#like do a thematic analysis for sure but personally i would stop short of saying 'joh created a new gender binary and forced everyone into

[nonasbirthday]

of course you can read necros and cavs as a parallel to the gender binary bc A) you can do whatever you want forever and B) yeah there's plenty of textual evidence comparing the necro-cav bond to a marriage. however one thing i think many of these discussions keep missing is the fact that most people in the nine houses are not necros or cavs and do in fact exist outside of this binary. which would make it. not really much of a binary

#get ur warm takes here #i know other people have said this already but i really feel like this binary idea has proliferated recently #but i get it i mean in the books we have almost zero exposure to House citizens living outside this 'binary' #so it is a binary in the sense that you can apply it to our major characters who are from the nine houses #but i'm just not sure about extrapolating it to the whole fictional society #i do think there are comparisons to be drawn here i just don't think enough discussions account for this third group being most of #the population. #like do a thematic analysis for sure but personally i would stop short of saying 'joh created a new gender binary and forced everyone into #it' bc. what about all those other offscreen characters who are neither necro nor cav #the locked tomb #nonasbirthday

[heinzpilsner]

Phew! So now, when we learned what pain of watching new live action feels like, we can finally return to the old good pain of analyzing Maiko interactions in "The Beach"!  Yay!

And today we'll dissect the middle of the party events: it's a relatively short scene, but it just seemed thematically right to analyze it separately.

So, in our previous analysis, we left the characters at the set-up of Zuko's jealousy downfall. Next time we see the pair though, they're just sitting together on a couch being bored to death by the party and... by each other?

(I'm willing to bet though it's mostly Mai who is bored - Zuko has plenty of entertainment with all the heavy brooding going on in his head.)

The pair has an opportunity to talk, but apparently, they either too annoyed at each other to initiate a conversation, or perhaps there is nothing orange in sight, so Mai is severely ran out of topics here.

(The paradox of Maiko I can't help but find ironic, actually - a girl who's always bored dates a guy whose biography by the age of 16 could become an instant world bestseller, and the only use for his tongue she can think of is kissing.

To be fair though... Would Zuko himself really want to talk with Mai about the past three years' experiences - in detail, I mean? There are too many unpleasant memories, uncomfortable facts and things he doesn't know how to interpret in here, I suppose.

And a bit too much of Iroh.

So, perhaps it's really a good thing that talking is not Mai's idea of "entertainment".)

They can't kiss at the moment either though. Not that doing it in front of other people ever stopped them for some reason, but kissing Zuko now would be a positive reinforcement of his jealous behaviour, so Mai neither can afford it nor she's really in the mood.

But wait, they finally start talking! And what a... lovely piece of interaction it gives us to analyze.

"I'm bored." "I know." "I'm hungry." "So what?" "So bring me some food." "Sure."

Okay, I must say this dialogue perfectly highlights one fundamental issue with Maiko. The huge crucial problem which totally undermines this ship.

It's the fact that Mai and Sokka would make for a better match!

... Okay, okay, I'm fooling around here. I mean, Sokka has interests and goals in life apart from eating and kissing, I wouldn't wish Mai in her current state on him.

...But seriously seriously this time.

This short dialogue implicitly tells us plenty of things about the problematic dynamic between the pair and the characters' wrong attitudes in romance and life in general.

We see again that Mai believes it's Zuko's job to entertain her when she's bored and to keep her needs satisfied.

(Of course, she doesn't say it directly, but there's no such thing as "simply stating that you're bored" in the presence of another person. Without any offers or actions of your own, it always turns either into an accusation, or a hidden request "think of something interesting for me to do".)

And her belief in this is so strong that she doesn't ask him to bring food politely, but downright demands it. As if they aren't equal partners or something, but she's either an empress or a toddler who can't provide such things for herself.

And so far, it's always about what Mai needs from Zuko, not the other way around.

I mean, did we ever before see her doing something for him, and not just with him for the sake of her own pleasure?

Maybe she asked him if he's cold in "The Awakening", but... would she really do something about it if it turned out he was?

Who knows.

But we know that back then, instead of giving him something he needed at the moment, she took something she wanted from him and just left afterwards satisfied.

On this party again, Mai demonstrates her consumer attitude towards Zuko (and the world in general, I guess). 

It looks as if she wants to be with him because she enjoys "the perks of being royalty" and the physical aspect, but as soon as these things become unavailable for just a day, he immediately falls into disfavor. And Mai doesn't even see the point of pretending otherwise!

Moreover, judging by her behavior, she believes that just agreeing to be with Zuko in itself is her great contribution to the relationship. She's a big prize, he should be happy to do things for her even though all she does is sitting here with perpetually bored face.

(Maybe she feels like this because she gave him "an access to her body" already. But... Do I really need to explain where lies a problem with such an approach to intimacy? Besides, with a general attitude like this, it's very unlikely for her to be a good lover.)

I mean... Zuko is a freaking prince! He's literally a future Firelord. Who looks like... well, like a guy who can say "you have quite an appetite for a girl" on a first date while pretending to be a peasant and still get a kiss in the end.

Mai is lucky the boy is so unsocialized and has such a low self-esteem, honestly.

(Well, 'lucky' is not exactly a fitting word in the context of this episode, but... You got it.)

But I wouldn't be surprised if in Mai's eyes, demanding food from Zuko also was her big favor - such a great opportunity to make it up for her after all the troubles he cost her today! The stupid boy just didn't realise it without a direct command for some reason.

I wonder why, Mai.

To be fair, after Zuko manifested his unwarranted mistrust of her, she has a good reason to resent him. In addition, his lack of self-confidence doesn't exactly make him more attractive, and Mai's cool-off is pretty understandable.

But that's just not a way a girl who truly cares about her boyfriend would treat him in such a situation. Because to care about someone means to value them. And girls don't value boys they use as a free unqualified service.

It doesn't mean the situation can't change, of course. But so far it's that it is.

(Actually, I start to think it would be pretty interesting to watch Mai's realistic personal growth in general. Most of her problems is a result of wrong life attitudes and depression, it can be fixed gradually. But instead, she is basically stuck as an attachment to Zuko with no room for it. It's a kind of a shame.)

Despite all this, we see that Zuko, a hot-headed boy who has both right and wrong reasons to be offended by Mai's behavior... just agrees to do her bidding.

I wonder if it's just because he got desoriented. I can imagine cogs turning in Zuko's head:

"Wait, food? Who am I again?.. No mask, no apron... Oh yeah, I'm a prince! ... Although, I'm a boyfriend, so I'm kinda supposed to do things for her anyway?.. Ugh! Why social life has to be so difficult?!"

Seriously though, I suppose he just didn't want to deal with Mai's reaction if he ignored her demand. Because he's still afraid to lose her for some unexplainable reason which wasn't yet shown to us.

Or perhaps because deep inside of him, he doesn't feel like he deserves anything better.

So, he leaves Mai alone on the couch to bring her some food. And what a great surprise awaits him on his return!

But we'll finally reach this brain-damaging part of our analysis next time! Brace yourselves for heavy Zuko roasting! Until then...

Thanks for your attention?..

And as usual, I ignore all notifications.

P. S.: Despite all of my stupid jokes, in this blog, we don't shame characters for their eating behavior. If food is the first thing that comes to their mind every time they think of something to do, even after they just had dinner, it actually can tell us a lot about their mental state, especially when it comes in tandem with chronic boredom.

We do shame characters for plenty of other things though, because we are not professional psychologists* here, and we are petty as hell about the fact that Maiko is an endgame ship, muhahaha!

(*Technically, I have a psychology degree though, so... Yep.)

P. P. S.: On a completely unrelated note... Wow, they actually managed to find for Mai's role in live action the person with less suitable face type possible. Like... What was their reasoning? I'd understand if her character required supreme actor's skills or something, but... It's Mai!

Hmm, maybe this girl is good at knife throwing? Who knows. But after watching Azula's, ahem, choreography... somehow I doubt it.

#atla #zuko #mai atla #anti maiko #probably too much of deadpan humor in this one

[aspoonofsugar]

Penny’s Final Word

Cinder might have had the final word of the volume and that is a meta for another time. Still, there is another character who got to have another important final word:

Penny: Let me choose this one thing.

Penny’s arc has always been about self-actualization and escaping objectification.

She was created to be a weapon and everything was decided for her by basically... everyone:

Both enemies and loved ones alike ended up choosing for her multiple times, so it is fitting that Penny herself is the one who has the last word about herself. She makes the final choice that decides how her life should end and what her legacy should be.

At the same time, Penny’s final choice and sacrifice perfectly tie together all the major themes explored in the Atlas arc.

This analysis will try to explore her arc and to show how it is central to everything the Atlas volumes wanted to convey.

PENNY AND HER FAIRIES

What makes a person a person and not something else?

This is a key question in Penny’s story and it can’t be answered without addressing who her Blue Fairy is.

Is it Fria?

Or Ambrosius?

The answer is neither and both. These two characters are definately references to the Blue Fairy, but they are not the ones who make Penny feel human. The one who does is ironically a red fairy:

You saw my soul Through the nuts and bolts You're the friend I can trust Helped me see I'm not just a machine

It is Ruby’s aknowledgement of Penny’s personhood that makes Penny feel alive.

