#but i don’t have to like her just because it’s a distinctive character choice | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

courtofterrasen · 1 month

Text

Alright, clearly some of you guys are just not getting it. So no more emotion from me; I am simply going to write in factual terms.

It takes a VAST amount of work to go into creating a series like Bad Batch. You have to go through writing, scene painting, 3D modeling, rigging, lighting, SFX, voice lines, editing, final production, etc; just to name a few. It takes hours upon hours upon hours of work for those animators to create all of the nuances in a scene, let alone in Bad Batch where there is an extremely high level of attention to detail. It’s not like anime where a character and background are mostly stationary while they talk. There’s constantly stuff happening in the background and they intentionally make choices that provide extremely little to the overall story and, in all honesty, take up a significant amount of their time and can be argued that they’re wasting their time and money and effort (I don’t think so, but I’m sure people could argue it if they thought that effort should be allocated elsewhere). But they do it because it provides a deeper sense of realism to the story as a whole and make it feel like a living, breathing world. For example, when a character trips a little bit or they animated them doing something slightly harder than it would have been otherwise or eyes darting around and studying someone. These are all very little things that take them hundreds of hours to get perfect. And those are the kinds of things that go unnoticed by the vast majority of people watching the show. Either because they don’t noticed the little detail that was put in at all, or they don’t understand the level of work that goes into creating little minute decisions like that. And all of those decisions that they make, both big and tiny, are given to them in specific instructions by the directors. When you think about the insane amount of work that goes into creating a show like Bad Batch, you realize that every single little detail that they choose to add in is intentional and was given to them via specific instruction. It’s not like in live-action shows where the actor can choose to make a subtle decision on the fly. There are hundreds of thousands of hours of work that go into this and every choice that they make is intentional. The lighting dept. has even confirmed this for us, saying that all of the lighting that they did was done very carefully and intentionally and to pay attention to what’s happening in the scene. Because there’s an extremely high level of detail that’s put into the show, based off of very detailed instructions that were presented to them.

Now. Taken all of these points into account, it’s critical to look at all of the little choices that were made when it comes to her character and the way that both she interacts with the world and the people around her, as well as how they, in turn, respond to her. Because, like the lighting dept. has already made very clear to us, every design choice they has been made in the creation of the show is 100% intentional. Even if that’s not something that they had said or wasn’t something you were aware of, when you focus on the aspect of animation, it’s sometimes hard to get a clear grasp on just how long it takes them to do these things. And that every little choice that they made was carried out under specific instruction. And that’s not even getting into the nuances of voice acting and understanding the subtle distinctions in the way someone talks and being able to discern the meaning behind their words based on dialect and the instructions they were given. And for someone who just casually watches the show, absolutely none of these are important. They’re watching it to watch it and no further thought is put into it. And there’s nothing wrong with that. People are allowed to watch things at a surface level and get enjoyment out of it.

For every character, they can be broken up into various parts:

•Their visual appearance

•Their behavior

•Their interactions with others and the world

•How others respond to their character

•Their small, subtle behaviors (such as a particular twitch or repetitive body movement that can be used to convey a deeper meaning)

•And their internal motives

In that order from the least to most complex. And these topics can also be used to understand the complexity of a character. For someone like Cid, all of these topics are touched on in a variety of ways.

•She’s different from them

•She’s gruff and money hungry

•She speaks to the Batch like they’re a bunch of kids and she knows better than them

•They never fully bring themselves to trust her and, at times, they see her has a burden

•Towards the end of their time together, she gets snappier, and whenever she’s around them her movements slow ever so slightly and she furrows her brows slightly a lot more than in the past

•And in the end, she betrays them

And that’s putting her character into a single sentence for every bullet point, which, for well written characters like Cid or Hemlock or Rampart or Nala Se, cuts a lot of things out.

When it comes to the way that Phee is written and what she contributes as a whole to the show, she is not a very complex character. I’m not going to go into every single scene with her, but I am going to touch on a few. And if I need to continue the discussion further to cover more scenes, then I will. On multiple instances, she puts the Batch into very dangerous situations, and overall appears to care very little for them as people unless it gets her something that she wants. This is made very evident when, for example, she gets Omega, a child, excited about a big grand adventure and Omega then convinced the Batch to go along with it. Even though they were very adamant about not doing it. This is said with both their words and their tense body language. They don’t want Omega to get hurt and they know it’s a bad idea; but in the end she’s able to convince them. Then, when they get to the site, she shows clear lack for them or their safety and proceeds to put them in a very dangerous situation where someone could have gotten seriously hurt or killed. And she shows no remorse for it. Her language, both verbal and bodily, are very loose and nonchalant, assuring them that she had everything under control and that they were able to handle it, despite their very clear frustration. This type of behavior is shown again and again and again as they continue to interact with her. Her actions relay to the viewer that she does not respect their boundaries, or arguably, them as people. Her words are designed to be rocks with a pretty bow on them. And again, this is not personal opinion or speculation. Every single word and action was carefully designed by the team. All the tensed muscles were created by a team of people working very hard to convey that to the audience. Every thinly veiled word was guided by a director when the VA came in to record the sessions. Every single choice was intentional for a very specific reason.

Tech likes things in a very specific way. He likes his ship to be in a particular order and takes very good care of its maintenance and upkeep. He prides himself on being able to maintain a good ship. He spends a lot of time on his data pad. It’s how he was designed on Kamino. That’s his link to his role in the group. He can do everything he needs to from there and, in certain scenarios throughout the show, you can see it provides him with a sense of comfort and stability. You can see this, not only in his subtle body language, but also in his fairly obvious body language with how he hunches over it. It’s reminiscent of a child hunching over a toy to bring it closer to them and protect it. It comforts him. You can also see, when he interacts with the rest of the Batch, his aversion to touch. It’s not significantly often that you see it, given that the rest of the Batch knows him better than anyone, but there are still times when physical contact or even just very close proximity happens and he either has a reaction by tensing up slightly or leaning away from it, or sometimes he doesn’t react to it at all and almost seems to not register it; such as when he’s focused on his work. Every little reaction that he has with his brothers was scripted and orchestrated for a very specific purpose. It conveys the nuances of who he is as a unique and individual person.

Keeping that in mind, when it comes to the way she interacts with Tech specifically and the Batch, it’s very clear to understand the dynamic behind them when you look close enough. To recall a few instances, there was a time when she was recounting a story about finding a big treasure and Tech says something along the lines of “she changes this story every time she tells it”. He’s conveying to both the people in the show and us as viewers that she is a liar. She is either changing the story to make herself seem cooler, or maybe it didn’t happen at all and she’s making the entire thing up. Which, I will briefly mention again, are traits synonymous with narcissists. In another instance, Tech, Omega, and Wrecker were having a conversation where Tech is reprimanding them for bringing items back from a junkyard that they were in that they thought were cool instead of what he asked them to go find and bring back for him. I’m this conversation, Phee inserts herself and tells Tech that it’s not junk; also, in that same instance, not calling him by his name, which I will get to in a minute. Tech, in that moment, is trying to work, and his conversation with the other two was interrupted and fizzles out as Omega gets excited about the idea of a treasure map. A third is when the group is on Pabu and Phee is trying to get Tech to converse with her. His body language is hunched, tense, and he averts eye contact with her. When she prods him further, he is unsure how to engage in the conversation. And when he doesn’t respond in the way that she’s wanting him to, she talks about him to the rest of the Batch as he stands there around him and says to them how he “doesn’t know how to have fun”. And then they proceed to laugh at him. And again, you can see in his body language that he is confused as to why they’re laughing at him as well as uncomfortable being in that situation. And going off of that for another small fourth instance, there is another moment when they are getting ready to leave Pabu and she approaches Tech, who is working alone and trying to avoid contact with anyone, and says to him “So you’re just going to leave without saying goodbye?” His body language immediately tenses, he hunches further in on himself around his datapad, and his words make it clear he is both unsure and unwanting of the conversation. And when he does not respond in the way that she wants him to, she moves the datapad away from him to make him focus on her. She removes the item that brings him the most security to force him into engaging in a conversation he is uncomfortable with having. And again, these are all very intentional choices. They are not left up for interpretation. They are there to tell us what the character is feeling in that moment. They are trying to convey to us that he is uncomfortable. Not that he’s shy around a girl he thinks is pretty. And given on other scenarios that have happened throughout the show, it’s very clear that interpersonal relationships with anyone outside of Omega and the Batch is not something that he’s interested in. If they wanted to convey that he found her attractive, there are routes they could have taken to ensure that that comes across correctly to the audience, such as a faint little blush or rubbing a hand through his hair. But they didn’t do that, and instead chose for him to shy away and hide from certain situations or tense up and keep his head down in others. They are conveying to us that he does not like being around her. Because every single action they made him carry out took hundreds of hours of work to execute, and they would not go through all that trouble for no reason.

Branching off of that, we reach the topic of Tech’s name. When you watch the series as a whole, you can count on one hand the number of times that Phee refers to Tech by his actual name, while she refers to the others as their actual names. This is different from Cid in the way that Cid made that intentional choice to call them different things as a way to maintain distance from them. It’s clear from both her body language and her words that she did not want to get close to them. And really, wanted nothing to do with them unless they made her money. These are intentional choices. Phee’s character is designed to be flighty and unbothered. And she wants what she wants when she wants it. The choice to call Tech names and refer to everyone else by their names is an intentional choice. Him not understanding why she does that is an intentional choice. She does not respect him, which is why she does this. She can see that he doesn’t know what to do about it, so she keeps doing it. Like when a person presses on a bruise. These are all intentional choices made by the directors.

There was also a comment that said she behaves exactly like Crosshair does. And there are a few things I think did not entirely process when they made that comment. The first being that Crosshair was written to be one of the main antagonists for the first two season. I know they appeared in Clone Wars as well, but I’m talking specifically about Bad Batch. He was designed to be a bad guy that goes through a redemption arc; just like Zuko did in ATLA, for those who enjoy it. They both started out as antagonists, had horrible things happen to them, realized along their journey that maybe they were wrong, and are able to redeem themselves in the end and side with, or in Cross’ case, return to, the protagonists. In the beginning Cross was very sharp and defensive and thought he knew what was best. But he grew over time and learned how to care for people and share his weaknesses instead of putting on a facade all the time. And that’s the difference. We are reaching the end of the series and Phee has never had character growth to the level that Crosshair has and softens and opens up to the rest of the group. She hasn’t had any character growth at all. She is still the same exact person she was when we met her. There have been characters who have appeared for significantly less time that her, and if you pay attention to them, they have had significantly more growth than her as well.

