#cause from that one shadow its still unclear but im a believer | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lunatic-fandom-space · 3 years

Text

Comparing RWBY and YGO DM: The Handling and Evolution of Themes

Hey! Its been a hot minute since I last posted anything RWBY-related but Im laying in my bed right now and Im sick and bored so I guess we're doing this. Today I will do my best to analyze what I percieve to be the main themes and messages of both of these shows, or more specifically, how theyre handled narratively. Im mostly focusing on that part because, while these series do have similar themes and messaging, they are still a few things in which they are wildly different. And with that, lets start with this essay-post-thing!

1. Theres something we need to adress first

Okay so, before we can really talk about this, theres something I feel the need to clarify here: Neither of these stories was "planned from the beginning".

Now, I dont think a story being planned from the beginning or not nesscessarily makes the story any better or worse by default, however, it is still important to acknowledge because the way the story is planned is going to affect every facet of it. Things are not going to be foreshadowed properly, things are gonna be set up only for nothing to come of it, the story might drastically change directions, characters might act differently, etc, etc.

And, this is bit off-topic but, it's much better to just admit that the story was not planned than trying to pretend that it was. Like, there are a lot of reasons why I tend to be so forgiving towards YGO even though its not very good, but one of them is definitely the fact that, as far as Im aware atleast, the guy who wrote it isnt pretending to have had this big master plan all along and neither is the fandom. With RWBY on the other hand... yeaaaah, its kinda the opposite. From what Ive seen of RWBYs fandom, there seems to be this pretty popular narrative that everything was planned even though it clearly wasnt. Thats pretty bad and honestly lowers my opinion of the writers so much more than if they would just admit to not having a proper plan.

Like, I initially consumed YGO like this: Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters, Yu-Gi-Oh (aka Season 0), like, a quarter of the Yu-Gi-Oh manga (I still havent finished it)

In all three of these we have the character of Yami Yuugi, or just Yami. Broadly speaking, he is an ancient egyptian gamer spirit who lives in a magical puzzle that has not been solved for 3000 years until this highschooler named Yuugi Mutou comes along and solves it, thus setting him free and allowing him to possess Yuugi and have access to the vague magical powers of the puzzle.

In Duel Monsters he's perfectly fine most of time, morally speaking. There is an instance of him almost murdering a guy and its a bit unclear what exactly happens to those he mindcrushes but overall he's very much a pretty good guy. In Season 0 most of what he does is set up these games for bad people, where they will go insane no matter what they do. From how I understand this whole Shadow Game, Penalty Game stuff, if you lose a Shadow Game, you get violent and intense hallucinations and you will always cuz yknow, gamer spirit. But if you try to cheat, which most of the bad people do in this show, you get violent and intense hallucinations as a punishment.

Since the two anime are generally considered two different continuities, its perfectly fine that Yamis characterization is wildly different in both of them. But in the manga both of these characterizations appear, basically one after the other with no real arc or consequences, for that matter. Why is that? Simply put, someone thought it was a good idea to try to turn an episodic, very slice of life-y light-horror manga into a more traditional, more plot-driven battle shounen. From what Ive heard, it was apparently largely because of network interference or something, but the point is, it changed directions incredibly drastically with little planning and everyone knows this and I can understand that for the most part.

In RWBY we have the character of Blake Belladonna, who, in the first 3 volumes/seasons atleast, was this aloof, more toned down loner-type character with a pretty strong sense of justice. She's an in-universe marginilized racial minority and she clearly cares about racial injustice. The way its initially framed makes it seem like she had a very hard life and no stable support system, which is what eventually pushed her to join a Civil Rights group/Terrorist organization (good god, the Faunus subplot is so awful, I could write a whole essay about it but Im already de-railing rn so I'll just save that for later).

Then, in volumes 4-5 it turns out her father is actually like, the mayor or chief of this island-place called Menagerie and she grew up in this big mansion with multiple guards/servants. Oh and also, apparently "space is a commodity" on there, so theres that. She still retains large parts of her personality but she's kinda like, worse somehow I think. I cant really describe it in a meaningful way but I hope you get what Im saying anyway. Then in Volume 6 she confronted her emotional abuser Adam (sorry for not mentioning him sooner but yeah, he was like, her abusive boyfriend, which is something that a lot of people disagree with but I wont really say anything about it either way because I dont really feel any specific way) with her friend, Yang, and ended up killing him.

After all that, she pretty much lost the rest of her personality, as well as her arc about all the Faunus stuff. She just kinda became the meek, generically nice, recovering abuse victim. Why? Well, the actual reason is that they didnt plan out shit and are just kinda flying by the seat of their oversized clown-pants and if they and the fandom just admitted it, I would have less of an issue. I still wouldnt be as forgiving towards RWBY as I am towards YGO because the crux of the issue, for me, is just that I dont particulary like RWBY but also like. Do you really expect me to take MKEK seriously as writers after admitting to not have a timeline because iT wOuLd CaUsE pLoThOlEs?

However, since they want us to believe that everything was planned out from the beginning, the explaination would be.... Idk, they deliberately butchered one of their main characters?? Because.. they hate her?? Maybe????

So yeah, that was quite a detour however, I would like you to keep this mind going forward.

2. Themes of the Early Series'

First, what do mean by 'Early Series' for both of these shows respectively? Well, for YGO that would have to be Season 0 or if youre reading the manga, everything pre-Duelist Kingdom. Basically, the part of the series thats a episodic, very slice of life-y light-horror series.

For RWBY that would be the first three Volumes, also known as the Poser-Era. Back then it was just kinda an action series that took place at Anime Warrior Academy (also known as Beacon) with some pretty bare minimum worldbuilding, character-driven plots and developments but now its more of an epic high-fantasy story with more of an emphasis on plot as opposed to just action.

The themes and messages in Early YGO are kinda vague, very confusing to me and if you were to follow any of it literally that would be pretty bad. For now Im just gonna say the main themes are Friendship and Identity and mostly focus on the Identity aspect.

Now, it took me a little while to figure out RWBYs deal but I think the main themes for Volumes 1-3 are also Friendship and Heroism. Once again, I'll mostly focus on Heroism and touch on Friendship more briefly later.

