#i like to think his social media is comically inconsistent
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My hot take is that the same people who call Jason copaganda, pr-gunviolence or etc are from the same vein as people who blame schoolshootings on videogame violence, who blamed crime on Metal and satanism.
Instead of taking a critical look at a system within which a symptom of a problem is making itself known, you look if there is an outside influence, a kind of "virus" that you can blame for making it "sick".
DC comics are a little fucked up. That's the agreement you entered when reading them. All characters are inconsistent and sometimes in the wrong. Jason is a Bat, so at least it feels like he's maybe substantial enough to blame for the whole batclans issues, in a way that Helena Bertinelli (for example) can't be, because she is less closely tied and has less appearances. Congratulations, you have an identified patient! Jason is the problem that is rippling out and causing all these nasty and unsatisfied feelings the readers have about how crime is handled in these comics.
We see crime being fought in imperfect ways and our current cultural consciousness goes off with warning bells to identify the problem. But what you were taught was to identify what outside influence happens to be present and connecting the issue, and how to justify that all evil stems from this malignant influence. So surely if we could just remove this bad thing, we could go back to the wonderful world we knew where everything was ok.
That world never existed. The thing we are nostalgic for, is the world before we became aware of it's flaws. The problem has always been there, has always been an integrated part of this whole you used to love and admire.
But because the kind of people blaming Jason for "copaganda" do genuinely and truly come from a good place of wanting social justice (I'm saying you are good people. I disagree and think you are making a logical error, but we do care about and want the same thing. Good People) because you come here with the right intentions, you use the buzzwords of copaganda. Or gunviolence. You know from what you have heard that the issue is systematic, but you are struggling to find what that system equivalent is in DC comics. You are falling victim to the fallacy of assuming a main narrative perspective. Just as irl cops are hard to identify as the problem bc you might have to first struggle through the cognitive dissonance that your old worldview of good cops was wrong (so so wrong), you experience cognitive dissonance if trying to read comics with someone like Batman being wrong and flawed.
Looking beyond any superficial similarities to cops Jason is called out for (uses a gun, kills, enforcing his vision of justice) he really doesn't have much more similarities. He isn't a figure of authority, he lacks the nigh god-given justification to do whatever he wants whatever the outcome and is questioned at every turn. Just the sheer instances of Batman or another Bat showing up to beat Jason up and lecture him on what he does.
Extending this, he does not have the pervasive and persuasive power to shape a narrative. Jason's narrative is so far out of his hands. Which has been a core truth about him since for ever. From his maleable origin story, to his death, the years of him being gone and having No Voice Whatsoever, his resurrection in utrh showing him trying, struggling to have a voice against Bruce's story and being drowned out and denied his perspective, the inconsistency of his character after, each writer trying to shape him into something. Now cops fucking have a narrative. Their narrative is the main one we are fed. Their violence is structured and oppressive. Jason is neither a structural systemic power, nor is he oppressive of anyone. If you disagree with his violence for the sake of the moral highground of condemning killing.... Then, just, there are other media, you know.
Cop violence is systemic violence. It is violence that is "justified" to the extent it requires no justification. It is above being questioned. I am genuinely willing to hear an argument how Jason is cop-coded. But to me he is the punk resistance based "violence" that is only organized in the anarchical but organical sense of caring to protect the community that surrounds you. He doesn't approach Gotham as a paternalistic force of protection shielding it from above, but as one of them from within, showing up for the people who are suffering the way he has suffered too.
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About Sonic
I never talked extensively about Sonic and what I think about him overall, despite him being my favourite (I see more Shadow as some mystical guy, alive certainly, yet somewhat more like a guide or a protector and Sonic's Shadow, but that's for another time as I talked about him a lot).
There is still this silly battle between Sonic fans on who is your favourite take of the character. The character has been inconsistent, in videogame too, even if we only take game/Japanese media (An example? Adventure Sonic is, at least the way I perceive him, mysterious and whimsical, joyful but slightly grumpy. Unleashed Sonic is calm, balanced, a bit quiet overall. The thing that remains consistent is that he is kind earthed and optimistic. Most of the time.
Even people who tell how Sonic is supposed to be interpret him very differently from each othes adn from the games, the way they make him talk or act in certain situation in their stories is not the same I see in videogames.
For Sonic unleashed I saw the whole cutscenes both in English and in Japanese, so...
Not that this bother me, as I previously said, since is a team who work on Sonic is normal different people have a different perception of the character, is based on our personal experiences. And in next years things will change over and over.
Let's talk about how is shown in various media, not necessarily Japanese since they influence each others (example the chili dogs).
SatAM, AoStH.
Aosth/SatAM Sonic was most likely the most mischievous incarnation of the character, since he apparently took joy to make fun of Eggman but also to the french coyote, Antoine, who is a sort of 'Luigi' in this show. I remember him as being creative, impatient, bold and very self confident, but not evil.
I didn't watch Sonic underground. It was aired in Italy but I don't know when. I can say nothing
OAV Sonic
Adventure Sonic and X Sonic traits start to appear here. This Sonic is aloof, whimsical and grumpy and not as joyful as we are used to see him. but is heart is ih the right place, of course.
Adventure Sonic
If I saw Sonic OVA only in latest years, I can say I played the two Adventure games early in the '00s. This Sonic feels to me as whimsical, elusive, mysterious (especially in Adventure 2, it is perceived as such especially by Shadow "Tell me, who are you?" and Sonic's answer is rather enigmatic, is also there you start to realize you know nothing about Sonic, where he comes from etc... you know the others better), still a bit grumpy yet way more joyful than the one from the OVA, a happy guy I would say.
In particular I loved the expressions in Sonic Adventure. Here come the folded ears you often see in Prime.
X Sonic
The most quiet of all. Elusive, still a bit whimsical and grumpy if you don't take him the right way, but this doesn't mean you lost him. Socially awkward and unaware of this, I think sometimes he is leaning in the Asperger territory sometimes. Joyful, optimistic, gentle, sometimes melodramatic and funny but he can get very serious when needed.
Archie Sonic
Archie Sonic is one I don't like much. He's self centered, most of his monologues tell how awesome he is, how good looking he is, how fast he is, well, 90% about himself and it go moldy soon. And can be a jerk toward his friends sometimes. Unlike other versions, he's never too serious.
Fleetway Sonic.
Unlike other sonic incarnation, Fleetway Sonic is a jerk, a bully, he constantly makes offensive jokes toward his friends, including Tails (in other media he is more protective toward Tails). He seems to care or express nice though only when his friends are not around. Is hard to read those comics. So far the worst Sonic
IDW Sonic
Not completely bad, not completely good. He got some traits from Archie Sonic. IDW Sonic seems to me the less sincere and less carefree of all. Like, Sonic we know is mostly feeling oriented. He can be thoughful when needed, but mostly he does what he feels is right rather than what he thinks is right. IDW Sonic is well known especially for his obsession of giving a second chance (and then a third, a four) to all his opponents. That is a thing Goku does and is fine because is true to himself. But Sonic is not like that. Sonic is not so merciful, he is a kind hearted character but there is still a red line and he tends to be wary toward those who don't deserve his trust, like Eggman. He forgives his enemies. After they show they're wort deserving forgiving, not before, unlike IDW Sonic. IDW Sonic is also cunning and can be manipulative, that's unique to this version. You can see the true sonic only when he is alone. Then he is more like himself, in his monologues about his friends, and how much he worries about them or appreciate them. Also his opinion of himself is not as high as the one we see in Archie comics. He is overall aloof.
Unleashed Sonic
This one is among the most gentle and down to Earth Sonic I've ever seen. He is slightly quiet and never a jerk. Instead he is fully supportive and encouraging toward his new friend Chip who is clumsy, despite being a god.
Frontiers Sonic
Sonic's personality changed again. He is still kind hearted, brave and strong. But compared tho before he is more mature, thoughful and slightly melancholic. He smiles less and I don't see his joyful exictment anymore. He just smiles when happy.
Boom Sonic
Sonic is usually elusive. Not in Sonic Boom. I perceived this incarnation as very playful and carefree, although an attention seeker.
Movie Sonic
Oh... this is one that goes through a character arc. He is shown to be a good hearted, hyperactive and lonely kid. He is very playful and talkative yet not gossipy. He talks alot just to not feel alone and took the bad habit. Once he found a family and some living being to talk with at times however, is shown he is not as sociable as you may assume by the way he lets his tongue run. He doesn't trust so easily people he meets the first time, as is shown with Tails and only later he feels more comfortable to have Tails around and opens up to him.
Prime Sonic
Another that goes into a character arc. Here he got new traits, like clumsiness, low attention span, affectionateness. And old ones like elusiveness. This Sonic is particularly interesting for some of his traits that are hard to spot. He clearly appears to be this impulsive, talkative (yet not gossipy), overconfident kid who trips on his feet and is deemed annoying (I personally don't find him annoying). He loves his friends and is ready to protect them but, before the prism shattering, is shown (and suggested by a conversation between his friends) that he also likes to spend time alone, without people around (here one trait that not many notice). Sonic is aware of his flaws and during his experience in the shatterverse he gets in touch with all of them, either the counterpart of his friends tell him or he realize his mistakes by his own. On the outside he is cheerful, a bit dimwitted sometimes, friendly. But as the serie goes forward, he is more, gloomy and pensive and he fully opens up only to Shadow and only later to the rest of his friends in the shatterspace (including Nine, who first sees through him). In the end of the serie is shown he is more considerate toward his friends and he hold some of his energies back.
What else? This is all what I can think of, I haven't played all the games. I may mention Sonic Cronicles, but there Sonic is the way you want him to be.
To me is hard to choose. As long as is not the one of Archie, IDW or Fleetway, I'm fine with all of them. My favourite might be Adventure Sonic and Prime Sonic.