The problem that I have begun to notice with people who are so quick to defend her actions is that they seem to be focusing more on her than on anything else. When you focus on just her, I can see how someone could mistake these interactions for being positive. Because all they’re focusing on is someone who’s having fun, and of course that would translate to something positive for him. But for the people who focus on Tech, it becomes very evident that these interactions are not positive. When you watch Tech, and I mean actually pay attention to him and not just watch him, you see all the subtle signs that you would otherwise miss. Him being annoyed and uncomfortable and confused and tired and generally not enjoying being around her. And this, unfortunately, happens a lot in real life too. People don’t take the time to absorb both sides of what’s happening. And since we as humans are quicker to pick up on people who are happy as opposed to people who are not, it’s so easy to miss the signals and just assume that what you’re watching is a happy interaction and put forth no further effort into making sure that’s actually what’s happening.

There is no other way to say that these things are all intentional. They wrote, designed, and sent out something that they have spent the past few years creating. When you understand the level of work that was put into it all, there are a lot of things that become very clear. And sure, headcanons exist and people can speculate what happens between the episodes. But headcanons can only go so far before it becomes ridiculous. We cannot confirm that Echo didn’t run off to go have a quiet life with Cid, but that doesn’t automatically mean that it’s true. Inferring things that are not within the realm of possibility is not conducive. Assuming that Phee spent a lot of time talking about her adventures that she may or may not have had with the Batch between the episodes? That’s conducive and we have clear evidence that would support that. Assuming that her and Tech had a very close relationship and she always listens to what he had to say between episodes? As much as some people want it to be true, it’s just not. There is no evidence that supports that line of thinking, and, in fact, there is a vast amount of evidence that would actually conform the opposite; such as Phee talking over everyone and commanding the conversation, not respecting things that Tech says, etc.

I’m going to wrap this up by talking a bit more personally now. There are plenty of people assuming that I’m a racist or a misogynist or that my literacy skills are lacking or whatever, but because you’re upset that someone is calling out the awful behavior of someone you like doesn’t make it any less true. And that applies to both this type of situation and in real life. I know who I am and what I stand for, and you trying to tell me that I’m otherwise changes nothing. And defaulting to assumptions like that shows that either you do not watch the show with a more attentive eye, or that’s all that you see Phee for. A black woman. Both of which are issues.

People are allowed to not like black characters, even if they are black.

People are allowed to not like Asian characters, even if they are Asian.

People are allowed to not like female characters, even if they’re women (or AFAB people).

People are allowed to not like LGBTQ characters, even if they are queer.

People are allowed to not like neurodivergent characters, even if they are neurodivergent.

People are allowed to not like characters that display particular traits or thought processes, even if they share those same traits or thought processes.

People are allowed to not like characters if they think that the character is bad.

Also, for the people saying I’m using my autism as a shield clearly don’t understand how autism works? I don’t say that to be an excuse. I say that to provide context and reasoning behind the things that I say. Like many other neurodivergent people do. You all are getting pressed about the wrong things. If you want to debate the time and study I’ve put into the show because I genuinely enjoy it, then be my guest. But don’t throw out petty insults and waste everyone’s time. At least put forth some more critical thinking behind it and try to figure out why someone could be saying the things that they’re saying

178 notes · View notes

yandereorg · 3 months

Note

Can you do hcs for your choice of characters having their captive get mad in an argument and spit in their face, in a distinctively disrespectful and unkinky way? Worst reactions to most tame reactions. Also, who's going to *MAKE IT* kinky, even if their captive didn't mean it that way? I can imagine a few people just opening their mouths and catching it to your disgust. -cia

Is disgusted

Bruce although this isn’t supported by cannon I feel like Bruce loves an age gap, like your 25 and he’s in his late 40s just because he likes the dynamic of him being a rich billionaire who knows everything but your still figuring yourself out and this is relevant because I don’t think he’d like the disrespect. Like he wants to be the person you come to for advice and help and he’ll provide for you and you are physically spitting in his face and in his head he’s saving you from poverty or having to work. if you’re a captive then you probably tried to leave/ Bruce thinks your a danger to yourself and this probably gets you the silent treatment and like he’ll make where ever you are freezing and take away any blankets you have or like outer layers like a hoodie or jumper so you have to crawl back to him and apologise. If that doesn’t work he might not feed you until you ask and have to crawl back to him that way.

Talia, she spits on you but you do not spit on her. She definitely will give you an insane punishment which is much too harsh considering this slight but it’s in the name of training you to be better. I think her punishments are like solitary until you’re so desperate for another person you see past her flaws. Poison Ivy I think shares talias reaction.

Secretly likes it but saves it for wank bank

Jason is hurt but he does like it when you take control, but will save for a lonely shower session later. He is hurt because he doesn’t want to fight and he is a little guilty over the whole kidnapping thing. He won’t punish you, hell storm away and lock you in a room for a few hours and than he’ll probably leave you some fruit cut up as a sign of peace

I feel like gar and Harley all fall into this category too

Is disgusting

Kori thinks you’re so cute! Trying to be in charge and she almost believed you were mad at her but now she knows this is how you flirt. She was scared for a second

Dick is mad as fuck and turned on. Will swallow it and make it sexual also you’re still getting that punishment after being victimised by this man and his undying hornyness

Roy, the king of grease and no shame. Will catch it in his mouth and is incredibly turned on my the show your putting on. Roy revels in the captor and captive power dynamic, do whatever you want as long as it’s to him and like you’re not leaving and you need to get it through your skull<3 a demon of hornyness, truly a greaseball and kidnapping his s/o means he can be his worst and they won’t leave!

#clinically insane anon #yandere dc #yandere jason todd #yandere batfamily #yandere roy harper #yandere koriand'r #yandere bruce wayne #yandere dick grayson #yandere talia al ghul

159 notes · View notes

demonhuntingcaterpillar · 5 months

Text

When Cursed Child was released there was uproar about the difference between Harry and Draco as fathers. Fans were upset that Draco Malfoy was such a calm, understanding father while Harry was a bit of a hot head. It was hard to grasp the distinct difference between the two characters as fathers. I’ll just resolve this whole issue with one word: Narcissa.

The biggest difference between Harry and Draco’s childhood is a mother’s love. Harry did not know what it was like to be parented or loved until he was 4 ft tall. Whereas Draco had grown up with a loving mother who cared for him while he was ill and tucked him in bed each night. Draco being such a good father to Scorpius makes sense because he had two polar opposites as parents. There was Lucius, who loves fiercely but his love is entirely conditional. And while I believe Lucius loved Narcissa more than life itself, he put his Death Eater duties and his thirst for power over his love for his son.

Narcissa was a different story entirely. Even though she married into the cause, she never took the dark mark. I believe this was because she saw what it required of Bellatrix, Regulus, and Lucius. She did not want to have to choose between Voldemort and Draco, because she knew she would always choose Draco. When Draco came of age, Lucius wanted to send Draco to Durmstrang. Even though Narcissa came from a world of pure bloods, she decided they would send Draco to Hogwarts. Prioritizing Draco’s safety over blood purity. This tells us she will choose Draco over Death Eater values. I believe losing her sisters and Regulus made Narcissa hyper aware of possible dangers and ever protective of her son. During his first year, we know it was hard on Narcissa to be away from Draco because she sent him sweets and letters daily. She is consistently protective of him, especially when Lucius must go to Azbakan. She bears her teeth and throws Sirius’s death in Harry’s face. Again, choosing Draco over anyone else, including her dead cousin Sirius. When Voldemort decides to make Draco take the mark as a punishment for Lucius’s mistakes, Narcissa sees his actions for what they are. She risks her life, along with her sister’s, in order to ask Severus to make the unbreakable vow. Narcissa gives Draco her wand during the war to be able to protect himself after Harry takes Draco’s. This leaves her and Lucius completely defenseless while Voldemort is LIVING IN THEIR HOUSE. They are in the midst of a war and Narcissa goes wandless for Draco. And finally, when Harry gives his life in the Forbidden Forest, Narcissa makes her biggest bad bitch mama bear move yet. She uses occlumency and lies to possibly the most powerful Legilimens ever, Lord Voldemort. She knows Draco is at Hogwarts, she knows he is more important to her than life itself. So when faced with this choice for maybe the billionth time in this woman’s life - Voldemort or Draco - she chooses Draco. Something her husband never had the balls to do.

So don’t come for me telling me Draco couldn’t have been a better parent than Harry. Don’t come for me telling me how terrible his father was and how there is no way a prat like Draco Malfoy could be understanding, forgiving, and loving. He knew what it was like to grow up with people hating/fearing him because of his father. He grew up knowing what it was like to be in the shadow of grand expectations, and what it was like to fail them. He grew up knowing the love of a mother’s touch and feeling Narcissa’s unconditional love. Draco Malfoy is an amazing father because Narcissa was an amazing mother. She put her love for Draco before blood status, before her husband, before life itself… which is exactly why Draco prioritized Scorpius’s happiness above everything else.

There’s a reason fanfic writers do everything but portray Narcissa as the Virgin Mary!!! She was just as good of a mother as Molly Weasley and Lily Potter. She was just as strong and brave and protective as Minerva McGonagall.

Sweet, loving Daddy Draco is canon and I will die on this hill.

#harry potter #hp #draco malfoy #scorpius #narcissa malfoy #lucius malfoy #draco #cursed child #harry potter and the cursed child #jk rowling #mothers love #canon #narcissa black #Narcissa #Scorpius Malfoy

153 notes · View notes

apas-75 · 1 month

Text

So last night I finished reading Rise of the Red Blade for TotE Vibes Research purposes and the two Inquisitor characters in it really illustrate exactly why I think Barriss is going to survive and escape them.