I dont have much more to add to YGOs themes right now, so I'll briefly go over Heroism in RWBY.

In RWBYs setting there are these man-eating monsters called Grimm that have basically infected the planet. In order to deal with that, they have people called huntsmen and huntresses that kill them and protect people. Theyre trained at special academies like Beacon and go on missions there and stuff like that. Our four main characters, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and Yang, are training to become huntresses and one day they go on this mission to clean up a grimm infested city block with one of their teachers. Obviously, that takes a long time so they have to camp out in one of the empty houses. Weiss, Blake and Yang cant sleep because theyve been thinking about this question that their teacher asked them when they were fighting grimm: "Why do you want to become a huntress?"

They have a heart to heart and we find out about their motivations; Weiss wants to bring honour back to her family, Blake want to distance herself from the White Fang (that terrorist organization I mentioned earlier) and as an extension from Adam, Yang wants to have a life of adventure. They also talk about why Ruby wants to be a huntress and it turns out that she judt wants to help people. Unlike the others, she has no motivation besides that. We're meant to listen to that and look at her as a sort-of personification of Heroism: kind, but not naive, strong and most of all, selfless. The others on her team are not portayed as bad for not being like Ruby by any means but we are clearly meant to admire her the most out of all of them.

Okay, now comes the part Ive been looking forward to the most:

3. How did these themes evolve in the Modern Series'?

Alright, before we can really delve into the way they evolved in YGO I'll have to give you a brief summary of the character progression. At the start of DM, during the Duelist Kingdom arc, Yami Yuugi is just that; A darker Yuugi. Hes more confident, bolder, his voice is deeper, hes somehow taller, more ruthless, all that good stuff. Notably, he doesnt actually seem more skilled than Yuugi even at the start of this story, but he's still dependent on Yami. Yami on the other hand, has no identity of his own or even hints at one at this point. He's just The Other Yuugi.

Then during the Battle City arc, they find out that Yami was actually a pharao prior to being sealed in the puzzle, he just didnt know because of amnesia, I guess. So now they need to find out his real name and then send him to the afterlife because hes meant to be dead, but not before saving the world from being swallowed by darkness, which is also a thing they have to do now.

Then we finally get to the Memory World arc, where Yami, Yuugi and the rest of the gang astralproject to ancient egypt via puzzle magic. Yami is trying to figure out what the hell is going on and who all these familiar people are, while Yuugi & Co are trying their best to help him. Then some weird shit happens and it turns out that all of that is not just Yamis sealed away memories, but also a giant D&D Shadow Game that will destroy the world if Yami loses. So now theres Pharao!Yami who is still clueless on the metaphorical and literal playing field and Player!Yami, who is kinda controlling himself now? I guess?? Yamis opponent, The Spirit of The Ring, has something similar to that going on where hes both controlling and properly participating in the game. So Player!Yami is now fighting against Player!TSoTR, Pharao!Yami is now fighting against Thief King Bakura (who is like, the human, ancient egyptian version of the Ring Spirit) and Yuugi is now fighting against Yami Bakura (who is like, the human, modern japanese version of the Ring Spirit). Yuugi gets Yamis real name, he and the gang go over to Pharao!Yami and tell him his name, meanwhile Player!Yami is also somehow helping as well and they defeat the Ring Spirit, thus saving the world. Then they travel to modern Egypt, the Ceremonial Duel happens and Yuugi wins, sending Yami to the Afterlife where he can finally rest and that was the series!

I originally wanted to recount the stuff that was going on with the Ring Spirit and his host as well because they parallel eachother, but this summary is already far too long and I think youll get the point without me needing to explain any more.

My point here is, that the story went from being vaguely about Identity, maybe? to being very clearly about Self-Discovery and Learning to Be Independent. I think this is a very good way to evolve the messaging of your story. How does RWBY track on that?

Well, uh... its not great. I will acknowledge that they have tried to introduce new themes and ideas since, even though I wont really be talking about them in this post. But yeah, the whole Heroism thing really regressed.

Like, I didnt explicitly say it when I was explaining grimm earlier, but theyre not going away. The grimm have always been there and people who sign up to become huntsmen and huntresses are effectively signing up for a job that will never truly be done, no matter what they do. Characters like Ruby and even more minor ones like Phyrrah have shown us that that doesnt matter when youre a hero. No life isnt worth saving, no grimm isnt worth killing, no criminal isnt worth arresting. Then, in volume 6 they find out about Salem. Salem is the Big Bad of the show, shes immortal, controls the grimm and is supposed to be very powerful.

What do our heroes do? They give up. Sike! They were just mindcontrolled by monsters or some shit, of course they didnt give up their mission (which is to bring an Important Macguffin to a city called Atlas, sorry I didnt mention it)!

But then they arrive in Atlas (which is llike, a city thats floating over another city called Mantle) and yknow, they do some plot stuff thats not really important right now until the city gets invaded by Salem and this big grimm army she has.

What do our heroes do? Well, Ruby, Weiss, Blake and some side characters are chilling, drinking tea in a mansion and Yang and the B Team were actually trying to do something, but even those efforts seem incredibly minimal.

Oh wait, I also forgot to mention that Ironwood (a fairly minor, vaguely antagonistic character up until now) wanted to lift Atlas even higher to save Atleasian civilians from danger while leaving Mantle vulnerable to Salems invasion.

What would be the most heroic thing to do?

A) Let Ironwood lift Atlas, get as much support as they can down to Mantle and save as many Mantle civilians as they can from the invasion

B) Prevent Ironwood from lifting Atlas but then split up in order to protect both Atlas and Mantle civilians

C) Prevent Ironwood from lifting Atlas and then dont do anything else

Congrats! If you choose C, you think exactly like the writers!

And I just

This is so mindboggling to me, I feel like I shouldnt even have explain how this is bad. And like, it wouldve been so easy to actually make them seem herokc through their actions, to make it seem like they did try but no.