So, what about Fria and Ambrosius? What is their role?

Fria chooses Penny as the next Winter Maiden. This is a powerful moment thematically because it is an aknowledgement of Penny’s humanity. She has always been a real girl, a Maiden at Heart, hence she can be given the powers and protect them.

Ambrosius removes Penny’s robotic parts and makes the “real” Penny come to the surface:

Ambrosius: Okay, but if I take the robot parts out of her, that would leave...

Blake: Penny. The girl who's always been there underneath it.

Penny’s new body is human because Penny has always been human and has always wanted to feel human.

In short, these two moments are moments of recognition of Penny’s humanity. She becomes a human both in soul (Fria) and body (Ambrosius). In particular, she has always had a human soul and this is why it can be tied to the power of the Maiden. When it comes to her body, she aquires a human one because her new appearance is nothing, but a mirror of her soul.

Still, even if these two moments are both meaningful, they are also moments where Penny receives something passively. They are aknowledgements of Penny’s humanity yes, but Penny wants more. She wants personhood aka to live as her own person.

To truly become a person one must be able to make their own choices. And interestingly, Penny’s free will is linked to both moments with her two blue fairies.

Ambrosius’s magic does not simply give Penny a human body, but it gives her back her freedom. Not only that, but it makes it impossible hacking her ever again.

Fria’s interaction with Penny is more complicated.

First of all, Fria does not impose the power on Penny, but asks her to make a choice:

Fria: Penny. Are you the one?

Penny: I…

And Penny does so in a sense, but it is gray. Penny is given no time to think about this choice, differently from both Winter and Pyrrha. It is something imposed on her by the events:

Penny: But taking the Maiden power was the only way to stop--

Moreover, it is something she very clearly does not want:

Penny: I was the protector of Mantle, but now, I am much more than that, and I wish I was not.

In short, Penny’s interaction with Fria is a recognition of her humanity, but also a duty imposed on her by external occurrences.

It is not what Penny herself wants. To truly be human, instead, Penny should make her own choices and be given the chance to pursue what she wants.

Still, what does she truly wishes for?

PENNY AND HER JIMINY CRICKETS

Penny’s wish is made obvious since her first appearance:

Penny: "You called me 'friend'! Am I really your friend?"

Ruby: "Uuuum... Y-Yeah, sure! Why not?"

My wish came true That day that you appeared And called me friend

She wants friends to the point that Ruby’s awkward aknowledgement of their friendship is enough to make Penny completely loyal to the other girl.

At the same time, there are many Jimini Crickets that go in the way of Penny’s wish for friendship:

Penny: I've never been to another kingdom before. My father asked me not to venture out too far, but... You have to understand, my father loves me very much; he just worries a lot.

(...)

Penny: I... was asked not to talk to you. Or Weiss. Or Blake. Or Yang. Anybody, really.

Ruby: Was your dad that upset?

Penny: No, it wasn't my father...

Both Ironwood’s high expectations and Pietro’s overprotectiveness make so that she is not free to enjoy her own life as she wants.

She arrives to the point that she comes up with a plan to stay at Beacon with her new friends:

Penny: Ruby, there's something I've been wanting to talk to you about. I want to stay at Beacon.

Ruby: Penny, they'll never let you do that.

Penny: I know, but I have a plan.

However, we never discover what this plan is:

This does not happen by chance and Penny’s plan is not a dropped plot-point. It is symbolic of how her agency is completely negated. She is objectified to the point that her story is interrupted before she can take any action. It is a meta-way to comment her character and her major struggle.

Penny’s first death is more than a murder. It is a way to refuse Penny’s personhood and agency:

Ruby:  And Penny… was killed… just to make a statement.

She is used as a symbol of Atlas’s shady research. Penny’s own self is forgotten in the chaos that follows.

The same thing happens in Atlas as well:

Ruby: I don't think Robyn was their target. Salem's goal has always been to divide us. I think Penny was exactly where they wanted her, just like at the Vytal Festival.

This time she is not framed as a victim, but as a perpetrator and used as the symbol of an authoritarian regime.

Her enemies’ objectification of Penny is made clear in many ways:

Cinder: I have come too far to be stopped by some toy!

Cinder: You’re just a tool to be used!

Salem:  Although he remains in captivity, it seems that he has worked with Ironwood to gain some control over the puppet masquerading as the Winter Maiden.

And Watts’s virus is just the culmination of it. It is the embodyment of the Jiminy Cricket trying to overwrite what Penny wants.

At the same time, though, Penny’s enemies are not the only ones who try to control her:

Pietro: I lost you before. Are you asking me to go through that again? No. No. I want the chance to watch you live your life.

Penny: But dad… I am trying to.

Penny’s loved ones have tried to protect her all along. However, this wish of protection ends up going in the way of what she really wants:

I've been combat-ready since The day dad made me Now I'll fight for something more Might sound wholesome, But strangely I've got friends Fighting for

What Penny wants is to fight together and for her friends. She does not want her life to be considered less than others’. Still, she does not even want it to be put before others’:

Cinder: I don’t serve anyone. And you wouldn’t either, if you weren't built that way.

Penny: That is not…I choose to fight for people who care about me.

In short, it is as Maria says:

Maria: Don’t you think Penny has had enough people telling her what to do?

PENNY AND BEING A REAL GIRL

At its root, Penny’s struggle has always been this:

Penny: I feel like I wish I could do both the things I need to do and the things I want to do. Is that normal?

She wants to reconcile her duty and her personal wishes.

It is her duty to accept the power of the Maiden and to protect it.

It is her wish to live with her friends and to protect them.

These two things end up coming into conflict multiple times:

Penny: And after the launch, I’ll return to help you all with the evacuation.

Pietro: About that, Penny. When Amity goes up, I think you should be on it with Maria and I.

Penny: But they need me here. Right?

Ruby: Well, if you stay far out of Salem’s reach, then she can’t open the vault. She can’t get to the relic. So...

Weiss: Maybe it is for the best?

Until the finale where Penny makes a specific choice:

Weiss: Penny, no!

If Penny were to act as the perfect Maiden, she would have just gone to Vacuo with the staff. In this way she could have protected both the relic and the power. Even if Cinder had ended up killing all her friends, Salem would have still lost.

However, Penny decides not to act as a Maiden, but as a friend:

Penny: You wouldn’t know anything about friends.

Even the reason why Cinder manages to mortally wound her is because Penny is worried about Jaune and Weiss and gets distracted for a second:

However, it is specifically in the moment of her death that Penny is able to make a choice to reconcile both who she is and what she has to do.

She chooses to protect the power:

Penny: She can’t get the staff..and the power.

And to save a friend:

Penny: I thought of you. And here we are.

Winter would have died without the Maiden powers and the same can be said about the people stranded in Vacuo. Penny saves all by choosing to be the one in control of her death.

Her choice is extremely powerful thematically and it ties together all the themes explored in these last two volumes.

1) It is a choice about trust:

Penny: Trust me.

Winter: Thank you for trusting me with this.

Penny asks to be trusted and chooses to trust as well. After all, this is what friendship is all about:

Attached but not By strings

It is a choice that uses the motif of “the part of you” in two different ways.

2)  Becoming a part of someone else can be seen as a reference to the process of grieving, which is one of the themes explored in this volume:

Grieving means to come to terms with your loss, to accept your feelings for the people who are gone and also their contradictions:

Robyn: Clover was a lot of things. You respected him, but I gotta tell ya, I think you’re the better Huntsman.

Vine: Then perhaps Clover was wrong too.

The lost ones will be missed regardless:

Harriet: Don't you dare! Clover was... He was...

Vine: ...Important to you.

Still, once you manage to finally grieve, you’ll realize the other person has become a part of you:

It does not matter if Qrow’s semblance has evolved, if it is a part of Clover’s power having stayed attached to the pin, both or if it is Clover looking out for them.

What’s important is that Clover will keep on living inside Qrow because Qrow will never forget him or what Clover has taught him:

Clover: You shouldn't do that, you know.

Qrow: Don't worry, I-I gave that up.

Clover: I meant deflect a compliment. Those kids wouldn't be where they are without you. You've had more of an effect on them than you realize.

Qrow should love himself. Only in this way he can stop being a self-fulfilling curse. Only in this way he can start looking at his own life with hope and wish for good luck.

Similarly, Penny won’t be forgotten and her legacy will live through Winter:

Penny: She's… gone.

Winter: No. She's a part of you now.

Penny: I won’t be gone, I’ll be part of you.

3) Penny becomes a part of Winter because Winter is finally able to do this:

Winter: But yes Penny, we must still acknowledge our personal feelings, wrestle with them. It ensures us that we're on the right path. It's what makes us human.

Winter is the one who taught Penny this, but it is obvious that through volume 7 and 8 she has avoided to face her feelings for both her family and Ironwood. By the end of volume 8, however, she is finally able to accept her emotions. She can finally follow her heart. Penny becoming “a part of her” is symbolic of this. As a matter of fact their dynamic has always been about Winter acting as “the mind” and Penny being “the heart”.

Symbolically they integrate because they both are becoming their own person even if in different ways.

Winter becomes her own person because she rejects this mentality:

Winter: Penny. The general is making hard choices so we don't have to.

