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usuimisaki · 1 year

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Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-Kun and Deconstruction

(Also, playing with fonts)

One of the things I have to wait awhile to decide, after obsessively consuming it, is whether or not a piece of media is good. By good, I don’t mean morally, but . . . well-constructed. Like, I love the Scholomance series, but I definitely see its fault as a piece of artifice. Some things are style (monologuing for exposition) and some are maybe just oversight (insufficient foreshadowing, not revisiting really cool characters). The Locked Tomb is well-constructed. Some if it is style (I was expounding on its whiplash juxtaposition of 19th century style Dark Romantic purple prose vs. it’s colloquial internet speak/internet memes to my husband last night) and some of it is intricate planning (the twists! The unreliable narration! The inherent fallibility of portraying reality with an objective perspective!). The Locked Tomb is a genre-bending series. I do like describing it as lesbian necromancers in space, but it is very much a mystery series, which requires keeping track of a lot of assumptions and misdirections.

Manga

Ok, getting back on topic, I knew that Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun (GSNK) was laugh-out-loud funny (to me), but I wasn’t sure if it was actually good. At the very least I could point out its deconstruction of manga. I’ve seen GSNK classified as shonen as well as shoujo, and I think it’s because of how it’s an anti-romance romance. It pokes fun at shoujo cliches in good fun. It points out archetypes of characters and contrived plot lines and reactions that have little to do with reality. It’s one of the biggest jokes in the manga: Nozaki (or another character) imagines how something will play out based on their experience with shoujo manga, and then those expectations are totally subverted. Nozaki later on explicitly tells characters (Wakamatsu, Kashima Rei) to not base their assumptions on unrealistic shoujo manga, even if he’s the one contributing to such assumptions by producing said shoujo manga. Reading the manga definitely made me self-conscious of fangirling over certain shoujo tropes, like wall-slamming, swimsuit reactions, and makeovers.

I definitely learned a lot about not just shoujo tropes, but about the technicalities of manga (Like tone. I didn’t know that mangakas and their assistants had to physically cut out plastic films?! I thought it was done by computer?!). Though I don’t enjoy them as much, the manga-focused chapters do have some great jokes, such as about page-turning cliff-hangers. Nozaki being consciously dumb (even if he unconsciously employs the trick well) about creating a page-turning reveal does create some pretty hilariously bad examples, but is also probably a way for the mangaka to make fun of actually stupid shit that she has seen.

Romance

The other major joke in GSNK is that the characters are dumb. No matter how smart they are in other ways, they are dumb, especially about romance. Something a lot of fans appreciate about GSNK is that there is never any relationship progression (which, if you think about it, is a shoujo trope in itself—how slow-burn can you be?). There are, like four couples in the manga who basically act like a real couple—but they aren’t real couples.

I mean, Wakamatsu and Seo basically go on dates all the time, and both characters have acknowledged that Seo singles out Wakamatsu, but Seo specifically told Kashima Rei that they just have a sempai-kohai relationship. But then it prompts the question: what distinguishes a platonic relationship from a romantic relationship? Waka and Seo hang out all the time, but Waka also hangs out with Nozaki a lot (almost everyone hangs out with Nozaki a lot, since being his manga assistant is one of the major plot contrivances of the manga). This creates potential for some crack pairings, but also interrogates the nature of romantic relationships.

The premise of the manga is that Sakura likes Nozaki (like, likes likes), but she just ends up being his mangaka assistant. She definitely gets closer to him as a result, but it’s not the type of relationship she really yearns for. In a way she gets what she wants because she goes over to his place all the time and basically goes on dates with him, but they’re not date-dates. They’re role-play or setting reference gathering outings. One of my favorite jokes is about how Nozaki starts realizing that he treats Sakura in a special way, like watching her to the point of distraction and wanting to hold her hand. He asks Kashima what the feeling is, and Kashima, being romance-dumb herself, speculates that it’s a maternal feeling. But that’s actually . . . not totally inaccurate? Nozaki feeds Sakura a lot, lends her his handkerchief, is very protective of her. It could be construed as maternal, but it’s also boyfriend/girlfriend-ish. In a real relationship there aren’t clear delineations between affection (intimacy), sexual attraction (passion), and caretaking (commitment).*

*Sternberg’s triangular theory of love, which I think is good, even if he’s now researching love stories. It’s not like they’re mutually exclusive theories. They’re another layer in the onion of the metaphor of love.