#sonic the hedgehog#sonic#sonic prime#sth#sonic boom#sonic adventure#sonic adventure 2#sonic adventure battle 2#sa2#sonic unleashed#sonic frontiers
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Tell me more about your neurodivergent Vergil headcanons? 👀 If you want to, I mean.
these are just my own views ofc but to me he feels very autistic, almost to a comical extent (i dont believe it was intentional on capcom's part at all but idk) and the portrayal of his trauma/ptsd is one of my absolute favourites in media. i think he's just so sensitively handled and with so much nuance, which is shocking for a high action series like this.
just, the fuckin... the fuckin concentration gauge. weaponized sensory disorder. he literally cant function and gets debuffed if he isn't exerting complete control over his actions/starts taking in unwanted stimuli. his playstyle rewards precision, repetition and patience. he just like me fr
his general social mannerisms and the way he carries the yamato, dare i say stimming with the yamato, feel very much to me like someone who NEEDS order- which is a good contrast to dante (who i see adhd hcs for which is also pog) and definitely part of why vergil gets so fucking pissed at him.
onto the V side of things, there's that special interest in poetry, again weaponizing a sensory comfort/hobby as a game mechanic which is just. SO fucking cool to me. he powers up by reading poetry. i also love his complete inconsistency with tactile sensations. in the VoV manga, V constantly gets covered head to toe in demon gunk without it bothering him, but when he goes to eat a burger he has no idea how to without getting sauce on his fingers, which he cannot STAND. griffon even calls him out on this and V says he doesn't know why but he just hates that feeling in particular. again, just like me fr
about his trauma... man just the entirety of dmc5 + VoV being about vergil's literal deconstruction and journey back to himself, reclaiming the entirety of his identity, even the parts he found undesirable, is just so powerful to me. it's more lowkey in dmc5 itself, but in VoV there are very clear moments of V experiencing flashbacks/panic attacks/etc and the manga takes a more direct approach with his mental state. it's handled really well and never feels like it infantilizes or demonizes him in any way
eugh this got long enough im cutting it off here lol
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Hi, Hello! Uh- welcome to my little corner on the internet!
"I… then I’m wildly inconsistent!"
Out of all the social media that I didn't code myself, I have to say that Tumblr is the best! I'm looking forward to all your questions and interacting with friends and fans alike!
Ask + Interaction rules:
Feel free to reblog, like, send asks. Just spam me with notifs! I won’t mind, it’s all part of the fun. If you’re scared to ask something, send an anon my way. There’s no judgment here, I mean, I’m literally running a Tumblr rp blog for an 8 year old from Sonic the Hedgehog.
I’m not good with separating information, so my Tails is a mix of pretty much every adaptation except for the comics (I'M SORRY I NEVER GOT AROUND TO READING THEM, I’M WORKING ON IT I SWEAR)
Just a few informational headcanons, believe it or not I've been affected by the trans Tails propaganda, but my own little twist nobody knows because yeah. I would explain but we would be here for a while. He goes by He/it (The it is just because he’s used to it from west side, don’t let him fool you.). He’s an Autistic little feller and we love him for that. And he can talk to flickies. I forget if that’s canon or just a very popular headcanon. Regardless he can!
Please keep things Sfw?? I mean- violence is allowed, yk what I mean. He’s 8 guys, relax.
Angst calms the voices in my head, so I am VERY open to receiving and answering questions that might be a tad on the… darker side. Although for Sonic's sake, give at least some nice questions??? He's going to explode if we keep doing this.
Have fun! Show support to blogs that interact, and if you feel like it, set up a side blog and join in on the fun! This isn’t a closed account.
I'm bored more often then not, so the quote changes on what I think best suits his mood! Time your questions accordingly to get the results you're looking for.
#miles tails prower#tails the fox#tails ask blog#ask blog#tails rp blog#rp blog#sonic the hedgehog#sonic rp
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does pacat rlly not care about fence anymore 😭 i feel like it’s much better than dark rise and could be better than captive prince too…it’s been a year since i last consumed anything fence-related and i really don’t understand what’s going on with the series?? but anyways i like ur fics a lot & agree with ur reviews of srb’s novels, which also could have had so much potential but ended up kind of sucking in a lot of ways.
Pacat is a mystery to me. Personally, I believe Dark Rise is his best work--it shows much better pacing than Captive Prince and gets the same impact and feel without going to such extreme and explicit horrors, which shows a lot of skill (I know CP is his most beloved series but he's improved a lot since writing it haha). What gets me is that Fence STARTED really strong and I counted it as his best work for sure. There were fun tropes and dynamics, interesting characters with a central relationship promising contention, fighting, and tension, and some fun elements in the mystery of Jesse and potential in the reveal of Nick's lineage. And you could tell there was passion in the project...but even by the later issues of the original 12-issue run, Pacat's social media reflected a large disinterest in Fence, and that disinterest has shown in the story as Fence continues to progress.
I try to logic and rationalize and analyze everything Fence related and literally every time I do I get met with 'it's not that deep' from the actual canon lmfao but I'm going to offer my rationalization anyway lmao the only reason I can think to justify Pacat's lack of interaction with Fence on Twitter besides not caring about it much is that it doesn't fit his brand. Which is only defined by two other series, but it's very much a high fantasy/historical fantasy dark romance with stomach-churning undertones and much darker themes than Fence. So I gave him that excuse for a long time. Fence doesn't fit within that brand at all, so from a marketing standpoint, it makes some amount of sense to focus more on the other franchises. However, I think this strategic thinking is giving too much credit--Fence has always had really shit marketing so either Pacat has no mind for marketing or he doesn't care to market Fence, which both get us back to the only real reason being he just doesn't care about it as much as his other things.
Do I expect Pacat to be hanging out in the Twitter FENCEtag? No. But I do think it's strange that he'll post tweets saying happy birthday to other people's books the day they come out, but literally didn't ever make a Fence Redemption announcement or say anything on the release day. The most he's done is retweet a couple things from BOOM! and 2 other outside sources. And this is regular behavior--he didn't do announcements for RIVALS or RISE either and didn't promote them at all. Yet Dark Rise gets announcements all the way along--title announcement, release date announcement, cover reveal, etc etc etc. He also posts and retweets fanart for his other 2 books really regularly, yet he didn't even retweet all of Jo's (the co-creator and illustrator of Fence) pieces for the Fence event Jo hosted in April, let alone bother with much fanart of it. There's just no reason for the vast gap in involvement and enthusiasm other than him very strongly preferring his other projects and not bothering with the effort of interacting with Fence. He'll occasionally ask culture questions (like if Americans say 'coz' for cousin or how to say something in French) but that's legitimately the best argument there is for his interest or care in the project.
And lastly, his lack of interest shows in the story. He handed his story off to someone else to write novels for and simply let her go wild without regard for how it impacted the comics or the fans. Further, Pacat lost track of his own story and characters between Volume 3 & 4 in a way that I cannot excuse as anything other than inconsistent characterization. And I know I'm biased there, but I make so many people in real life read Fence that I don't jabber at about it/pull into the fandom (so they have no knowledge of my takes), and all of them have commented on the 180 the characters made between the volumes. And, listen, if I wouldn't accept that kind of inconsistency in characterization when grading my 12-year-olds' narrative writing projects, why am I still sitting here trying to excuse the lazy/poor writing in a published and successful author? The pacing is also telling--a lot of conflict was skipped over 'off screen' between the volumes (which, say it with me folks, is lazy writing). Nick's resentment toward Seiji turned into full admiration sans any ill feelings or acknowledgment that even if he IS hot shit, he was still a major asshole in his initial conception, and Seiji apparently agreed to drop his thing about Jesse (you know, the thing that had them in a fist fight approximately 40 pages of comic before). There was no build-up to their relationship or resolution of the conflict that made it unhealthy (expect to have Nick 'admit' Seiji was right to treat him like shit...) These things push the story along a lot faster; rivals to lovers moves really fast if you skip all the tedious development of the characters getting to know, respect, tolerate, and then like each other. Pacat loves rivals/enemies to lovers and (to be blunt) mean/cold bottoms, so it is so fucking bizarre to me that he'd speedrun the relationship and change the characterization so much when it's directly moving away from his preferences (see: Captive Prince, Dark Rise). I don’t know how it happened from anything other than sheer laziness or from not caring about Fence so deeply that he let SRB overwrite the characters and romance he'd originally created.
Last, there are just SO many inconsistencies and copyedit-level mistakes. And I get it that typos happen, but it happens so much that it's like,,, are you even rereading the scripts before you throw them at your publisher? And the continuity errors are massive at this point. Seiji's year in France, which was apparently the result of his loss to Jesse, is only possible if time travel exists and also timelines exist simultaneously. How do you fuck up so big when constructing a story you care about? At least by the time it gets published, you should be sure it's READY to be published. It's like he's writing issue-by-issue as he goes with no plan and can't be bothered to skim through the previous issues to check for things.
I just can't come up with a reality where Pacat actually loves Fence when this is all the care he gives it. We are so so so lucky to have Jo--she is literally the most amazing and gives so much love and care to Fence, and it shows...I just wish Pacat's writing didn't affect her contribution to the comic too. But she at least loves Fence even if Pacat doesn't seem to tell her all that much more than he tells the rest of us LMFAO
This turned into a WHOLE messy essay, I just have a lot of thoughts and they've been brewing for years so sorry to go off on my mad ravings and thanks for tuning in XD and also!!! I'm so happy you like my fics TT.TT <33 and also that you see my point about the novels uwu
#jackshit#fence comic#fence vent#also obligatory PSA: Pacat in genderqueer and has stated he's not a woman (though he's not a man either)#she/her and he/him pronouns#ik most people refer to her as she/her which is cool!! (so long as you're not also trying to tell me shes a woman lmfao)#but i like to even the pronoun usage by favoring toward he/him because most people assume he's a woman#so more he/him vibes need to be put into the universe for him too and to remind people he's not a woman
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fr tho why does rachel have in comic to be like ew look how gross apollo is you can see (barely) in the reflection of his sunglasses he's looking at her body!! as if on episode TWO the first time hades sees her isnt several panels of him hyperfocusing on her body (w/ her face cut off) aka doing the same like? idk i just dont see how hes the "better man" because rachel wrote in one is a sexual abuser and the other isnt, yet theyre exactly same otherwise, like is that how low the bar is? really?
Yeah theirs alot of things that hades does that apollo also does, like it's made clear that Persephone doesn't like being grabbed because of apollo... but also hades does that all the time along with viewing her and her body in a sexual light.
on another similar note I find that like in relation to Persephone trauma there is alot of inconsistencies to it, which in one way does make sense as trauma can be inconstant from moment to moment. Though there are a few times that it just.. feels really off, like during the tour with hades Persephone makes it clear that she doesn't want to be grabbed, but also hades grabs her alot?
That along with the point that Persephone hates having her picture taken, so much that she can have her employee picture taken. Then a few episodes later after actively taking about her trauma with eros she takes has her picture taken for social media. Especially with the mention she should make herself more sexually appealing by pushing her boobs together?
Again I don't think this is a concrete bad thing, as again trauma is odd and never always effects you the same way but it feels really weird how when she is with hades, or doing actions that connect to hades her trauma is consistently gone. There isn't any negative reactions to his kisses or touches (at least that I remember), and whenever she is thinking about hades there is never even a slightly negative reaction to it.
