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themiracleisstillwaiting · 4 years

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I WAS TRYING VERY HARD NOT TO GO ALL DGM BUT! top 5 dgm characters?

YOU CAN GO ALL THE DGM YOU WANT TO GO, Its not a problem at all! ⋆Ask me my “TOP 5” anything! LETS GO!5 - Lenalee Lee- I appreciate Lenalee now so much more than I used to appreciate, before. To be completely honest, she’s still very much a stereotypical female character of a shounen manga, but I do feel like Lenalee always had more Heart than other female characters filling the same stereotypical roles, on other shounen mangas (I’m thinking of Ky.oko on KHR, Sak/ura on Tsub.asa, even Urara.ka from BNHA). Its hard to explain now, but lots of things feel like Lenalee, rather than feeling like “heres the main girl from this almost all male cast”. Now I can understand her character arc and how it was about protecting her kindness on a cruel, cruel world, instead of assuming a cold, unbothered facade. On the moments she cried, it felt natural and even brave to do so. Its crazy to think that not every exorcist is absolutely overwhelmed with their depressing missions, and seeing Lenalee letting it all out feels refreshing, and it feels very her, too. She’s sensitive and a gentle soul who’s endured a lot and knows she’s endured a lot. And even though she’s brave and strong cuz she had to become brave and strong, her kindness is still very much her priority. When she sheds tears saying “welcome home” to Allen before they enter the Ark is… Is the Soul of DGM, you know what I mean? That one moment is DGM’s very own Soul.4 - LulubellUNLIKE! YOU! I really loved the anime, it was my defining anime, when I was growing up. And I do love how they explored Lulu’s character. I think she’s super Cool, man, the kinda side character that you fall in love with and dedicate yourself thinking about just on solely the very few moments she has. I love her power and I think it was one of the best ways I saw that kind of power being nicely explored on a villain (the “Changing your appearance” type). She’s cool, elegant, seems to be analytical and intelligent, all of that while being Lust and without (at least for a long time on the manga) being sexualized. 13 year old me Loved Her and dedicated a lot of Brain Power thinking about her and shipping her with Tyki.

3 - Allen WalkerI Love Allen’s character! (Or Allie, if you prefer!); I love their kindness, and how, ultimately, their kindness is their strength. This has been explored time and time again on so many shounen mangas but I dont think it has ever been so well done as with Allen on DGMS’s first 9 volumes. I mean, Akumas are some of the fucking worst and most Cruel Creations as enemies on a shounen, and Allen wants?? To save them?? Has always wanted. Allen always respected them and Felt for them, out of their empathy for their souls and for the Loss they represent. Those feelings take So Much, so much out of them, and you feel it! You feel it while they cry about their resolution to save them, right on Crowley’s arc, and their cursed eye evolves, on volume 4. You feel that no one is with Allen on this, and they know. They keep on persevering to save as much as they can, how much they can, even when they’re fighting lost battles. The second volume with the Doll arc, represented that very well, and you could see how unreasonable Allen’s self sacrificing ways felt. Their dialogue with Kanda “We are destroyers, not savers” - “Then I wanna be a destroyer that can save”, so heartfelt, so stupid and so humble. Allen’s self sacrificial ways inevitably makes people around them Suffer, but they cant get rid of this trait because its their Core one. Its what drives DGM as such a humane, empathetic story, how you feel for the Fallen, for the Akumas, even for the Noahs, and you’re right to feel so, cuz Allen drives the story and they try everything to save (and feel for, and respect) lost causes. Something about Allen and their amount of kindness feels so, so, ultimately tragic.2 - Lavi Bookman Jr.One drawing I have of Lavi without his bandana was one of the first drawings Ive ever felt completely proud of, when I made it on seventh grade. I feel like Lavi’s character is almost entirely done on his very own character design. He’s so beautiful and daring and Cool, ya know? Something about him is so fucking chill. When we found out later he’s a Distant person who needs to dissociate from everything around him, naturally, almost by profession, it feels like him, too. How he’s so airy and calm when literally the Worst Fucking things are happening around. How he’s capable of smiling every time, even at the face of the worst situations. Bravery? No, our boy is a fucking coward. Its just Pure Dissociation (and a little bit of self hate).