Gender and Queerness

I do think GSNK does a better job of deconstructing gender compared to most shoujo manga. I’ve written before about how gender-bending usually actually ends up reinforcing existing gender stereotypes, but I think there’s more awareness acceptance of LGBTIA issues. I have to admit I sometimes have trouble with slash. I’m very focused on straight ships. I don’t know if it’s because that’s my bias or just because straight ships are by far more likely to become canon, and I’m a sucker for textual support. (Probably bias. Even when I read The Locked Tomb, which is full of canonical lesbians, I focus on the one major male-female quasi-romantic relationship there is--I’m looking at you, Palamedes and Camilla)

So is there canonical gender deconstruction in GSNK? Well, I do think that Mikoshiba-Mayu is just as legitimate of a “couple” as any other (non-existent) couple in GSNK. Mikoshiba has to be at least bi, considering how much he fanboys over sexy female figurines, but he basically treats Mayu like a boyfriend, buying him souvenirs and whatnot. Mayu is so lazy that he could be interpreted as aroace, but anything he does put effort into must super-important to him. He likes his brother, Nozaki, sometimes going out of his way to support him. He likes judo, even if it makes it seem like he’s interested in guys at the mixer. And he does pay attention to Mikorin. They’re close enough that Mikoshiba invites Mayu to accompany him to the mixer so Mikoshiba will have someone to talk to. Maya might have agreed to go because his beloved brother asked him to, but in the meantime, does characteristic boyfriend things like saying that Mikorin is his, and spending all night texting him (even if they’re both pretending to be teenage girls). That’s the joke of the manga: non-couples doing things together that couples usually do.

The other gender-bending couple is, of course, fan favorite Kashihori. Kashima is, after all, a prince. She looks like a handsome guy and is constantly flirting with her fangirls. She cross-dresses pretty consistently. It makes sense that she is friends with Mikoshiba, because bishonen, TBH, present kind of feminine. They’re a she/they he/they pair and are canonically best friends—to the point that I’m surprised I haven’t seen more pairings of the two.

Hori mostly appears as a straight man (sexually and comedically), but after all, one of the recurring jokes with the couple is how Kashima thinks that Hori wants to cross-dress as a female. And as an actor he’s ok with all kinds of roles, even if he gets offended when Kashima sincerely tries to give him women’s clothing to wear.

Hori’s apparently professional obsession with Kashima as a beauty and thespian manifests itself with wanting to spend time with her (in club), having roles written for her (so that she will shine), and managing her appearance and well-being (he’s just fanboying). He treats her like a possessive boyfriend even though he’s not her boyfriend. He also secretly (to him) wants her legs in a carnal way.

Kashima, for her part, is romance dumb because she claims to just want Hori to obsess over her (the way he already does) and praise her openly . . . and that’s it. Even Kashima Yuu’s own sister tells her to be more ambitious in terms of what she wants from Hori-sempai. They finally progress to the point where she keeps asking him if he does this or that for her because he likes her until he just ends every statement towards her with “because I like you.”

And that’s brilliant in itself. What does it mean for someone to like someone else? Is their relationship romantic? Platonic? Some weird third thing? Canonically, probably some weird third thing. Hori might be sexually attracted to women in general, legs in particular, and Kashima’s legs specifically, but what he really wants . . . is for her to shine as an idol. (And for her to do her club duties seriously.) He likes her acting. He likes her face. He doesn’t care if she presents as male or female. He doesn’t care that her fans are girls (he gets perturbed when someone else, male or female, rivals Kashima, and doesn’t understand why Rei’s friend doesn’t see Yuu as a potential love/flirtation interest).

So what’s their future? Are they ever going to become a hetero couple? Will Hori experiment with cross-dressing? Will Hori and Kashima form a polycule with a third woman? (I doubt that just because whoever joins them would feel like a third wheel. What could plausibly work? Some fangirl of Kashima that Hori finds attractive and that . . . supports her girlfriend’s boyfriend also doing stuff with her?) I mean, Kashima seems open to the idea, but she’s also a love idiot who as far as I know doesn’t display any actual interest in her fangirls. It’s like she’s just playing a role, like when she does improv with Hori or even Nozaki’s instruction.