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Weekly Reading Update (04/15/24)
Reviews and thoughts under the cut
The Buried and the Bound by Rochelle Hassan (8/10)
This was a quick reread since I'm going to be reading The Summer Queen, the sequel, and I actually liked this one more the second time around! It has a sort of casual interaction with the fantastical that I love, and Aziza, Leo, and Tristan are all great characters with unique ties to each other. There are some points where I think things are just a little too convenient or rushed, but those mostly happen early on and the plot is cohesive and strong for the rest of the book.
House of Crimson Hearts by Ruby Roe (3/10, DNF @ 50%, 18+)
As I've mentioned, I was excited for this one since sapphic fantasy romances are few and far between. Unfortunately, this book was just a mess. The main characters have wildly inconsistent characterization, and it's so obvious the author wrote in certain worldbuilding elements to make them have sex without working out their issues and hatred for each other. The worldbuilding is atrocious; despite the typical vaguely historical fantasy setting descriptions and the lack of anything like lightbulbs, phones, or really any technological advancement, the final straw for me was the remote control vibrator that made its appearance halfway through. There's absolutely no effort to build a sensible setting for the story, which is barely there in the first place. The actual plot was just beginning when I DNF'd--halfway through the book! An unfortunate letdown.
To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang (CR, 53%)
This was another highly anticipated read of mine and, unfortunately, it's not living up to my hopes. I think a lot of flaws lay in the writing, which is clunky and over-descriptive, taking time away from character and plot developments. The worldbuilding is interesting, but it's inserted in very awkward infodumps, and a lot of the elements that caught my attention aren't being given a lot of page time.
Wolf Gone Wild by Juliette Cross (CR, 33%)
On one hand, this is shaping up to be a brainless, fun fantasy romance, just like I thought it'd be. On the other hand, there is a place for your fandom rants, and your published novel is not it. If I wanted to read about this author's undying love for Reylo or Wolverine, I'd check out their social media. I should not have to slog through a whole chapter of the main character perusing a comic book shop so the love interest can say she's so 'quirky' and 'passionate.' It's unfortunate because the rest of the book is meeting my expectations so far.
Island of Graves by Lisa McMann (CR, 18%)
This is another book with a major pro and con. Pro: Alex instantly gave up searching for Aaron, finally letting Aaron reap the consequences of his actions. Con: Alex instantly gave up searching for Aaron, ruining the cliffhanger of the last book. If you're going to introduce a huge future plot point at the end of a book to get readers to continue your series, you can't immediately backtrack on it. This is a symptom of this series' issues as a whole, desperately trying to maintain the status quo for seven whole books, and stunting the plot and character growth in the process.
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice (CR, 6%)
I've barely started this one, but for now it's just sort of decent. I'm vaguely intrigued by the vampire's story, but it's also tough to get attached when a lot of the details, such as people's actual names, are missing.
#books#reading update#the buried and the bound#rochelle hassan#house of crimson hearts#ruby roe#to gaze upon wicked gods#molly x chang#wolf gone wild#juliette cross#island of graves#lisa mcmann#interview with the vampire#anne rice
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Maybe I should start using this blog to talk about my hobbies as well so that I can associate it with things I like. I like art, I do a variety of mediums. Watercolor, charcoal, graphite, trying to get into pastels and gouache, digital, not a fan of acrylic but I can do it, really want to try oil painting but I don’t have the space for it to dry.
I like reading classics a lot. Pride and prejudice is a fave rn and I impulse purchased Jane Austen’s entire works. Read the predecessor to Dracula, Carmilla. Very good. Very gay. Way more gay than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be subtext. It was not. I also like reading trashy books as well. I really enjoy the ones that TikTok recommends that have absolutely insane plot premises. I don’t care about the writing at that point I just need to read.
I’ve recently gotten into Overwatch. Never played a FPS before. Made a couple new friends from it. Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, I really wanna get into Celeste. On the second Ace Attorney game, I love mobile and gacha games, I wanna play more otomes even tho I’m not a big fan of romance when I am implicated.
I unmask a lot with this blog and every time I reread a post I can’t help but think of how bland it is and how I’d never talk like that in real life.
My favorite game is Okami. Never met other people who like it. Very sad.
I watch anime, tho I do this thing where I’ll watch a popular anime a couple years after it comes out. And I tell myself that it’s to see if it lives up to the hype but honestly it’s bc I’ll have random moments in which I want to watch anime and then the only ones that come to mind are popular ones on social media years ago. I say my favorite is Bungou Stray Dogs but that’s actually my favorite manga not my favorite anime. My fav anime rn is probably High Card. Doesn’t have the highest budget but I like the premise so far and the characters. My favorite mangas are Bungou Stray Dogs, Kuroshitsuji, and Witch Hat Atelier (also not caught up on). I wanna start reading firefly wedding.
I read a lot of romance manhwas, mainly with female leads but I have a couple with male leads that I adore. I haven’t watched any tv shows in a while but I’ve been telling myself that I’m either going to watch Hannibal or Dexter. I’ve been wanting to consume more queer material involving women since I’ve found that despite being sapphic, very few women media shows up recommended to me. Favorite movie of last year was Bottoms. I watched it several times. I want to get into cdramas. The next film I see will either be The Handmaiden or Maja Ma. Or one of the Saw movies. Been on a Saw movie binge with friends. I find the themes inconsistent. An unforgivable crime.
There’s no actors I’m particularly into. Never got into anything Marvel aside from Spider Man. I plan on reading the comics soon bc a friend of mine really likes Spider man and I want him to know I care about his interests.
I’ve found a new enjoyment for figure skating. I have a couple of male skaters that I quite enjoy, but I’d like to watch more and eventually get into some female and ice dancing pairs as well.
I crochet. Valentine’s Day is my favorite holiday. I graduate with my bachelors in the spring. I plan on doing my masters in IO psychology. My favorite color is blue and pink. I’ve been dying my hair for I think two years now. Maybe six months away from two. My friends say that I am surprisingly progressive in regards to my political views. I don’t know what that is supposed to mean.
I have a new car cause I recently got into a car crash. I’m very privileged. I don’t have to worry about money. I do regardless. I somehow have this personality disorder, and I have had one of the best life’s a child could have. Though every time I say that my friends say that’s weird considering the amount of trauma I’ve gone through. I think I have turned out well despite my circumstances. I like caring about other people. I’d like to make it my life’s goal to improve the life of somebody I don’t know yet.
Feel free to reach out to this blog anytime. It’s a side blog so I’m likely not gonna end up following anybody but I like talking.
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Modern retelling of Batgirl 2000 where Bruce and Barbara keep going on the AITA subreddit about their different parenting styles
#My (49m) daughter (18f) has recently expressed suicidal tendencies my coparent (28f) believes that her continuing in her unhealthy hobbies c#ould be worsening it however I believe if she continues with raging perfectionism shewill be fine#gross oversimplification? Yes but c’mon#cassandra cain#batman#batgirl#barbara gordon#oracle#bruce wayne#i like to think his social media is comically inconsistent
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10 Anti LO Asks
1. TBH I wish Hera didn't change her mind do fast to suddenly support HxP because that would be so much better in terms of drama (esp since it's supposed to be a romance story and all) and it could have been more of showing and proving they're a good couple over the course of the comic instead of her having very real concerns then dropping it out of nowhere. It feels like that was the 1st case of RS being too scared to actually let HxP have any struggles so the story feels flatter for it.
2. So during the trial we can see Hades being super protective over Perse and not afraid to oppose his brother to the point he became aggressive over normal questioning. Such a good boyfriend eh? Where was that energy when his brothers made fun of Minthe? He didn't even bother to make them remember her name. He let his friends abuse her for the sheer fact of being a nymph. But what am I expecting from a guy who dumps his girlfriend for a teenager he just met🙄
3. Guys guys guy, the reason Persephone hasn’t made any female friends is because she’s so traumatized of her last friends dying. That’s why Persephone can’t make friends with other gods
Cause she can only make em
4. it's kinda funny but also sad LO is now in that group of media where critics/fans are basically like "yeah its a badly drawn male fantasy lying its feminist with bad writing and a mountain of bad ideas and countless inconsistencies but its not SUPPOSED to be GOOD" like?? what??? how is now a mark of praise its actually bad?? is this a new white fandom thing i dont get it 💀
From OP: I don’t get it either. Especially with LO since that implies RS isn’t trying to make LO a good story.
5. Just wanted to say Im really happy I found your blog, it opened my eyes to how bad LO is and i finally stopped wasting my money on fp. I think the part that gets me the most is how Persephone's character is not consistent. I mean, she's very naive but shes also super smart. She's had no experience with other people but she's also very good at manipulating situations (aka manipulating Minthe), she is very pure and never had any sex experience but she's also extremely sensual. Not to mention her body, she's not skinny but she's also not fat, she's tiny and kinda childish but at the same time has curves everywhere? It's like come on RS just choose one lmao
6. I saw the Tiny Head Apollo ask and. He looks like a goomba from the mario bros live action
7. I don't even think Persephone is (or really was) a bad character, she was fine if not underdeveloped, but Hades is like literally awful? Like we are introduced to what seems to be a socially awkward guy in a cruddy relationship, only to find out he's an entitled capitalist with violent temper tantrums who cheats on his mentally ill girlfriend with his sister in law, take advantage of impressionable young women who need the help, and literally owns slaves?? like he had negative development??
8. literally the most greek myth accurate thing in LO is that the SFX font is called "Phobos" (who he and his twin were cut to instead have random love named kids??) and thats it.
-----FP Spoilers/Mention-----
9. Episode 188 Spoilers:
Eris get out of here while you can, you shouldn’t be tarnished by a terribly written comic like this. Get out of here, girl, please (at least, I’m 80% sure it’s my girl Eris)
10. ExCUSE ME, Persephone wants to study Law? Since when?? And why tf do the Greek gods meet in a Gothic style building? I noticed the windows and other details. It makes it look like they are in the UK or the US? (For ep. 188)
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Fire Lord Ozai: A blood thirsty monster or the less fortunate “Zuko” of his generation?
Hello again and thank you as always for clicking and allotting some of your time to read my humble post! Since I’ve happened to notice quite an increase in posts lately regarding the controversial character and nature of the former Fire Lord, the now imprisoned fallen prince Ozai, and I’ve personally promised in my previous post that I will share my own analysis on him if people asked me to do so (which actually happened), I am here to deliver my own take on this very intriguing man’s character, while also building a potential past for him based on stuff gathered from the show’s cannon.