Because the thing is that there are two kinds of Inquisitors! The ones who volunteered, and the ones who...didn’t. Iskat (RotRB’s focus character) perfectly exemplifies the first type: she had some traumatizing experiences at a young age, fell through a number of institutional cracks in the Order, had a really terrible master (meet me in the pit, Sember Vey), everyone was too busy to give her the follow-up they would under normal circumstances, Palpatine had an agent actively gathering information about her and pushing her to become Worse—she was a pre-selected candidate who was offered the choice to come quietly when Order 66 hit, and she took it. By that point all of her issues and doubts had been exacerbated to the point where it wasn’t hard for her to make herself hate the Jedi, and then she rationalized her way through any indication that her freedom was a lie and doubled her way down right into hell.

By contrast: Tualon, Iskat’s crechemate situationship guy. He had some issues but was not someone on Palpatine’s radar; Iskat left him to die in Order 66 and he survived getting shot by darksiding out about her betrayal. Because of that he was taken alive and they did some shit to him. When Iskat runs into him at the Inquisitor HQ after he’s freshly-inducted he can barely remember why he hates her, or anything else from before he was taken. He woke up in the room where you fight Trilla and they fully shattered him and glued a semblance of a person back together out of the wreckage, just COMPLETELY Winter Soldiered the guy, and the only way he had to cope with it is to lean into a weird codependent situationship with Iskat.

And that distinction’s always been there with the Inquisitors; you have the true believers who ended up hating the Jedi or wanted to go on a power trip (or had the kind of revenge plan only a 12 year old could come up with and then stick to for a decade, in one case) and didn’t need any additional coercion to volunteer, and you have the ones that they broke. In the former group you’ve got the Grand Inquisitor, Reva/Third, Lyn/Fourth*, Fifth, and Iskat/Thirteenth. For the most part they’re certified freaks, but they came by it naturally. (Reva’s a different flavor.) In the latter, you’ve got Trilla/Second, Seventh, Masana/Ninth, Tualon, and probably most of the others. They all got disassembled and reassembled without much care given to the process and are all Coping with it badly in different ways, whether by deciding it’s Empowering, Actually (Trilla & Seventh) or by becoming completely jaded about everything (Masana & Tualon).

(*We obviously don’t know a lot about Fourth yet, but the fact that she shows up to recruit Barriss while rocking yellow dark side eyes before ROTS is even over tells me she’s definitely a volunteer.)

All this is to say: The Grand Inquisitor is making a colossal mistake with Barriss from the drop, and it’s why I think she’s going to win their battle of wits and escape. Because he is treating her like she is an Iskat and she could not be any farther from it.

He sends Lyn to get her to come quietly! They actively withhold information from her about what happened to the Jedi and what her expected role in it is! That’s not how they recruit the ones they think will be a problem; if that were the case she would have been stunned out of hand and woken up on a rack.

Instead, he’s giving her special attention,, he’s training her—he doesn’t think they need to break her. She’s just got a few...pesky hang-ups from her time as a Jedi that need ironing out**. He’s projecting on her; he doesn’t just want an empty shell holding a lightsaber—he wants Barriss Offee, loyally kneeling at his side, fully believing in their mission. She’s his favorite.

(**That “mercy only breeds defeat” line isn’t just a generic darksidism; I’m pretty sure he’s directly critiquing how Barriss got caught because she showed mercy to Asajj Ventress.)

And surely that's something he can turn her into, right? Because she hates the Jedi, right? She attacked them, she outsmarted them, obviously she’d be down for wanting to wipe them out! He was there when she confessed and, like pretty much everyone else in the room save for Ahsoka, he didn’t hear a single word that she said—just what he wanted her to be saying. He’s got a deeply incorrect idea of her, and that idea is “she’s just like me for real.”

And he’s wrong, because the Inquisitorius is everything she feared the Jedi Order was becoming—literally, an army fighting for the dark side—and the Empire is everything she knew the Republic was becoming. She might be prone to despairing, it might in some hypothetical be possible to get her into the same resigned despair trap as Anakin, but she would never actually want to serve the Empire, and they don't think they'll have to try hard to convince her to.

She loves the Jedi, she loved being a Jedi, she wanted to save them. She wants to be one again more than anything even though right now she thinks she doesn’t deserve it, thinks that she’s already too broken to reclaim what she was. But I think being surrounded by actual fallen Jedi and being told over and over again that she’s like them is, in the end, going to be what reminds her that she never stopped being a Jedi in the first place.

And as long as she can make sure her captors don't realize that's true until it's too late, she'll be home free.

#barriss offee #grand inquisitor #inquisitorius #tales of the empire #tote #star wars #they're gonna make her use the dark side and they're gonna make her do some stuff it'll be hard for her to live with #and she might give up hope for a minute #but I believe in her #she's gonna make it #the only way out is through

119 notes · View notes

sad-endings-suck · 4 months

Text

blue eye samurai popped off so hard in every department, but this post specifically is a shoutout to the character designers who manage to put so much personality, life, and uniqueness into each and every character to create a signature art style, while still maintaining realistic-like proportions and features that are more reminiscent of live action than animation.

not a single character with speaking lines or more than 3 secs of screen-time looks anything like any other character unless it’s intentional (i.e. resemblance between family members). not only are there so many different body types, but no one’s body is ridiculously proportioned. some characters are very thin (heiji), others are very large (shogun’s emissary), some are quite powerfully built (chiaki)… but then there’s everything else in between!! mizu is very lean and androgynous, and she definitely has muscles, but she’s not ridiculously skinny, nor does she greatly lack softness in her torso, hips, and chest. mizu very much has a woman’s body, her proportions are just not exaggerated to make her look overtly masculine or overtly feminine. unlike some other animes that would absolutely give mizu ridiculously defined muscle mass and 8-pack abs, or maybe a 10 inch waist and huge boobs (that she magically hid completely with some diy fabric bindings and a dream) and then credit those choices to “art style”.

ringo is on the bigger softer side physique-wise, and his body is a perfectly normal human body that any normal person may potentially have! akemi and taigen are both conventionally attractive within the story, but even still, neither is the perfect personification of masculine or feminine “beauty”. yes akemi is very petite and slim, with a more hourglass shape, but she still very much has a body type that some real people naturally have. she has a stomach! and i don’t mean that she has a protruding stomach, i just mean her stomach actually exists. so does mizu’s, even if they both have small flat stomachs, they still very much don’t have itty bitty anime waists. though they are both slender women, they have actual room for organs and ribs in their torsos!! or on the other end of things, there’s taigen, who may be very athletically built, but again, it’s not to an impossible degree or standard. he still very much has the build of a real human person, not a comic book hero with a 12-pack. even fowler, who is on the heavier-set side (presumably from his lifestyle, surviving famine, etc) also has strength to his build that many other characters do not, indicating he does keep up with his training and is very much physically dangerous.

and that’s just the body diversity! we are shown characters and character models of young adults, mature adults, babies, seniors, young children, older children, teens, etc. women in their 40s/50s/60s (madame kaji, lady itoh, “mama”).

hell, the fact that the art style can be so consistent throughout, and yet akemi looks like she’s been rendered in watercolours, whereas taigen appears as if he’s been painted with acrylic is crazy!! or how well the show is able to convey that mizu very much looks like a woman, yet it also convincingly shows us how she’s able to pass as a man through a slew of details is amazing. such as her more androgynous features, her height, a scarf to hide her lack of adam’s apple, hat to conceal her features, orange tinted glasses the cancel out the blue of her eyes, baggy pants and boxy top to hide her silhouette, poncho and sword positioned to give the illusion she takes up more space in the world LIKE A MAN WOULD and so much more.

It’s just so beautiful to see, not only because it speaks to the skill of the creatives and the level of care and attention to detail with which this story was clearly made, but also because it proves you don’t have to “choose” between a distinct art/animation style and diversity. by combining animation and live action, and using the best aspects of both, blue eye samurai has managed to capture something that no other animated production I’ve seen, has (no, not even arcane). and that is allowing the personhood and character of a live action actor/model to come through in the character they are portraying. no matter how much beautiful animation i watch, there is almost always some level of “default” face, body type, height, or facial features that are consistent across every character, and blue eye samurai proves that this is not just due to “art style”. it’s a limitation of the medium of animation (to an extent), or at least, it was.

we live in an era where plastic surgery, photo/video retouching, workout supplements, trendy scheme diets, beauty consumerism, etc, are at an all time high. so it’s such a relief to see an animated project of all things choose to reflect real human appearances in its work, and not only that, but do so without ever commenting on it. as an animated project, it could “beautify” its characters as much as it likes to make them all same-face/same-body conventionally attractive, and excuse it as their “art style”. but blue eye samurai does not do that. they said “no, we can do better. we can do way better” and they did. the way bes is shot leaves no room for women (or anyone) to be sexualized or objectified, regardless of how much nudity and sex there is in the show. it demonstrates that sexuality and sexualisation are in no way inherently synonymous. there are no unnecessary comments about a character’s body that feel off or not in tune with the social perceptions of the time period in which the story is set. it’s just amazing to see.

#blue eye samurai #mizu blue eye samurai #blue eye samurai meta #taigen blue eye samurai #akemi blue eye samurai #fowler blue eye samurai #blue eye samurai art #blue eye samurai animation #bes mizu #bes akemi #bes taigen #bes ringo

140 notes · View notes

the-descolada · 6 months

Text

Spoiler-Free Advance Review:

Exordia by Seth Dickinson

I could not put this book down, my god. Staying up super late multiple nights because I couldn’t stop reading is such a great problem to have, and Exordia gave me that problem more than any book I’ve read in a few years.

This is a very different book than Baru, but Seth’s evocative prose and dark humor is familiar from page one, and the laser focus on defamiliarizing real world injustices is again the core of the work. Despite being far more immediate (Exordia is set during the Obama administration in our world, with an alternate history beginning from the moment the book starts), the heaviness of the topics never gets overwhelming. There’s some incredible (and extremely fitting) tonal dissonance here, with every perspective character having their own sense of disaffected humor about the apocalyptic situation they’ve been thrown into.

I described this to my friend after just starting as “if the Books of Sorrow were written with Gideon the Ninth’s tone and just straight up in our world,” and I think that remains true throughout. There’s a huge amount of references peppered in, and it helps maintain that lighter tone to balance the despair of what is essentially a doomsday clock ticking down throughout the book - and it helps keep things grounded, honestly. I never felt it took away from the gravity of things, or was unnatural - after all, if I, an early 21st century sci fi nerd, was thrown into some fucked up alien bioweapon mystery, it’s hard to say my first thought wouldn’t be “oh shit, this is just like the Andromeda Strain!”

