him, forgetting why they’re there in the first place. In other words, he’s a little jealous. He can’t exactly go around saying that--it would hardly fit his character--so he just gives Roland something to do. An important something, there’s no question that it needs to be done, but it’s also something that will keep Roland away from both him and Noé for a while.
Noé’s strong reaction to Roland’s declaration as well as the one back in the catacombs where Roland announced they were friends indicates to me that Noé is kind of lonely. That isn’t surprising; he only ever really had two friends and one of them died a few years back. Teacher only visited sporadically from what we’ve seen and Dominique is restrained in her affection in the present, which is understandable. She can’t let Noé how she feels, so she can hardly go around announcing something like this in the way Roland can. Of course, Vanitas can’t really be described as affectionate at all. 
Noé is pretty open with how he feels about people, so Roland is probably a nice change of pace and probably the only person being as open and forthright as Noé wishes everyone would be. Granted, as I just pointed out, a lot of Roland’s openness is a facade, but Noé doesn’t know that....
We also get to see Roland and Olivier in action at last!
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Furthermore, we got to see Olivier’s weapon, which seems unnecessarily violent in my opinion. XD A sword and a chainsaw? Sounds excruciating... And apparently he’s quite vicious with it. I laughed pretty hard at how the villagers were initially cheering him on without abandon, but the more he fought the wolves the more their cheers started to die down as they realized this guy might be a little unhinged. 
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That one guy became physically ill...
It’s also confirmed that Olivier’s weapon shares the same name, Hauteclaire, as his namesake in “The Song of Roland,” too. According to the edition I have on hand, Hauteclaire means “Highbright” while Durandal (Roland’s weapon) might mean “Enduring.”
As for the mysterious Gano, I haven’t yet seen a name that looks like his in the poem. Maybe it’s a nickname? If so, I wonder if he might be Ganelon. In that case, his weapon would be Murgleys, which the translation thinks may mean “Death brand.” If he does ever show up, I think we may find him the most fearsome paladin yet.
Olivier and Roland are each leading their own teams (team 6 for Roland, team 3 for Olivier) and we finally get to see how these two interact during battle and it’s exactly what I hoped for: Olivier is barely tolerating his nonsense, and Roland is getting his way through sheer force of will alone. In this regard, they’re definitely like their counterparts but the main difference is that they’re both leaders here as opposed to Olivier working for Roland. Granted, he seems to give in to what Roland wants regardless, so...
But Olivier is no fool. He sorts out why Roland is making such bizarre requests.
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He knows that the only people to get Roland to change the way he does everything, to make him rethink his belief system, is Noé (and kind of Vanitas). He kind of looks worried; he knows Roland is pushing things with the Church, but there’s nothing he can do to stop him.
For all of Olivier’s worries though, Roland will do his job. He will wipe out all the vampires if he has to.
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It’s all too easy to forget how dangerous Roland actually is but let’s not forget that while Astolfo called him a “buffoon of a man” this was the image he had of Roland when he thought of him:
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He’s looking down on him with a face of stern judgment. That’s not a man to be messed with. Makes me wonder how Astolfo and Roland actually get along...
As it is, Noé only has the barest inkling of Roland’s true nature himself. But this scene makes one thing very clear: Roland is restraining himself. He has no doubt he could kill Chloé and quite likely Jean-Jacques if he needed to. It would be fascinating to see him and Jeanne fight each other. They’re each absurdly powerful but they each restrain themselves for personal reasons. If they ever did have a confrontation where neither was hindered, I honestly don’t know who would win. On the flipside, imagine if they teamed up? My goodness...
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This monster kind of reminds me of Prédateur in the catacombs arc. It’s misshapen and grotesque. I suppose it must be a result of Chloé losing control of her power? I’m looking forward to seeing how he and Olivier sort it out.
This chapter we also finally got some insight on Jeanne as well. Honestly, I really thought this arc would be focusing a lot more on Jeanne than it actually did, so I’m glad we’re finally getting back to her.
Jeanne was knocked out along with nearly everyone else who was too close to Chloé, including Astolfo, Dante, and Marco (Astolfo’s assistant). She’s lost in a memory, and it’s a memory that is very interesting:
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She’s surrounded by water and she’s being approached by a man with a candle, telling her she’s a doll who must obey without question.