I have never seen a central theme be this botched, how in the world did they do that? Why did they think it was a good idea for Ruby "The Embodiment of Heroism" Rose to sit in a mansion doing nothing, no planning, no organizing just ..... God, how are they this bad? Like, this doesnt even have anything to do with it being planned in any way, this is just straight up incompetence

4. Very briefly touching on friendship

The friendship is awful and its not solely because they all have the same opinions. They barely interact with eachother outside their designated pairs which leads to it all feeling incredibly hollow. Theyre also practically indistingushable from one another now, which is a shame because it wasnt always like that. Like, I dont think the characters were that well-developed in earlier volumes but they were very well-characterized. But now we've gotten to a point where you can literally copy and paste one characters dialogue onto another and literally nothing changes, it really sucks.

5. Some closing words

Damn, this took way longer than I thought it would and now Im pretty exhausted. I have no idea how yall always write these but props to you! I feel like this ended up a bit rambly but overall, Im pretty proud.

Please let me know what you think of the points I brought up! Id also really appreciate some tips on how to get better at these longer posts because I am planning on writing more in the future (not the near future, probably but yknow).

Thats all I have to say for now, thanks for reading!

#rwde #rwby critism #anti mkek #yu gi oh #ygo duel monsters #yu gi oh analasis

2 notes · View notes

rimurutempest · 3 years

Text

finally we get to my research paper, which i hated and think i did a garbage job on, but it’s DONE and i got an A, so i dont really much care. also credit where credit is due, i wouldnt have gotten anything done at all if my husband @koinuyasha hadn’t started this for me, though i then butchered and rewrote most of it, he gave me a useful skeleton to work with!

Prompt/Parameters:

Research paper for LIT 241 (Horror and Supernatural Fiction) Urban legends exist in varied forms from crime stories (the Choking Doberman) to the supernatural (Don’t say Bloody Mary three times while looking into a mirror). Such legends tend to have “really happened” to a cousin of a friend or a friend of a cousin. For you research paper, you need to pick a famous urban legend and explore the origins of it. Some legends may have unclear or multiple origins. You would do well to use a process of elimination to find an urban legend with at least one potential origin. Just as the horror novels, short stories and movies we’ve been studying this semester tap into real life fears, so do urban legends. In your research, explore the societies in which these legends began (focusing on the time period and the geographic locations). You may also want to see how the legend was modified in varied other times and locations. Basically, you want to examine the connection between the urban legend and the culture in which it began. The structure of your paper should run as follows: 1. Retell the urban legend in your own words. 2. Present the history of the legend’s origins. 3. Analyze the connection between the urban legend and the society/culture in which it began. The paper should run 750-1000 words. Use 12 point Times New Roman font. It is due by 6:15 pm on November 25, 2000. Cut and paste your paper into the body of the email. Don’t send any attachments or links to websites like Googledocs. You need at least three credible sources (not Wikipedia) for the origin of the urban legend. Follow MLA rules for citations and bibliography. NOTE: I DID NOT DO THIS, I WAS PASTING IT IN A DAMN EMAIL, THIS IS STUPID.

this whole project was ridiculous, urban legends never have three whole ass credible sources, what a bullshit fucking specifiation, im still so damn mad about this. i could have done so many other more interesting subjects if not for this absolute horseshit restriction. fuck you, prof.

Eyes that Shine, Burnin' Red: Tracking the Black Dog and its Many Tales Have you ever woken to a feeling of being watched, only to feel your heart skip at what look like strange, glowing eyes staring back at you from the dark corners of your room? Have you perhaps felt a pressure on your chest? Something standing in your room, breath ghosting over your face, as you find yourself unable to move? Unable to even look away from the beast or cry out for help. Even if you try, you can't scream, and when you finally can, the creature is gone...? Perhaps instead you've found, when walking alone in the dark, you can hear the jingle of keys echoing at the peripherals of your senses, but no one is around? Perhaps it has occurred to you that, rather than keys, the jingling might be the sound of dog tags. You might look out of the corner of your eye to catch sight of bristling black fur, glowing red eyes, hot, steaming breath, and large, sharp, white teeth in the inky black shadows of the night. No matter how fast you might go, it always seems to follow just on your heels until, suddenly, it disappears without a trace, as if it had never been. Maybe you've even wondered to yourself, while passing by a graveyard at night, that what you see prowling between the gravestones, or glowering from up in the church's steeple, might just be a large, lurching black beast of a dog? It has looked at you with those glowing eyes, hovering in the deep darkness, hasn't it? You have felt that shiver run up your spine, haven't you? Pushing you to walk faster, doubling your pace and deciding not to cut through the old churchyard after all. Maybe at some point, when the weather was chaotic and terrible, you took refuge under an overhang, lightning crashing out in the distance. You might, in such a situation, see a figure loping across the field before you, hoping it doesn't notice or care about you, hoping it doesn't come your way. It probably looks like it has a destination in mind, but it is not easy to shake the feeling of dread such an experience could inspire). Late at night, do you ever hear sounds echoing from the deep in the woods, so you can't help but wonder: Are those just a bunch of mannerless geese honking, or do you hear some ghostly hounds baying in the distance in actuality? There are many stories about the Black Dog, a frightening but benevolent messenger at its best, and a harbinger of death at its worst. The origins of the Black Dog are muddy, as is the case with any good urban or local legend, with it seeming to stem from Welsh, Norse, and Greek origins in most of Europe, while the Celtic and Germanic origins are the prime candidates for the British legends. In the Welsh Mabinogion cycle, the Cŵn Annwn are spectral hounds associated with the otherworld, what with being the hunting dogs of Arawn, god of death and the afterlife, the coming of which meant death for whomever saw them.1 To the Norse, Garm was a mysterious beast, sometimes equated with Fenrir, sometimes attributed as Hel's guardian, and sometimes said to be to wolves and dogs as Odin is to the Gods.2 In ancient Greece, we find Cerberus, the three headed dog who guards the underworld as a menacing figure to most wouldbe interlopers or escapees.3 Hellhounds are present in various Germanic mythos, and Celtic stories feature the goddesses, Epona and Nehellenia, who are accompanied by dogs. Most stories stem from England however, with many tales told about a presence or creature presumed to be the Devil themself taking the form of a Black Dog. Though this creature can often shapeshift into other creatures such as, but not limited to, a donkey, a goat, and often a cat, the figure of an imposing black canine is a popular choice. A few specific, named examples include Black Shuck – a malevolent spirit said to have attacked two different churches and killed at least two people, the Church Grim – a black dog buried to stand guard over churchyards, and The Skriker – sometimes visible as a big, black dog with huge paws that make large sloshing sounds when they hit the ground, though other times believed to be entirely invisible, that wanders about screeching hauntingly. All of these creatures share commonalities in appearance as large black dogs, often described as having glowing eyes, that are associated with death or the devil, and often seen late at night and, in cases such as the Black Shuck, especially during fierce thunderstorms.4 Western Europe has the most stories of the Black Dog, British societies especially. England, of course, has a long and complex history with religion and superstition – with which are tied many legends of some variation of the Black Dog. There is also another piece to the puzzle that we can examine: the simple fact that there are several stories originating during war times, when people would wake – or even just remain awake late at night or into the wee hours of the morning – to see these beasts in their bedrooms or stalking about their homes. We may posit that, for some of the legends of the Black Dog, this could be attributed to a combination of sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations, as some of the stories are as simple and brief as a a child seeing a dog rushing into a their room and disappearing before they were even able to scream.5 There are also tales of the dog, as mentioned previously, attacking churches during thunderstorms and appearing during the flashes of the lightning strikes, accompanied by the menacing rumble of thunder cracking in their wake. We do in fact have some recent research to look to which has led some experts to believe that there is a chance thunderstorms might cause hallucinations – ball lightning, for example, may in fact be a type of group hallucination when and where it occurs, as there has been little by way of credible evidence for it being a natural phenomenon.6 The effects of religion and the weather of the area cannot be dismissed, the influences of which making it understandable that there should be so many stories of devil dogs and spectres skulking about places of worship during inclement weather. What with people, during the times these legends cropped up, taking ill even more readily than today, and it being more likely they should die of illnesses that seem relatively harmless now, it is also unsurprising that they were frequently seen as omens of death. Similarly, there are stories which originate from periods of extreme stress, such as war and famine, of children – and even some adults – seeing these animals when they could not rest at night in their bedrooms and frightening them during what seems likely to have been cases of sleep paralysis, commonly believed to be symptom of exhaustion and anxiety, among other things.7