I would like to start this essay with what I find to be my favorite quote ever: ”Monster’s aren’t born, they are created.” ~ Naruto Uzumaki (Naruto) What I like about this quote soo much and find very inspirational is the truth it holds within its short, yet powerful message. We are often fast to judge a “book by the cover”, to reduce others to what we assume of them by their appearance or latest actions that we’ve seen them do, but never actually take a moment and wonder where they come from, if this person we soo harshly look down upon really has been this way since their very beginning?
I’ve come across many comments on social media related to ATLA, especially on YouTube videos on which people would throw with harsh comments such as “Aang being a coward for choosing to spare the villain just because they saw a dumb baby pic of them” or “Ozai is the essence of evil and even as a baby he’d been a monster”. I can’t help but wonder who hurt these people to make them be so cruel? Like, how messed up must you actually be to say that a baby, a friggin baby, is the embodiment of all evils? Or that a child was a coward for choosing to see his opponent’s last bits of humanity and opted to spare them?
Aang was soo morally conflicted about the idea of killing Ozai not only because it contradicted the morals of his people, but because he himself understood that this man hadn’t always been the cruel beast he came to met in their first and final showdown. It’s important to note here the fact that upon finding that picture, Aang was actually convinced it had to be Zuko as a baby since it looked so innocent and cute and was actually surprised to learn it was Zuko’s father. And that’s the thing, Ozai was born like us all as an innocent and sweet baby. Babies aren’t in any way evil or twisted, they don’t even have the notion of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ defined in their small, still developing minds. In fact, the very choice of the creators to add this picture in the show is meant to tell us this very thing: this man wasn’t always like this. But if he wasn’t always like this, then what happened to make him become this way?
Well, in order to find out the reason, we must go back in time to the very beginning: Ozai’s childhood and upbringing. For this next part I am going to solely focus on the show cannon, as the comics aren’t the products of BryKe and have a lot of inconsistencies to the source’s cannon (you can go and read my other post on why they fail when it comes to Zuko’s character and his family).
From what we know and can easily deduce by ourselves just from their appearances, Ozai and his brother Iroh have a huge age gap between them (somewhere between 10 and 15 years). This has to be our first red flag: isn’t it soo odd that this family opted to have their children at such a long distance between pregnancies? It almost feels as if Ozai hadn’t actually been part of his father’s actual family planning... In other words, he was a ‘mistake’ child (I actually hate having to use this terminology, but it will become relevant to when we expand on Azulon’s relationship with his sons). Sure, some may argue that Azulon actually decided to have two sons in case something were to happen to his first born, but wouldn’t it have been more logical to have his second born at 2-3 years max distance from his first? Why choose to have your second child when you are much older and thus risk having a baby with issues, if your sole purpose of this child is to serve as an insurance that you don’t ‘run out’ of heirs? It just doesn’t make much sense, so let’s go for the moment with the possibility that Ozai was an unplanned pregnancy.
This perspective actually gives way to another very interesting aspect: remember the infamous “Born lucky...Lucky to be born” quote? What if I tell you that there is a possibility that this quote wasn’t Ozai’s personal wicked invention, but actually something he himself heard from his very own father? It had been puzzling me for a long time why he choose to say “You were lucky to be born” to Zuko, which implies that Zuko wasn’t supposed to exist. I mean, it’s soo odd that Ozai went with something implying that Zuko was an unplanned pregnancy, since Zuko was the first born. So my theory is that maybe Ozai wanted to convey a different message to Zuko when he said that quote, but due to his anger he ended up replicating the same line he received from Azulon at some point in his childhood. We never got the exact flashback when the line was delivered from Ozai to Zuko, so we don’t have the exact context that lead to it (remember, we are excluding Yang’s take on the matter from the comics).
I mean, this feels like something that wicked old Azulon would have said to his least favorite child. Okay, so let’s go with the scenario that Ozai was an unwanted child, to which we could also add the possibility that Ilah’s health deteriorated after the first birth, which makes plausible the family’s initial decision of stopping at 1 kid.
Moving on, we know from the old ATLA character wiki’s that Ozai’s character design was made with Zuko in mind, being meant to be a grown up version of Zuzu, without the scar. An interesting choice indeed and even Iroh’s letter to Zuko on Ozai from one of the ATLA books describes Ozzy in a similar way to teenage Zuko in book 1: stubborn, feisty, determined and with a volcanic personality (easy to anger and competitive), so it means that these were intentional choices to imply that Zuko and his father are more similar than we were led to believe at first glance. Maybe Ozai was the “Zuko” of his generation. Also, in one of the interviews on the royal family, BryKe stated that Ozai worked very hard to get where he is in book 3, referring to his firebending specifically (we all know how Ozzy got the throne, so clearly, he didn’t “work hard” for that), so maybe he wasn’t always the strongest man alive, with the most exceptional firebending skills out there, like Azula who showed ease in her learning, but rather someone closer to Zuko’s weaker performance as a child, building his way to success through endless hard work until he became the prodigy we know today.
Continuing with our theoretical scenario, after his birth, the second child show’s lesser skills compared to his brother Iroh (by that I don’t mean that he wasn’t gifted at all, but that maybe Ozai wasn’t as fast and great of a learner like his big bro), so Azulon opts to just ignore him and continue focusing solely on his golden child. In my headcannon I actually think that Ilah survived the birth and so she was left in charge of the younger child’s education and upbringing. At this point Iroh is already 10 or older, so he is forced to focus on his development, which prevents him from spending time with his lil brother, but just for the sake of being positive, let’s assume that Ozai still had both his mother and his big brother to keep him sheltered from Azulon’s darkness for a small portion of his childhood.
I choose to believe that Ozai had his mother’s love for a small bit of his childhood due to his willingness in the show to allow Ursa (who mind you, as the granddaughter of Roku was considered a treacherous individual) to spend a ton of time with both Zuko and Azula and share her philosophy with the children, as seeing his wife playing with their children probably reminded him of his own bitter-sweet memories he had with Ilah. They also probably spent a lot of their time near the turtle-duck pond since that pond’s existence prolly dates long before Ozai and Ursa married and had their own children.
Unfortunately, Ilah dies and little Ozai remains all alone, to be influenced negatively by his father (and even by his grandpa Sozin, we don’t really know for certain when the old man died, so he prolly was there for a short time when Ozzy was still a child). Azulon most likely blames Ozai for his wife’s death as the second birth might’ve really had a huge toll on Ilah’s already fragile body, bringing her closer to death, so he still neglects and ignores the child, if not straight out bullies and abuses him for not being on par with Iroh. This prolly leads to Ozai becoming jealous of his brother since Iroh has their father’s love, pushing them further apart. I headcannon that this jealousy between the siblings led to Ozai complaining to his dad when he finally had too much of their father’s discrimination (at a similar age to when Zuko prolly did and got the infamous line, if not younger) only to get the “Iroh was born lucky, you were lucky to be born!” line with the sole purpose of hurting him since now the child knows that he was never wanted.
When Azulon scolds very furiously adult Ozai in Zuko’s memories for daring to ask to be named crown prince, he literally says something like “What, you dare ask me to betray MY own son?!” (this is like red flag number two), line that pretty much testifies how Azulon chose to pretty much treat Ozai as if he wasn’t his son too, showcasing how much he despised his second born and favored the first child over him. Since we are on the topic of their last conversation, the punishment Azulon gave to his son alone proves this man’s level of sadism, which leads me to be believe that Ozai’s childhood was full of this type of punishments for bad behaviors that could be easily corrected trough a long serious lecture or a lesser punishment focused more on teaching him an actual lesson.
The old wikis also mention on the page about the hall with portraits of the previous Fire Lords that it was the place where Ozai chose to spend most of his time in his youth, seeking advice from his ancestors. I mean, seriously now, if he had a good and supportive father and a present brother in his life, would Ozai had chosen to seek guidance from the dead instead of his living family? That piece of information that was easily overlooked by many proves how lonely this man was in his youth.
So for the most part of his life, Ozai grew up under the toxic influence and abuse of his tyrant father who refused to acknowledge him. Yet he managed to grow up still full of determination to one day prove his worth to Azulon and gain his acceptance (just like we saw with Zuko in book 1, who was desperate to regain his honor and be accepted by his father). But unfortunately, no matter how strong he became or how good of a firebender he was, Azulon was unmoved and unphased by his second son’s performance.
From what we could gather from the little info we received in the show, it seems that Ozai was never sent to the battle field to aid his older brother, being kept as a stay home prince, with the only occasion he actually left home being to search for the Avatar (I don’t think Iroh was sent to do his part on searching the Avatar since he strongly believed that there wasn’t going to ever be one, so it’s safe to assume Azulon assigned Ozai with this mission just to get rid of him for a few years) and the only purpose he ever served to his father was to become part of the old man’s genetics experiment in order to create strong unparalleled firebending offspring (which I am pretty sure were meant to be ‘biological war machines’ used by Azulon in the war, as he didn’t really seem to give a shit about Ozai’s children compared to Lu Ten). So just imagine the level of disappointment and dishonor Ozai must’ve felt as a man and young aspiring soldier to find out that he was going to be used like a ‘non-bending daughter’ in a strategical marriage and never get to serve his country in what he’d been taught was the greatest and most important war for their Nation.
All in all, this marriage didn’t really end up that badly because it seems he and Ursa were actually very compatible. The old wiki for Ursa states that she was a noble woman and the perfect match for Ozai, which leads me to believe that show Ursa was intended to be a very strong willed and determined woman who earned his respect. The show never stated that Ozai never wanted his first born or that he was disappointed with Zuko from birth like the comics say, so it’s safe to assume that Ursa and Ozai actually ended up falling in love at some point since they had not one, but two kids with relatively a short time in between pregnancies.
There are actually many signs in the show that actually prove that these two loved each other and Ozai didn’t abuse his wife: from the fact that they went every year to see Ursa’s favorite play despite Ozai hating the poor performance of the Ember Island Players (I mean, what man would do such a sacrifice as to endure the same torture every single year just to make his wife happy if he never loved her?), Ursa’s undeniable and sincere love for their children (in the show it was never stated that Ursa saw Zuko and Azula as someone else’s children, so if she were indeed an abused woman who was forced to have these children, she wouldn’t have ever loved them to such an extent, especially Zuko who resembled his father the most physically), the fact that Ursa had equal rights in their marriage and raising of their children (her even scolding and grounding Ozai’s favorite child without hesitation), to the most significant scene to the Urzai ship in Zuko’s flashbacks: Ozai sitting troubled all alone in Ursa’s favorite spot by the pond, in a sad and brooding atmosphere, after he lost her, instead of celebrating what had to be the happiest day of his life since he was finally crowned Fire Lord (it’s clear who had more importance in his heart: Ursa meant more to him than the throne, so losing her outshined his achievement). In fact, Ursa must’ve been the only thing that still kept him outside of the darkness that threatened to swallow his heart and once he lost her, Ozai had nothing else to keep him on the right path.