To me, it looks very much like she’s in a tank, much like whoever this individual is:
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Both Jeanne and the girl (?) in the tank have something to do with Ruthven as well. Furthermore, both of them react to Charlatan, which I’ll get back to in just a second.
There’s a theory that’s gone around that the Jeanne we know might be a clone and I’m really starting to wonder if that might be the case. Look at this flashback of her parents, for example:
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The way this is set up is confusing. At first I thought the two individuals in the first panel were her parents but they kind of look like chasseurs, don’t they? Furthermore, they ask her if she’s alone and if she’s all right. After that we cut immediately to the second panel, which we know for a fact is a conversation between her parents and Ruthven, and it’s shown they’re not her biological parents.
If the two in the first panel are chasseurs, I think it’s safe to say she was probably in one of those tanks in the catacombs at some point and that she’s some kind of experiment, possibly of Dr. Moreau’s or simply of the Church/Ruthven more generally. Either way, not a good thing.
When her parents betray the vampires, she’s the one who’s punished, which is just absurd and heartbreaking.
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This goes a long way toward explaining why Jeanne is so hesitant on occasion. She knows the price of doing things according to her own will: someone else will die in her place.
I think for the first time we’re actually seeing what she and Vanitas have in common. Neither of them were allowed much agency in their youth, both were treated as subhuman/vampire, and both are try to rectify the mistakes of their past. They differ in how they want to accomplish that, however. For Jeanne, she’s decided that the only way to sort through the horrors of her past is to obey and cut off any sense of individuality she might have. Vanitas is inflicting his opinions on the world at large and is trying to separate himself from other individuals by denying them any agency.
But this chapter we see them both go the opposite direction. Jeanne was reiterating to herself that she cannot be a person--she must be a tool. There’s no point trying to save Chloé--she’s beyond that point and Vanitas and Noé can’t hope to get there in time. But then:
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 Vanitas extends a helping hand to Jeanne. A real helping hand, for once, free of any demand or manipulation. He tells her it isn’t too late to help Chloé; something can still be done.
What follows is something I find fascinating:
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They’re having a genuine, honest discussion of how Jeanne sees things and we see how low Jeanne’s self-esteem is. She can’t even allow herself to hope for something, to wish for a different path in life. And for once, Vanitas actually seems understanding. I think he’s been here before; he knows what it’s like to have no hope for a better future, to accept a fate of darkness.
And when he was at his lowest, ready to give up utterly, someone helped him see another way of doing things. It almost doesn’t need to be pointed out, this chapter already does, but that person was Noé.
Vanitas is offering hope in the only way he knows how and is it any surprise that when he’s at his most genuine, his most caring, he’s imitating Noé? That doesn’t mean he’s being false here, quite the opposite, but it indicates Noé is the only example he has to go off of, the only person who has ever given him this kind care, and now he’s offering it to Jeanne in turn.
There’s no doubt in my mind that this is the first time Vanitas and Jeanne have felt genuine or romantic and it’s fascinating to witness. A lot of people would argue that the scene in the cabin was romantic; it was framed to look like a kiss after all! But to me that was more about Jeanne asserting herself; it didn’t further their relationship in a romantic sense. But this? A genuine exchange of feelings and a real offer to help her for once? That speaks greater volumes of how they’re both changing their perspectives of each other far more than what came before.
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Even though Vanitas is offering to help Jeanne, she still can only bear to ask him to help Chloé out loud. She asks him to help her inwardly, but they’re still not at the point where she feels she can ask him to help her specifically.
Will they ever have a real, proper romance? I don’t know. When Jeanne reveals she does, in fact, care about whether Vanitas lives or dies, he returns to his usual playful, carefree demeanor. In other words, the act he always puts on when he’s around Jeanne. After all, he has no interest in Jeanne actually loving him. He still doesn’t want that. It raises the question of what it is he does want from her, especially as their relationship continues to change the further into the series we get.
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Hmm, will Vanitas or Jeanne die first? That’s the big question, isn’t it? Vanitas is trying to fulfill a broken promise to Misha through Jeanne but we don’t know what that promise was exactly. We can guess it was similar to the promise he made Jeanne, though.