Penny becomes her own person because she is finally in control of herself and her destiny. Moreover, she is able to do for Winter what Ruby has done for her:

Winter: No, Penny, you were always the real Maiden at heart. I was just a machine. Just… following orders.

Penny: You’re my friend.

She affirms Winter’s personhood and in this way she affirms her own as well.

In other words, this version of Pinocchio does not end with the protagonist being transformed into a real boy by the Blue Fairy, but with Penny transforming Winter in the Blue Fairy:

So “becoming fully human” in RWBY means to do this:

Qrow:  This last great creation would be given the power to both create and destroy. It would be given the gift of knowledge, so that it could learn about itself and the world around it. And most importantly, it would be given the power to choose, to have free will to take everything it had learned and decide which path to follow - the path of light or the path of darkness. And that is how Humanity came to be.

It is about gaining knowledge, like Penny does about feelings and relationships, loving life and accepting death. Finally, it is about making a choice, even if it is painful.

This is because being human is not always simple. It can be hard:

But I found that humanity It came with sacrifice

Having a human soul means you have a duty to do the right thing out of your own free will, like Fria’s gift showed.

Having a human body means you can experience the warmth of a hug:

But it also means you can be mortally wounded:

This is Ambrosius’s teaching.

Still, it was worth it all for Penny because she got the chance to meet friends and to feel alive:

An answered prayer A chance to Share the world To be a girl Who fin'lly felt alive

This is why her second death can be juxtaposed to her first one. Both times she was killed by Cinder. However, the first time she was used as a pawn in Cinder’s plan. This time instead she is not letting herself be controlled and she negates Cinder what she really wants out of her own free will.

In conclusion, there is this phrase by Jean-Paul Sartre:

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

And I think it sums up Penny’s story perfectly.

Penny does not choose to be born a robot or to be used as a weapon. She is objectified in multiple ways...

Still, she manages to make something amazing out of herself.

#rwby #rwby vol8 #penny polendina #rwby meta #rwby spoilers #my meta #qrow branwen #even if only a little

[tonystarkissist]

Presumed Dead - Villainous July

Part 1 of "Oh Sweet Child, The Thing’s I’d Do for You...”

Summary: Tony Stark is dead. Has been for years. His actions destroyed Peter’s life, as well as any hope, exuberance, or trust he had in the past, and Peter is nowhere near ready to forgive.

Rating: Teen (For language and Thematic Material)

Word Count: 2.7k

A/N: The relationship between Peter and Tony is purely platonic. St*rkers dni!

~ Masterlist ~ Read on Ao3  ~ Next Chapter

The release bell rang loud enough to continue echoing in Peter’s ears for a good few minutes. He was sure to have a blinding migraine by the end of the day thanks to the annoying ring adding onto the headache that had already established earlier in the week as a result of his recent insomnia. So, already, the beginning of his dreaded weekend was off to a rocky start, and he had to shuffle through the crowd with his shoulders pulled up to his ears to avoid being shoulder checked by another student. His patience and sanity were both teetering on thin ice and he felt that any other minute inconvenience will make him fucking explode… God, he hated Fridays. 

Everyone was always so excited, which just seemed to sour his mood even more. Listening all day to the weekend plans his peers would discuss in whispered undertones during class, or amongst the chaotic chatter of the lunchroom-- about spending time with their families, and friends, maybe going on a short little vacation-- it got to him sometimes. It made his eye twitch, and it made him scowl. He had never used to be a person prone to envy, but lately, he’s found himself grinding his teeth when he overhears the fantastical tales his classmates would speak about during school. Whether it was about the new phone they got for their birthday, or simple complaints about their sibling trashing their room… Peter always found something to be jealous of.

“Peter!” Ned pushes through the crowd when he spots him, “Have you started the English project yet?” Ned grasps the straps of his backpack with both hands, grinning in anticipation as they walk towards Peter’s locker at the end of the hall. “Who did you decide to write about?”

Peter frowns… the stupid English project. It’s like the teacher couldn’t find a better way to torture an abused orphan. 

“No, I haven’t started yet,” Peter grunts. Usually he’d apologize for his salty mood, but Ned’s known him long enough to remember that Friday’s were not as joyous an occasion as most students found it to be. Plus, his stomach was killing him. It’s only been a few hours since lunch and it already felt like his insides were clawing a hole through his abdomen. That didn’t help his mood. “It’s not due for another, like, four months. I’ve got time.”

“Yeah, but you gotta do a whole powerpoint, and a whole philosophical analysis… you did see the rubric right? This project is going to take forever!” Ned groans dramatically, following Peter through the slowly emptying hall now that he’d finished at his locker. “I think I’m gonna get MJ’s help. She’s a sucker for this sorta thing.”

“--Sucker for what sorta thing?”

Speak of the devil.

“The English project. Peter hasn’t even started on his yet.”

“You might wanna get on that Parker,” MJ points out, “you may be a genius, but you can’t write a 7 page analytically comprehensive essay in a night. Also, I’d advise studying up on Plato’s philosophies on morality. He has some interesting ideas that go along with the whole ‘defining a hero’ concept Mrs. Morris likes. I’m actually surprised she didn’t recommend his book before assigning the project.”

MJ zones out in thought and Peter stares at her. He doesn’t think he’s ever heard her speak for that long in a single period of time.

“Yeah, but I don’t even know who to write about, and that’s the backbone for the whole project.” Peter eventually says, shoulders slumping in defeat. He rubs his head while he’s at it. The ringing had at least finally stopped, but now the lights were a bit bright and he was only dreading the walk home beneath the bright afternoon sun… Maybe he could stop by Delmar’s for an hour or two. He could probably scrounge up enough change along the sidewalk for a sandwich too. Or maybe offer to work for it. Mr. Delmar’s let him wash the dishes in payment for a sandwich before.

“What about your Uncle,” Ned offered, “he was a police officer right? And he went head to head with Iron Man when he was tearing up the city! You could write about that.”

Peter laughs with a humorless undertone. “Sure, because he definitely stood a chance before the first repulsor blast tore a hole through his chest.” Peter grimaced at his own words, wincing at the disrespect in his tone like he was expecting Ben to rise from the grave to exhibit his disapproval. It’s been three years, yet he still reacts like his Uncle was still around to enact a punishment. 

Weak, Parker… weak. 

“Wow,” MJ scoffed. “Morbid, much?”

“Sorry,” Peter sneered, “I’m just kinda grumpy today.” 

Ned’s mouth fell into a frown. “Oh yeah. I’m sorry Peter. I forgot.”

“What’s wrong?” MJ asked, and if Peter wasn’t mistaken, he’d say there was a smidgen of genuine worry in her tone.

“Peter hates Fridays,” Ned answers for him, “he has to do chores all weekend.”

Yeah… the chores weren't really the problem. 

“Well, sucks to suck,” MJ chuckled, “have fun cleaning Parker.” And with that she waves, breaking away from the pair when her mother honks the horn from the car-pickup line.

Ned grabs his shoulder. “I’m really sorry Peter. Hopefully he’s a little more bearable this weekend. You’re always welcome to come over if you’re able to get away. My Mom’s making the Poi you like.”

Peter shakes his head. “You know I can’t, Ned. I wish I could.”

“Alright then,” Ned sighs, “I’ll see you Monday, and I’ll make sure to bring you some leftovers!” Peter smiles. He didn’t deserve a friend like Ned. No one did. “Maybe you could use the project as an excuse to stay in your room this weekend.” Ned smiles, hoping to lift Peter’s spirits, and Peter’s too afraid to tell him it wasn’t worth the effort, so he just kept smiling and bid his best friend goodbye before tugging his hood over his head to block out the sun and heading back to the apartment, keeping his pace slow and allowing himself to absorb the last hour of peace before the weekend truly began.

He was in for a long couple of days...

He steps through the door, closing it behind himself as quietly as he could manage, but it was no use.

“Peter!” The joyous shout made him wince scornfully. “How was school?”

The man steps into the room, wiping flour from his hands with a dish cloth and grinning like there was nothing wrong with the world. 

“Good, sir,” Peter answers with a numb frown and dull tone, “I have a lot of homework this weekend, though.”

“Sorry to hear that pal,” the man frowned. “Why don’t you get a head start on that so you still have time to do your chores this weekend?”

Aaaand that's exactly the plan. Peter offered him a tight smile and escaped to his room. He shuffled around for a while, deciding whether he should power through his procrastination and get started on that project, or just lay face down on his mattress and wallow in his own misery, hoping his migraine would magically go away.

He decided the former would be better, just in case an impromptu visit from his foster father was in his near future. So he powers through the dull throb in his head and sits at his desk, grabs a pencil and a clean sheet of paper and begins to brainstorm… he thinks of every person he knows who may be qualified to star in the project worth half his grade. He’d probably choose Mr. Delmar if he knew more about him… he didn’t think he could write an entire 7 page, in-depth, essay about the sandwich shop owner without at least conducting an interview first, and he’d rather not go through that awkward exchange. 

Ned was the closest second, but he knows Mrs. Morris wouldn’t approve of him using a peer as his self-proclaimed hero. And, god, Ned would go all mushy on him and he really didn’t want that either.

He toys with the idea of using Uncle Ben, just to have something to throw on the page, but his conscience wouldn’t let him do it… not when he knew the man for who he was outside of the uniform.