And even as a father, it seems that Ozai wasn’t always cold and distant to his children, as his true self depicted in Zuko’s memories on Ember Island shows him caring for both of his children, even holding Zuko close to him with a protective arm on the boy’s shoulder. Except the Agni Kai, there don’t seem to be any instances in which he was physically violent towards his son before the banishment (Iroh literally let Zuko in to join that faithful war meeting willingly. Would’ve he done that if he knew his brother to be very violent towards his children in case they disobeyed? If yes, then it would make Iroh actually very questionable on a moral standpoint) and even on an emotional level, I don’t really think that he was actually abusive to him (at least while Ursa was there) because from Zuko’s conversation with Zhao, he’s adamant that his father will take him back and even states "You don't know how my father feels about me. You don't know anything!", meaning that the father he used to know showed him a level of respect and genuine affection (if Ozai were to bully Zuko since the boy’s very early childhood, do you think this kid would grow up to be so sure that his father wants him around and would he defend this bully when someone badmouths them in front of him?).
Even with Azula, despite people demonizing her from early childhood and saying that she was manipulated since birth by Ozai to become a war machine, I do believe that she shows genuine love and affection towards her father. I do choose to believe that back in the good times when the family was happy, Ozai spent quality time with his daughter, filling in the gap left by Ursa’s neglect. I theorize that the reason why kid Azula badmouthed her grandpa and uncle was because she was being very protective of her father: since she used to like spying and eavesdropping, it’s safe to assume that she prolly witnessed many instances in which the old man bullied or insulted Ozai, favoring Iroh over him. It’s a bit harder to see it that way since her snarky comments involve dark topics, but since they live in a society governed by power and war, I see them as something similar to if Azula would’ve said “Uncle sucks and he will surely be fired from his job!” or “Grandpa is old and weak, he should leave the family business to dad!”. Even the fact that the only thing capable of shattering her to pieces was her father leaving her proves how much she cared for him. Ty Lee and Mai’s betrayal was a big blow on Azula’s control and sanity, but she didn’t breakdown until Ozai discarded her after his coronation as Phoenix King. There’s nothing more painful in this world than to be left behind by the person you loved the most and was there by your side your whole life, whom you wanted to follow to world’s end and back. That was the moment Azula finally realized that the father she used to know and love was actually gone and had been in fact, long gone for years at this point.
But if Ozai cared for his family what made him change? Easy, it all comes back to the fact that his father never acknowledged him. The throne doesn’t seem to be his ultimate goal in life since Ozai discarded of the Fire Lord title very easily, tossing it to Azula without any remorse or hesitation. It was more about the meaning behind getting the crown: replacing Iroh in the line of succession was the ultimate proof of his father’s acceptance, that he wasn’t only a “mistake” and “failure” in his father’s eyes, but since Azulon ended up saying and doing what he did, backfired Ozai and made him understand that no matter how hard he tried, the old man will never see him for what he is. So yeah, for a proud man like Ozai this was a hard defeat to swallow, which in turn sparked his strong desire of winning the war and becoming the king of the world: if Azulon wouldn’t accept him even in death, then Ozai will prove to the whole world that he was above his father and his “perfect” brother by accomplishing what they never could and even better and no one was going to stop him, not even his own family.
This is what differentiates Ozai from Zuko: while both had similar upbringings, Ozai never broke away from his obsession of gaining his father’s admiration, allowing himself to fall prey to the darkness left by Azulon in his heart and abandon his true self, only to become the copy of his abuser, while Zuko stood up to his dad and chose his own destiny. If Aang were to come back around 20 or 30 years earlier, then he might’ve actually been able to save Ozai just like he saved Zuko, but unfortunately it wasn’t this way.
Do I think that Ozai could still be saved and redeemed even after the events of book 3? Definitely! Since he’s actually a broken man and still has a tiny bit of humanity left within, I think he still has a chance to change his heart. The only thing is that it’d be a long lasting process: first off he needs to spend a long time in solitude and reflect on his life’s choices and his past, understand where he went wrong and that what happened to him in his childhood is called abuse, which he ended up replicating on his own children. After he understands his wrongdoings and becomes willing to rediscover his true self, he needs to understand the truth about the war, that everything he’d known was fake propaganda and that there was nothing glorious in what he, his father and Sozin did under the excuse of “sharing their Nation’s greatness with the rest of the world!”. But most importantly of all, the only remedy that could possibly save him is love. It sound cliche, but by responding to hatred with more hate like Zuko did in the comics would never change the world “for the better” or bring it “to reality”. The only way to save both Azula and Ozai would be trough showing them the power of love, hope and empathy, how they don’t have to struggle alone and push everyone away. And especially by redeeming Azula, she would be a very important piece in Ozai’s redemption: since he had a closer parent-child relationship with Azula and cared for her the most when he did care, realizing how much he made her suffer through his actions, that would probably break Ozai enough to make him admit that he was wrong all along.
So yeah, this is my analysis on Ozai’s character using the cannon information from the show and old wikis and why I think he is just the product of a very bad environment and an abusive parent who never showed him love (if there’s a reason for why Ozai might be uncapable of showing a healthy parental love to his children is because you can’t show what you’ve never learnt yourself), being the Zuko of his generation who never got to experience the positive influence of an “Uncle Iroh” to guide him on the right path.
You can agree with me or not on this one, but this is what I choose to believe. Maybe I am way too good by choosing to see any potential good in anyone, but I feel it’s a better way than to counter hate with more hate like Yang did in his monstrous portrayal of Ozai in The Search.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and if you agree with anything I’ve said, feel free to leave a like and to reblog this post.
See you next time and stay safe! Bye-Bye!
Saby out.
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Okay, so I kinda wanna know your thoughts about how weird the fandom portrays the bat characters. Canon is ... not my favorite, but it actually offers a lot of nuance to the characters that I think makes them all interesting. Unlikable, but interesting. I noticed fanon tends to boil the batkids all into these superflat caricatures. Like, cereal obsessed manchild Dick Grayson or bad boy who's literal crimes are only because of the lazarus pit Jason Todd. Its not really a major problem, just weird
Oh I have a LOT of thoughts about this. I try so hard not to shit on how other people interact with content because like, it’s comic books! We’re all just here trying to make the best out of a mess of stuff and have fun, but admittedly a lot of fanon stuff drives me fuckin’ nuts as someone who reads a ton of comics.
Like, I like memes, obviously, I draw tons of memes with the batfam (+ yj) characters and make lighthearted jokes etc etc, and honestly if it’s just for jokes then I don’t mind people having whack interpretations of the characters quite as much. The thing that drives me up a wall though is like... when serious works and analysis and discussion are very clearly based on just the fanon interpretations without any bearing on canon aside from what you could skim from a wiki page, and it’s spoken like it’s fact! There’s ‘having fun with jokes that aren’t taking things that seriously’ and then there’s ‘blatantly mischaracterizing based on misinformation’. Way too often I see things fall into that second category.
Now, a lot of people in the batfam fandom don’t... actually read comics (or at least not frequently) and that’s not even a bad thing necessarily, like you’re 100% allowed to enjoy content however you want to! (I don’t wanna be gatekeepey, especially since comics are confusing to get into)
But the problem is that when a lot of people aren’t reading the comics, then the people who do’s opinions have a lot more influence if they’re loud enough. All it takes is one person who read something and interpreted it a specific way that might not even be correct, and then it can echo chamber and suddenly half the fandom thinks it’s 100% canon that way because ‘oh so and so said that and they actually read it’.
I also think that’s a problem with the popularity of out of context panels/blogs, while they are super funny sometimes, when people make assumptions about characters based on just a few things without context... it can lead to problems. If enough people say something enough times people just... start to think it’s true, even if it exists entirely devoid of context which changes the meaning.
Like, for example, according to canon there’s no actual confirmation Tim stalked Batman on foot for an extended period of time! We know from Lonely Place of Dying that he followed him once to get a picture to convince DIck that he still needed a Robin. Otherwise his ‘stalking’ & how he figured out Batman’s identity was more through media appearances (like newspapers and tv). This is wildly different from the common fanon idea that little Timmy was sneaking out regularly to follow Batman & Robin around with his camera.
I primarily blame Geoff Johns for this misconception because of these panels in in tt 2003 (from issue 29)
But like, think about it for a second, literally how would Jason know that? This is one of the first times he’s ever interacting with Tim, and he was dead/catatonic when that would have been happening! He is either making a wild assumption or perhaps Talia told him this when she told him about Tim, whichever of those it was it’s secondhand information not something he witnessed. Taking his word as fact here makes no sense, he was just trying to get under Tim’s skin while fighting him. But seeing those panels out of context if you haven’t actually read Lonely Place of Dying/only read a vague summary of it, and don’t necessarily know the details of the Jason situation, it could absolutely lead you to believe otherwise!
Dick as a cereal manchild is a weird one because like... okay yeah sure he likes cereal, I can think of like two panels I’m too lazy to find right now off the top of my head of him having it, but... that’s not something we see all the time! Its not like Ollie & his chili (which IS a running joke- seriously I have not read that many Green Arrow comics but the amount of times I’ve seen that man bring up chili in just in the few things I have read is wild. there’s even an official recipe. his chili has it’s own dc wiki page). Then, because Dick isn’t quite as emotionally closed off in the same way the rest of the batfam tends to be, people project literally all the pent up feelings onto him, making him this hug-crazy crybaby manchild... again it’s just very clear people who perpetuate those ideas (outside of like, maybe as jokes) haven’t actually fully read that many comics with him. I’d also even blame the Young Justice cartoon version of Dick for some other traits fanon Dick has, bc that version of him is def a bit of a Hot Mess™️ once he’s Nightwing
Jason I understand misconceptions about probably the most because of how wildly inconsistent his writing was before the new 52 and how consistently Not Great it was once Lobdell took over. Jason’s one of the few characters I have read like, 90% of appearances for so I’m speakin’ from experience here. But still... acting like Jason as Red Hood is just a ‘bad boy rebel’ that could have a relatively happy connection with the whole Batfam is fun but unrealistic. You can not blame everything on the lazarus pit... he still has killed people! Lots of people! Willingly! Yes he has reasons and when he’s being written well it’s clear that he’s not just ‘random murder happy’ but rather ‘I kill when I feel they deserve it and that it’s necessary’ which is what keeps him an anti-hero rather than a full fledged villain most of the time, but that still keeps him so at odds with the rest of the Batfamily! Writers in more current continuity have had him compromise by only using rubber bullets in Gotham so they can have him interact with the family, but he’s still killed and will do it when he deems it necessary.