I feel like Lavi always had those depths we can almost touch out of how well they seem to come out of his character but… We never really got to see them entirely, and well executed and we probably never will. He was Hoshino’s first protagonist on one of her first ideas, so I think thats why she could give off that feeling on Lavi’s character. She knows him and have always knew him, better than us, and this is why he feels so real, but she will, ultimately never be able to tell his story on the way she probably meant to.

And that shit hurts, but thanks for the memories, Hoshino. which is incidentally the fall out boy song I associate with Lavi, along with carpal tunnel of love.

1 - Kanda Yu,

Hey, I love my man.

I could be done with only this phrase, but lets try to drive this car to memory road. Yu was the first character I headcanoned as something like trans/non binary without even knowing those terms. (again, confused 13 years old.) I remember reading tidbits of something that I realize now and only now, was hentai and it depicted Yu with breasts and I remember thinking “ah, cool, this might as well be.” or something, anyway yeah, fucked up that I was trying to read that, but I feel like it drives my point home about how I feel towards him. I liked his appearance a lot the way it was and felt it was kinda unnecessary when Hoshino made a point to draw him less pretty, androgynous boy and more manlish like on his face. But of course, nostalgia might be playing a factor into this.

Kanda is just so fucking cool, u know? The way I like him so much is almost unreasonable. I like his clothes, I liked his weapon, I liked his Innocence powers, I liked his boots (to this day I headcanon he is the kind of guy who wears only boots on a modern day AU), I loved (loved) his introductory arc, with the Singing Doll, and his phrase “we’re destroyers, not savers” was said with so much … grief. It’s not like he wants to look cool in front of Allen, that was the phrase of somebody who witnessed so much loss and destruction, he got used to it, it was a warning from Kanda to Allen. The thing is that exorcists technically are saviors, they are the good guys and the world needs them. So Kanda telling this to Allen was indicative of some major shit he’s probably been through while going through missions and trying to save people. He always felt like the kind of character that was an asshole because he needed to become one (plus just his natural lack of social skills). Ever since the beginning, I had my eye on him He was very effortlessly cool cuz he honestly didnt give a shit to anybody else, as this lonesome character; and his disagreements with Allen felt very real and in place. Their personalities and attitudes just didn’t match and it created a good symmetry of having Lenalee and Lavi as their best friends and the people they had a soft spot for. Not gonna lie, the Lavi/Yu ship is a HUGE REASON as to why those two are in my thoughts even to this day. They completed each other effortlessly, by personalities; and Lavi was the only one to call Kanda “Yu” while Kanda called him “stupid rabbit”, it was nice, ok? also they were closer in age … Loved them so much, even their seyuus used to ship them.

Anyway, Kanda up until like … volume 17 of DGM was 9/10, one of the most important characters in my life, just so you know.

#long post #d gray man #dgm #isa talks headcanons #kanda yu #cross-tiedoll #THANK U FOR ASKING !!!#it feels so refreshing to talk about DGM #I COULD CRY TYPING THIS OUT #.... shit

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meggannn · 6 years

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(based on your previous ask) do you mind if I ask how you feel about lok? is there a general consensus if it's good or bad? youre really insightful and just wanted to know if there were any major issues you had with it

yeah sure, i’ll do my best. if you want a quick answer to your question, here is a link to some of my other korra posts where i say pretty much the same thing as i do here, just in fewer words. cause this post will be mostly an unhappy summary of my experience watching the show. this post will contain spoilers, and disclaimer, i am a really biased, disappointed asshole, so i’ll just admit that now.

short answer: i liked the concept of lok more than the product we got. a lot of that is because you had a physically buff brown wlw protagonist written mostly by cishet white men and, as you can imagine, it wasn’t handled great. when i think of lok now i tend to fluctuate between bittersweet nostalgia and quiet, simmering rage.

if you don’t care about the show summary, skip at the middle paragraph break down to my tldr.