So, he makes a list-- A checklist to be more precise-- to help him make an informed decision 

What makes a hero?

Brave

Honest

Selfless

Good

Caring

Strong…

The list went on, and at the rate he was able to scribble down the words, the faster he came to realize that by these standards there was no one in his life qualified to don the title of his hero. 

He pouts… staring down at the first sheet of paper he’d neatly laid over his desk. It was blank, besides his name scrawled in the top right corner. Out of all the essays he’s written, he thinks this might be the hardest of them all. Give him a prompt, and a research topic and he can write all day long, but using his own opinion and discretion? On a matter inherently personal and subjective? Most people would find it easy, but it was going to be a struggle for him.

He had no hero to write of… but maybe that in itself was something to write about. Mrs. Morris might appreciate the unique twist. So, he begins to write. He lets his pen scrawl across the paper, jotting down any thought that comes to him in hopes it will spark some sort of creativity...and he doesn’t stop until his hand is cramping and he forces himself to look back through his messy scrawl of his rough draft to correct any mistakes he might have made.

Peter B. Parker

Mrs. Morris

English 101

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

“With great power comes great responsibility,” a wise man once told me. At the time I wasn’t sure what it meant, or the implications behind the words, but now I think I understand it better. This is why I’ve come to the conclusion that I do not have a hero. Most students would probably choose their parents, or one of the Avengers, but for me both of those would be used in the past tense. To be a hero is so much more than just helping people. It takes determination, courage, morality, and strength, because the load any hero must carry is heavy, and most can’t handle the weight. Heroes are a thing of the past, and I theorize that they may not have ever even existed at all. A man or woman may appear heroic, but that does not make them a hero at heart. In this thesis I will discuss examples of heroes of the past, the struggle they had faced, the criteria I believe makes a true hero, and the string of elements that have brought me to the conclusion I’ve drawn.

First, I would like to bring out a prime example of my theory: Tony Stark, aka. Iron Man. He was once known as a great hero, possibly one of the greatest of all time. Had he not done what he did, Tony Stark would be the theme of this essay, but instead his transgressions have inspired doubt and bitterness. In another life he would still be considered a great man, and I would have continued to look up to him, but the pressure he faced crushed whatever goodness he had before. The pressure of such a strong responsibility can easily become overwhelming, and a debilitating mental disorder is not uncommon in his line of work. “A career dedicated to protecting and serving others may leave minimal time for self-care in addition to being frequently exposed to trauma. The unique pressures experienced by these first responders lead to a high occurrence of substance use and mental health disorders” (Hull 2020)...

Peter frowns as he reads through what he just wrote. He was in no way trying to excuse the actions of Tony Stark, yet that’s what it was sounding like. What the man had done was despicable and unforgivable, and Peter couldn’t think of a better example to prove his point. Tony Stark was no hero… there was no such thing as heroes anymore. But, as per the rules of essay writing, he couldn’t be entirely subjective. So he must prove his point through facts and logic, and Tony Stark was a prime candidate to do just that.

... There is plenty of speculation regarding Tony Stark’s breakdown, though most of the theories can be trailed back to a long line of undiagnosed mental health disorders. This fact in no way excuses the actions Tony Stark committed, just as a person suffering from psychopathy is not excused for any violent actions they may commit…

There, that makes him feel better.

...This account is simply to help better understand why Tony Stark may have chosen the path he did when he held so much promise in the future of his career. 

Before Tony Stark ever donned the title of Iron Man, he had suffered from many mental illnesses. Ranging from alcoholism, to severe depression and dissociative tendencies (Everheart 2009). After becoming Iron Man, he did amazing work that would have properly designated him as a hero according to the criteria I have put together. He put the people first, he created several charities dedicated to helping people in need, and he helped form the avengers to save the world from the extraterrestrial attack of 2012. He was selfless in many ways, but selfish in so many more, and this alone disqualifies him from his heroic position. His position in this particular tile of my rubric, had gone unnoticed for many years, forgotten after his former years of malicious and careless actions. One day, it culminated, as most already know, after he lost his longtime partner and friend Pepper Potts in an accident. This, as most believe, is the driving force behind the mass murder that followed. There are still many missing details in regards to this complete turnaround in his character. Even before the Avengers were betrayed and killed by one of their trusted leaders, there had been many testimonies coming forth of the sudden animosity between them and Stark. The people turned against him as soon as word spread, and government officials even attempted to detain him. There is plenty of video feed of the occurrence, most capturing Stark’s attempt to explain the reason for his actions of killing his former teammates, but the disregard and the hatred people rightfully spewed led to a devastation of New York far worse than what the city had seen a year prior. These were the acts of a troubled man. A man who was once considered a hero; one of the best the world has ever seen, yet the natural mental disposition of man led to his downfall. That is why no man can be considered a true hero.

Tony Stark killed his family. Tony Stark was responsible for his suffering. The man deserved a death far more tortuous than the one he enacted on himself. Peter’s glad he’s dead… because if he was alive, he might just consider doing the deed himself. He can only hope the man was rotting away in hell.

Peter stares down at the page, scowling at his own words. Just because he couldn’t be a true hero like he aspired to be, didn’t mean he couldn’t try. He could-- no he would be better than Tony Stark. 

He turned in his desk chair to stare at his ratty backpack which held his most prized possession, then he glanced back towards his bedroom door. It was too risky to go out now; he’d have to wait until Beck drank himself into a drunken stupor before he could sneak out the window. He was exhausted… and his bones felt heavy, but he couldn’t use that as an excuse. Maybe he’d take a short nap after dinner to replenish his energy before going out, but for now, he decided to put the essay aside and begin on his Calc work. After all, the hardest part of an essay was starting.

~ Next Chapter ~

Ending A/N: Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you enjoyed! I am very excited to begin this journey with you all. The formatting is a little off thanks to tumblr, but oh well, you got the gist of it anyways. If anyone is interested in me starting a tag list for this fic, just let me know, or you could just subscribe to the fic on ao3 so you will be notified by any updates.

Besides that, just a minor point to avoid getting myself in trouble for plagiarizing or something... the first quote of Peter’s essay was a real quote taken from a real article (to give it that true essay writing feel). The in-text citation should really be (Hull, 2020), but this fic doesn’t take place in 2020, so lets juts pretend that it had said 2013 instead. Also here’s the link to the article just in case lol. “https://www.floridarehab.com/resources/first-responders/”

@multiverse-irondad-july​

#Villainous July 2021 #villainousjuly2021 #villain tony stark #peter parker #irondad #tony stark #superior iron man #fanfiction

[davidmann95]

How about those JL storyboards?

In case you haven’t heard, Zack Snyder is putting on display the ‘storyboards’ - i.e. a rough plot summary accompanied by some Jim Lee sketches - for what would have been Justice League 2 and 3, or as this puts it 2 and ‘2A’. You can see them here (I imagine better-quality versions will soon be released), and read a transcript here. This is evidently a very early version: this was apparently pitched prior to the release of BvS and Justice League being rewritten in the wake of it, with numerous plot details that now don’t line up with what we know about the Snyder Cut, plus it outright mentions it builds on the originally planned versions of the Batman and Flash movies. But it’s a broad outline of what was gonna go down, and while I initially thought it was Snyder throwing in the towel, the timing - paired with the ambiguity left by the necessity for changes, including that this doesn’t factor whatever that “massive cliffhanger” at the end of the Cut is - says to me he’s hoping this’ll be a force multiplier behind efforts to will sequel/s into existence. He’s probably right.

I’ll be discussing spoilers below, but in short: with this Zack Snyder has finally lived up to Alan Moore, in that like Twilight of the Superheroes I wouldn’t believe this was real as opposed to a shockingly on-point parody if not for direct, irrefutable evidence.

Doing some rapid-fire bullet points for this baby to kick us off:

* Folks who know the subject say a lot of this is a yet further continuation of Snyder doing Arthuriana fanfic with the League reskinned over those major players, and I’ll take their word for it.

* I don’t know whether I love or hate that in Justice League 2 the Justice League are only an extant thing for the first scene, and then it’s Snyder giving everybody their own mini-movies. It’s compressing the entire MCU “loosely interconnected solo stories leading to a single big movie later” strategy into a single movie!

*  Funniest line in the whole thing: "Even Lantern has heard of the Kryptonian, worried that he's under the control of Darkseid. He heard his spirit was unbreakable." Hal what fuckin' Superman movie did YOU watch? Second funniest being “IT WILL GIVE HIM POWER OVER ALL LIVING LIFE”

* 90% of the plot I have nothing to say about, it’s generic stage-setting crap. That to be clear is the ‘shocked it’s Snyder’ element, it feels so crassly commercial in a way I can’t believe is coming from the BvS guy.

* Most of what I have to say is unsurprisingly gonna be about a handful of characters but Cyborg’s happy ending being “he isn’t visibly disabled anymore!” is not great!

* The Goddess of War battle with Superman...never pays off? No clue why it’s there.

* What I’d originally heard was that the Codex in Superman’s blood was the last key to the Anti-Life Equation and that’s why Darkseid was coming to Earth. It’s not like all of this wouldn’t have already been averted by Kal-El’s pod smacking into an asteroid on the way to Earth so it’s not as if this makes it any more Superman’s fault, and it would have at least tied all this back to the beginning of the movies, but I suppose that was either fake or from a later draft.