Also like... at the time of Under The Red Hood in the comics... theoretically... he hadn’t even been in the lazarus pit for well over a year. Go read Lost Days (it’s short! And except for the thing with him & Talia towards the end of the last issue it’s pretty good!), he spends a lot of time traveling the world and learning things/training before the events of UtRH. Yes you could interpret there still being some Lazarus influence going on there but I think the movie version of UtRH especially leads people to believe there’s a lot less time between his dunk in the pit and his first actions as Red Hood.
Fanon also has a lot of ideas about pit madness that vary wildly from what we have seen in canon, like yeah it’s been said to be a thing to some extent, but there’s not really the Danny Phantom Glowing Green Eyes™️ or anything like that... it’s fun to explore cool new ideas for sure but I just think it’s important to recognize the distinction between things that are actually canon and things that are popular fanon. (Also there are things that fall somewhere in between, there’s definitely stuff that isn’t 100% confirmed canon but could still be plausible/has been hinted at by some writers/is only canon in some settings)
Other things that drive me nuts are ‘quiet does-no-wrong angel Cass’ and ‘the Normal One™️ Duke’ because those just make literally no sense if you’ve read any comics with either of them... but fan content either does those versions or just completely ignores their existence a lot of the time! So! That’s a whole bigger problem!
In general though, this is fandom it’s not like this... matters that much on the grand scheme of things in life, we’re just people on social media talkin’ about comics. And this kind of misconception/flattening of characters does happen in literally every fandom ever. But it still does suck to see characters that have a lot of nuance and interesting history to play around with get reduced to a few traits that aren’t even actually that relevant to who they are.
#batfam#pls dont kill me for sayin al this again im not telling anyone how to enjoy stuff JUST my thoughts
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The He-Man Movie You Never Saw Would Have Been Like a Buddy Comedy
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While Masters of the Universe: Revelation reignites Mattel’s toy-spawning fantasy franchise, the Kevin Smith-conceived Netflix animated series arrives in the recent wake of an ill-fated film project. Indeed, Sony/Columbia settled on up-and-coming directors Aaron Nee and Adam Nee to conjure new live-action exploits of He-Man in the land of Eternia, which progressed to pre-production and cast Noah Centineo in the starring role before the pandemic put an end to the endeavor. Interestingly, David S. Goyer, who wrote an early draft of the Masters of the Universe screenplay, reveals what would have been a rather unique dynamic at its center.
Contrasting with the potentially-controversial protagonist direction hinted in early reviews for Revelation, the driving concept for the long-planned Masters of the Universe live-action movie was to focus on the friendship between He-Man and his loyal giant green, orange-striped tiger steed, Battle Cat, as Goyer reveals to THR. Of course, most of the franchise’s various iterations present the narrative notion that Eternia’s sleepy slacker royal prince, Adam, secretly transforms into “the most powerful man in the universe” when he imbues himself with mystical energy from the Sword of Power, after which he directs said energy toward his cowardly talking pet tiger, Cringer, transforming him into the hero’s ferocious loyal steed, Battle Cat. However, Goyer reveals that—during his tenure with the script—the film would have broken precedence by putting a comically dysfunctional twist on the traditional hero/steed relationship.
“I legitimately liked the script that we did,” says Goyer. “We were going to do it as a feature at Sony. What I liked the most about it was that it was mostly about a friendship between He-Man and Battle Cat. The idea was there had always been He-Men and different recipients of the Sword of Power and that Battle Cat had always served at their side. And this was a new He-Man that Battle Cat and many people didn’t think was worthy of the sword.”
Contextually, while mainstream representations like 1983-1985 animated series He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and the 1987 Dolph Lundgren-starring Masters of the Universe movie mostly stuck to superficial backstories, the franchise’s deeper mythos—once canonically-inconsistent across the decades in its multimedia forms—has started to uniformly embrace the idea that Adam himself is merely the latest recipient of the mystical Sword of Power, which several generations earlier, was wielded by his ancestor and ancient castle namesake, King Grayskull, after which the sword—and the sublime power it yields—was passed down to various other “He-Men.” Indeed, even Revelation’s trailer showcases King Grayskull, implying continued adherence to the hand-me-down dynamic, and the possibility for time-travel-facilitated team-ups with previous versions of Eternia’s hero. Likewise, the concept was integral to Goyer’s screenplay, since Adam’s newfound role as He-Man would have come attached with an intimidating, seemingly-unattainable legacy, of which this wryer, more-critical version of Battle Cat seems acutely aware. Thus, Adam’s arc as an upstart hero would have hinged on earning the ornery Battle Cat’s stamp of approval, yielding buddy comedy style interactions.
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“So, it was a story of the character earning the sword, but, more importantly, earning the friendship of Battle Cat, who just thought this guy [Prince Adam] was a lightweight,” explains Goyer. “I really liked it. I thought it was a fun story. There was a lot of humor in it and it creeps up on you because Battle Cat sort of grudgingly accepts him, and it’s Battle Cat’s acceptance of He-Man that gave this version of the story heart.” Goyer’s comments seem to shed light on the reasoning behind the eventual casting of Noah Centineo (pictured just below), who—hardly the WWE-level jacked giant one would envision for the role—seemed set to convey Adam’s getting-by-on-good-looks slacker personality, having come from the realm of teen comedies, notably from his role as Peter in 2018 Netflix rom-com To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and its two sequels. Thus, it not only would have been interesting to see how a fully-transformed He-Man himself would have manifested in this live-action attempt, but how Battle Cat could have served as his shade-throwing foil.
Alex Israel
Unfortunately, fate would not favor this particular Masters of the Universe live-action reboot project, which saw several attempts—notably the Lord of the Rings/Game of Thrones-influenced version under director Jeff Wadlow. Those years saw several hints about the movie in the form of early versions of its logo and various social media-teased concept art designs, which revealed a motif that—perhaps in response to Marvel’s 2014 success with Guardians of the Galaxy—leaned into the space-esque sci-fi technology side of the franchise’s traditional amalgam with savagery and sorcery. Moreover, back in 2015, one of the project’s more enthusiastic early proponents, producer DeVon Franklin, tweeted a concept image of what the Battle Cat in question might have looked like—albeit as a CGI creation—in this particular live-action milieu. Yet, despite years of hype and even a projected, never-realized March 2021 release date, the project came to an ignominiously anti-climactic coda, notably affirmed this past April after Centineo reportedly exited the role from the COVID-stopped production.
@danmillerNY @TheOneHansen @Guardians I totally agree!!! pic.twitter.com/6g6W18D9J7
— DeVon Franklin (@DeVonFranklin) March 3, 2015
Regardless, Goyer, having made a monumental mark on the industry with The Dark Knight Trilogy amongst other heavy hitters, isn’t thinking about He-Man and Battle Cat these days, since his hands are currently tied with two lofty tasks as the credited creator of Netflix’s developing television adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman and, more imminently, the Apple TV+ television adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s sprawling novel franchise, Foundation. However, Masters of the Universe, while still generally associated with ‘80s pop culture, has managed to exist in the periphery across the ensuing decades. Oddly enough, we’re living in a time in which the franchise permeates (not even counting Netflix’s recent animated series centered on He-Man’s estranged twin sister, She-Ra,) with two major animated series (one of which is a developing CGI series,) and several current toy lines, two of which are sold at retail stores worldwide. Thusly, Revelation could prove to be the iteration that truly brings it back to the forefront, perhaps leading to another live-action attempt—maybe by Goyer again.
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In the meantime, Masters of the Universe: Revelation will release the first part of its inaugural season on Netflix on Friday, July 23.
The post The He-Man Movie You Never Saw Would Have Been Like a Buddy Comedy appeared first on Den of Geek.
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Homestuck's always been antagonistic and insensitive, but I don't recall seeing any of you try to dox Hussie? But please, continue to rationalise how cyberbullying lgbt people for not being nice enough and having opinions about a fictional character you disagree with puts you in the right. A story doesn't go the way you'd like and this is how you respond? You COULD have just not bothered reading it instead of CHOOSING to make your online life about something you hate like a toxic weirdo.
Hi, Kate. I’m so glad you could find my blog. (Edit: that was a joke. Apparently, some anons find it impossible to tell that I don’t actually think you’re Kate). It’s clear to me that you didn’t take the time to read through any of the content that’s actually on here, since you’re throwing around rather wild accusations, so let me take this down step by step.
Homestuck has only rarely been antagonistic and insensitive. Things like the Alpha Trolls - which were clear criticisms of fandom culture - were relatively few and far between, and when we complained about them, they actually stopped. Remind me, for instance, how relevant the Alpha Trolls were to the plot? How long they stayed as mockeries towards the fandom? Yeah, not long. I actually have talked about this before on the blog - alongside other things I thought were negative towards the fandom from the original comic - but the difference here is that... in the entirety of Homestuck, these things were outliers and inconsistencies. They stuck out because they were in stark contrast to the otherwise wonderfully handled content Homestuck went over.
For instance, Homesuck is critical of abuse - especially in terms of relationships. We see through a critical lense the shit normalisation of parental abuse can do to a child - with actual talk of triggers and of the mental and emotional scarring left behind, and the complexities of the child’s feelings towards the parent’s death through Dave - and we see how self destructive relationships can be, how harmful they are, and how hard it can be to leave them - such as Terezi’s very toxic blackrom with Gamzee, which was always portrayed as something negative and harmful especially with how worried Karkat was for her and how withdrawn she became during its run, and Dirk’s relationship with Jake, which goes very much over how communication can cause a deterioration in romantic relationships especially when the two participants have conflicting mental illnesses.
It also goes over how men, though they can be mired in toxic masculinity, can choose to be good. How sometimes we’re not born as good people, but we can become good people through the love we have for the people around us, through frequent attempts to check what we’re doing, through the sheer willpower to be good. Dirk’s entire arc, knowing that he could very easily become Bro but deciding he doesn’t want to be, that it’s something he wants to work on, is so important and incredibly powerful. Mental illness in men is often just given as an excuse to make them violent with no attempts at betterment - so Dirk actually existed as proof that you don’t have to be that stereotype.