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If the salvation Misha needed was death, if the salvation Jeanne needs is the same, than it would really be in Vanitas’s own best interest not to grow too attached to her. We already know Vanitas is actually pretty bad at not getting attached to people though (just look at Noé and then also consider how similar Noé and Jeanne are personality-wise), so he may be in more trouble than he realizes.
If Vanitas dies before her he would, in essence, be breaking his promise once more, something he refuses to do. And we can tell this is something that’s definitely on his mind, because this is what he says to Noé shortly after.
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Honestly, this is Noé’s fault. It’s only because of Noé that Vanitas keeps growing attached to people, keeps caring strongly enough to risk everything to help them. Noé is the one that keeps forcing him to change his views and to do things he’d never do normally.
Now he’s made a promise he knows he might not be able to keep, and that’s helping Chloé but if she hurts anyone in Gévaudan, there’s nothing he can do. They can’t take out all the chasseurs and Roland made it clear that he would do what he must. They have a very limited time frame to work with now and Vanitas has promised Jeanne he would save Chloé, all because he’d been in Jeanne’s position once before and when he had been, Noé helped. Now he’s essentially trying to be Noé but he doesn’t have the boundless confidence that things will work out the way Noé does. He knows this is foolhardy and has a very strong possibility for failure.
Despite being in the same room, Noé appears not to have heard any of Vanitas’s exchange with Jeanne. It looks like he was checking on other people in the room, but honestly... How does he keep missing all of this?
I really can’t wait for the next chapter; I’m curious to see how things are resolved and who takes part in what. There are a lot of ways this could go now and I hesitate to speculate. I will say that if Vanitas accomplishes what he promised Jeanne then I think they will grow closer whether he wants it or not. If he fails... I don’t know what that will do to their relationship. They won’t be completely divided; they have a deal of sorts. But their relationship would be a great deal more frayed than it was before.
Last but not least, I mentioned that both Jeanne and the girl in the tank react to Charlatan. It’s a small thing, but when Naenia’s name was mentioned, the girl’s hand twitched with recognition. Furthermore, Jeanne was actually approached by Charlatan:
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Charlatan is replaced by Ruthven. To me, it seems very likely that Ruthven and Charlatan are not only working for one another but very closely linked. There was some proof beforehand that Ruthven might be a curse bearer but maybe it’s more than that. Maybe he’s spreading the curse himself in Charlatan’s stead. Furthermore, Ruthven is linked both to Jeanne, that girl in the tank, and Naenia. It’s looking immensely suspicious, but I feel like it’s relatively safe to say Jeanne is a curse bearer. Of course, if that’s the case, it means Noé is also a curse bearer and that’s going to cause some trouble later on.
Also, Jeanne used to be a bourreau for the whole senate. She was only permitted to continue because of Ruthven’s interventions. Despite how his treatment of her has been iffy at best, it’s no wonder she is loyal to him.
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pigeoncentric · 4 years
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i did an A:TLA rewatch and took notes because that’s just what i do, and here’s the notes if anyone wants to see my thoughts
i haven't watched atla since about a year before korra started airing, so like, around 2011. i should also mention that i never watched korra through to the end, but i guess i'll do that after this. if i feel like it. i do know that the biggest bottles were never popped
i have such a clear memory of the first episode. it must've been on nickelodeon pretty often, even though when it was airing, i only watched it occasionally. i remember they also aired the library episode super often.
aang's voice is so tiny and sweet
i gotta turn off my dumb adult brain and put my dumb kid brain back on so i can better appreciate the nickelodeonness of it all
sokka and zuko's first interaction.......
zuko's intimidating approach and then his tiny teen voice
SOKKA AND ZUKO'S SECOND INTERACTION............
zuko's like "i'm going home." with aang. he must be feeling an incredible mixture of feelings, thinking he has the avatar and can reclaim his Honor. but he also must be terrified to go back, and in disbelief... fortunately he's not going home like he said and there are even more confused feelings in between
i just remembered that iroh's voice actor dies between seasons :(
thinking a lot about dante basco... no thoughts in particular, just a lot of them... and how he shipped zutara lmao
"my troubles cannot be soaked away!"
hei bai looks like a ben 10
mounts list (added to as i progressed through the series): zuko's rhinos. earth armored ostriches. metal noshing mole. north pole goatyak. azula and friends' fur geckos. sabertooth moose lion if you're not a wimp. appa-sized beetle. moose with aquatic features. Eel Hound.