* I have NO idea how this was reimagined without the ‘love triangle’, it’s the central character thing and the entire climax flows directly out of it!

* Darkseid’s kinda a chump in this, huh

Anonymous said: So: Does Zack Snyder hate Superman?

Look: the hilarity of this when Cuck Kent has been a go-to Snyder cult insult towards ‘inferior’ takes on Superman for years cannot be understated, yet at the same time I can almost wrap my brain around where Snyder’s coming from with that as the end for his take on the character. He talked in that Variety piece on how his interest in Superman is informed by having adopted children himself, and Deborah Snyder is the stepmother to his kids by previous relationships, so I can see where he’d be coming from, and I can even imagine how he’d see this as ‘rhyming’ in the sense of “the series begins with Kal-El being adopted by Earth, it ends with him adopting a child of Earth!” In the same way as MARTHA, I can envision how he would put these pieces together in his head thematically without registering or caring what the end result would actually look like. In this case, Superman raising the kid of the man who beat the shit out of him who Batman had with Clark’s wife, who earlier told Bruce she was staying with Clark because he ‘needed her’, suggesting if inadvertently that this really honest to god was a “she’s only staying with Superman out of pity, she really loved Batman more” thing.

But Clark is nothing in this. He’s sad and existential because of coming back from the dead I guess, then he’s corrupted, then time’s undone and he woo-rah rallies the collective armies of the world (interesting angle for the ‘anti-military/anti-establishment’ Superman he’s talked up as) as his big heroic moment in the finale, and then he stops being sad because he’s adopting a kid. So his big much-ballyhooed, extremely necessary five-movie character arc towards truly becoming Superman was:

Sad weird kid -> sad weird kid learns he’s an alien, is still weird and sad, maybe he shouldn’t save people because things could go really wrong? -> his dad is so convinced it could go wrong he lets himself die -> ????? -> Clark is saving people anyway -> learns his origin, gets an inspiring speech about being a bridge between worlds and a costume -> becomes superman (not Superman, that’s later) to save the world, albeit a very property-damagey version, rejects his heritage he just learned about and space dad’s bridge idea -> folks hate him being superman and that sucks though at least he’s got a girlfriend now -> things go so wrong he considers not being superman but his ghost dad reminds him shit always goes wrong so he should be good anyway, which sorta feels like it contradicts his previous advice -> immediate renewed goodness is out the window as he’s blackmailed into having to try and kill a dude but the dude happens to coincidentally have some things in common so they don’t kill each other after all -> big monster now but superman keeps supermaning at it because he loves his girlfriend and he dies -> he’s brought back, wears black which apparently means now he likes Krypton again? -> he has work friends now but he’s still sad because he was dead -> evil now! -> wait nevermind time travel -> rallies the troops -> his wife’s having a kid so he’s not sad anymore -> Superman! Who gives way to more Batman.

Do I think Zack Snyder is lying when he says he likes Superman? No. I think he sincerely finds much of the basic conceits and imagery engaging. But I don’t think he meaningfully gives shit about Clark as a character, just a vessel for Big Iconic Beats he wants to hit. Whereas while for instance he’s critical of Batman as an idea (at least up to a point), he’s much more passionately, directly enamored with him as a presence and personality. So while Superman may be the character whose ostensible myth cycle or arc or however it’s spun might be propelling a lot of events here, it’s a distant appreciation - of course the other guy takes over and subsumes him into his own narrative. Of course Batman is the savior, the past and the future (though if he’s supposed to be Batman’s kid raised by Superman there’s no excuse for him not to be Nightwing), the tragic martyr to our potential. Admittedly the implication here is also that Batman can apparently only REALLY with his whole heart be willing to sacrifice his life to save an innocent, for that matter apparently his great love, once said innocent is a receptacle for his Bat-brood, but he and Clark are both already irredeemable pieces of shit by the end of BvS so it’s not like this even registers by comparison.

Anonymous said: That “plan” Snyder had was utter dogshit. Picture proof that DC & WB hate Superman. Also I love how you’re like Jor-El: Every single idealistic take you had about Snyder, his fandom, and BvS was wrong. Snyder’s an edgy hack, his fanbase just wants to jerk off to their edgy self-insert Batgod as he screams FUCK while mowing people down with machine guns, and the idea that BvS said Superman was better than Bats was completely wrong. You know what comes next SuperMann: Either you die or I do.

In the final analysis, beyond that mother of god is there sure no conceivable excuse for the treatment of Lois in this? The temptation is to join that anon and say as I originally tweeted that these were “built entirely to disabuse every single redemptive reading of the previous work and any notion of these movies as nuanced, artistic, self-reflective, or meaningful”.

...

...

...yeah, okay, that’s mostly right. Zack Snyder’s vision really was the vision of an edgelord idiot with bad ideas who was never going to build up to anything that would reframe it all as a sensible whole. He’s a sincere edgelord genuinely trying really hard with his bad ideas who put some of them together quite cleverly! But they’re fucking bad and the endgame was never anything more than ramping up into smashing the action figures together as big as he could, the political overtones and moral sketchiness of BvS while trying to say something in that movie reverberated through the grand scheme of his pentalogy in no way beyond giving his boys a big sad pit to rise out of so when they kicked ass later it’d rule harder, and all the gods among men questions and horror and trappings were only that: trappings. Apparently he’s really pleasant and well-meaning in person, but at his core his art as embodied in a couple weeks in his 4-hour R-rated Justice League movie meant to be seen in black-and-white all comes down to that time he yelled at someone on Twitter that he couldn’t appreciate Snyder’s work because it’s for grown-ups. He made half-clever, occasionally exciting shit cape movies for a bunch of corny pseudo-intellectual douchebags, folks latching onto and justifying blockbusters that at least acknowledge how horrifying the world is right now even if the superheroes are basically useless in the face of it if not outright part of the problem until a convenient alien invasion shows up to justify them, and a handful of non-asshole smart people who vibe with it but...well. ‘Suckered’ is a harsh word, and definitely doesn’t apply to all of them re: what they’ve gotten out of it up to this point and would (somehow) get out of this. But it doesn’t apply to none of them, either.

#Justice League #Zack Snyder #Superman #Batman #DCEU #Opinion

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis is a series that looks at villains across various media in the hopes of coming to something of a consensus on the overall quality of the character. Are they performed well? Do they enrich the narrative? Are their motives fleshed out? Are they voiced by Tim Curry and thus a sex icon? 

There are a lot of important questions that I look into, but ultimately, Psycho Analysis boils down to asking one simple little question: How bad can a character be?

Thankfully, there’s one villain who decided to answer that question for me... in song form.

Psycho Analysis: The Once-ler

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Yeah, I’m finally talking about everyone’s favorite greedy bastard who, back in some of the darkest days of Tumblr history, ended up being the premier sexyman on the website. People were thirsting over this twiggy weirdo, acting as if he were God’s gift to women and shipping him with alternate versions of himself. Much like the movie he’s from, he is now incredibly hard to take seriously.

But hey, speaking of alternate versions of himself, I’m going to be covering him from the original book and the animated short film as well. Might as well just knock it all out of the park at once, right? Now let’s see how ba-a-a-ad this guy can be.

Motivation/Goals: The Once-ler is all about biggering. He’s making thneeds (things that everyone needs) and he is gonna stop at nothing to craft these things. Not even the power of the Lorax, Danny DeVito or otherwise, is going to stay his hand from getting that sweet, soft Truffula fluff to make his wares. This is ultimately a little unrealistic, at least for the Illumination version; if Danny DeVito asked me not to do something, I’d listen, no questions asked.

Performance: In the animated special, Bob Holt does double duty, as he is portraying both Once-ler and the title character. It works really well for what they’re going for, and the double casting is interesting because it highlights the ultimate role of the Lorax as the Once-ler’s conscience given form.

In the film, Ed Helms portrays the Once-ler, and he’s fine. He’s certainly better casting than Audrey, but that’s not particularly saying much considering that’s a non-singing Taylor Swift (when Cats is able to utilize Taylor Swift better than your musical, you know there’s trouble). I don’t know, Ed Helms is fun and all, but I’m just not sure his take on the Once-ler is all too compelling overall.

Final Fate: In the original book and the special, the Once-ler wins… but even he realizes it’s a terrible, pointless victory, and all he has achieved is ruin, his family leaving him, his business ultimately collapsing, and the environment permanently damaged. He’s left as a miserable, jaded hermit, broken by the bleak consequences his greedy actions have sown upon the world and only able to tell his story and pass on the last Truffula seed in the hopes that maybe, maybe someday the trees can regrow and the Lorax will return. The Illumination version follows this but then tacks on a happy ending  where the Lorax and Once-ler reunite because as we know ambiguity and bittersweet endings cannot exist in children’s films.

Best Scene: Obviously it’s the scene where he shakes his ass to seduce Jack Frost, in one of the greatest gay romances ever put to film.

Joking aside, it is undoubtedly his villain song. It has become such a meme, but real talk? “How Bad Can I Be” slaps. This is a really good song, probably too good for the movie but you know what, I’ll take it.