1 http://www.self.gutenberg.org/articles/Cŵn_Annwn)

2 https://norse-mythology.org/garm/)

3 https://www.britannica.com/topic/Cerberus)

4 https://www.thesuffolkcoast.co.uk/articles/the-legend-of-the-bungay-black-dog)

5 http://www.simonsherwood.co.uk/blackdog.htm)

6 https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18918-mysterious-ball-lightning-may-be-a-hallucination/)

7 https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Sleep-paralysis)

Please allow me to reiterate, this is my worst writing since high school and I hate it viscerally, please don’t fucking give me literally any kind of con crit, I know how much of a flaming pile of shit it was, I had to bullshit it enough to get the grade and I know what lit/writing profs like, which is hot garbage. They love hot garbage, and this prof most of all.

#back to school adventures #art is a breeze #i shudder to put this in my art tag but fucking whatever #black dogs #hellhounds #barghest #black shuck #etc #sleep paralysis #mass hallucinations #ball lightning #urban legends #flaming dog shit

0 notes

unproduciblesmackdown · 6 years

Text

yallnve realized by now that this is a fulltime 100% narnia blog...and as i havent slept since finding out someone somewhere was set on making "the silver chair" into a movie & the dynamic world of narnalysis is the best i can offer,

first of all im like.........ya rly gonna just jump into the silv chair!! im not really interested w the details on what anyone plans to do with the content b/c i donno, ive never been really interested in the book. not because its like bad or anything, actually it's probably the most cinematic in terms of things actually happening at a steady rate. i just like what i like, maybe because its sort of lower scale? whatever. its not like its hard to make into a movie i dont think, is what im saying. that would be either the horse and his boy or prince caspian, probably the latter b/c like a genuine 1/3 of it is an expository flashback. but all of the books are bit tricky to adapt coz theyre just short, you have to pad basically all of them in some way or another. but sure. silver chair. w/e

the thing is that you Have to assume despite starting afresh that theyre doing this one since the first three books have been recently filmed? and this being the fourth. but How Are You Going To Just Jump Into This One. thats an awful lot of exposition thats being built on, at this point in the game we're neck deep in the Lore. you'd really just have to have read the previous books or at least seen the movies. are they counting on the audience to have done that? but at the same time its really not fair to fully rely on that. in the book you can go "read the other books" and wave it off in a sentence of "and then they explained it all" which does tend to happen in the actual text a fair amt. its a bit awkward in movie form though? its a plot point right off that eustace knows who prince/king caspian is. so then you have to sum up dawn treader. and that has to do with what happened in prince caspian, in which the plot of lww is pretty important. like, alright, possibly you could just explain tvotdt & take it from the perspective of the girl who doesnt know crap about narnia yet? but thats not nearly as good a starting point as lww. on account of that ones meant to be a starting point! i'll see scholastic / any publishings that try to push magician's nephew as the first book In Hell, frankly. strongest narnpinion right there. the published order over the chronological order

anyways i'm sure it can be figured out, its just.......Interesting to think how the silver chair intro might be made into Intro To Narnia v.2.0? will they even try or will it be "ok but seriously just have read the books or whatever before you come in here." mystery unfolds

another thing thats interesting is that lww is clearly abt like, hey kids here's a version of the resurrection for you. whereas silver chair doesnt have anything to do w any Biblical Events at all (tho of course neither does prince caspian, tvotdt, or the horse & his boy). it is instead about how atheists will try to steal your firstborns for.................reasons. (no reason, theyre just evil.) this one is just a major amplified version of another particularly ridiculous CS Lewis Apologism Favorite that runs through the books: that when it comes to having no Faith (in aslan but you know also the abrahamic god) everyone who doubts aslan/god is like, actively lying to themselves, because they have that Gut Feeling telling themself that their faith is not only whats righteous but also whats true. the gut feeling of truth is a big theme in the books, shit hinges on it all the time and makes doubt all Clearly Sinful instead of a reasonable result of aslan effing off for centuries or whatever. and speaking of, god only knows if lewis is really suggesting that real life doubt or nonreligiousness is 100% populated by people who are clenching their fists like "i know in my heart jesus is real but i dont want to believe it so i won't, damnit!" which yknow makes no sense for like....life, and uh? i dont know what its supposed to mean for like....other religions? i dont think he's about putting the nuance that not every concept of religious Faith is the same as in christianity into this book, i dunno abt his thoughts irl. lord knows its a mystery how he thinks that "if jesus wasnt lying and jesus wasnt Insane then christianity is real" argument means anything. nothing in the world fits that argument for finding out if something is true or not........and also it hinges on that concept of "insanity" which......like.......i'm sure is all about nice 1940s ideas of how "insane" people act. its shit, throw it out, i mean. and besides? as though theres a Logic argument to prove christianity as truth? have you just Solved religion, lewis? have you? sometimes, i swear..