Also, revisiting Sakura and Nozaki, some people have talked about Nozaki being aroace (like his brother!), but I think of him more as being on the spectrum. He could be demisexual or something, but I don’t see him as being aromantic. He’s obsessed with romance, even if he doesn’t actively want to experience it himself. Or rather, he does want to experience romance, all the time, but he does so through role-play (usually in the female role). He could be nonbinary.

I’m not sure if any of these LGBTIA tones will ever become canon or if it will be queerbaiting--but that’s ok! Because GSNK is an equal-opportunity baiter. It baits the hetero ships. It baits the queer ships. It doesn’t just gender bend. It’s gender fluid. It’s neither romance nor platonic, male nor female, but some secret, third thing.

It says: who the fuck cares? At the end of the day, isn’t enough to hang out with your crush, your crush’s boyfriend, your crush’s boyfriend’s girlfriend who looked like a boyfriend? Your crush’s boyfriend’s girlfriend’s boyfriend who is also your crush’s boyfriend? And all these other people who may or may not be boyfriends and girlfriends? They have fun!

#gsnk #gekkan shoujo nozaki kun #deconstruction #tropes #shoujo #romance #gender #lgbtia #this is a hot mess and may or may not be edited in the future

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cringefaillosersummit · 1 year

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Omg i didn't even think of gsnk can I submit late every single character from gsnk

unfortunately we only got one submission for mikorin so he wont be moving on to preliminaries 😔

i will do a little honorable mentions for characters who i wouldve liked to see based on submitted responses and also who i personally wouldve liked to see nominated (gsnk characters were definitelly going to be included)

#not cringefail loser poll

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direct0rhutao · 1 year

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HI TELL ME ABT THE GENSHIN GSNK AU

HELLO HELLO OK SO!!

to start the genshin gsnk au is also a fanfic which you can see here .there’s only 4 chapters so far but i will add more someday this is a promise

anyway i will tell you more about the characters in the au however when i was typing this out it got really long so. i’ll put it under a readmore hehe

the name of the au is monthly girls’ sangonomiya-san because kokomi is nozaki and lumine is sakura. kokolumi ftw (just started considering kokolumi as a ship like two months ago when i first started thinking abt this au)

anyway sangonomiya kokomi is a quiet highschool girl who secretly writes manga under the penname sango-sensei. her current project is called Heart-pounding! Love and Magic Time and it is set in a fantasy world where theres a rebellion against an oppressive regime and the main leads are a doggirl (hina) and a catboy (muuzuki. mew-zuki…) and they fall in love. so the plot is still mostly typical shoujo manga stuff it’s just that every so often kokomi will throw in detailed analyses of classic war strategies or philosophical musings on the ethics of propaganda or smth

lumine is kokomi’s classmate who had a big crush on her and decided to try and confess her feelings to her, except she messed up and kokomi thought she wanted to help with her manga, and the rest is history

gorou as mikoshiba…he’s the captain of the archery club and has a lot of admirers and he would be so cool were it not for the fact that he gets flustered sooo easily. he’s been kokomi’s manga assistant for some time now but somehow never noticed that she’s basing her heroine’s personality on him

arataki itto is seo except even more oblivious. he is still in the glee club and they call him “the glee club’s angel of music”. he lives with his grandma and his childhood friend kuki shinobu, who goes to a different school but works at a cafe where kokomi and friends sometimes go to talk about manga things. ofc shinobu has no context for any of their conversations ever

yoimiya as kashima ..not sure she’d be as “princely” as kashima but yoimiya’s so pretty and lively and always seems to know the right thing to say to a girl to make her day.. so yeah shes still the girlcrush of the school and the drama club star

kujou sara is hori. she is so tired of yoimiya getting distracted talking to girls in the hallways instead of showing up to drama club practice on time. she wanted to quit and join the archery club at one point but she stayed on as the drama club president because of yoimiya (but she will never tell her this). she’s kokomi’s background assistant so she’s spent enough time around her to know that beneath her quiet, ladylike demeanor, sangonomiya kokomi is a dumbass

thoma is wakamatsu, he’s one of the newer players on the basketball team and he’s a nice guy but a little naive. he got tired of itto showing up to “help” the team practice (the captain says itto helps them learn how to deal with “unpredictable” opponents) and thought that maybe he could get itto to be a better team player and less annoying. except of course itto thinks thoma just really wants to be friends. now thoma is stuck dealing with him all the time. oh, if only itto could be less boisterous and more considerate, like the glee club’s angel of music…surely someone like that would have a personality as gentle and angelic as his singing voice, right?