Having seven (eight?) different protagonist (or deuteragonist, I don’t know which they qualify as) PoVs is pretty wild but works perfectly here. Every character has such a unique outlook that you can instantly figure out whose head you’ve popped into even before any identifying names or things are mentioned - Seth’s mastery of the tonally cohesive PoV shifts was something I had loved in Tyrant, especially, and they’re equally impressive here. The characters are lovable, hatable, and everything in between - and each as mentioned is so distinct and compelling that I can’t say there was a single character who I was unhappy to get into their head. And that’s saying something, given who some of these characters are, but I’ll leave the specifics a surprise. Predictably, my favorites were the dysfunctional autistic butch-femme lesbians, but I really loved all of them in the end.

The base premise is almost comical in how small it starts to how much it escalates - a cynical, disillusioned Kurdish genocide survivor, Anna Sinjari, meets a terrifying (and yes…very hot. I’m a simple woman) alien in Central Park, and this seemingly chance encounter sees her roped into a small group of scientists, soldiers, and her own mother in a desperate countdown to solve an otherworldly mystery and save their world. The twists and turns of the plot are intense, so engaging that I was bouncing up and down at times (there’s plenty of sci-fi insanity that I absolutely eat up), and tightly paced.

Seth seems to really enjoy writing ethical dilemmas to great effect, and Exordia is ruthless in that area, taking the base concept of the trolley problem and the moral justification for what someone would sacrifice for the greater good and carving it apart for narrative weight. What greater good does the sacrifice serve? Is it actually good? Who gets to make the choice, and do they have a choice but to make it? There’s a lot to dig into here, and Exordia is a four course meal.

One aspect of this simply taking place in our world, rather than being an alternate universe like Baru, is that the defamiliarized commentary is even more on the nose. Whereas Baru is a commentary on empire and homophobia as a whole, transparently pulling from primarily American history of genocide and imperialism to shape a culture unlike our own in many ways to defamiliarize this moral exploration, Exordia is just literally about real world American imperialism and enabling of genocide in the MENA region, primarily the ramifications of the military industrial complex’s usage of drone warfare and the extremist regimes armed and encouraged by “counterterrorism.”

All this sets the stage for the question of what happens when a bigger fish arrives, one just as hell bent on empire building and justifying its own atrocities. The sci-fi intervention into this banal evil is at the same time a reflection of that evil, and asking if the world has the capacity for resistance to both. Exordia’s answer is profound, and far from easy, but entirely fitting for the ethical dilemma that runs throughout the book, creeping up on you slowly as you start to recognize what shape it takes in this story.

The central material conflict of the book, a locked box mystery of sorts that you piece together with the characters, is fucked up and fun and scary, a reality shifting threat that treads the line between body horror, meta-narrative, and lovecraftian math. It’s extremely cool, and I think it’ll be right up the alley of fans of The Andromeda Strain, The Locked Tomb, The Books of Sorrow and other parts of Destiny lore, and a lot of other SFF stories where ethics, horror, and mystery mix together.

I don’t want to say too much about the climax and the ending - going into this book without knowing too much was an incredible experience that had me on the edge of my proverbial seat - but the ending left me asking myself some very similar questions as I had at the end of Traitor, and I cannot wait for a reread when the physical book is in my hands to see what little foreshadowed things I can pick up on.

I don’t think people are going to be quite as completely emotionally Destroyed at the ending of this one as Traitor, but…it is very much a Seth Dickinson book, and they have quite the talent for making every thread tie together at the end to make the reader feel every emotion at once and realize that this could never have gone any other way. I cried, I laughed, sometimes simultaneously, and a book that can do that to me is entirely worth the experience - and what an experience this was.

Absolutely fucking incredible, I want more of these characters and everything they’re wrapped up in, 10/10.

I received an ARC of this novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

#exordia #seth dickinson #my writing #sci fi #sff books #queer sff

76 notes · View notes

acre-of-wheat · 1 year

Text

Everyone ready for an unhinged theory about The Gales from Willow 2022?

So obviously they’re a dark mirror for our protagonists, and they function like a lot of teams of baddies in media-- they tie up each character in combat scenes by either having skills that subvert what the heroes are good at, or are simply just better at the same skills the heroes have.

Have a fast and dexterous fighter like Kit? Throw the Scourge at her and it overpowers anything she throws at it. Have a knight commander in full armor? Toss the Lich at him and have it bamf out of existence every time he swings his sword at it.

But I think there’s more to them than being battle foils for the characters. When Elora and Kit are hemmed in by the Gales and Airk, he tells them that the Gales are, “not what you think they are.”

So much of Willow has to do with the past, and choices, visions and alternate futures, recursions and cursed blood. I think that the Gales actually are our heroes, from a time when they gave into the Crone’s temptations.

Spoilers under the cut.

The Lich / Graydon Hastur

There’s a lot going on with Graydon.

First, his scar. I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s something magic going on here, and my guess is that it is a seal meant to prevent whatever possessed Graydon in the first place from popping out again.

I’m going to hazard a guess that whatever is still inside him is where his magic comes from. Magic apparently comes in several colors, but it does seem to at least partially relate to who is casting it, and what the spell is.

Willow and Elora’s natural colors are green, which you can see in the training montages and in Elora’s battle with the crone. Red appears to be pretty obviously bad.

Something happens to Elora’s magic color when she casts a Nekotic spell the Crone taught her though. The color turns darker, and goes blue.

Graydon’s “natural” spell color seems to be purple, and it doesn’t change based on what he casts, even when he fights the Crone and uses a spell that sounds very Nekotic.

I think it’s only a matter of time before the influence of the Wyrm makes Graydon’s spell work go fully red.

I also think his scar/seal is spreading. During the trek across the shattered sea, Graydon begins to learn magic. We know from Willow that magic takes a toll on the body, and we see that a bit with Graydon during a conversation with Elora.

She tells him not to scratch at something, and Graydon pulls his shirt aside to look, very carefully not revealing what it is. It’s worth noting that this is not on the side that he was injured on, so it’s not that “acting up.” Instead, I think it’s the seal spreading as he uses more and more magic, thinning the line between him and whatever possessed him.

If the scar continues to spread, perhaps Graydon might come to look like the Lich that we know-- covered completely in scar tissue.

The Doom / Jade Claymore

This is the one that initially got the gears turning, and all because of the weapons involved.

Throwing stars are only used by two characters in the show, and it seems like such an odd choice. Not daggers, axes, or javelins, but throwing stars. The Bone Reavers and the Tir Asleen knights don’t seem to use them, so they’re not a cultural practice that Jade might be familiar with. They aren’t used in the original movie either. Jade uses them once in battle, and then once during a training scene which doesn’t seem to have any story significance other than to remind us that she has them.

The only other character to use such a distinctive weapon is the Doom, when attacking the silt sleigh.

Because we’re talking about weapons, it’s worth noting that the Doom dual wields metal whips. Until the last episode, the only one of our heroes to dual wield her weapons is Jade, when she uncouples her sword from its staff/sheath

Speaking of distinctive, the Doom’s dark metal face plate is pretty unique, but we do know another character who wears a face mask into battle-- a battle that took some of Jade’s innocence with it.

I also really like the symbolism of the Doom’s first fight being with Kit and Sorsha, the very people Jade is most adamant about protecting.

The Dag / Kit Tanthalos

This one feels like a fairy-tale curse. What does Kit’s dream mother offer her? Freedom, a chance to go wherever she wants. In the usual wicked twist of irony, why not make that freedom both symbolic and literal by transforming her into a bird creature? Rootless, homeless, chasing after who she used to be and the girl she used to love.

The Scourge / Thraxus Boorman

This one doesn’t have much to go on-- they’re both tall, beefy dudes? The only thing that might be symbolic is that we know Boorman would rather jump off the edge of the world than have an intimate conversation-- what better way to avoid intimacy than to have a spiked cage around your head?

#willow #kit tanthalos #jade claymore #elora danan #graydon hastur #thraxus boorman #willow spoilers #willow 2022

392 notes · View notes

overheard-at-camp-half-blood · 5 months

Text

Zeus Cabin Deep Dive & Analysis

As stated in the Percy Jackson TV show and books, being a demigod sucks, especially given the broken system. Being a forbidden child sucks, given that it is an isolating experience. However, being the child of the god who is one of, if not the most responsible for the broken system, the god most unwilling to change his perspective, is the worst.

Not only that, add that in with the fact that being a child of Zeus gives you alot of added pressures in general. As a child of Zeus, you are expected to lead in one way or another, and almost always, children of Zeus have very little say in their paths in life.

Thalia Grace managed to escape the pressures of being a child of Zeus by joining the hunters. Jason, was a boy, so he didn’t get that same choice. Instead, he was forced to endure the pressures of being a child of Jupiter, until he was able to pass it down to someone else.

However, Jason was never truly free from these pressures until he died.

It also seems like, contrary to popular belief, Zeus isn’t a very popular godly parent. In a series of polls I ran, I asked people about their godly parents- nobody chose Zeus. The survey for Zeus cabin remained blank. I asked if people knew someone in real life who would be a child of Zeus, most said no.

Zeus, in general seems to be a very unpopular god in general, and it may seem very arrogant to many to claim to be a child of Zeus. I also don’t think there are a lot of discussions on children of Zeus in general.. because analyzing the Zeus cabin as a whole, there are many traits that I think alot of people don’t realize.

The curse of being a natural leader

While he is Roman, I am going to be including Jason in this analysis, because I think a lot of what applies to Thalia also applies to him, even if there is a slight difference.

Now, Jason and Thalia are the only two (demigod) children of Zeus we meet throughout the series, and both characters have distinct personality traits. Thalia, is much more hot-headed than Jason is. Jason is more experienced in leadership than Thalia is, but there is one thing they certainly have in common: they are often under immense amounts of pressure.

They are natural born leaders, mainly because their father is the king of Olympus. Leadership seems to be the trait most commonly associated with Zeus kids- even when I did the fandom survey, asking what traits people commonly associate with Zeus kids, nearly everyone said leadership.