Best Quote: HOW BA-A-A-AD CAN I BE? Yes, I’m using a line from his villain song. Sue me.

Final Thoughts & Score: What can one really say about the movie version of the Once-ler that hasn’t already been run into the ground? Well, how about… He’s not too bad, honestly? Like, yes, he has next to nothing to do with his book counterpart and they really go way too far into trying to make a capitalist pig sympathetic… but the animated special from the 70s did that too. I think the Once-ler honestly works better when there is a dash of complexity to him and he isn’t just a simple-minded Captain Planet villain.

Of course, the issue here is that the 70s version took a simpler approach, kind of less is more. The 70s Once-ler brings up some valid points to the Lorax about his work, and the Lorax can’t help but agree that there’s no easy answer while also stressing that the environmental devastation is still really, really bad. It works, it feels complex, and it arguably helps the ultimate point that we need to protect the environment better than even the book did (and I love the book, don’t get me wrong, but its take on the Once-ler is a bit too simple for its own good; it almost runs into the Femme Fatale problem by being a bit too much of a strawman). The movie version has a bit too much going on, especially with his family. His family are much more blatantly evil, greedy, and manipulative, but they’re relegated to the background for much of the film and don’t effect things all that much. The whole narrative would have been infinitely stronger if they were the greater scope villains behind Once-ler and were who needed to be defeated and maybe taught a lesson, but instead they are ignored in favor of someone I’ll address very shortly.

All of this leaves movie Once-ler feeling extremely disjointed, but not irredeemably so. As I said before, his villain song is unironically awesome, and as lame as it is compared to the more haunting, contemplative ending of the book and the special, I’m not so much of a curmudgeon that I didn’t at least smile when he finally reconciled with the Lorax. Ultimately though, him being memed to death really didn’t help his case, but it means I’m not giving the movie version anything less than a 3/10. He might in fact be the best “so bad it’s good” villain ever, or at least up there. He’s just so undeniably enjoyable even if the narrative isn’t making him as complex as it thinks it is. The animated special version gets a 9/10, the book version is a 7/10, and the Once-ler’s family gets a 5/10 for being an interesting concept they sadly do little with, which will now be elaborated on as I follow up on the foreshadowing from the last paragraph...

Psycho Analysis: Aloysius O’Hare

Remember how I said the Once-ler’s family gets ignored in favor of someone else? Here he is, Aloysius O’Hare, one of the absolute lamest villains ever put to screen.

Motivation/Goals: He’s greedy. That’s it. I’m not kidding. He’s just a cartoonish caricature of a rich person, which still makes him a realistic portayal but also makes him boring as sin compared to the wacky dude with a big musical number about how bad he can be.

Performance: Rob Riggle does a decent job, but there’s really not much for him to work with here. This character is a cardboard cutout who exists to be as cartoonishly greedy and evil as possible with no nuance so the kids know who to root against and so that Once-ler doesn’t look bad in comparison.

Final Fate: Look, he’s a blatantly evil corporate villain in a kid’s movie about the environment. Of course he gets defeated and everyone turns on him. What’s especially funny though is that, on the brink of learning his lesson, he rejects any form of redemption and just goes whole hog on being a villain.

Best Scene: I will absolutely give him this: in the face of his ultimate defeat, after having the virtues of trees sung to him and the entire town turning on him, he for a moment contemplates turning over a new leaf… and then absolutely rejects the thought and instead decides being evil is just too much fun, at which point he tries to get everyone back on his side by seeing a funny little song about death while wavedashing. If more shitty villains did this, I don’t think there would be shitty villains.

Best Quote: LET IT DIE, LET IT DIE, LET IT SHRIVEL UP AND DIE! Yes I’m quoting a song again.

Final Thoughts & Score: Look, I’m not gonna mine words here: O’Hare sucks. Big time. He is a prime example of why The Lorax failed as an adaptation. In a story that is dealing with a moral grayness with no easy answers, O’Hare is just a big, blatant target, a dark shade of black in terms of black-and-white morality. He’s like a reject Captain Planet villain with Edna Mode’s haircut.

The movie would have been infinitely better if, instead of him, the Once-ler’s family were in control of the town, and they needed to learn the lesson about saving the trees instead of simply vanishing from the story. They were shown to be overbearing, manipulative, and greedy, and they had a much more personal connection with Once-ler being, you know, his actual family. The fact they abandon him and never really get any sort of comeuppance despite being perhaps the most evil people in the move, egging on Once-ler and taking full advantage of him, makes O’Hare all the more egregious, because there could have been some strong thematic elements that would have tied the film together and made it come off as much less preachy and more nuanced.

But we don’t live in a world where that happened, we live in a world where we got O’Hare. Aside from some genuine hilarity from him at the end, O’Hare really adds very little to the film. I gotta give him a 2/10, but I will say he’s a lot closer to a 3 than he is to a 1; there’s no denying his absolute rejection of learning a moral is absolutely hilarious. I love when villains do that. It’s just a shame those funny moments are wrapped up in something monumentally unimpressive.

#Psycho Analysis #The Once-ler #The Lorax #Ed Helms #Aloysius O'Hare #Rob Riggle

[alteritymonster]

The Gate

ST s02e09

In which I wrap up this little braindump about ST2 ^_^ Thank you, anybody still reading! ST2 is still my favorite season—and I even quite like ST3 (for what it’s worth). I hope everyone’s been able to do something fun tonight, and been safe, and is as close to reasonably happy as any of us can be right now. Love you, tumblr peeps 💚

We know Hopper’s reasons for hiding El and lying all this time, and they’re good reasons, but still I feel for Mike’s anger and hurt and feeling of betrayal so, so much here :(

The Party’s whole “friends don’t lie” ethos has stemmed from Mike, really. I think as their leader (insofar as they have or need one) he’s impressed this on the group as an answer to a need that is more keenly his than anyone’s among them. (Not to say any of them would recognize this.)

We know Mike is flawed, though we also know he has plenty of virtues such as courage, loyalty, tenacity. I don’t think there’s a writing motive to add on a special fixation on perfect honesty so as to put a halo on him.

Lying has meanwhile been thematically tied in this season—repeatedly, overtly—to love, protectiveness, safety from the possibility of loss. We’re shown numerous times that lying is effective for people in meeting their needs and protecting others.

Yet Will is saved in the shed, made himself again even (if only temporarily), by the truth of who he is, told by the people who love him the most. The only one of those people not in his immediate family being Mike.

More than anything then, “friends don’t lie” is a statement of how Mike, distinctly from many/most of ST’s characters, understands love, what he demands of it, what he needs love to make secure for him. And (by extension, necessarily, of course), what he is most afraid of not giving, or being able to give, to someone he loves.

In other words, he’s a closeted queer person.

(Amateur psychoanalyzing? Massive projection? Why not both!)

Okay, I’m not past the opening credits yet. I promise I’m going faster for the rest of this :)

Urgh, Billy with Karen... I know what’s coming in s3 that follows up on this, but what’s weird to me right now about their first interaction is how, even though he’s nominally a kid, my gut-level hostility/discomfort/disapproval are reserved all for him. Just an observation of my own reaction, not sure what I’m making of it.

Meanwhile, Karen’s kids. Stancy are peaceably over; Mileven...? Hopper pulls them apart (seemingly right before they’ll kiss?), again prefiguring a feature of s3. If my amateur analysis of Mike here is not too far off, then there’s a certain symmetry in the conciliation/truth-telling that’s about to happen between El and Hopper, and Mike’s frantic dishonesty continuing through most/all of s3. Hopper, the adult, has grown and moved on from his earlier ways; Mike, still painfully growing up, must lie.

And in that conversation between El and Hopper, he even starts to say “Sometimes I feel like I’m—” then stops, obviously echoing, but then halting and revising, Mike’s “sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy” to Will.

“I could be so...” “Stupid?” “Yeah. Stupid.”

Another Ghostbusters reference (to Zuul) when Dustin and Steve put the demodog in the fridge?

“This isn’t a stupid sports game.”

Billy gets got by Max. Woo-hoo!

Max making Billy repeat that he understands her: a small, unpleasant echo of Neil in his one scene. Hmmmmm.

More Exorcist stuff falling on Will :(

I’ve never seen The Exorcist.

Poor Steve. Fulfilling his contractual obligation to be well fucked up once per season :\

The block helping Max reach the pedals of Billy’s car is, I’m going to assume, alluding to Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (a movie that came out in 1984).

We do not look up into the freaky monster pollen sphincter, Dustin!

Dustin’s farewell to Dart is sweet.

Passing over the closing of the gate, I guess. It’s cool. I just don’t have any good observations to make.

Hawkins, a place where “nothing ever happens.” See: Heaven, song by Talking Heads :)

Hopper meets Owens in, I think, the same bar where in s1 he lied to the state trooper about his daughter. Now he goes there to ratify the truth of his now-daughter.

Caleb McLaughlin is very adorable/funny as Lucas getting ready for the Snow Ball.

I’m also mostly passing over the Snow Ball, only because I don’t have any original observations right now. But the feels!!

Joyce and Hopper. Shared trauma. Let’s be sure to check in on them a year from now...

“Do you want to figure it out?”

The school gym in the Upside Down has the lights decoration for the dance strung up. Its metaphysics/relationship to our world are intriguing. It’s clearly not simply parallel to and independent of our world. Things like this lend plausibility in my mind to theories like Will (or maybe El) having created the Upside Down.