anyhow so in the silver chair its just a big ol festival of his "atheists are lying to themselves" and "atheism starts by someone who Knows The Truth (jesus is real) lying to others, likely aka the devil or whatever, and the stand-in for the devil is a witch again." and lewis really seems fond of the allegory of the cave. smh! like, in that allegory "knowing" that your faith is true is impossible! but youre also out here arguing its logically provable? and don't forget the gut feelings thing. but it makes NO sense for him to drop it into this book universe because in this allegory the prince captured by atheists & the protags are people who have hopped into the cave and seen the sun and shit!! they dont need to be the people who have only ever seen shadows who need to be convinced that an outside world can exist!!! bitch!!! get your allegory in order. silver chair just.....lord. the lying babysnatching atheists

a n y w a y s . . . thats a weird conflict to put in your third act, and its also a weird argument to make re christianity, that even though you acknowledge its impossible to know that your faith is in something thats real, you're willing to risk it? its sort of like that idea that you might as well be religious even if you dont "believe" any religion is true, because you lose nothing and potentially gain both comfort in life and reward in an afterlife. but its kind of a big deal in christianity that you're supposed to believe that what you believe in Is Literally Real. maybe apologists are allowed to do that sort of thing in their arguments, i suppose. its like in the last battle where he has a dude who believes in another deity accepted into the christian afterlife b/c despite a lack of belief, his virtuous nature is, from a practical standpoint, accepted to be for all intents and purposes to be equivalent to having believed in the christian god, like if he happened to follow all other rules except the Believing In Jesus one then he's good to go anyhow. interesting in that its also supposed to be pretty vital in christianity that one has to accept jesus as god in order to be Saved all up into heaven! i suppose that guy in the book was meant to have been converted right before death or whatever. at that point its very unclear who is exactly dead or not, but probably everyone. still, aslan clearly makes the argument that "basically you might as well have been believing in me, so you're good to go." fascinating stuff. another one to ask lewis abt

uhhhh another point is that i think theyre intending to make other movies also? but not all four remaining ones!! and if i had to guess which one they'd be leaving out uhh lets say....the horse & his boy....................which conveniently is the other sort of sparsely plotted one. two kids ride horses towards narnia, briefly have to have a shenanigansy undercover sneak through a crowded city, ride towards narnia some more, and then one of them stays at some guys house while the other kid goes into narnian battle where he himself doesnt actually do anything, but that fact is described pretty funnily. its still sort of a fun one, on account of the sneaking around hijinx, and the fact that it happens to give ANY of the details of what tf the pevensies did for like the twenty years they reigned over narnia's golden age which the lww just tells you absolutely n o t h i n g about! the answer is: a lot of battling probably, on account of narnia went from being ruled for a century by someone who could kill you in a second and also why would you have invaded narnia at that time, it wouldve been like trying to invade russia. but then a bunch of kids took the throne and upended the whole system and the snow went away, it seems like a destabilizey time to invade or whatever. imo. but then again they mightve bought themselves a few years on account of aslan having shown up and all. but lbr, they were just put into battle right off and coronated three seconds later, theres no reason on that front that they wouldnt shy away from having more battles. and the books said there were a lot of battles. and in thahb, its like, well we've been battling a lot lately and now we're in shenanigans and we'll just have to battle our way out of it, which they absolutely do. edmund straight up decapitates a guy. how ARE they supposed to just transition immediately into english schoolchildren after a couple decades of that mess??? they even have the fancy courtly speech. its magic i suppose

the point is its kind of a fun book, oh also, aslan is TOP shenanigans in this one. he straight up actually attacks one of the protagonists, for Reasons, but still. not that he doesn't murder the pevensies in the last book. i mean, i guess you could argue that its just like Divine Coincidence where what with the unaligned timelines betwixt england and narnia, aslan couldve just picked the moment everyone was gonna die anyway and just tossed them over to X point in time in narnia. but I Donno.....im kinda with that university student who's stressing about whether aslan cause ww2 for the purpose of sending the pevensies to the wardrobe. like, that train accident that killed everybody killed four people on the platform & five people on the train in different carriages and everything, or maybe the numbers are switched because i dont remember where lucy was. im saying, that was a hell of a crash. but sure. anyhow, even more fun, aslan appears as a cat to the Other protag while he's spending a night on the edge of the wilderness, and scratches him for saying he once threw rocks at a stray cat. like, hard #same, aslan!!! wtf dude why arent YOU being claimed by satan

whats also fun is that it doesn't really take place in narnia, which is also the reason besides pacing that you wouldnt really want to make this one into a film? because uhhhh the whole worldbuilding lewis crapt upon everyone for calormen is clearly racist as fuccck. if you arent already familiar with all the books (namely this one and i suppose the last battle) then its like.....i guess its some sort of vague notion of the ottoman empire? its really just a mashup of any number of white-english-variety racist notions. everyone is brown, is it an inaccurate stab at an amorphous amalgam of middle eastern culture? east asian? are people islamic or hindu? just try and guess what he was going for because its just. not based on anyone needing to know anything about reality. lewis was against seasoning food i guess, because it will mention i guess like, people cooking with onions like the heathens they are. (spoilers: this country just exists in the narniaverse to represent Those Heathens). its not necessarily an Evil place, they are noble savages ok!! with their formal seriousness and cutthroat customs.......b/c they are not as advanced and peaceful as the white northern christians, see. closer to the less developed violence of their inherently backwards ways and Cruel Society reigned by violence DONT CONVERT OR YOU'LL DIE, KIDS. but also.....you wont be white? the reason of calormens existence is really never explained. telmarines came from englandverse on accident thru a magic portal just lying around, possibly thats whats meant to have happened there too? its never attempted to be explained. anyways its basically the intro to the disney aladdin.