There had always been a lot expected from Jason, being a child of Jupiter. He was expected to lead, he was Camp Jupiter’s golden boy, and sure, a lot of it was pure skill and experience, but a lot of it was also the fact that he was a child of Jupiter.

These pressures only followed him to Camp Half Blood, where he was immediately expected to lead a quest. Jason is shown to be somewhat tired of the expectations placed on him.

Thalia… was pretty much the same, just slightly different.

Thalia was not only a child of Zeus, but at one point, she was thought to be the child of the prophecy. So not only was she expected to be a leader, not only was an unreasonable amount of attention placed upon her for being a child of Zeus, there was also a level of danger that followed her around as well.

Until of course, she became a hunter of Artemis, and the expectations shifted back to Percy. However, I am fully of the belief that a lot of factors went into her decision of joining the hunt, but among the most significant factors, was that she would be free from the near impossible expectations.

Gifted Kid Burn Out

A lot of people associate gifted kid burn out with Athena kids, and don’t get me wrong, I understand why, but from examples we see in the text, children of Zeus often fit this mold much better. Children who are proven to be very gifted at a young age, very good at what they do, so they were given high, nearly impossible expectations.

Half the time, they had very little help or support navigating these expectations. Thalia ran away from home at a young age, and didn’t get to train at camp in the same way other characters were. Jason was raised by wolves… literally. So for the most part, they were left behind by the system that created them.

Then they are put into situations, with people just as good at leading, some just as powerful, after being told their whole lives they were the best at everything. That has got to suck, to be shown that you really aren’t as good at something you are supposed to be the best at.

For Thalia, we see her become a bit competitive, especially with Percy. Their egos, as children of the Big Three, tend to clash, because they are almost always fighting for the attention and respect of others.

Jason, however, does not know what to do with himself anymore. We see glimpses of him going through a existential crisis- why does he always have to be the leader? But what is he, if he is not a leader?

Thalia and Jason tend to show many traits of traumatized gifted kids, to the point where they just give up altogether.

The shittiest father in a world of shitty fathers.

Okay, this is obviously subjective, but Zeus, in the Percy Jackson universe, is probably the worst father, even towards his godly children. He quite literally tells Jason that he cannot openly show his pride towards him, or else his other children will get jealous. Not only this, but he is responsible for a lot of decisions that force godly parents to be somewhat neglectful towards their children, especially after the first series.

It is deeply implied throughout the two series, that Zeus does love his children… to an extent. He does not love his children enough to put his pride aside for them. So as isolating as it is, being Zeus’s son, they seem to be most isolated by their father.

In Conclusion

I feel like children of Zeus are some of the most misunderstood children, at least fandom wise. There seems to be this idea that all children of Zeus are arrogant assholes, like their father, but they are actually the most obvious examples of the gods’ neglect.

Overall, most children of Zeus find ways to be freed of their fate, of their responsibilities, because oftentimes, it is overbearing. Some die. Some pass the torch. Some join the hunt.

Either way, one thing is for certain: where there is a child of Zeus, there is a leader.

The Masterlist

#thalia grace #jason grace #zeus cabin

51 notes · View notes

longing-for-rain · 8 months

Note

I know you said no bait asks, and I promise this isn't, I'm genuinely curious to hear an opinion from a Zutara shipper who seems pretty rational. (I am not a kataang fan either by the way so I'm not trying to argue that or anything.). Do you believe that Zutara is a feminist relationship in comparison to Kataang? And what are your reasons for being so strongly invested in Zutara?

Hi, thanks for the ask. I’ll do my best to explain my feelings on this, but to summarize, I think there are two questions here that aren’t inherently related: a) is Zutara feminist and b) why do I like it so much. I know this might surprise you, but even though Zutara is my OTP, I don’t consider it inherently feminist. Let me explain though because that doesn’t mean it’s a bad ship at all.

Obviously, I really like the characters together. However, I won’t go ahead and say it’s the “feminist” choice over kataang, because personally I think that discussing whether a female character has a feminist narrative should not center around which man she ends up with. The primary focus should be on her narrative independently. And if she doesn’t have an independent narrative, well…that’s not feminist at all.

But I’ll answer in more detail below because I think this is an interesting distinction.

a) Is Zutara feminist over Kataang?

Like I said above…no, not inherently. I think what this question is getting at is which relationship gives Katara as a character a feminist narrative, which is a tricky question. Only one of these ships is canon, so we only know how one relationship would have played out in the eyes of the creators. Everything else is up to the interpretation of fans.

First things first, I absolutely do not think kataang, as portrayed in canon, adds to Katara’s independent narrative as a character, and certainly doesn’t contribute to any potential feminist narrative of her character. There are many instances of Katara being damseled and/or generally reduced in complexity whenever she’s placed in a “romantic” situation involving Aang. Despite Katara also being a main character, the “crush” is portrayed entirely through Aang’s POV. And post canon, Katara ends up being relegated to the role of a healer who stays home at the South Pole (this is why I could never get invested in LoK). Which, if you paid attention to her character at all, was something she explicitly stated she didn’t want to be and fought to escape. Ending her story that way reversed any “feminist” narrative set up in ATLA. So no, this is not a narrative that centers Katara and her ambitions at all.

Now onto fanon content.

The beauty of fanon is that it’s completely up to interpretation. Fans can give the characters whichever narratives they want. This goes for both Zutara and kataang. Just because your ship is canon doesn’t mean you have to adhere to canon; many canon shippers write “fix it” type content or otherwise make changes to the canon relationship to make it more appealing to them. I’m sure there are kataang shippers who rewrite their canon relationship to give Katara a feminist narrative, but to be honest the ship just doesn’t appeal to me at all so I haven’t seen those, but I’m not saying they don’t exist.

Now, Zutara. Even though there are definitely some hints in the series, there was nothing explicitly romantic between these characters in canon. So, fans are free to interpret how a relationship between Zuko and Katara would play out, and therefore Katara’s narrative within that relationship. Some people do make a strong effort to give Katara a feminist story, and in my experience, this is often a direct response to canon. But on the other side of the coin, some people absolutely…do not. It’s a big ship with lots of content. Some of it gives Katara’s character a feminist narrative, some of it…does the exact opposite of that. I think anyone familiar with the ship is probably well aware of some of the unsavory tropes associated with it so I won’t get into that.

But anyways, for any ship, there is a variety of content featuring Katara. Sometimes she’s a great warrior, sometimes she plays an important political role, and sometimes she’s just treated like a slave. Sometimes she has her own wants and ambitions and sometimes her story revolves entirely around whichever male character the author is thirsty for. Sometimes she’s treated as a complex human being and sometimes she just exists to be a fetish. Which again, goes for literally any ship and character you can think of.

So when asking yourself if Katara is given a feminist narrative, asking which man she’s paired with is asking the wrong question. Instead the focus should be on Katara herself and what the message of the story says about her.

b) Why do you like Zutara?

Although you can probably tell from the above, I do consider myself a feminist and enjoy analyzing media from that perspective. But honestly, that has little to do with why I like this relationship so much.

Sorry if this answer is boring, but I just…like them. Everyone has different tastes. For me, I was immediately drawn to them watching the show as a kid, because I’m a sucker for that sort of hurt/comfort dynamic they had going on in books 2-3. Growing up and taking a closer look, I also found that I see Zuko and Katara as having a lot of similar values and personality traits that I feel would make them compatible in a relationship. Also, there’s the fact that I just really like Katara and Zuko as individual characters so I like the fact that Zutara allows me to explore both characters by themselves, as well as how they interact together.

But if I’m being real, the final Agni Kai scene is what sold me. The emotional intensity of that scene just had me hooked for life. It’s really not much deeper than that, but yes, I’m extremely obsessed and emotionally invested in this ship.

And yes, I do write a lot of Zutara fic and do my best to give Katara independent goals and ambitions and agency as a character. I do my best to write her in a way that portrays a feminist narrative because I personally find that important. But that’s something I could apply to any ship. I don’t think it’s inherently feminist to ship Zutara, because like I said earlier, it completely depends on the individual fans and how they interpret it. I like interpreting it in a way that gives Katara individual power and goals, but that’s just me. Not everyone writes Zutara the same way.

Hope that answers your question ❄️

#katara #zutara #fandom salt #ish #pro zutara #kataang critical #well more like canon critical #ask #anon #analysis #atla #feminism

77 notes · View notes

accirax · 10 months

Text

Literature Girl Insane and the Color Connection Theory

(Spoilers for DRDT’s Literature Girl Insane MV, as well as through Chapter 2 Episode 11. Vague spoilers for Super Danganronpa 2 and New Danganronpa V3. Because the images in this post are mainly designed to showcase the colors presented in the MV, there will be no image IDs in this post.)

Wow! Literature Girl Insane is… so much!! There is literally so much to look at that I don’t know how we’re supposed to handle it!!!

I mean that all in a glowingly positive way, to be clear. The DRDT creator has granted us an exciting puzzle that may take months to fully solve/analyze (or maybe we’ll never finish it), with so many facets that there are still things that I haven’t seen much of anybody talking about.

Speaking of, I’d like to take a look at the colorization of some of the lyrics! As per my eye, there are 15 distinct colors that appear in the lyrics of the MV. I distinguish the lyrics as “the words that are outlined in black (or white, when the color is black),” so any of the colored text in the background, such as the literary passages, will not be included in my analysis.

An important piece of information that I’ll reference a lot is the official colors that have been assigned to the students. That being, the color that the first letter of each of their first names gains when the students enter the Class Trial.

Because Xander never attends a Class Trial, he has no confirmed color, unless I’m forgetting something. However, based on his bright hair, I would have to assume that the color of that letter would have been a fiery red. It’s even on the opposite side of Teruko on the color wheel.

David has two colors; one for his inspirational speaker persona (yellow) and one for his depressed theater kid persona (gray). I don’t think J’s color changes between being listed as J Rosales and J Moreno. Although I didn’t put it on the chart, MonoTV appears to have no color, with all of the letters in its name remaining white. Some of my personal assignments will go against these color choices, but I think it’s still important to keep in mind.