The Mind Flayer watches over this mass public ritual of heterosexuality, and considers its next move.

#stranger things 2 #st2 rewatch #byler #stranger things 2 rewatch #alteritymonster

[warsofasoiaf]

Per @goodqueenaly, the Blackwood v. Bracken feud has never been portrayed with nuance. Throughout the history we have read, the Blackwoods are always protagonists while the Brackens are always antagonists. Yes, that’s remarkable considering the families are supposed to be related due to so much intermarriage, but that’s what we get. Don’t you think it’s time to give up hope when GRRM has already shown us what he intends to do with this? Simply put, the feud is entirely shallow ...

And by shallow, I do mean that it is literally shallow. For instance, Bloodraven is made to “look cool” while I can hardly remember what Bittersteel looks like. Barba is meant to be “buxom” and “seductive” while Melissa is thin and model-like with a beautiful face. All Barba has are her breasts. Jonos Bracken could not have been Harry’s father because Harry was good-looking and since Tytos is the protagonist here, we are to believe him. The degree of shallowness here is stunning.

So while I love your essays, don’t you think you have looked at it with more nuance than what GRRM actually wrote? Even the Dance of Dragons wasn’t that nuanced. GRRM had a clear favorite in this conflict and while a few blacks may have been morally questionable, there is no mistaking that they were objectively better at everything than the greens and in that conflict we see how much better the Blackwoods are, too. Don’t forget Benjicot the 11-year-old military genius, which was plain ridiculous

And to be clear, there have been a few clearly bad vs. good wars in history. WWII, for example, but even then you had, for instance, some Russian soldiers on the good side committing mass rape. I think GRRM promises WWI and gives the opposite. However, this comparison doesn’t even make sense because Blackwood and Bracken are just families. You can’t choose your family, so it makes no sense for all Brackens to be bad and all Blackwoods to be good all throughout history. Yet that is what he wrote.

Recently, I mentioned how the point of the Blackfyre Rebellion seems to exist to justify the stigmatization of bastards. I thought of how Ramsay does as well. Domeric Bolton, clearly a good person, was killed by his bastard brother Ramsay. Ramsay also happens to be the epitome of evil. Jon Snow, our bastard protagonist, probably will turn out not to be a bastard at all. Is GRRM doing this unintended? Because it comes across as bad to me.

And you can counter it by saying that Daeron the Good had his bastard brother Bloodraven on his side, but I don’t feel like that is a counter to my point. Bloodraven, while fighting for the “good side,” is still a kinslaying, tyrannical child murderer and while the majority of the fan base admires him, the same can’t be said of the Westerosi in-universe. They hate him.

This might be my first six-parter. That isn’t a criticism or a complaint, the content here is thoughtful, the arguments coherent, and the questions excellent. I’ll try to address these issues one at a time, from top to bottom.

I will continue to maintain optimism because I know GRRM is capable of portraying a conflict with nuance and depth. I circle back to the painful reckonings Dunk has in The Sworn Sword and the repeated portrayals of Bloodraven’s tyranny. It undermines a great deal of the thematic points if Bloodraven becomes a monster, but the Blacks are to a man awful, because it justifies Bloodraven’s tyranny and misrule.

Now, I don’t argue that the Bracken-Blackwood feud has really not been done well so far, and has been shallow and one-sided. The slightest hint we get of it is “The Encyclopedia that Rides” Hoster Blackwood discussing how there were marriage pacts and constant land squabbles, but we never see the Blackwoods be the aggressors. Even when dealing with the Teats, it’s Aegon IV who takes them and gives them to House Blackwood in a moment of fitful caprice, not the Blackwoods who schmooze their access to the royal person. 

Where I’m hoping that changes is the story that makes Pennytree into a royal fief. Ideally, the resolution will be Aegon V stopping a conflict over Pennytree and its shifted overlordship by making it a royal fief in honor of the deceased Ser Arlan. I don’t doubt that the Brackens will be portrayed as schemers, you don’t get a name like “the Brute of Bracken” for being an enlightened and thoughtful individual. I might be succumbing to wishful thinking, working backwards from the resolution in a way that satisfies me.

I also agree with you that the Dance was very poorly done. But the War of the Five Kings was done much better. I’m not going to pretend that I have some sort of magic Batphone to GRRM so that I could tell him that I thought the Dance was poorly done, even if sometimes I wish I did. I think GRRM sometimes has a problem with sticking the landing, of creating characters he wants to root for, and a love of lurid spectacle that doesn’t necessarily correlate to authenticity. Same with Robert’s Rebellion. No one disagrees that Robert was a pretty trash person when you get right down to it, but when it came to the aftermath of the First Blackfyre and Robert’s Rebellion, only one of them had lingering animosity where “red or black was a dangerous question, even now.” 

I’m not so sure the “all bastards are bastards” mentality sticks. Even if Jon ends up not being one (which I don’t believe will happen), we’ve got plenty of bastards who are good. Addam of Hull, Cotter Pyke, these lesser bastards don’t get as much play as someone like the Bastard of Bolton, but I think their existence shows that GRRM is thinking about it, even if he falls into the authorial trap of wanting to create conflict because it’s more interesting.

So, I agree with a lot of your points, and I think it’s good that we criticize when we feel things fall short. Maybe I’m just an optimist, but I think the things that Dunk experiences, combined with the short snippets we get about Haegon being “treacherously slain” by a POV who would have no real reason to be favorable towards the Blackfyres (and perfectly willing to bias his conclusions) will bear out.

If I’m wrong, so be it. I’ll be disappointed and you can say I told you so. But, and forgive me for assuming, I think we’d both prefer a better outcome than that.

Thanks for the longform analysis and questions, Anon. You should think about compiling them into an essay, you have a good head on your shoulders.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

#literary criticism

[terramythos]

My thoughts on October Daye #12 “Night and Silence” oooor “Dammit, Janet!” (suggestion courtesy of @mistressofmuses ).

And with this I am officially all caught up! Well, I haven’t read all the novellas and short stories, but caught up on the main series. Now I have to wait for #13 this year like a normal person! Gah! 

-So, leading off from all the horrible shit that happened last book, things aren't going.. great.

-You know that intense, extreme trauma 2 members of the main cast experienced @ the end of last book? Yeah that. Didnt go away

-There's a line about how Tybalt keeps seeing Toby as her mother Amandine... the person who kidnapped and basically tortured him last book. And he's basically terrified of shapeshifting at all and has just stayed in his humanoid form. And he's refusing help from anyone and disappearing for long stretches. And maybe going just a little bit Fuckening Crazy. G-great start, guys!

-And there's a flashback where he's just MEAN and like you can understand why but MAJOR YIKES and also pain.

Ok unexpected May feels ;-;

-Gillian Is Missing Again but I have a feeling this is not gonna be much of a retread...

-And.. boy this sure is a callback huh? May and Quentin being the found family, Gillian is missing, Tybalt is antagonistic...

-ok Jocelyn is a creepy fangirl character

-ok I'm 5 chapters in and wondering where this is going. Apparently there's Quite The Twist in this one or at least that's what I suspect is going to happen

-oooohkay they find like this weird pocket dimension with like. A miniature house that is also a chicken (and no one even mentions Baba Yaga). And idk what it is about the scene but it is fucking eerie and creepy as hell somehow.

Shade appeared in like book 6 as a Literal Cat so.. here she is showing up and being relevant for 5 minutes

-but what the FUCK is with this place. I got nothing and that exposition just raises more questions. There's no magic scent at all (except MAYBE cinammon), a bunch of rare fucking plants, and a fucking miniature baba yaga hut just wandering around

-that opens another rabbit hole because Golden Gate Park is ALSO completely unclaimed for no particular reason 🤔

This might be a waste of picture and might get deleted later but like, that's fucking creepy, right???

-god I know there HAS to be someone with cinnamon in their magical signature who we've MET but... it's been 12 books, dog. I dont fuckin remember

-The closest I can think is Simon with "mulled cider" because that's cinnamony... BUT it's pretty unlikely he did this, and that part of his magical signature is PRE corruption and we have the corrupted version running around.

-We just found a SECOND creepy unexplainable house hidden in plain sight so that's starting to feel Thematic.

-And she smells the false Queen's magic in this house :) someone supposedly asleep for 100 years in Silences. So that's great.

-Aaand there's Gillain! Not even halfway through the book. Way too easy.

-It's not Gillian. It's a Baoban Sith which is apparently *googling* a.. vampire. Ok

-My crack theory is pretty much dead in the water lol 

There's more than this bit but ;---; fuck dude

-But yeah! After a book and a half of hiatus, Tybalt's back! A little.. broken and suffering from severe PTSD, but you know.

-They go to Goldengreen based on a hint and Marcia is there baking cinnamon rolls. It really stresses the fact that she's making cinnamon rolls.

UM.

-.... holy shit.

-Ok. Ok ok. Assuming that's the truth that means Amandine's mother was.. a human? Making her a fucking CHANGELING Firstborn? What the fuuuuuck

-Oh that is fucking hysterical with what a fucking blood purist Amandine is. She looks down upon changelings and the beast races SO MUCH. Janet implies Amandine has no idea her mother was human, or at least never knew Janet. I'd bet she figured out she was part human because the Dochas Sidhe's whole deal is messing with one's heritage for fun results. Gosh. Hmm.