you can't out-mom-friend katara. even when she's yelling and being reckless
it's true... airbenders are weak to nets.
the n*tfli* captions are making several mistakes. eat my ass ne*f*ix and hire me to do flawless captioning instead you dumb fucks
YEAH! even by episode 13 in season 1 we already know zuko is a good boy! well also by episode 12. and earlier. well i've seen the series before.
i've just learned that zach tyler eisen is the voice of aang and i have to give him huge props for having the perfect voice. i pay a lot of attention to voice acting, usually in a nitpicky way, and i've never heard an english voice actor whose voice is perfect on the level of ikue ohtani... and when he was like 12 years old. incredible. i'm not being remotely sarcastic
i gotta be 100% honest. i had completely forgotten the existence of zhao and that he's actually a pretty important character, at least in season 1. also his voice actor is pretty good. generally the voice acting is good in this show, and i'm picky.
god the animation where aang makes one catapult catapult the other is so good. also appa just picked up and grabbed a guy. with his fist. wait how many toes does appa have? is that 18 in total? also appa has scutes on his ventrum. anyway i love that appa can pick up and grab a guy but generally chooses not to. gives it more weight when he does choose to
zuko tells turtle seals to be quiet and then touches them unkindly :(
zuko busted out of katara's ice orb instead of melting it :\
zuko put his hood up like iroh told him to but aang just has his naked bald head in the snowy cold :(
seeing zhao grab and bag the moon spirit fish made me feel sick. such a foul act
god. the quality rope. i noticed sokka mention it and was like, "was this a chekhov's gun or a red herring" and then a few minutes later there was a pointed pan over to the quality rope.
anyway examining the quality of the voice acting here leads me to a thesis i might gather evidence to prove: american english voice acting for cartoons is far higher quality than american english voice acting for anime dubs. or is that just something obvious that everyone already agrees on
anyway anyway, the episode ended without the quality rope being put to use. unless i missed it, which is entirely possible.
jesus i heard azula's first lines and got an instant flashback to all the tumblr drama about grey delisle and her tumblr account and how she pretended it wasn't hers or something let's just erase all of this from my brain right now
this is kind of out of nowhere and borderline inappropriate but i'm glad characters in avatar are illustrated with nipples when they're shirtless... it always disturbs me a tiny bit when shirtless characters are depicted with zero nipple, not even a hint of nipple. (Aladdin.) not just because it implicitly stigmatizes something everyone has, but also because this scenario always plays in my head where it's like, a little kid sees a cartoon character without nipples and they think, "so i'm not supposed to have these..." and they start feeling weird and bad about themself... all you need to depict a nipple is a single unobtrusive dot. nothing visually offensive or explicit about it.
even to an audience who doesn't understand any cultural context, you can't not see the significance of zuko and iroh cutting off their topknots...
fandom seems to see sokka as the silliest one when in fact at least 40% of his entire role as a character is to be the tsukkomi
underrated moment: "you've got an elbow leech." "WHERE?! WHERE?!"
zuko should be a good boy and only steal if it's from pirates
stealy zuko stealing money and buying iroh a teapot !
god i forgot what a tiny baby voice toph has... so tiny
zuko trying really really hard but doing a bad job hammering (tears)
azula set up zuko and mai for a lucky sukebe...
when zuko's mom told him not to forget who he is, she didn't mean to remember that he's a prince and an heir as he revealed to the unsuspecting earth kingdom village. she meant to remember that he's someone with at least the base level of empathy and compassion, unlike most of his immediate family...
i still think aang's voice actor did a great job but i bet it sucks to be a young boy doing an excellent young boy voice and then when you grow up a little and presumably experience some puberty you just Cannot do the young boy voice anymore. hopefully in most cases where that happens, it's at least not abrupt
placing a bet that the writer for episode s2:e10 (the library) is different than most of the other episodes. i don't like it very much, at least in the first several minutes. if it's a name i recognize from the credits of several other episodes, i might be a bit disappointed in them. seriously, there's one stinker after another. and with such a great concept of an episode...