Since Tumblr doesn’t want to let me use as many colors as I want, I will put in an image of what each color looks like the first time it appears. I’m going to analyze each color in order of how many times it appears in the MV, from most to least. That means the first color is…

Red

are all just idiots (final verdict); Bye; whatever; Goodbye.; go mad; together; are all just idiots!; Bye; broken; go insane?; ignorant; God; go mad; great applause!!!; Aa; won’t change; original; you’ve killed so many; and disappear!; 1; medicine; [untranslated characters]; [untranslated characters]; [untranslated characters]; go mad; self delusion; isn’t it!?; ah,

(If you want time stamps and pictures of the characters, I wrote them down in the document Venus and I compiled together)

Red appears 28 times throughout the MV, and as you can tell, they’re very… edgy. It’s a very interesting color, given that there are multiple characters I think it could apply to.

The first option is Veronika. Her color is a bright red, and she’s no stranger to creepiness. Things like “go mad” and “you’ve killed so many” could definitely be words she’s spoken to her problematic faves like Arturo or David. The selection of “broken” could apply to her hidden quote: “once something is broken, it can never be pieced together in quite the same way again. The same goes for people.” If Veronika herself is something that is/was “broken,” going insane could apply to her as well. Some people have already called her delusional, which could fit right in with “self delusion.” With her chaotic attitude, I can also easily imagine her using the intense punctuation (!!! and !?) seen on some of the lines.

The biggest problem with this interpretation is that, frankly, I don’t think Veronika merits this level of importance in this MV. Now, that’s not to say that I don’t like Veronika, or don’t think she’s important– I love Veronika! I just don’t think she’s that important to David, who this MV is about.

They could have more of a connection in the future, given that Veronika has started simping for his dark side, but thus far they’ve barely interacted at all. The most damning rebuttal is the cast list at the end.

Would the color that appears the most in the MV really go to a character that doesn’t even make the supporting cast list?

The main way that I can imagine that Veronika actually is red is if she is the mastermind. That would explain how she could claim such a prolific color in general, yet why she wouldn’t yet be listed as a Main Role– because David (presumably) wouldn’t know that she’s the mastermind. If David survives for a while alongside mastermind Veronika, it would also give more of a chance for their relationship to develop down the road.

Still, it would make more sense to me if red did belong to a listed character; even better if one of the main roles. Someone like…

Option two: Xander Matthews.

Xander is obviously a key player in this MV, and like I said, I would guess that his character color would be red. Even if it was, say, yellow (for his eyes) instead, I don’t really think anybody could complain if he showed up as red in the MV.

The focus on the word “bye” would also fit Xander. He’s dead now, and David has clearly been thinking about him, so he could constantly be saying “bye” to Xander after the rebel “and disappear!”-ed from life. Xander had to treat his eye in the infirmary, so “medicine” could make sense for his character. “You’ve killed so many” could be something that David could imagine Xander saying to him in his guilt-ridden spirals. Although, as far as is confirmed, David has never actually killed anybody, including in his secret. Venus adds that “You’ve killed so many” could be Xander speaking to himself, stewing in his survivor’s guilt about the death of his family. She also says that “go mad” sounds like something a British person would say. You never know what she’ll have to contribute /lh.

Speaking of things Xander could say, though… I have a hard time imagining that he would say some of these things. I’m sure Teruko would tell me that I’m naive to have any trust left in the guy, but some lines just seem out of character for him, to me? Like, calling everyone idiots and telling people to “go insane” feels very different from how he acted in Chapter 1. Maybe if Xander was reflecting on his own “going insane” after he stabbed Teruko, it could work?

The line that stood out to me the most for not fitting Xander was actually “won’t change,” though. Man’s the Ultimate Rebel. He’s all about inciting change in people. Whatever this thing is that won’t change– David’s attitude, the mastermind’s wickedness, the continuation of the killing game– would he really be chiming in to say that it’s immutable? But, if I don’t really think that it’s Xander or Veronika, then what red person could be left?

Ah, right… the classic copout option, #3, Mai Akasaki.

I say “copout” because, overall, we know very little about her personality. Therefore, it’s easy to put words like “idiot” and “insane” into her mouth because there can’t be too much of a counterargument. It does seem like a pretty big contrast to her characterization as Unnamed Student (assuming that’s her), but given this series’ penchant for moral bankruptcy, I wouldn’t be surprised if her nice exterior hides a more sinister slant.

However, there are some genuine points in Mai’s favor here. First is the red color– Mai’s hair is red, and Teruko even notes that Xander’s red hair reminded her of Mai’s. Thus, if I speculated that Xander’s color could be red, Mai’s could be too. She’s at least in the Supporting Cast, unlike Veronika. “Bye” and particularly “and disappear!” would also fit Mai well, given her absence in the killing game. “God” is also of particular note, as it’s the first word in Mai’s roman numeral quote, “God is dead.” Mai also seems to be worshiped like a god among those who remember her (Teruko potentially excluded), and the MV notes her as “someone dearly loved.”

Those three aspects of God could be leading us to the conclusion that red represents Mai in this MV, and it’s that interpretation that I’ve decided to roll with. I promise I’ll pick up the pace for the next colors, okay?

Yellow

game; Bye; cat; is what you’re told; ambition; the falling slanted sun; Bye; “happiness”?; dead; make noise; The acclamation is; live; original; 2; Let’s do that! [translated]; shout; ah,; miserable

While Eden is the only holder of the color yellow as of Chapter 2 Episode 11, I think this color has to go to the man, the myth, the now-starless star himself, David Chiem. I mean, c’mon. It’s his MV. He has to have one of the most prominent colors.

But even beyond the yellow, there’s a lot that points to David here. Since I just mentioned the fading of the stars in David’s eyes, let’s start with “the falling slanted sun”. As the sun itself is a star, this line could represent both how the stars have fallen out of David’s eyes and how he, a star, is falling in the public’s perception. Given his determination to save his career, “ambition” certainly fits David’s character, and he “make[s] noise” every time he gives a speech, making people believe “what [they’re] told”. But despite his stage persona, he’s always felt “dead” and “miserable” on the inside.

Perhaps the most interesting line here is the “Let’s do that!”, which can be seen here.

(It’s the only line in Japanese we were able to translate ourselves T-T)

Even if it’s a “let’s do that!” instead of a “no, that’s wrong!”, which means that David is arguably only agreeing with himself, the protagonist imagery here is exceptionally clear. Not to mention, every canonical protagonist post-Makoto has been able to access consent points as well.

I’ve definitely seen people out there theorize that David may become Despair Time’s protagonist one day, and while I found the concept merely amusing at first, the more evidence piles up, the more I’m forced to believe it may be true. So, if David is represented by the color yellow, this could be further evidence/foreshadowing towards his future role. If so, I’m particularly intrigued by the fact that yellow has both “dead” and “live”. It seems like David’s alignments and beliefs are still up in the air.

Green

this guy →; Bye; a life full of much shame; make noise; this guy; anonymous; Bye!; substance of the arts; this guy; original; 4; make noise; clown

Similar to yellow, there are two primary candidates for the color of green. And while Hu has a better argument than Eden did on yellow due to being listed in the supporting cast, her greatest competitor, Teruko, is also in the supporting cast.

Did you know that green appears thirteen times throughout the MV? Of course it’s fucking Teruko.

There’s a good argument to be made that, with her tragic backstory, Teruko is one who’s lived “a life full of much shame.” Doubly so if you believe that she has the “the killing game is all your fault” secret, which I personally do. Because she’s moved around so much and doesn’t seem to have many attachments to people, you could say that she’s “anonymous” in a lot of her actions.

Teruko “make[s] noise” frequently in both Daily Life, when she refuses to avoid the subject of murder and thrusts knives at people, and Deadly Life, where she maniacally laughs her way through solving the entire trial for those idiots twice in a row. However, due to her over-the-top lack of trust in anybody, I could still believe that David would see her as a “clown”. A smart clown, but a clown nonetheless. (She also had her sillier moments as well, especially when Xander was alive.)

The line that makes the least sense to me is honestly “substance of the arts,” especially given that it’s part of Veronika’s roman numeral phrase. Teruko doesn’t seem particularly artistic to me. Maybe it’s just meant to imply that she’s a girl with a lot of substance? If “the arts” were theater, it could be saying that her life is very tragic and dramatic? And if Teruko is a substantial, dramatic character, maybe Veronika would appreciate that? I’m obviously reaching, but I still do believe that green represents Teruko here.

Cyan

dog; No Longer Human; game!; I; isn’t that; original; LET’S LAUGH; just like that; 3; cry; foolish; “kapukapu”

While it might seem like this color should belong to J, given that it’s quite similar to her character color, I actually believe that this color represents someone else. Namely, MonoTV.

MonoTV’s official character color is white, but its face is obviously a bright cyan. It even tells Teruko that its favorite color is blue in Chapter 2 Episode 3, so I don’t think that calling MonoTV cyan is a stretch at all.

The most obvious clue that MonoTV could be cyan is “dog,” which is pasted over “cat” (in yellow) at 0:37. The replacement of “cat” isn’t written in the original lyrics of the song, so the creator definitely intended for this to relate back to MonoTV. Why not give the mascot itself the line correcting the species? “No Longer Human” fits along with this creature angle as well.

“game!” is another obvious one, as MonoTV is the excitable host of this killing game. While “LET’S LAUGH” seems sweet out of context, in the killing game, it could seem much more heartless and robotic. The all-caps approach also makes it feel threatening. “cry” could also be a command to the students, like when MonoTV encourages them to create more drama in Chapter 1. I don’t remember a specific instance of MonoTV calling the students “foolish”, but it doesn’t seem out of character at all.

I couldn’t figure out exactly what a kapukapu was, unfortunately. It’s a reference to Yamanashi, a children’s book by Kenji Miyazawa, but they don’t actually describe what a kapukapu is in that book. When I googled “kapukapu,” it came up with a Sega character described as an antagonistic “orange cat creature with yellow eyes, a zigzag shaped tail, and big sharp fangs.” The creator definitely knows more Japanese than I do, but if they were similarly struggling on this one, they may have also googled kapukapu, seen “evil cat” and said, “yeah, that sounds enough like MonoTV.”