In contrast, Homestuck^2 completely uncritically gave Jade, who was cis, a dog dick, made her, a bisexual woman, a sex maniac and the yaoi “woman who gets in the way of the gays” trope, made her a cheater and someone who forced her partner into the relationship to begin with, and made her a neglectful mother after having cheated with her best lesbian friend in something that has incredible recall to just about every futanari video ever - and they tried to claim that this was good representation of trans women, actually, and that the only reason we didn’t like it is that Jade is “a woman” who “has sex”.
Likewise completely uncritically, they made Gamzee, an anti-black stereotype, enter a relationship with Jane, a fascist, and then made the entire thing into a cuck joke wherein Jake being frequently drunk and sexually assaulted was funny because he wasn’t “man enough”. They then forced him to go back to his abuser after he left her in a scene that read very much like, “ridiculous man thinks woman is abusing him, go back and do your manly job”.
This, of course, doesn’t even go into the travesty that is any form of trans representation in the comic. Roxy, a trans man, is barely even focused on as trans; they make no attempt to enforce in the fandom that he’s a trans man the way they do that June is a trans woman, and even then, they seem to think that just saying someone is a trans woman is actually good representation. Not, like, bringing it into the comic - just saying that it’s a thing. And of course, that’s not even going into the completely uncritical lense they have of Vriska, wherein her being a trans woman completely frees her of any and all blame for the past abuses she has comitted, and once again she becomes an amazing character to save the day without a single flaw - which in turn inherently associates trans women with abuse apologism, abusers, and the ideology that just because we’re trans we can get away with anything scott free.
I honestly cannot think of one instance of good and genuine representation in Homesuck^2, nor can I think of any scene where negative content was actually treated as the negative thing it actually is. There’s no critical lense at all, not like we have in Homestuck; there’s just no fucking comparison. And this isn’t a one-off situation, either. Whereas Homestuck does do fuck ups - isn’t perfect - in between the otherwise brilliant content, Homestuck^2 is just founded upon these horrific takes. There’s almost no good content in between, and what is left is a slog to get through when surrounded by the thick slurry of shit that compromises futa Jade, abuse apologism Vriska, and victim blaming Jake.
Of course, we didn’t “doxx” Hussie. Hussie actually listened to our complaints, for the most part, and worked with us to create something that worked well. The way Homestuck^2 was touted to work. You know, since it was meant to be written with the fandom in mind, influenced by the things we suggest and react to. We went into Homestuck^2 with the explicit idea that we were going to be listened to and taken into consideration when it was being written - the way we were with old Homestuck. I’m very sorry to say that, when you make these expectations, people are going to be a titchy bit upset when you then commandeer the entire thing and exclude the fandom from any of the process that you said they were going to be part of.
Additionally, it’s rather funny, isn’t it, that what you call doxxing is actually just people upset with how triggering content is being handled, and going to the people who actually wrote the content in order to voice their complaints? It’s almost as if social media exists to allow this communication between reader and author, which is a fundamental thing you’ll learn in any creative writing course, such as the one I’m on currently, wherein you’re actually taught how to respond to social media and to build up your image with your fans.
Homestuck^2 is an ongoing piece of media. We’re well aware that we have a potential to change these uncritical takes and the horrific way they’re being handled if the writers will just listen to genuine criticism. This is, frankly, no different to the people who go to J. K. Rowling’s Twitter to tell her how harmful her transphobic comments are; because if she believes these things, they will work their way into her texts and will perpetuate harmful ideologies.
The literal same thing is happening in Homestuck^2 - again, such as futa Jade, which normalises the point of view that bisexuals are cheaters and completely trivialises what it means to be trans, or Gamzee, which perpetuates just about every anti-black stereotype possible. Media does have a very powerful impact on what people see in the real world. This is why, for instance, positive black characters are so important in media; if they’re always portrayed as villains, then people will see real world black people as villains as the ideology is perpetuated to the point of fact. This is especially true if the people already believe in the ideology.
Fiction is one of the best ways that we can counteract this cycle. If you make a character that they like, and they happen to be positive representation, and then they watch more media that is likewise positive representation, it’s more likely to stick that these positive representations are the actual experiences of minority groups. Also? It’s important TO those minority groups. A black person, especially right now, doesn’t want to see an anti-black stereotype fuck a fascist, engage in sexual assult, and then enact pedophilia - only to die at the hands of a hero and be laughed at for the death. Surprisingly, shit like this is why we need to tell the writers that what they’re doing is harmful, that they’re perpetuating phobic ideologies, and that we need better representation - especially in a comic that is this widely read, and also has a very large minor fanbase.
I shouldn’t need to explain why exposing minors to anti-black stereotypes, transphobic, homophobic, biphobic, abuse apologism, victim blaming, and the trivialisation of rape and sexual assault (especially towards men), might be a federal fucking issue.
So, no, we’re not actually cyberbullying LGBT+ people. We’re trying to hold shitty writers accountable for the incredibly toxic and harmful ideologies they’re forcing into a text that has always been written with critical thought in mind.
I should also point out how funny it is that you’re focusing on how some of the writers are LGBT+ - as if we’re not? I’m trans, I’m gay, and I’m ace. Yes, I can actually be these things and absolutely furious that a trans women is writing some of the most transphobic shit I’ve seen in a while into characters she then claims to be completely free of blame. We can be furious that people within our own community are enforcing negative stereotypes.
Being LGBT+ does not make them free from blame. We cannot give them a free pass to be racist, to be transphobic, to be homophobic, biphobic, to be abuse apologists, just because they’re LGBT+. Not only because that’s just a terrible fucking idea to begin with, but because it also reflects so, so badly on the community as a whole. As if being part of the community instantly means that you can do no wrong? As if there can be no toxicity within our own community, despite the fact that there very much is and it is still an issue to this day?
That is such an issue, one of the biggest issues even shown just in Vriska and the way Kate handles her as a whole - and, once again, is WHY we need to get them looking at this shit more critically. This view that LGBT+ people can do no wrong and cannot be criticised is shoved into Homestuck^2 and, once again, perpetuates the ideology. This isn’t something to be proud of. This isn’t something that’s actually okay.
Also, your point that the writers aren’t nice enough and that we disagree on fictional characters - well, I’ve already been over the second part. But for the first part, I would like to remind you that they aren’t just random LGBT+ people on the internet that we’re going to because we think their takes are a little shitty. They’re actual writers working on a piece of media. They are official content creators.
Again, one of the first things you learn on any creative writing course is that when you become a writer, you gain a significant amount of responsibility for your interactions with the fandom. This is something that you genuinely have to expect, and if you don’t, then, unfortunately you just don’t know what it means to write something that thousands of people have a potential to read. As a writer, it is your responsibility to portray your image online; it is your responsibility to engage with the fans in a meaningful way; it is your responsibility to not cause drama and to listen when criticism is brought up, to have genuine discussion and not to perpetuate hatred - especially towards your own fanbase.
Consider, for instance, the way I’m talking to you right now. This is the sort of tone that someone should take when talking to a fan about genuine criticism. When things are brought up, you go over them step by step, you listen, you write back - you don’t go on a flurry of “fuck yous” to a minor who asked you why your team didn’t post anything about the BLM movement on the official Twitter, and you definitely don’t respond to every comment with genuine criticism with the word “pigshit”. You almost definitely don’t tell your trans masculine and masculine-aligned nonbinary fans that their opinions don’t matter.
As a writer, Kate and the rest of the team have a responsibility with their interactions with their fans. They aren’t just normal fandom voices anymore; they’re official fandom voices, voices that have more weight behind them than anyone else. They’re who people are going to turn to when it comes to anything regarding Homestuck^2. Their words now reflect literally everything about Homestuck^2, the future of Homestuck as an expanded universe, and the opinions of the group as a whole. They have to be careful with what they say. They have to be held to the same standards as industry voices because that’s essentially what they are - especially now that Homestuck is something you pay for.
Also, this isn’t a point of the story not going the way I want. This is a point of many of people in the fandom being upset with how content is being handled, upset that their voices are being shut down, upset that triggering content is being laughed at or used flippantly and without care or respect. This is people being upset that trigger warnings were removed specifically to make the comic unsafe for them as a punishment for daring to say that something was wrong. This is people being upset that a piece of media that used to be so fucking good at portraying sensitive content in a critical light, that used to be so good at normalising LGBT+ identities and healthy representations of those identities, has suddenly turned to this.
The story can go whatever way it wants - and frankly, that’s fine be my. What isn’t fine is that content is being used specifically to hurt and to incite.
And, of course, that final piece; nothing will improve if we don’t say that it’s wrong to begin with. Someone needs to voice the complaints of the fanbase, othrewise these toxic ideologies are going to go unchecked. One of the biggest things I’ve come to understand while making these posts is that a significant portion of the fandom feels isolated in their hurt; they don’t think other people feel the same way they do, and several people have mentioned feeling like they were going crazy because they were upset with things that the text and writers are normalising. It’s so important to make sure that these people know they’re not alone. It’s so important to make sure that our voices are heard. It’s so important to try and create critical discussion and debate over something that so many people still fucking love.
The thing is, I don’t hate Homestuck^2. I actually really, desperately wish I could enjoy it. I wish I could read through it and theorise, could go in depth about how amazing the characters are, could write long and extensive posts on how creative and engaging it is - could even just go on about how interesting the Meat-Candy divide is, and all the points they’re trying to make about canonicity. But I genuinely fucking can’t. There is just so, so much wrong in the text that is completely unrelated to plot and to the overarching Point that makes it impossible for me to read, to want to read, to try to encourage other people to read. They’re things that literally don’t need to be in there, either; stereotypes and toxic ideologies and uncritical or badly handled sensitive topics that could be rectified so, so easily.
Homestuck^2 could be amazing for a lot of the fandom. It could be something that we all rally around the same way we did for the original comic. For for a lot of people, it has ruined their fandom experience, has ruined their desire to want to read anything more to do with Homestuck, and has caused a significant portion of the fandom to just drop out entirely. That in and of itself should be a sign that this isn’t just a little fandom drama. That this is something much bigger and much more serious that, just maybe, needs to be looked into, talked about, understood - and, potentially, changed.