i didn't recognize the name of the guy who wrote this episode so i thought i was right but no, he wrote a bunch of episodes. must have been off his game for this one... either that or i'm in a very unforgiving mood and don't realize it... also when i went on wikipedia to look at who wrote which atla episodes, i learned that the animation for the show was split between two animation studios, and they're both korean. ah, i guess that doesn't mean all the animation took place overseas, as DM movie has a headquarters in the US. according to wikipedia.
oh, they're BUZZards... i get it... i gotcha.
aang with a vengeance is both scary and sad to see. but he does understand that property damage is nothing compared to a life
people who love azula are the exact same as people who love vriska: [comment redacted]
they have american birds in the avatar world. i keep hearing an eastern wood-peewee going "pee-pee-uwee" in the background :3
the serpent's pass seems geologically implausible.
sokka should really get face paint all over his face when he kisses suki. or like, the cartoonish image of when someone is covered in lipstick lip smacks, but it should be suki's makeup color
appa's been through so much and now he has to meet a boarcupine?!?! fortunately he still knows how to pick up and grab... but still :(
he touched appa's scutes and read them like a palm...
longshot translated his meaningful stares into out-loud words for katara and friends
zuko forgot that azula always lies :(
zuko should know that being redeemed in his father's eyes is the opposite of what he wants...
i LOVE aang's passionate tsungi horn dance
there are spring peepers in the fire nation
god the dripping of the rotten clams is so excessive
you know how ultrasonic humidifiers can create water vapor without heating it into steam, by vibrating it super fast? let's try that with waterbending, it'll be cool
two different bad guys have been skipped across the water like a rock
i love the fake time lapse of cleaning the river... and it showed how with pollution in real life, stopping the source of the pollution is not enough. it needs to be removed as well
sokka deserves LOTS of credit just for being able to handle a boomerang.
GOD THE SLOW PAN OVER THE BEAUTIFUL SWORD (in 3:4)
sokka also deserves LOTS of credit for being able to admit he doesn't know everything.
i managed to forget that zuko turns his back on iroh, while remembering that at some point, iroh gets buff
the voice of sokka's master is the voice of the boulder. right? right? no? are you kidding me? i suck at this
seems like kissing azula would have immediate consequences, like something melting
zuko is poorly socialized
zuko still forgot that azula always lies. even when she's being somewhat humanized in an episode like this.
so avatar roku had earthly attachments he did not let go of, presumably. such as his wife. did he have unfettered access to the avatar state? that's what i would ask him during this expositionfest if i was aang.
so sozin could do heatbending... that's amazing. i think i missed that the first time around.
that's right, zuko came back and his hair is long enough, but he hasn't recreated his topknot.
hawky is the only atla animal that poops on camera.
if you're gonna bend sweat, you might as well bend spit, and it's a little easier to obtain
wait so... is combustion man also a heatbender? i'll have to look into it later. [looked into it later: the avatar wiki has termed it "combustionbending?" are you shitting me?]
ooh it's the bloodbending episode! i'm pumped.
someone made a post about how when they watched this show and they were a kid they were thinking about how the characters are hot, and now they're watching as an adult and the characters are all tiny children... that's how i've been feeling. also season 3 episode 8 aang's voice sounds a little bit pubertous.
anyway damn this bloodbending episode is outright traumatic. good shit
oh, now zuko's topknot is back.
appa's armor covers each individual toe <:3c
i seriously misremembered the course of zuko's character development. and the timeline of the invasion in general. but now i understand that zuko has to tell his dad to eat shit face to face.
watching zuko's "zuko here" practice speech hurts 100% as much as it did the first time i saw it. and when he's delivering it to the gaang it's impossible to watch. i didn't put my hands on my head-- they just went there unbidden.
i kinda can't help picturing dante basco's face every time i hear zuko talk. the whole time. it's sometimes not optimal to know the faces of voice actors. especially when you're like me and you're not good at pushing out unwanted mental images.
what the fuck, combustion man? he just loves assassination so much you can't take back any orders. also i can't help but imagine that if you put a slice across his third eye his combustion would be fully inhibited. well i guess that's not a problem anymore.