I should also probably talk about the “1”, “2”, “3”, and “4” portrayed at 2:43, which has shown up in the red, yellow, green, and cyan sections so far. These numbers representing Mai, David, Teruko, and MonoTV definitely feels plausible to me, especially if you throw in the wrinkle that David could become the protagonist. The qualification could be “mysterious characters with a darker side,” “characters related to the formation of the killing game,” or even “the most actively important characters at the end of the killing game.” This interpretation makes me more confident that these assignments are correct, although there’s obviously room for debate.

Pink

anonymous hopes,; heart; Rolling with laughter and turning into clowns; brainwashed; degraded copy; original; [untranslated character]; clown; painful

And now, onto a color for which I feel there’s basically no debate. If these text colors do correlate to characters, this color has to be Whit.

For starters, he’s the only character assigned the color pink, probably because it’s so prevalent in his design. I can imagine “Rolling with laughter and turning into clowns” paired with his XD laughing sprite, fitting how he’s the biggest canonical joke-teller in the cast. “heart” fits his Ultimate Matchmaker talent perfectly, while also representing how his empathic ways can make him the heart of a group. MonoTV literally mentions that he has “too many damn hearts on [him]” in Chapter 2 Episode 2. “painful”, meanwhile, can represent his secret, and how he represses the painful memories of loss regarding his loved ones.

The most concerning and confusing lines here are “brainwashed” and “degraded copy”. You could definitely pull these for mastermind Whit analysis, but since I’m not a strong believer in that theory (perhaps because I just desperately don’t want it to be true), I’ll go with another interpretation. Brainwashing could be something that Whit essentially does to himself, controlling his mental state and forcing himself to be happy. “degraded copy” could be how Whit feels about himself in regards to his mother. Although we don’t know too much about her, we know that he doesn’t relate to his dad, and he dyes his hair to be more similar to his mom. Since he idolizes her so fiercely, it’s possible he feels like he can never be as great as she was.

There’s always a lot to unpack with Whit “repression” Young, but… for the sake of post length, we’re moving on.

Gray

(after all); whoever else; (turbatus); XI.; whoever else; [untranslated character]; thing

Despite the fact that we’re running out of colors at a rapid pace, I actually think this one is David again. Specifically, clipless David, after his color turned to gray. C’mon, he’s the star of the show! He gets special privileges.

The gray character feels very depressed. It doesn’t seem to care about anything, using vague terms like “whoever else” and “thing,” as well as taking “turbatus,” AKA “troubled.” David has already claimed to have a family history of depression, and although he’s a liar, I don’t know if he was bs-ing that one. Based on his worldview as portrayed in Chapter 2 Episode 11, it’s not much of a leap to assume David feels this depressing gray way.

The inclusion of “XI.” is quite interesting, given that that’s Mai’s roman numeral, “God is dead.” In my mind, this further cements a potential relationship between Mai and David (and that Mai is red and David is yellow/gray). Just look at the colorization of the quote “XI. God is dead”!

That’s both of David’s colors on either side of Mai. Maybe, as the protagonist, David will be the one to take down Mai, the “God”?

If gray isn’t a second David, I would suggest that this could be Rose. While she isn’t particularly associated with the color gray, “(turbatus)” is part of her roman numeral quote, and she has plenty of troubles of her own. Based on her hidden quote, “In the end, the only thing I can do is watch my wretched life go on,” it would be reasonable to believe she is also depressed. “whoever else” and “thing” could refer to her absentmindedness, and how she tends to forget things that aren’t important to her (despite her photographic memory).

Orange

← that guy; shout; that guy; let’s play!; that guy; original

So it’s a little random, but my best guess is that orange is Ace? Mostly because he’s the only true orange color in the class trial– Min and Rose have sort of orangey colors as well, but to me, they don’t fit the lyrics super well. Not to say that Ace does, but there’s more of an argument there to be had.

“shout” is the most Ace-like lyric to me. Most of his (amazingly) voice acted lines are screaming in some way. He yells a lot, whether due to stress, excitement, or anger. On that angry wavelength, “let’s play!”, though it sounds innocent, could be something bitterly yelled out at an opponent. Like, “oh, if you wanna play, let’s FUCKIN’ play, Nico/Levi/etc!!” Given that Ace identifies as a man, he would be a more classic “guy” choice than Min or Rose would be as well.

The repeated “that guy” puzzled me at first, but I did find a solution. The thing that was tripping me up was that the orange “that guy” is always paired with the green “this guy.” If Teruko is green, then why would David be putting Ace on the same level of importance as Teruko there? He and Ace have barely interacted!

But then I remembered that there’s one key place in which they did interact, and that was in the second class trial. Ace takes part in revealing David’s secret when he exposes the conversation David and Arei had in the relaxation room. And then Teruko agrees with him, saying that she’s always found David’s behavior suspicious. David could pair Teruko and Ace together in his mind as “this guy” and “that guy” as the main ones who exposed his secret. Whoever else was there doesn’t matter; they were the main ones at fault.

Plum

change!; like that; original; change!; a cup of poison

Purple time! This one is Charles, I’m pretty sure.

Charles has probably had the greatest positive character arc thus far (other than maybe Arei?), so him being “change!” is very fitting. He’s certainly urged Teruko to change for the better, and maybe he’ll do that for David in the future too. “like that” is part of “Do it like that / let’s live together!”, which could refer to Charles warming up to his classmates. Notably, that is part of VII., which is J’s roman numeral. J did possess Charles’ secret and tell him about it, but it’s not the strongest connection.

“a cup of poison”... does not bode the best for Charles’ survival! However, it could just be referring to his custom weapon being strychnine. Rose’s secret weapon is also poisonous in nature, but (spoilers for the post) I’m not sure she actually has a color in this MV. Thus, if the creator wanted to give one of their poison recipients the “cup of poison” line, Charles may have been their only option. It could also indicate that Charles’ strychnine is more important to the story than Rose’s turpentine (a concerning concept, given that the turpentine has already been involved in an attempted murder), but… who can say! (I am in denial)

Black

you; the track to the ideal country →; you; you

We’re running out of colors here, and it would be pretty weird if the second member of the main cast didn’t have one. That’s right, I’m saying that black refers to Xander, despite his red leanings. However, his color was never officially assigned, and his gloves are black.

David seems very fixated on Xander in this MV and its associated content. Thus, the triple repetition of “you” could indicate David repeatedly thinking about Xander throughout the days. Although, if Xander is the black text, Xander should probably be the one saying “you”. Perhaps instead, it’s about how Xander cares about and fixates on specific individuals, like how he noticed that Nico was alone at lunch and went to go talk to them. I’m giving the guy a glowing review, but it kinda seems like David is doing that too.

“the track to the ideal country →” also reminds me of Xander. As the Ultimate Rebel, he calls for country-wide reform. So, he could believe that he’s leading the way to the ideal country. Abstracted a bit, this could also relate to his motivations for attempting to kill Teruko. He may have believed that killing her was “the track” to save everyone and get them out of the killing game.

Although I wish I could give him a color with greater importance, this one makes a lot of sense to me. It is the first color that appears, for what it’s worth.

Dark Blue

cry; original; big

This one is… hard. I’m not super confident about it– “cry” and “big” do not give me a lot to work with. I’m going to give this one to J for the time being, mostly based off of a fringe theory I developed about “original”.

Yeah, “original”. That 8-color madhouse that I’ve been ignoring so far. To be honest, I don’t know what to do with it. It’s possible that “original” itself is meant to apply to all of the characters featured in it– the word is generic enough that I believe it could apply to all of these characters.

However, I was trying to figure out if this could be hinting at a Chapter 6 trial composition. Eight people seems like way too many for Chapter 6, but if you say it includes Mai (red) and MonoTV (cyan), you only need six surviving students. While casts usually roll up to the endgame with 5 people (based on how SDR2 and v3 went), all you need is to skip a double victim case or have a blackened-less trial to get up to 6.

Under this theory, that would put Teruko, David, Charles, Whit, and Ace in the Chapter 6 trial. (Do I really believe this is true? Not really, but, man, what a dream.) I don’t know exactly how much the creator is paying attention to balancing their final cast, but I have to imagine they would notice that Teruko is the only girl listed there.

That was the deciding factor that swayed me into calling this J over Arturo, as both of their colors are blue. I can see J as a survivor much more easily than I can Arturo, and she would be a second girl (or third, if you count Mai) in the trial. I’m definitely not super convinced, though, so take dark blue with a grain of salt.

Light Blue

cry; cry; idk!!!

So, this is… bleak. This person is not having a great time. Based on color, I’m saying this one is Nico. (That’s also why I didn’t mention them as a non-male blue person on dark blue).

While Nico is definitely less of a crybaby than people might have assumed based on their first appearance, it’s still true that they have multiple sprites with tears in their eyes. “idk!!!” could reference how they struggle to communicate with others, and never know what’s considered “polite” to say. “idk!!!” is also part of Nico’s roman numeral, connecting it to them again.

You could also read “cry, cry, idk!!!” as a timeline of what Nico has done so far in the story. They were anxious, got bullied, and cried a lot, until something in them snapped. What are they gonna do after they snap? Idk!!! Kill Ace, maybe? Either of these options, along with Nico’s official color, are enough to convince me that they could be light blue.

Soft Blue

You’re called an; the world

Hang on, isn’t there another blue non-man you haven’t mentioned yet? You’re right. It’s because I think soft blue is Arei.

Even without her class trial color, Arei is a character covered in blue from head to toe, so she would definitely fit one of the blue options. “You’re called an” reminds me of her for multiple reasons. One, she’s a bully who gives people mean nicknames, so it could be her calling someone else something cruel. Two, many aspects of her personality were derived from her sisters bullying her, so you could say that she’s defined by what she was called as a child. Classic cycle of violence type stuff.

“the world” is a little iffier, but there’s definitely still an argument to be made. In her rant to David and Teruko, Arei makes clear that she believes the world is an inherently cruel place, and that she’s only one piece of that meanness. If she ponders the state of the world frequently, “the world” could be related to her character. (She’s also my world, so–)

Mint

“Idiot”, pointless

Another character who is not having an excellent time! Well, if this alternative green isn’t Teruko, it’s probably Hu, as she’s the other character assigned green. That would also mean that we’ve cleared every character in the cast list, other than the mysterious M__ N____i(___).