kamisato ayato is kokomi’s editor who shows up at her apartment in a hoodie and sweatpants to collect her manuscripts and then leaves usually without saying more than ten sentences. kokomi appreciates him greatly. kamisato is so professional. so punctual. so reliable. definitely a huge upgrade from her previous editor, Nightmare Editor Yae Miko, who kept suggesting ideas that were either incredibly simple or incredibly stupid and trying to get kokomi to put kitsune plushies on every page. to this day kokomi isn’t sure if yae actually read any of her manuscripts or not

kazuha as mayu.. kazuha is kokomi’s cousin who grew up in the same house as her so bascially he’s like a little brother to her. he’s a bit spacey and either speaks in flowery, poetic language or just doesn’t speak much at all. he spends a lot of time sleeping or staring into space because he’s saving his energy for kendo club

aether is lumine’s twin brother who goes to a different school than lumine. sometimes he wonders about his sister and her friends from school, especially that girl she mentioned having a crush on. he visited lumine’s school once and left even more confused than he was before he arrived

#aurelia chat #mailbox tag #from fl0wer-fiend #gsnk #genshin impact #OH ALSO i forgot to mention but #“where’s paimon in this au” paimon is the mascot on lumine’s hair ties #i need you to imagine that in this au lumine has sakura’s hairstyle but instead of the two big hair bows #lumine has hair ties with chibi paimons attached to them #that is all. thank you

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cashmoneychiyo · 1 year

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Thank y’all for enjoying a very entertaining and chaotic chapter, 90% of that chaos coming from Ribbons alone

can never say no to NozaMikoChiyo shenanigans, and am also very intrigued by those NozaChiyo crumbs indeed!!

twas a very fun and educational(?) chapter on figurines too!! may there one day be a new GSNK figurine based on this chapter, maybe one that can be a useful body model for the final OP (head optional)!!

#mod grolia #grolia answers #ask #fatehascalled #anonymous #okey now I sleep

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mako-mahko · 1 year

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I posted 423 times in 2022

That's 423 more posts than 2021!

5 posts created (1%)

418 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@dear-ao3

@cashmoneychiyo

@braisedhoney

@galacticus-underscore

I tagged 373 of my posts in 2022

Only 12% of my posts had no tags

#ofmd - 33 posts

#ace attorney - 33 posts

#mcyt - 26 posts

#stranger things - 24 posts

#goncharov - 21 posts

#dsmp - 19 posts

#iswm - 13 posts

#pjo - 12 posts

#mp100 - 10 posts

#gsnk - 10 posts

Longest Tag: 136 characters

#and the thing about the train and bridge scenes (especially the parallel to the apple buying marketplace scene between katya and sofia?)

My Top Posts in 2022:

crash

0 notes - Posted April 1, 2022

SK8 GOT RENEWED FOR SEASON TWO, OH HELL YEAH!!!!

3 notes - Posted August 14, 2022

You know, not enough people on here are talking about the conversational parallels between the apple cart scene between Katya and Sofia and the bridge scene between Goncharov and Andrei. Yes, the soundtrack's motif is there in both the bridge scene and the clocktower shots, so obviously that's what people are going to focus on; but there's something rather substantial to be said about the parallels between the apple cart scene- something which is widely agreed upon to be one of the most blatantly homoerotic scenes in the entire film- and one of the most impactful and revealing character moments in the narrative.