i like that the gaang are a variety of heights, and that they're all noticeably shorter than most of the adults they meet. it just makes it feel realistic
if it was a US max security prison and prisoners were escaping they'd probably just fucking murder them
i love how when mai starts up the gondola again and azula is like "what is she DOING!" and ty lee just makes an "iunno" noise
tfw your best friend abandons you because you wouldn't let her murder her own brother
chit seng didn't get to free his girlfriend and best buddy :(
funny how azula seems almost docile when she's getting everything she wants. typical narcissist. well ok not the least bit typical.
sokka ate the rose. i remembered this scene Too clearly. but i didn't remember that.
um... was that the full moon? when katara bloodbent that guy? i should've looked at the sky... i went back and looked and still didn't see if it was the full moon. maybe the wiki knows. i don't care enough to look it up properly.
i was wondering when the melon lord would show up
none of the teens understand the obvious solution of defeating the fire lord by beating him INTO SUBMISSION (or oblivion) instead of killing him. just like in every anime fight ever. it's over when you acknowledge you've lost or you can't fight anymore, not when you die. (for the #1 best example of ending a fight the right way, see the way luffy defeats crocodile.)
so i know aang's gonna defeat the fire lord by essentially hitting him with a forced purification beam to the face and make him realize the errors of his ways or something. the fun part is how we get there
bumi bending entire houses through the air
aw i forgot the turtle island didn't have a cute face.
jyong jyong firebent a jet platform to fly around on?!
i guess the firelord can fly around like bakugou katsuki
i forgot that aang took away his firebending... and sokka hops up to him like "well, look at you, buster"
i'm glad i decided to watch this again. even if i didn't do a great job paying attention tbh. well i did spend a bit of time carving a little wooden spoon while i was watching. anyway i was thinking i wouldn't move right on to korra but rather read some of the atla comics that i know exist but have never read whatsoever. i wonder if i can find them in some kind of library...
  i found the comics illegally on the internet and read a whole bunch (up until the end of the "zuko finds his mom" arc). i didn't write my thoughts down as i was reading, so i don't remember them. that's how my worthless brain works. i do remember that i found the comics satisfactory as an accurate extension of the show, and that i feel ambivalent about how azula is written/treated in the comics.
i don’t know if i feel like rewatching korra yet.
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kaoarika · 6 years
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Today I ended up finding a webtoon in the Korean Naver site that I fell pretty interested into.
I think at first it was my morbid curiousity about how a Korean artist would tackle the topic, because at times, I take for granted that perhaps this was one of those stories.
One of those stories about an overweight person having to lose weight to find their happiness and increase their self-esteem.
Except, perhaps my first impression changed when I was checking each one of those chapters... because this was nowhere as “fun” or “one of these stories”... well, kinda a bit...
The series is called “좋아하는 부분” (literally, “My Favorite Part”),by the webcomic artist Tari (or Taree) and it’s about an overweight woman who has very low self-esteem, who happens to like guys who are very attractive... however, this is a downfall on its own, because on one hand, some take advantage of her naiveness and well-intentions (and that “I want to find love”), and on the other hand, sigh, these men are literal assholes who don’t find overweight women to be attractive.
But then, there is a guy, who likes her and finds her attractive - he is also overweight as her. And he is also the opposite MC of this series, btw.
I really don’t want to spoil that much, because I just got a general gist of it, and there’s no translation of it ANYWHERE in ENG, not even a fan translation, so I may have understood wrong some stuff... (this is also why I’m referring each of them as MCs, I don’t know their names ;_;) but I can summarize it in the follow points:
*The male MC is incredibly into her, and they start going out as friends. I want to say he kinda fell in love at first sight of her (and he is incredibly cute as chubby, :’D)... but he is also a bit... off.
*Things start falling out (and this is only in the first 10 episodes!) once an old classmate of his appears on scene. This classmate first reaction when she recognized him was “he changed a lot”, but freaks out when she sees him who is going out with him. It happens that, when they were in high school, m!MC showed an interest in her... when she was fat (he was also very slender in the past, btw). She then cites the f!MC to tell her that she has to be careful with him, because he may not be seeing her as who she is, but instead of her fatness (!).
*Ofc f!MC freaks out because she was getting a crush in him (a first of hers, because he wasn’t slender as the other guys; but was clearly having some chemistry with her, and he seemed very nice) and thinks that, perhaps he isn’t as different as the other guys she liked before.