While this is not my opinion, I think David currently sees Hu as a “pointless” “idiot”; another person in the long line of manipulable people that he was destined to control. He literally calls her a “fucking idiot” at 18:30 of Chapter 2 Episode 11. It’s also possible that this is how Hu is feeling about herself right now– she says in that same episode that “If no one relies on [her], then [she] won’t be useful anymore.” Since she wasn’t able to prevent Nico from attempting murder or see through David’s lies, she could believe her existence here is pointless.

Kind of an L, but I think this makes sense.

Orchid

doubt; shout

…um.

So, in the assigned colors, the only people with purple-ish pink-ish colors are Charles and Whit, but they’ve already been assigned colors– purple and pink, no less. The next closest person to being purple is Levi, so I guess I’m giving this to him?

It’s not like “doubt” and “shout” are terrible for him. He definitely has moments of doubt when it comes to understanding Arei’s mind games, or when apologizing to Ace. Speaking of Ace, “shout” could refer to the moment in Trial 1 where Levi snapped and threatened to strangle Ace.

I also don’t know if it has any significance that these two words rhyme. Probably not, just because I don’t really see how this would point us to any character, but it’s something worth mentioning.

We’re almost at the end!

Periwinkle

world

Part of the reason why I disliked giving Levi the orchid quotes was because his color fits this periwinkle color much better, but I digress.

For starters, let me say that I’m pretty sure this is its own color, but it could be that my eyes are deceiving me from staring at this MV for too long, and this is actually part of purple. In that case, Charles is also my world, so we good. (The other color assignments are subjected to my opinions as well. I tried screenshotting everything and bringing it into Photoshop, but it was coming up with different hexcodes for colors that were clearly meant to be the same thing, so I gave up and went with subjectivity. If you think something is assigned wrong, let me know!)

As I just mentioned in the orchid section, there aren’t really any more pink or purple characters left in the cast, which leaves us with a problem. Based on the answers I landed on for all of the other colors, I found myself left with Min, Eden, Arturo, Rose, and Veronika. I sort of associate Min and Rose with purple based on the colors of their outfits, but officially, they’re both sort of brownish.

That’s why… I actually think this might be a character we haven’t met yet. Namely, Diana Chiem (should she actually exist), the woman in the video/the hand holding the acceptance letter, the class’ teacher that Min mentions, or M__ N____i(___). Or, some combination of these people, should any of them actually be depicting the same person.

Periwinkle is the last color to appear, which could correlate to how this character will take a while to appear in the story. Their one and only quote being “world” matches how this person is currently in the outside world, not the killing game. They could also be a connection David has to the outside world.

I’m aware this is even more of a copout than calling Mai red, but I honestly believe in this more than any of the other students.

And with that, we’re finally done! I’m always a sucker for matching things to other things, so this was a lot of fun. I might have more to say on this MV in the future, or I might not, but either way, it’s been an honor to piece this thing together with you guys.

99 notes · View notes

mintakablue · 1 year

Text

cool details i noticed + things i loved in across the spiderverse

spoilers ahead!

i think the stylization of the different spiders was even more distinct in this movie than the last one! i like that when the camera is focused on certain characters, you get their aesthetic “bleed” into the world (e.g. gwen’s painterly strokes in her silhouette bleeding outwards, miles and his family having chromatic aberrations in theirs, manny’s chunkier outline, etc.)

i LOVE that the spot is miles’ nemesis for a couple different reasons. he aesthetically opposes how colorful miles’ world is, he is a “villain of the week” that peter parker originally faces off against rather than miles, the major inversion he gets (becoming black with white spots) kind of feeds into the underlying theme of asking who the good guys are--especially when we learn that miles would have been prowler in earth-42! obviously also the fact that he and miles are both anomalies is great. i also think it’s good meta humor to have made the bagel guy become the spot.

there’s also a bagel billboard above the spot’s apartment. in some ways very fortuitous that everything everywhere all at once related bagels to the multiverse.

the stylization of three side characters really stuck out to me--pavitr, ben reilly, and of course, hobie! i love pavitr and mumbattan, i think it was a good choice for the trailer and stylistically a really strong and complementary style to bridge miles’ transition into this aspect of the spiderverse. ben reilly’s stylization i love because it evokes the mobile spiderverse game that introduced a lot of people to some of the more obscure spiders. and DUH i love hobie’s style, you can really tell that they incorporated tons of actual britpunk influences in there. also let me not forget margo kess! she’s so cute in this i genuinely like that she’s a VR spider. i hope to god they make jokes about her being on the web. please.

on that note i do like that the prop design also retains obvious notes of which things belong to which spiders! hobie’s is obvious, but you also see it with gwen’s items. also i like that each spider has a different way of swinging through the air that’s more obvious in this one! gwen and pavitr both have an dancerlike quality to them, hobie’s is a little more erratic (anarchist), and miles of course is still figuring out how to nail some of those more tight swings, but he’s way cooler with being in freefall than any of the other spiders. also miguel using his claws instead of swinging and jess using her motorcycle were very cool! lots of aerial play in this one that i’m excited to watch again and follow the eyetrace for.

good moments with miles and his family! i almost always hate the moody teenager plot because it’s like. you don’t see why they even Should care about their family or the family is so overbearing you start just siding with the teenager, but this movie struck a really good balance there for me. also i just really really like that there are scenes where miles and his mom just speak spanish with each other :’) the rooftop party was so real to me. i am not Latine or live in ny, but i am Filipino and i have been at one million parties like that with my family. and those pink cake boxes from a small bakery that your parents like is iconic.

i genuinely enjoyed the commentary on faking the struggle to get into school LMFAO i think that’s very real for a subset of poc, but especially more affluent Black and Latine people.

OH YEAH miles cracks a joke about ATM machines and then pavitr (my king) cracks the same kind of joke about chai tea and naan bread. a bit of an old joke but hey the movie has been in production for 2.5 years and i do think it serves to highlight the way that spidermen crack the same joke. especially when after in the spiderverse HQ a ton of other spidermen crack the same kinds of jokes about spotting The Spot. across the spiderverse, spidermen are the same

pointing spiderman meme is terribly funny i will stand by that forever

more funny meta commentary about donald glover being people’s pick for miles’ voice and not becoming spiderman, so he’s the prowler--in the same way that miles, had he not become spiderman, would have been the prowler. more obvious is his appearance in mcu spiderman, but i still think it’s fun foreshadowing!

on foreshadowing, i think this movie does a great job of laying out a lot of those bits of information. starting off with highlighting earth-42 and making sure you know that sticks in your mind (and it’s also impossible to choose the number 42 and not evoke the cultural memory of hitchhiker’s guide lol), having the spot talk about how the spider came from a different earth, getting another glimpse at it, seeing miles’ earth number right in the splash screen, saying that the big spider device sends you back to your universe via DNA analysis + margo seeing the big EARTH-42 instead of earth-1610 on the screen. and then even in earth-42, the color palette is really different from 1610! 1610′s opposing color for miles is like a deep blue color (opposing his red suit accent), so 42 having a primarily green palette opposes the prowler’s purple accent!

not to mention that when miles pulls into his bedroom, you can see that he doesn’t have a drawing desk up (or his sashimi/supreme poster). i think it’s a sad little detail that the movie seems to imply that his mom didn’t notice a major change in his appearance (having a short afro instead of braids) is because she works so much she doesn’t see him that often :(

fun sound design in this movie! in the scene where miles-42 gets revealed as the prowler, you actually hear that growling sound effect first when miles-1610 gets tackled and then again twice: once we see miles-42 in shadow as the prowler, then when he says his name!

in fact there’s actually tons of fun sound design details! miguel gets a futuristic sting, gwen has like a full on leitmotif, miles has a short leitmotif which i believe is part of “what’s up danger” (i would need to go back and watch the movie a second time to really pick up on it), pavitr and hobie have their own musical instruments associated with them... and even the spider from earth-42 has its own sting! i might have misheard, but i actually also think hobie and pavitr’s “thwip” sounds are a little different than the standard ones!

i love when those little notes show up in the lower corner. very comic book! a lot of those details make me smile, i really feel like they cared a lot about evoking some of the writing styles of different spiderverse writers there

aesthetically and tangentially related, i like the sketchiness of some of the characters! it’s most obvious in the spot and the alternate universe vulture, but it’s such a neat visual trick. it also serves to give the spot an almost “unfinished” look while also giving him better volume. very excited to see the behind the scenes from the riggers/animators/3d artists

the idea of canon events is such a good one for spiderverse--i think it’s great! one of them that i’m almost certain they’ll bring up in the next one is that. um. gwen usually dies when spiderman is trying to save her. straight up i actually thought they were going to pull that one instead of officer singh dying after gayatri is falling! after all spider-gwen almost got shot, plus miles straight up almost drops her after he glitches out in mumbattan. sony please don’t break spider-gwen’s neck...

genuinely loved all the calls to different spidermen too! there’s like one really prominent shot of paperbag spiderman that made me and my sibling giggle. here’s how the fantastic four can still win

in that vein, i have at least Some prediction of what the spiderverse resolution will be? i can imagine that because miles is an anomaly, his canon event breaking might actually be permissible to some degree... perhaps only if he returns to his own earth? truly truly i cannot IMAGINE that they would make us watch his dad straight up die onscreen because like MAN we already watched his uncle die. that would be way too devastating... but obviously miles-42 and miles-1610 have a lot to say to each other about watching an older man in your life that you love die. i’m a little back and forth about the idea that miles was “destined” in some way to become the prowler in an alternate universe but i’m gonna put my faith in the team to not make it weird ykwim. seeing as they already slipped in commentary about the fact that like Yeah it’s partially because miles’ family has money in 1610 that he is even able to “stay out of trouble” i think there will be an interesting conversation to be had about class dynamics between miles-42 and miles-1610! i am like wildly excited for the next one, i have a lot of hope that it will be even more gorgeous than this movie was and will have the same depth of writing/foreshadowing!

lastly and i know i’m just saying this because to ME spiderman is a very trans character. but peter parker from spider-gwen’s universe was just taking his testosterone okay. and spider-gwen having that painterly pink blue and white as she was saying essentially “i want to live my life fully in my identity” was so... happy pride!!!

#spiderverse #across the spiderverse #spider man: across the spider verse #LOOONG post i have even more thoughts but i tried to condense them here if you can believe it

107 notes · View notes