so for those who don’t know, LOK was really my first “big” fandom on tumblr. when it was announced, a bunch of ATLA purists were already hating on it because 1) brown woman, 2) it was unrealistic to go from ATLA’s technology to streampunk in 70 years, and 3) it wasn’t ATLA, basically. it was my first big interest that i got to participate in as it was airing, and i was really excited about it. i defended it, i wrote meta, i liveblogged, i wrote tons of fic and spammed theories/wants before the damn show even had a release date. all that is to say, i was Invested, and i believed in it before i even saw it. people called me a bnf, i’m not sure if that’s true, but i did gain a lot my followers in my first few years on tumblr by posting korra stuff. a lot of them – hello – i think are still around today (i’m not certain how all the video games hasn’t scared them off yet)

i should say at this point that my opinion of LOK the show has been really wrapped up in the ugly stain left by the fanbase. korra the character has been the subject of tons of racist, misogynistic criticism since the moment we saw her back; when she showed up on screen as a proud young woman who fought with authority and stood up for herself, that was the nail in the coffin for her reputation. i agreed that she had a bit of growing up to do, because ATLA/LOK have always been stories about coming of age and maturing, but i disagreed strongly with this notion that she deserved to be “humbled,” which is what a lot of fans were looking for.

the overall consensus on if it’s “good” depends on who you ask. most people agree that ATLA is better overall: it was better plotted because it benefited from more writers in the room and more episodes to flesh out the world. opinions on LOK specifically range based a lot on their opinions of the K/orra/sami pairing, if they were involved in or what side they were on in any of the fandom wank, and also just complete random chance.

i’ll go more in depth into my ‘history’ with the show below, but i just wanted to mention that all the while the show was airing, korra was being hit with waves of criticism by so-called fans for basically being a confident brown woman who were calling for her to learn her place, respect her elders, etc. another common theme was fandom’s brilliant fucking idea that asami, a light-skinned feminine non-bending woman who was more polite and reserved than korra, would’ve made a better avatar. because you know why. (korra was often described as brutal, rough, unsophisticated, next to pretty, perfect asami. and asami is a fine character, to be clear, but that’s what she was – fine. nothing really stands out about her, which is a fault of the writing, because she had a lot of potential too.) so anyway all of this did sour my mood toward engaging with other fans outside my friend circle.

–

it was around maybe the middle of book 1 that i realized the writing for the show was simpler than what i was expecting – not that it was childish, which it was (because it was written for children, i understood that), but i felt like the plot meandered and the twists came out of nowhere. it felt like they were making it up as they were going, and it opened threads it didn’t answer. one of the biggest threads was the equalist revolution, which was a very sensitive topic that got jettisoned when the leader was revealed to be a fraud, and that devalued the entire movement in an instant. really disappointing, because i was looking forward to seeing that addressed. for a lot of people, this was a dealbreaker, and they started walking. i stuck with it, but loosely.

book 2 aired, focusing on the spiritual world and some really cool history. it still suffered a lot from awkward b-plots and loose threads it didn’t know how to tackle. korra lost her memory and then regained it 2 episodes later with no consequences, mako flip-flopped between korra and asami because bryke don’t know how to write teenage romances without making it a love triangle, and at some point bolin kissed a girl against her will and they didnt acknowledge that at all? i honestly don’t remember. anyway at the end of book 2, even though korra saves the day and prevents the world from descending into darkness for ten thousand years, due to events beyond her control, korra loses the spiritual connection that ties her to all of the previous avatars – aang, roku, kyoshi, wan, everyone. and people hit the fucking ceiling. “korra’s not a real avatar if she lost her connection to the old ones! that’s the entire point of the cycle! this show is bullshit, it’s not canon anymore!” (the entire point that finale demonstrated that korra’s power alone was enough to save the world and she didn’t need anyone else. but people found that ~unrealistic~ i guess). as you can imagine, being a fan of LOK is starting to get a little tiring by now.

books 3-4 is where the korra haters got to love the show again, because they were both straight-up torture porn. after everything she did saving the world, this is the arc where korra got beat down, tortured, dragged into the dirt, swallowed and spat back out. book 3 is a lot of people’s favorites because it was the first book that felt fully plotted out before it was put on air, which is why i enjoyed it too. but for me it was difficult to see a girl, whose identity revolved around being the avatar after being raised and sheltered to think it was all she was good for, effectively abandon her life and even her name by the beginning of book 4 because the events of book 3 were that traumatizing for her. somehow this was character development. we were encouraged to stick with it because we hoped korra would find herself again. and she did, sorta.