lewis is entirely inconsistent and self contradictory all throughout the series for the sake of the authors convenience. this is part of what makes the stories fun and the worldbuilding charming. it is also what allows him to pull stunts that have you pinching the bridge of your nose in exasperation and writing out essays to try to figure out how narnia is supposed to work. it is also what allows him, five books in, to be like, "here is the country to the south where the demon-worshipping gross scary brown uncivilized folk sit around hating narnia and confirming any racist notion you have about any nonwhite nonchristian country or culture." thanks, clive

its of course ludicrous and, of course, the protagonist shasta just so happens to be white despite being raised calormene. spoilers, he is narnian. or really from archenland, which isnt narnia but is still white and pro-narnia so its alright. i mean, technically narnia is allied with calormen at all points in time of the series? calormen just quietly tries an invasion in that book and also in the last book. so thats interesting. i suppose lewis is anti-crusades, which is big of him. the pevs arent out here trying to conquer calormen and convert them to narnianism. so that must not be the Destiny of the true christian? or are we meant to believe calormenes are beyond help? shasta who is of course secretly not "really" calormene is still representing someone undergoing "conversion," yet again, the guy is white. i suppose being brown is whats hopeless?

theres an inadvertently laughable line at the start of the book where a calormene expositorially points out that shasta is white by comparing him to the "accursed but beautiful" narnians. who are all white? is he just talking about the pevensies? the archenlanders (i cant remember where theyre meant to have come from either.) are like, all humanoid narnian natives white?? wtf, aslan. anyways, the dialogue is unnatural and funny enough, but its also like.....ok lewis, we got it, whiteness is the standard for all universes and everyone wishes they were white. stupid, sexy narnians.

what alllllmost suggests that being a poc isnt an automatic fastpass to hell is that im fairly sure the second protagonist aravis is a nonwhite calormene?? i dont remember it ever saying she was "fair" like the narnians the way the book immediately points out that shasta is. she is of course escaping an arranged marriage (the calormene plot to sort of vaguely try to invade narnia is also based on forcing susan to marry a dude she doesnt like yet who she apparently genuinely considered as a suitor when he wasnt acting like a jerk? so not only a dude who isnt white but a dude who isnt aslanian christian. its a whole complicating element to just toss out in this otherwise flat af worldbuilding, dude!! not to mention? despite the battles and shit, susan was out here considering marriage? how absolutely fucked up would it have been if any of them married and then effed off back to england. moving along) but she is from the start portrayed as equally sympathetically as shasta and nothing about her is pointed out as being Bad and Reprehensible, which the narration has no qualms about doing. she even gets to spend some time with her calormene friend, who is not exactly meant to be as sympathetic or noble but certainly isnt portrayed as at all evil. like...theres at least the occasional exception apparently, in which maybe not every person is inherently evil and violent and cruel. who knows

also aravis definitely later marries the white protag?? but apparently interracial marriage isnt entirely Unthinkable here. wait, also, aravis claims to be somehow a direct descendant of the calormene god tash? first of all, is that true, comma, possible? in the last book its confirmed that tash is real, albeit, like, a demon. dunno what c.s. is telling us with that one. is aravis related to a demon. we can only guess on account of the theme of Inconsistency

anyways. i suppose you could make it into a movie if you just threw out the racist shit. but the "calormen is also distinguished from narnia via its religion" element is also a touch janky. can it be thrown out too? if they intend to produce the last battle, will it be thrown out then. it kind of comes up again. if you get rid of those elements though, the stakes get a little blurrier and more political and more "wait well why would they have any beef with each other in the first place" if you cant just easily point out that the calormenes are shaking their fists at the narnians and their demon worship and their jealousy at not being white. again, are all centaurs white or something? wtf

truly calormene is the most racist ass shit in the whole series, but the concept comes up in less painfully direct ways other times, too. why are there native species in narnia that are considered inherently evil?? sure, the white witch as the stand-in for the devil wasn't originally from narnia. was she creating shit too? i dont remember what she was up to on account of i havent read the magicians nephew in a hot minute. i know they had to take a pegasus into a garden of eden type shit to smoke her out of wherever she was lurking for some reason or another. still. whys there whole types of creatures who are universally and unilaterally condemned? i know we're meant to believe that they just have evil intent according to their nature, but uh....theres no point at which any of these creatures are given a chance? maybe they served the white witch because she was nice to them for once. you're not given the chance to know. EXCEPT for the fact that you get shit like: giants are evil save for the occasional exception, like in lww when a "good" giant is described as having like, a long family line, and "traditions." not like Those Sorts. they do talk in like prince caspian and shit, when their numbers are miserable and theyre discussing tactics, whether to get help from the gross hags and harpies and etc and ppl will talk about Those People and Sorts and Rabble and its like...jfc. b/c apparently sommme of them can be decent! if theyre a giant or whatever. and meanwhile the dwarfs are always chaotic neutral or whatever. not believing in aslan but not necessarily being anti-narnia coz they live there. but sometimes being good guys!! but sometimes being bad guys, and jadis was cool to them apparently. like.................theres definitely cases of Types of narnians who fall outside the "born good / born bad" system, and thats pretty fucked. wolves too? theyre the Talking Beasts aslan definitely created, but on the side of the white witch? how was she having trees be on her side, too? whats going on around here. whats the moral meant to be. smh