In these scenes, one character truly expresses their desire (although not explicitly in a sexual or romantic way (although with the surrounding subtext and the context from the rest of the plot it's hard to deny their meanings)) for the other. The twist about this, however, is that they play opposite roles in the narrative. Sofia orbits Katya, having such a fierce allegiance towards the woman that she would do anything for her, even stand up against Katya's mafia don of a husband. Goncharov is obsessed with Andrei, toxically so, to the point where he goes so far as to ensnare him in every little thing to keep him close, even as Andrei attempts to distance himself from fear of their operation going south (as it does after the betrayal; this film truly has one of the best depictions of narrative foreshadowing and cyclical narratives I've seen from films of the period.)

Their partners are both enthralled by the others declarations, but in opposite directions. Katya takes their conversation as a means to go through with her plan, as she has the reassurance of one of her closest confidants. Andrei, on the other hand, asserts that he must stick with Goncharov in order to survive, thus falling further into the bond that they share (and further dooming himself, in turn).

In short, these scenes just show so much thought into character relationships and bonds and it's a shame that so many people do not see the many similarities that they share.

6 notes - Posted November 20, 2022

This is based on a possibly controversial reading of Ed that was brilliantly explained by this post by @chuplayswithfire- it’s a very nice read and made me realize what I am going to talk about in here.

Something which I find incredibly interesting, especially in the era of queer media being dominated by teenage and young adult love stories, is how the readings of queer characters and storylines have been seemingly skewed by the existence of coming-of-age stories. This, along with the possible absence of knowledge about code-switching as mentioned in the post above, could possibly be an explanation for why certain reads of the OFMD characters seem incongruent for what is seen in the show. This is most prevalent for Ed and Izzy, two characters for whom people tend to fit into typical character archetypes seen in teen-centric media.

Most queer media being produced now expresses the highs and lows of finding yourself during that period of teenage discovery. As such, there are some formulas typically involved in these stories- the characters will discover aspects of themselves they didn’t know existed, and will go on the journey of self discovery along with the journey of battling first love. As audience members and traumatized members of fandom (through many lackluster, safe, and stereotypical “queer” pieces of media), I think that there is a stigma, one of no blame, starting to form for how the characters will develop within an actually good story that features explicitly queer content. The self-discovery arc, although not something that is impossible for older characters to experience (it even somewhat happens in the show with Stede realizing his love for Ed), is not what a majority of the characters in OFMD have as one of their storylines.

The main characters in Our Flag Means Death are very intriguing because they exist in a state that I could almost call a constant mid-life crisis. Stede had been unhappy with his life on land, so he took to the seas to become a pirate. Ed was bored and uninterested by remaining Blackbeard, so he pursues Stede, someone new and interesting, and is able to express more of his true self. Izzy is in a state of turmoil due to someone who had been relatively constant in what Izzy believed to be his natural state, Ed as Blackbeard, getting “corrupted” by Stede. These are instances that occur to characters that already have all their character traits and personalities fleshed out. Stede knows he’s unhappy on land, so he leaves and goes to do the things he loves, which is the sea and being a pirate (as expressed when he plays with his children). Ed was already frustrated of being viewed as Blackbeard, and he carried that red silk with him from a very young age (an age at which he already expressed both a love for finer things and more violent tendencies). Izzy maintains loyalty to the ferocity of Blackbeard, and renounces Ed due his personal belief that that is not the correct state that Ed should be in, despite that being another facet of Ed’s personality.

These characters have already matured to the point of their life in which they know, more or less, who they are. There are challenges to their beliefs, of course, such as Stede’s conflicts with his old life, the party and episodes 9 and 10 in Ed’s case, and Izzy’s entire existence in this show (except for episode ten in which he feels vindicated that the person who he thought Blackbeard should be returned- but that’s for a different post.)

The characterization that I have been noticing seems to gloss over these previously established character traits and delves into how the character’s development in the show- such as Ed having to take all the parts of himself and express it as being truly him- lends itself to the idea that Ed doesn’t know who he is. And while that’s a viable take, it makes more sense within the show that he needs to figure out how to show all of himself at one time, as opposed to hiding behind a mask or playing up those aspects of himself in order to fit in. The self-discovery arc that teens typically endure throughout their respective stories is one that Ed already has gone through- now he’s attempting to settle what he knows to be himself with how he adapts to fit in with his surroundings.

9 notes - Posted June 4, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

I swear that sans only won bc he's the most renowned Tumblr sexyman, and the extra .01% are people who do not know of reigen's true status

22 notes - Posted September 7, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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