but it makes me furious that people who had quit in books 1-2 came back during 3 because they heard these books were better – aka book 3, the book that featured korra the least, and books 3-4 in which korra got her ass handed to her in some of the hardest fights vs some of the cruelest villains of the series. (nevermind that the book 3 villains suffer from the anime villain curse: they quickly went from “cool character design” to “wait, how does this rando group of villains show up with powers literally no one in the universe has ever heard before?” – questions no one ever answers)

anyway book 4 is a mish-mash of… i’m not sure. i’ve rewatched all the books but i don’t know if i’ll ever touch this one again. the culturally appropriating airbender wannabe, zaheer (a complete rando who somehow masters airbending enough to fly, which was a huge middle finger to airbending masters aang and tenzin for no reason) a guy who literally tortured korra one season before and put her in a wheelchair, is the one who the writers send korra to for her spiritual awakening that lets her save the day. not tenzin or jinora, her spiritual teachers with whom she has positive, healthy relationships – they send her back to her abuser who terrifies and degrades her a bit more before deciding to help. this was a pattern: the writers made both korra and asami face their abusers (in asami’s case, her father) for catharsis instead of gaining peace over their trauma another, healthier way because…. i’m not sure why. there is no reason why. and then there’s the guilt tripping nonsense of asami feeling as if she had to forgive her father, who tried to kill her, because he said he was sorry and sacrificed himself for her in the finale. it’s angst galore, if you like that kind of thing, which i normally do, except this is less angst and more just the writers trying to hammer in torture porn, grimdark, and poor attempts at morally gray nonsense into their finale season.

anyway at the end of her journey, korra, our buff brown woc, learns that she had to suffer to learn how to be compassionate and relate to her enemy. i’m not exaggerating, she literally says that. which is lovely.

–

tldr: i wasted a lot of emotional time and energy into this show and was extremely disappointed when some of the ending’s notes were “you had to suffer to become a better person” and “forgive your abusers/villains because aren’t we all the same in the end?”

but also on a strictly narrative level, LOK also bit off way more than it could chew both emotionally and thematically. it had an amazing premise, but it was not committed to

utilizing the steampunk genre to its best potential in the bending world (after the creativity in the rest of the worldbuilding, the LOK series finale was literally fighting a giant robot – seriously?)

giving its hero the respect and character arc she deserved. and i don’t say that because i think korra had no growing up to do in b1, she did, but she didn’t deserve for it to happen like that.

so basically i realized that a lot of the writers that made ATLA great weren’t brought back for LOK, and it showed. i realized that the LOK writers, when they listened to fans, were listening to the fans that whined the loudest, or (more likely, since they plan seasons years before we see them) they thought from the beginning that it was a good idea for korra to go through years’ worth of pain just to be spat out a humbler, “better” person

the reason i told you all that about me defending LOK in the beginning is because i need you to understand that i believed in LOK longer than i probably should’ve. i wanted it to be everything i was expecting in a diverse children’s show with an unorthodox female protaganist. but just because they had a brown wlw heroine doesn’t mean that they deserved to be praised for it when they treated her like garbage.

and korra and asami walk into a beam of light together in the last second of the show and i’m supposed to applaud the writers for their bravery or something

#megan talks about korra #Anonymous #askbox #this is a very condensed summary because otherwise i'd be here all day talking about the pro-asami anti-korra fandom wank

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scribbledoll · 5 years

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Watership Down thoughts, sorry!

i feel like there were so many great and powerful scenes in the Watership Down BBC series that i missed out on solely because i couldnt tell the characters apart some of the times. =‘(

Hawkbit, Dandelion, Holly, Bluebell and Blackberry were the worst for me, since depending on the lighting, nearly any two of these could be mistaken for another. Thethuthinnang and Nettle too had big moments that were lost on me because I wasn’t sure who was who. Some of their voices sounded a bit too similar for me too, especially Bluebell and Hawkbit, who both talked about does enough for me to not be sure of their traits.

I think I would have loved it a lot more if I could tell them more apart. I sort of had this problem with the other movie too, but that one wasn’t as character focused as this one is, so getting them mixed up a few times wasn’t as bad because I didn’t really NEED to keep track of them. But here, each character has a bit of an arc, so to really get the emotional payback, you have to be able to follow each of their journeys. And I had a hard time with that since I couldn’t keep track of who was who.@_@

But that could just be me not paying attention or being bad at telling characters apart. I think if I rewatch it a bunch more times and get the hang of who is who, then I will be able to enjoy it more.