uhh well anyhow, you could do a nice essay on gender re narnia. on account of sometimes its staleass typical sexist tropes like uhh, say,, the devil stand-ins keep being women? witches, ok. and the idea of "women need to be protected as pure creatures" as a basic sexist notion, and even lewis taking a relatively subdued jab at the idea of calling that sexist. susan being the miniature mom character type, and of course the infamous last battle bit where, in an attempt to describe her lack of spirituality as a self-insert of what lewis considered his own period of fake maturity via rejection of christianity, she's of course not only described as not believing in narnia (which????? what is anyone supposed to make of that. again, in the allegory of the cave shit, she's been outside the cave!!! she lived in narnia for YEARS AND YEARS and then WENT BACK. how are we supposed to believe she just convinced herself it wasnt literally real? its not quite the same as someone losing their faith in christianity.) but as like, wearing makeup, damn her. even if he wasnt trying to make the point that "look at boys and go to hell" which, i suppose he couldnt, as in narnia susan was being courted just fine as queen, yet i suppose also she didnt marry anyone—anyways, of course its still sexist to slight the way she decides to dress as some form of false maturity, even if its meant to be metaphor. just clumsy af & not great when again, devils are always witches around here. and being younger is to be more spiritually pure which like............mmm ok. this is sort of another one of those weirdly sexless fantasy universes, why do those keep happening. i mean sure this is a christian fairy tale for kids. but nobody even gets married save for in the last paragraphs of a couple books. its left a bit ambiguous whether thats even spiritually acceptable in the narnia rules, unless its to Continue the Line a la the telmarine monarchy from caspian the first to tirian the whateverth. hm

but also of course you get the young girl characters being...somewhat almost allowed to fight (archery mainly) but anyways at least being given equal status to the boys who are there also. theres even mention of once apparently narnia being ruled by a queen w no kings around. fantastic. and theres some non-witch lady characters on occasion. the human characters are where the dynamics are most at, i suppose, but anyways this at least has some nuance & at times seems to go just a bit beyond what you might expect from some old dude in the 50s. still not that surprising or innovative, but not completely flat, and seeming to contain at least a little reflection upon the topic

the essay of race re: narnia would be really short though. Its Racist Af. if you threw classism in too, you might get a bit more length out of it. but really its just so flat in this subject, and totally needless. there's the fact that even narnia is ruled by white english people but.....you can really do without juxtaposing this with the heinous nonwhite country somewhere over there. the rest of the books operate just fine w/o this

tolkien mentioned HIS scary brown backwards civilization to the south a lot more fleetingly in lotr but its....v much the same worldbuilding as narnia??? aka middle earth is pretty much an imaginary proto-england where you dont want to go too far east or south or you run into dangerous &/or inherently evil territory!! ok, jrr.....who was the other people in the inklings?? what did they write. could no one rein these guys in. coz lewis is over here with his Alternate Universe england. with uhhhh wilderness to the north and west and the dangerous evilish racismland to the south. and the ocean and dont forget narnia is a flat earth to the east. also? why are the lone islands like that. can aslan take care of some of that shit. for gods sake. anyways. the all-white good guys / evil poc should be thrown out of everything, thats not what makes the worldbuilding in either lotr or chronarnia at all interesting. yet is it is surely a subsection of the inherent Englishness of both examples........it warrants analysis but not "carrying on into films or anything based on either's precedence in the fantasy genre."

god who knows what im talking about at this point. im just saying "if they arent looking to even bother trying to wrangle the horse and his boy into something not ludicrously racist then i wouldnt be at all surprised." still, do you suppose theres like a curse where unless all narnia books are given some sort of film adaptation, the world won't know peace? more likely the world would end, maybe. the curse of clive. i dont really remember but that elder bbc series sure didnt cover the whole saga

well this is long enough but lets all set off in more endless, doomed narnalysis, such as

my thesis on trying to figure out what. the Fuck any reader is supposed to make out of edmund's role in the lww

whats the deal with merpeople?!

where are all these witches coming from, anyways

seriously if the narnians were just less murderous to the Undesirable species would they have been on the pro-aslan side all along

if there was only two humans staying in narnia at its birth, wouldnt their line like, die out immediately with their kid.

where did the archenlanders come from

where did the calormenes come from

oh yeah and like. are we seriously meant to believe that, at the end of the world, when aslan reveals that being goodnatured supercedes having the Wrong Religion, there is only one calormene in all of a) current existence and b) history who fits the bill? really. why even bring it up, then.

how did narnians react to their four monarchs completely disappearing......for real.....and what happened to the line to the throne?? was there just no ruler until the telmarines came in and took things over for the rest of the few centuries or whatevs.

when was that deep magic in lww written? at the start of narnia? coz thats the magicians nephew. again, how tf did the white witch get any leverage in that one. how was that supposed to be a good idea. wtf. see my thesis

whats the white witch supposed to represent as a stand-in for the devil? not helping that i dont remember the details of magicians nephew for shit, but she's definitely in the Multiverse lore of narnia as being from a different world as narnia and england. wtf is like...her nature

how weird is it in narnia that you have a god who drops in confused alien children to both go on personal journeys and save the world? is narnia-aslan/earth-jesus also dropping other children from other worlds into other other worlds? via other forms? hmm

lewis is all but inviting us the readers to be filling in the blanks with narnia fic. he's basically like, outright actually inviting fic with people wanting to speculate what happens with susan, who must inevitably return to narnia as lewis intends her to represent his own departure from (and obvious inevitable return to) christianity

a weird detail that is also never elaborated on: in addition to the narrator freely inserting loads of opinions into the narration, there's a time or two its made clear that like, the narrator has gotten this info from interviewing the characters. how'd you know about that last battle, "they all died and this happened in the afterlife" shit, huh. just another weird element

sussing out other lewispinions, like how he hates all schools apparently

narnia vs middle earth!! both quasi englands, both pre industrialization, both with christ figures running around some more than others, both with the need for rightful kings, totally different roles for humans tho. well, thats the whole comparison

and, inevitably, more.

#just narnblogging #or narbling #stay tuned for......murder

1 note · View note

respect-the-gryphon · 7 years

Text

((Jabberwock no kuni no alice draft))

((Mun needs to get this shit on the road. But she writes way too much. Also the chapters will not ilbe in proper cause im brainstorming the format before the final draft. this is after Joker no kuni no alice if she picks Blood, but she hasn’t let anything go of her past yet.doesnt make senses? Too bad. ))