#homestuck^2#homestuck^2 critical#long post//#ardenttheories#Apologies for how long this is. I wasn't going to finish it until I got every point across#And that ended up being... uh. Several thousand words I suspect#Anonymous
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Reader’s Corner: Springtime Window, Boys Run the Riot, and A Sign of Affection
A Sign of Affection, Vol. 2
Volume one of A Sign of Affection was a manga I had on pre-order a full year before it released, and I instantly hit the preorder button whenever a new volume becomes available. No surprise then that I stopped everything to read volume two when it arrived, and it did not disappoint. It’s every bit as good volume one, and perhaps better. My heart was so giddy and happy when I finished because Yuki is such a brave and courageous woman and was really moved at how she is able to share her feelings so openly. And Itsuomi! He treats her so well, and so respectfully! I am very much appreciating this very sweet, slow burn romance, though I am eager to witness it fully unfold, especially after seeing both these characters open up to one another. Volume two shows more of Yuki’s hope concerning her friendship with Itsuomi, as well as more about Itsuomi’s dream, along with the lingering concern, first voiced by another character, about whether Yuki can fit into it. And just as Yuki feels her time spent with Itusomi is so short, I can’t help but feel the same way. I’m desperate for the third volume because the ending was such a cliffhanger! But not only that—I just love the sweetness of this story and this beautiful romance. I highly recommend this josei series! ~ Laura A. Grace
A Sign of Affection is published by Kodansha Comics.
Stitch and Samurai, Volume 1
Stitch & Samurai asks a very important question: Can the premise of Lilo & Stitch titulor alien crash landing in feudal Japan and being found by an aggressive warlord carry an entire manga series? Turns out, the answer is yes, yes it can. This first volume opens with Lord Yamato preparing to burn an entire village down as a way of spreading his authority. Then he sees something crash into the ground. It’s a rocket, holding Stitch. The “blue racoon,” as Stitch is called, causes Yamato to totally lose focus on the war efforts and instead shift them toward trying to befriend Stitch. It’s ridiculous in the best possible way. Also, the artist approached this work by doing a combination of a more traditional and realistic manga-style artwork for the Japanese cast contrasted with the American cartoon look of Stitch. It works beautifully. The first volume was a lot of fun and I look forward to seeing where this ridiculous concept goes next. ~ MDMRN
Stitch & Samurai is published by TOKYOPOP.*
Rascal Does Not Dream of Petite Devil Kohai (Rascal Series, Vol. 2)
Despite its focus shifting from “bunny girl senpai” to “petite devil kohai,” and thus severely lacking in the rapid fire exchange between Sakuta and Mai that made volume one so much fun, Rascal Does Not Dream of Petite Devil Kohai is a vast improvement on its predecessor. Author Hajime Kamoshida’s habit of not letting the story unfold in a natural way, but forcing it to go where he wants and then quickly trying to explain the rational when certain situations don’t add up, returns but in far fewer instances. Although the plot seems as complex as that in volume one—Sakuta and Tomoe, the kohai with whom he exchanged butt kicks in volume one, are trapped in a time loop in which they pretend to be a dating couple to avoid the latter being ostracized by her friends—there are actually far fewer complications with this sci-fi device and thus a smoother plot overall. Buffeted by the endearing personalities of the central “couple,” as well as final chapters that take the story in an interesting and unexpected direction, Petite Devil Kohai is a triumph, an entry that is compelling from start to finish and, after the inconsistencies of Bunny Girl Senpai, an encouraging sign for the future of the series. ~ Twwk
Rascal Does Not Dream of Petite Devil Kohai is published by Yen Press.*
Springtime by the Window, Vol. 1
Volume one of Springtime by the Window is nothing but warm, fuzzy feelings—namely, the lovey dovey kind. Cool and popular Yamada is in love with his childhood friend, Seno, while Yamada’s friends, Akama and Toda, appear to have feelings for one another as well. Originally posted as tweets by the artist, the volume has a social media or webcomic feel to it, featuring short chapters with miniature payoffs as they depict school life and place the would-be couples in situations that push them nearer and nearer to admitting their feelings. I do think this series would probably best be enjoyed in such short bursts, but I admit, I found myself reading quickly through the volume, like an elementary-aged child tearing through an entire bag of candy, making a meal on food that’s quite lacking in nutritional value, which in manga terms, comes across somewhat in story but more profoundly in the almost-novice and inconsistent art. But also like said kid, I was too hopped up on the sweetness to really care. ~ Twwk
Springtime by the Window is published by Tokyopop.*
Boys Run the Riot, Vol. 1
Based purely on the concept of the openly transgender mangaka Keito Gaku developing a manga featuring a transgender and LBGTQ+ lead discovering his voice while entering the world of street fashion, Boys Run the Riot would demand attention. But this series isn’t satisfied with staying within the confines of that premise, as complex as that lane by itself would be. Instead, Gaku is weaving a tale of young character who are trying to find out and be comfortable with who they are, despite the sacrifice and cost that comes with doing so, as represented in this volume through Ryo, who is facing gender dysphoria while being surrounded by fellow students and teachers who, whether entirely real or imagined, don’t care about his struggles; Jin, the transfer student, held a year back and seen as a delinquent, and who finds a kindred soul in Ryo as one who shares his eye for fashion, quickly enlisting him as a partner in starting a brand; and most surprisingly, several others in more subtle situations who are likewise trying to find their own way in an unforgiving world. What results is a powerful and human look at the complications for those working through issues of gender identity and a host of other identifying traits about themselves in a cultures that impresses normalcy on them, and how they learn to fight back by being themselves. This is a moving and significant work. ~ Twwk
Boys Run the Riot is published by Kodansha.*
The Treasure of the King and the Cat
The Treasure of the King and the Cat is a TokyoPop collection of two stories (and a set of small postlude vignettes) about the half-elf wizard O’Feuille and Prince Volks, the twin brother of King Castio, saving various people. The first story revolves around a young boy whose mother is ill while also conducting some world building about the inherent magical nature of half-elves in this world setting. The second leads more into the main plot about people disappearing and cats turning up all around town. This is advertised as a Boys Love (BL) manga as there’s heavy homosexual overtones, though everything is winked and nodded at with no actual relationships developing. Volks’ huge crush on O’Feuille is played up a lot with the king and his humble servant implied a lot as well, but again, no development beyond that, There’s a kingdom of missing people to deal with, after all! As you can tell, the story is silly and simple, a read without much distinction, but it does make one think about the nature of what it is you genuinely treasure. ~ MDMRN
The Treasure of the King and the Cat is published by TOKYOPOP.*
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Reader’s Corner is our way of embracing the wonderful world of manga, light novels, and visual novels, creative works intimately related to anime but with a magic all their own. Each week, our writers provide their thoughts on the works their reading—both those recently released as we keep you informed of newly published works and older titles that you might find as magical (or in some cases, reprehensible) as we do.
#Manga#Light Novels#Yubisaki to Renren#A Sign of Affection#Stitch & the Samurai#Tono & Stitch#Seishun Buta Yarou#Rascal Does Not Dream#Springtime by the Window#Boys Run the Riot#The Treasure of the King and the Cat#Ou to Neko no Hihou#Reader's Corner#Articles#Author: Laura A. Grace#Author: MDMRN#Author: TWWK
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Hi love, so me and my cousin were having a debate of sorts, basically the question was do you think things in the Marvel universe would have played out differently if Disney hadn’t brought the franchise?
To be honest I said I was on the fence with it, because yes I think the storylines would be a lot more gritty and gruesome to, much like the Snyder cut of Justice League. There probably would be a darker or perhaps more traumatic scenes shown for the characters. There’s definitely chances to build on character development and understanding if it was shown. Perhaps as an audience it would have opened up many more eyes that being a superhero is not clean cut in the sense that these are people who are free to protect and make decisions but are not free from the consequences of that. I’m not saying we haven’t seen that in Marvel films, I’m saying it may have been delved into deeper into how it has affected the people/world. How would it have been dealt with? Playing into the minds of the hero’s and revealing layers of complexities and traits regarding them, the only time I can remember is from AoU when Wanda used her powers to affect the team and Civil War. Something I think is important and a nice touch to explore because the action film is great but give me a film or a series where the characters who’s been dealt with the wrong cards, who tries to be good and let an audience see the effects, let them be more human than be put on a pedestal where they seem untouchable. Let them be seen in a more human light at a forefront of an audience mind.
Although Disney’s main focus is kids and is such a popular franchise worldwide, chances are people may know Disney more than comics (generalised idea here, based on what I’ve seen with families and friends, including internet) after all so changes had been made or not implemented at all.
At the same time I was like nothing would have changed as these are comic book characters and high list actors, who can’t afford to compromise with director’s decisions if said decision would lead to mass backlash, on not just the company but the reputation of the actors/actresses. Being realistic here because I’ve seen so much negativity on social media platforms, even when the actors/actresses don’t have control of these decisions, which is horrible. Not only that but the inconsistency of Marvel storylines probably would have continued, I think there’s a post on tumblr that shows how in one movie they would establish something critical for the characters to move on but is completely disregarded in the next film. Definitely something that is interesting to point out in the sense that they probably just did it to keep the audience but at the same time it’s annoying because as an audience we want character growth and expansions, complete backtracking on essential actions to achieve it is not the way to go. Yes, No writer is perfect at what they do, that’s a part of life no one is perfect at any thing, but when there’s a mass audience saying that doesn’t make sense then it doesn’t make sense. Nothing can be done to the film cause you know it’s been produced and edited but feedback from people who have grown up with the characters and love them helps guide those decisions. It’s definitely a tricky thing to answer because I’m not an expert on anything regarding Marvel and Disney, but I can logically think it through when I put my mind to it but that never works when there’s so many inconsistencies and character assassinations.
Sorry for rambling these are just arguments that both of us used and I spent time thinking on, sorry to bother you about it too. Hope you have a wonderful day, many thanks Anon xx
Hello nonnie!! Wow, thanks for your message! I’m afraid I’m not knowledgeable enough on all the inner workings and details of the things you and your cousin discussed to really say much about it that will be of use to you, but it was definitely a very interesting read! I’d say it’s definitely possible Disney purchasing Marvel altered the course of some of their movies, but then again, I think they bought Marvel in 2009, right? So that would’ve been before even TFA was made. But like I said, I’m not knowledgeable enough on all this so I’m not sure when they started really weighing in and all that, maybe that was later? Not sure! But yes, you’re absolutely right in saying that consistency isn’t the MCU’s strongest point and that too often, they try (and usually mostly succeed) to sell the audience something that, when you think about it a bit harder, doesn’t actually make much sense. It’s a shame, especially for those of us who are more invested in these stories than your average movie goer! I’m sorry I can’t say anything more sensible in reply to your message lol, but thank you nonetheless for sharing your thoughts! Hope you’re doing very well today, nonnie 💙
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