Also, Watership Down is one of the last stories I’d expect to see a sappy love subplot thrown in (because they’re very much animals and don’t have a lot of romantic feelings in the book). In the book and other movie, it felt natural. The “love interests” didn’t say sappy things to each other because they pretty much just met each other. They had respect for each other and counted on each other.. But here it’s so jarring to hear them say all these cheesy lines to each other.

Keehar was kinda..... eh? He was supposed to have a strong accent and be a bit hard for the rabbits to understand, since he was a bird and they were rabbits. I didn’t feel like Keehar earned that slow motion scene. But I’m really happy they showed more of Bigwig and Keehar’s friendship.

idk it might be a nit-pick, but i felt like there were too many dramatic or inspirational speeches. Like... you dont have to remind us how much you went through, or how much you suffered, or how determined you are. we spent 3+ hours learning this about you. some of the inspiriing moments didnt feel earned or came across as being overly cheesy. not that there’s anything wrong with being cheesy, but it seemed to want to take itself seriously? idk.

idk this bothered me and might not bother anyone else, but at the end, Hazel and Fiver are talking and one of them thanks the other for their “friendship”. I mean.... i guess it makes sense, but its a bit odd to me? they’re brothers.

I think I saw too many posts on here that made me expect Bluebell and Blackberry to be 100% confirmed gay, so that lead to me being disappointed because I’m not sure if it was?????? I can see why people think so. I don’t want to crush any dreams, but I also don’t want others to go in expecting definite representation. idk. im not the best at noticing romance stuff so it might just be me not getting it. Maybe they did 100% confirm it and i freaking missed it.

But there was a lot to like too. I liked seeing some of the characters who hadn’t been featured yet.

A small detail but I LOVE how Bigwig seems to have a permanent little rabbit smirtk on his face. It’s so perfect.

I loved how “brother” and “sister” were used. There was a nice moment where one character distrusts another, then later on helps them and calls them “brother/sister” (being vague with gender to avoid spoilers, sorry!) and it was a nice touch.

I loved Fiver, Bigwig and Hyzenthflay’s voice actors the best. They did soooo well in making the characters feel real. Hyzenthflay especially, since i ADORED her voice in the other movie. They really fit the characters!

It was an interesting change to have one character go to Efrafa, who didn’t in the book. I thought there was some cool character stuff going on for them and those around them. But Woundwort’s “be my queen” thing was icky. It was like... really? we’re doing THIS? Instead of this cool potential between two unlikely characters, it’s just gonna be this? But it was still cool to see that change. I wish it was given MORE depth though. Like... did the character regret running away from their safer home? They joined this ragtag group of rabbits chasing an ideal, and it lead them to basically the worst place for a bunny to be! I don’t know if they ever stopped to think “if I never left, I wouldn’t be in this horrible place”. Sure the character’s theme was “hope” but i feel like it would have been MUCH more impactful if that was challenged by the character themselves. Like if the character didn’t just hnag onto it, but stopped to really question themselves. Then come to the same conclusion, but this time it is stronger since they ran it through their mind some instead of just .... having it. IDK but it was still nice! :D

The singing scene was beautiful!

The opening of the first episode was beautiful. inspired by the movie, while also making it its own.

They made the marking scenes much more intense. O_O

I liked how they included the Shapes. I also liked Fiver’s vision from that area too.

THE TWO ESCAPES BEING SHOWN AT THE SAME TIME WAS SO INTENSE I LOVED IT!!!!!

I’m glad Bigwig said the whole phrase to Woundwort!

I wouldn’t recommend watching this without first having read the book, or getting used to the fictional rabbit language. They use a lot of phrases and I’m guessing it could be very confusing to people who aren’t familiar with the terms. They mostly do a good job calling something by its word in the language the movie is in, before calling it by the fictional rabbit word. Not always though, so it might be confusing or tricky to fill in the gaps.

And if I live the rest of my life without seeing a cgi rabbit making kissy faces, I think I’ll survive.

#long post #watership down #watership down bbc #sorry!

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