.chapter 1 ????????????? “….Why am I here again?” The path was a familiar one indeed. Too familiar. Fists clenched and the swallow of invisible air down to the pit with nervous tension. The forest road littered with a mess of trees with paste-on door frames and hinges. Cloudy tones of nature and faraway music of a carnival. It echoed down like a hallway, only getting louder when one draws closer. An uncomfortable warning of what could be in stored. A cause soft breeze was safe, but the end of the path only knows the opposite. The brunette knew. She was on this road before and only believe that it was over. April season was drawing to closure as her unclear ending of the story. Was she never really free from that cell? “Joker? Why am I here again?!” The girl trails down in her red ribbon mary janes to the dirt way. Balls of fist planted by her petticoat and breaths of alert and anxiety. Bits of her mind wasn’t correctly putting things together. It was playing paranoia about everything, including her existence in this realm. Wasn’t the season ending? Why was she here again? Was it all a lie? “Alice….” A whisper reverb down the open space, drawing blue eyes at the direction. “Don’t look back…” That voice. That calm, but a sadistic voice. “Joker!” First instinct was to splint down the road, tired legs galloping dust and debris behind. “Joker!” Alice’s voice was wheezing her energy out with every few steps as if running away from terror behind. “Why did you pull me back here!? Return me back!” The colorful forest was becoming dull, and the breeze only sprays burning charcoal and ash. It cues Alice to pause her pace and cover her face from the gray smoke. She withdraws and heaves for oxygen, coughing. Her left arm shielding her eyes while the other covered her lips and nose. Was that fire?! A fire here?!“ “Hurry Alice… You’ll miss the grand finaile.” The carnival music that didn’t register was breaking down, gargling in broken notes and broken rhythm. A smacked music box choking out the last loop of its song. It sounded demonic. The childish laughs switch to screams of distress. The vision from Alice was fading as she fell on her knees, the smoke was getting too much for her, what little in the lungs limited versus the casting dark of smoke. “Silly girl. Tired already?” A sudden gust of wind brush through the smug black directly in Alice’s way to clean her space and lungs despite the chaos surrounding her. Gasping and coughing, the poor girl finally squints her eyes open at the casting shadow over her. A piercing hand extended for her casually. “I wouldn’t think you would be this late, my dear. You miss the final performance.” A gentleman in pattern jester clothes stepped back to give room to fix herself. Red hair with soft, droopy crimson eyes matching a smile of peace. “Though I don’t believe there will be another show for a while I’m afraid.” “Joker!” Alice finally got her composer together, fixing her ghastly appearances and wrinkled dress down. A glare set at the ringleader who just tilted his head acutely. “W-What do you want from me? Why am I back here? April Season is over-” A mix of orange light dance behind the taller male, her eyes widen in horror, speechless. The tent of glory and amusement of the circus engulfed in flames. The cloth was slowly becoming ash, and the support beams were gradually disappearing, creating the remaining parts of the tent to collapse. The worst part was the cries. The crying and screaming for help. People were trapped in the circus and stuck in the burning death trap. “Oh my god!” The girl shook, hands over her mouth, visibly shaking. Not even a question, just inhales and tears. Only frozen there, shocked there wasn’t anything defusing the fire or saving lives. “Yeah, it’s a shame.” A sound of annoyance presented in the Jester’s voice. It turned into a stool closer to the sight of destruction before him. “I forgot my cards in there. I did leave them with Black last time. And last time I saw him, He was inside. What a shame indeed we can’t play cards one last time-” “You monster!!” Alice accused, wiping tears from her cheeks, pushing herself off her bruised knees and onto her feet. “How could you be this cruel and kill all those people!? What are you trying to prove?!” The Jokers were cruel, but this was too far. For what? A shock value?! To scare her? At this point, it was best to jolt and pray for the peace of bed if one is dreaming. “Hm?” He leans his head for the moment before chuckling as a practical joke happened before him. “You thought I did this? No, No. I enjoy my job very much to do something like this.” Joker stepped closer to Alice, the flame behind him growing brighter. “It’s only a particular cycle of the game not needing my presence. A special round.” “Special round?” Alice still shaken, knees bend as she shifts backward from Joker. “I don’t believe you.” It was still the season of lies, and after everything she went through with this season, it was enough. “My friends would have told me. Blood would have…” She paused. But would he though. Doubt crossed her mind. “He would have, right?” A hand of hers placed close to her chest. “Sadly, the Hatter wouldn’t know either. None of them do. It’s a surprise for all of them. This event is very extraordinary.” Joker joyously twirl his jester hat, hearing the jingle of bells with each loop. “Many rules will be broken, lives at stake. It will all fall apart so fast if someone fails. The question is, are you ready for it?” “Joker. Please just let me go home.” He examined the hat for a moment, ignoring her plea. “It will bring the worst out of people. I wonder what it will do to you when I’m not around…I just worry that you would be safer behind bars than what’s going to happen next.” The fire was creeping closer, swallowing down the grass by the man’s feet. “It will really put your demons to the test. Bring them to life.” It follows around the rubber sole and leather fabric to snag the pants around him and hurry up his leg. “There’s a poem that reminds me of your possible redemption. I hope it doesn’t end this world though. How sad it will be to have the hero die in the end.” “The fire!” It was too late, the fire race around Joker’s clothes and skin like paper. The tone he continued to speak despite his limited moments while the fire began to eat his existence away. The red hair male, walked closer to Alice who couldn’t move in fear. He became the dancing flame with the burning forest of red and heat. Joker reached for Alice. “I hope to see you win against the Jabberwocky. I’ll be rooting for you…..” A sinister laugh broke out mixed with pain, skin melting off of bones. Only screams and crying came from Alice as she felt paralyzed in her spot, dreading for escape while boney fingers tugged her muscles up to restrain her movement. Yells for help didn’t echo while she was forced to stare at the melted skull of the ringleader who only laughed at her misery, moving its head to reveal a large shadow figure of a creature, lunging from the fires of hell. A growl of sharp teeth hinges over to devour the offered victim into blackness. “N-Noooo!” A distress cry with sheets crunch into the fists of the girl in the bunk bed. Troubled eyes were darting at the ceiling under a pool of sweat. It took a few minutes for the outsider to remember that she was back in reality, but her back remains on the mattress. It was just a nightmare. A terrifyingly one as well. A sick joke. But where was Nightmare in it? He would have known. “….Do I have to ask?” A question from a startled Clockmaker from below the bedside. With his hair sticking out like a scared cat, eyes bugging at the other. —-lets end it here because i write too much–

#heart no kuni no alice #joker no kuni no alice #fanfic draft #alice in the country of hearts #hnkna #hnkna fanfiction #kill me now plz ohmydskgdsj

10 notes · View notes