*After drama shenanigan happens (cuz it’s spoiler :P), a year passes by, and life goes on. In the present, the main guy has lost weight, and his first scene is finding out that his gf (or so I think?) has been cheating on him... reasons for that are a bit more clear later. But then, I think a friend of his invites him over, and finds out that the girl he liked has been dating (?) and working with him.
*And then things get a bit more conflictive and serious, because the guy CLEARLY still likes her, and he doesn’t really want ther to end with assholes who also CLEARLY take advantage of her, and also people who clearly want her to “change” for them instead of doing so for herself.
The series right now is under 55 episodes, with a return from hiatus to start the 2nd part/season in October 4th.
And... for lots of reasons, I really want to protect both MCs so much. Like, REALLY.
You would ask me, “but, Kao, why do you root for this series too much?”. And I will say, first, that it went over my first impression. Sometimes, this is the kind of premise that will launch to a “slice of life” or “comedy” series, something that people will expect “duh, it’s obvious that the main MC is going to lose weight and learn some self-esteem”... but, as I was checking it, I was getting a vibe of “My ID is Gangnam Beauty”. The premise is not for fun, tbh.
It’s really rare looking for some body diversity in main characters of an eastern  series, even if it’s a bit more in the negative side (but not in the whole “one of those kind of stories” that I’m tired af to see around as a plot element). Sure, I am probably asking something like Pochamani or perhaps a bit more in the Patissier to Ojou-san side, and this may not be fully delivering it, lol. AND, MAN, the comments section in the Naver site (through GT) are generally... bad :’D
I think, there also need to be more series that want to root for a message of “you have to change for yourself, and not live the expectatives of others, as they also want you to live up to their expectatives” (which I believe what “My ID...” plays a bit with... Mirae had plastic surgery because she didn’t feel pretty.. .and even when she did, she is catalogued as a “monster”... and she is still working with self-issues, too), because, I’m also a believer that “well, you lost weight, but your self-esteem is not going to change from one day to another”.
“But, Kao... isn’t this also a bit toxic? If you are saying the male MC is a bit off and may be looking at the female MC just because he likes her fat... isn’t that fetishization, too?” I cannot whole answer this for some reasons... like I mentioned above, he does like her as a person, and seems that he wants her to find out her own self-worthiness (as far as I understood) instead of simply changing for others (it pisses him off that guys take advantage of her), and yes, he likes her the way she is atm... but this issue is also (briefly?) discussed in the series, too. I don’t have the facts straight as why he gained so much weight (from HS to adulthood)... or why he lost it in less of a year, for example... but he seems to have some sort of trauma about why he doesn’t like going out with skinny girls (and he tried, his ex was skinny)... and he also has some other issues related to what I mentioned in the above paragraph... not fully uncovered... one thing is that he has a type... other is that he looks traumatized about another...
Tsk, did I mention his chubby self was pretty cute? SURE, before the drama unchained I was like “damn, this guys looks too cute... I hope these two end up together!”, but right now I just want to protect them both.
Now the biggest question I have in mind is “so, why isn’t this translated yet?” At this point, I’m waiting IF the western LINE/Naver/Webtoon gets it... but I wish there was some fan translation, as well... Like I said, sure, this isn’t “cute” as Pochamani (to be fan translated? heck, I dunno... but I pray this happens)... but... I really want to READ IT and not making this whole writing about it. I do wonder... if this is also some kind of “fear” about negativity from users. Like, I have seen other (mostly from the Discover section) series’ comments section about “why this MC doesn’t lose weight?”, “”I hope you are not promoving fat as ‘healthy’” and, I get that this would be... controversial from a standing point... but, the story seems interesting, and I SUPPOSE I also want some “normalization” about “hell, not everyone has to be thin to be happy, too”.
OFC, I’m a bit afraid of what will happen in the return from the hiatus, because episode 55 SURELY left a cliffhanger that I wish I could understand, too! but *lays down*
ALSO; ALSO, looking for ENG info of the series is, futile, as the title “My Favorite Part” is a pretty simple sentence that is used EVERYWHERE.
Link for the series available (as free on Naver), returns from hiatus in October 4th, 2018. (For pluses, it’s also in the XOY Webtoon (from the JPN Naver branch) site as “Kimi wo Suki na ri yuu”, so, it has been translated SOMEWHERE.
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