-And this mirrors everyone hiding October's heritage from her BEAUTIFULLY.

-I don't remember quite when "Miranda" was introduced but it was pretty early on. And now that I think of it there was NO REASON for her to fucking exist! What the fuck! The story would have made just as much sense with Cliff being a single dad raising Gillian. Miranda was just an antagonistic extra detail who didn’t... really do much. God damn it. 

-Cliff “accidentally” marrying Toby's maternal grandmother who is somehow Human and also like, alive, in order to help raise Toby's daughter is. Fucking Something, huh.

Oh lore??? (Oberon, King of Faerie, kinda a nice guy it turns out, accidentally knocks up a human. Uh... whoops?)

-Fuck dude, that was the blood memory flashback we had in book 9. The Luidaeg begging her mom not to leave on The Ride. Oof.

-So Janet is, yes indeed human and YES INDEED Toby’s grandmother. She’s cursed with immortality because of all that shit she pulled. 

-And BOY does that lore regarding Janet make the whole "Amandine was doted on and given everything she ever asked for" make sense cause... THAT'S WHAT THEY DID WITH HUMANS. And here we have a fucking FIRSTBORN born from a fucking HUMAN. Gosh. Jeez.

-and Katy pointed out to me that that's a big book 3 reference because Toby's family holds her down when THEY try to remove her from Blind Michael's version of the Ride, and SHE wildly shapeshifts through dozens of forms.It was a Tam Lin retelling only I don’t think I ever expected the actual thing to be relevant. 

-And FUCK Evening/Eira, by the way. I think that goes without saying at this point.

-So is Blind Michael's Ride supposed to be a replacement of the old one? 500 years ago the fae used The Ride to sacrifice a human every 7 years--until Tam Lin and Janet fucked it up. Fast forward to the present and we had Blind Michael showing up every couple years stealing children for what HE called The Ride.

-soooo Toby killing Blind Michael might have not been a great thing if you follow that line of reasoning. I mean, he was a fucking monster, BUT... Because The Ride is supposedly to maintain balance, hence the sacrifices. Whatever the fuck that ultimately means. And by stopping it...

-Add that on to all the stuff last book about how Blind Michael wasn't always such a shitty person, and... uh hmmm.

-OK this part might be a stretch but: the Dochas Sidhe are the only descendants we know of that are just... one hundred percent descended from one of the Three. The human part is largely irrelevant in fae terms. They’re directly Oberon’s, not some mix of Maeve/Oberon or Titania/Oberon. Would that mean Oberon is actually Dochas Sidhe? He did, after all, create the hope chests, and the Dochas Sidhe are literally living, breathing hope chests. IDK MAN. 

Tybalt, PLEASE.

-So it is, predictably, the false Queen behind this whole situation, helped by Jocelyn. And I just FUCKING REMEMBERED that it was that dickbag Dugan who had cinnamon in his magical signature .-.

-The Baoban Sith just be like "yeah sorry about almost eating you I uh straight up hadn't eaten in 40 years lol. Anyway I'm Kennis, what's up?"

OH FUCK! I FUCKING *CALLED* THIS SHIT OUT IN BOOK SIX! I remember it being mentioned offhand as something that could happen. I fucking KNEW we were going to turn a character into a Selkie for plot reasons. But I gotta say I didn't expect it to be Gillian!

FUCK DUDE ;___; in this house we stan The Luidaeg. Best character. I'm not crying. (I am.) 

-She has a line a few pages later about anxiety and catastrophic thinking, and how what you THINK will happen is never as bad as what actually happens. She compares it to "chasing the tide" and honestly that's such a useful metaphor, as someone often caught in that trap...

-They take down Dugan, yay, he was a loose end. He's not DEAD, but.. This is another one where the villain felt pretty secondary to the big plot revelations. 

-And Tybalt stepped down (temporarily) as King. Jolgeir's daughter is apparently going to temporarily take things over so I expect we will be introduced to her later?? 

---

-And, like the last few books, theres a novella epilogue at the end. This one is "Suffer a Sea-Change" and looks to be from Gillian's perspective.

-ok so Gillian has this whole scene where she TALKS to Firtha (whose skin she's wearing now) and I can't help but wonder if all selkies have this weird scene with the Roane whose skin they inherit when they ascend or whatever?

-The Answer Is "No", The Story Explicitly Says 

-Gillian is honestly pretty funny. She's up to here with this bullshit.

-The Luidaeg would like to remind everyone that she’s nice to October and Quentin but she’s not actually all that nice to most other people and Definitely Has Her Own Agenda. Although she seems to have taken in Poppy as an apprentice of sorts so... *vague shrugging* 

-And The Luidaeg speaking fondly about her "little brother Michael" who liked interior decorating despite being entirely blind. This is my uncomfortable face based on all my Analysis earlier.

-So Gillian is a Selkie now! That's not a twist I expected. And the next book (not out until September) is about The Luidaeg finally calling in their debts. So uh. That was one hell of a way to make the stakes personal on that.

-Im probably gonna make a master post overview of the series now that I read the whole thing in relatively short order. I'm glad I'll have a chance to read other books, but I'm anxious for the next one too based on the recent developments...

[analytic-chaoticism]

Help For Hire, Advice For Free: Marsti Houtek as Sylph of Void

Marsti Houtek is a queen who deserves the love of the world and she definitely hasn’t been getting enough so I’m here to give her a classpect character analysis. She’s just... so kind... so good... Today - as any other - we will be using @revolutionaryduelist’s understanding of the Homestuck class system. Spoilers for Marsti’s routes and long post ahead:

Let’s look at what Taz has got to say on Sylphs: 

“But some consistent themes surrounding [fae - the Create class unifying myth] include an unearthly Fairy realm of their own to inhabit(which certainly describes Aradia’s relationship to the Bubbles) and an interest in meddling in the affairs of mortals. (Kanaya and Aranea. Nuff said).”

“So Kanaya’s one reference to being a fairy is here, where she’s described as being a Fairy God Troll.”

“Fairies in general were also sometimes considered a species of Elemental, being a broad term sometimes used to describe [Sylphs].  Sylphs in particular are a kind of Wind Elemental, meaning a being literally made from the force it derives its essence from.”

“Finding a balance between focusing on themselves and their desire to get involved with and help others is part of a Sylph’s struggle.”

- optimisticDuelist

A lot there but we’ll break it all down. 

Marst’s sign is Arittarius - the Astronaut - meaning they are a Derse-dreaming Void player. Void (in short) is the aspect of nothingness and irrelevance, obfuscation/mystery, misfortune, and erasure. As the inverse of Light it also has connections to the material. As a rustblood, her caste - via the presiding Aries true sign - are influenced by the Maid of Time classpect. Time is - most importantly here - the aspect of decay, action, inevitability, and death (as a facet of destruction). Maids are the active (selfish) class of the Create class pair, Sylphs the passive (selfless). I also refer to these as being ‘internally vs externally motivated.’ 

The etymology of her last name relates to both Time and Void. Credit to the MSPA wiki:

“Her first name means "purification" in Sanskrit which fits her janitor like appearance. Her last name could be derived from the comet Kohoutek, which before its close approach, was promoted by the media as the "comet of the century" as it was expected it would produce a spectacular display of outgassing; because Comet Kohoutek fell far short of expectations, its name became synonymous with spectacular duds. Additionally, In 1973, David Berg, founder of the Children of God, predicted that Comet Kohoutek foretold a colossal doomsday event in the United States in January 1974.”

To purify something is to remove unwanted or negative elements, erasing or ‘voiding’ them, so that’s a bit of a gimme. But Houtek is interesting; it’s a promise of great relevance - due to a bright light - becoming associated with irrelevance and darkness (Void), assuming apocalyptic symbolism? Well Time - particularly Aradia, apocalypseArisen - is all about moving toward the day everything is destroyed. Perfect double thematics, and it relates to her title as the Astronaut. 

An astronaut is literally a professional spaceman, sure, but I more immediately think of the loneliness of space: someone swallowed by - if you will, becoming one with (elementals i.e. Sylphs) - a great unknowable void, in which they are made entirely insignificant. I could stop here but I’ll keep going aye.

First I want to jump onto the fairy imagery because it’s the most distinctive part of Marsti’s characterization in regards to classpect I feel. Marsti emulates a single story that shows her as a Sylph, roleplaying as a Maid: Cinderella.

1) Cinderella is a maid, forced to serve others - cleaning AKA Marsti’s self-and-socially-imposed job - as a fundamental part and symbol of her poverty (rustbloods anybody?). Speaking from a Create class perspective, she is also literally a Maid: an active class forced into an unhealthy state of passivity, maintaining her family’s home. She is made irrelevant in a bad way, and has her life consumed by the material. I know there’s a lot of bolding but that’s because there’s a lot of importance here, bear with me. This is relevant because Marsti is assuming the role of Cinderella, roleplaying as a Maid who is made to (functionally) roleplay as a Sylph. It sounds like I’m suggesting Marsti is embracing Sylphdom, but because she’s approaching it from a misinterpreted angle of negativity, she’s doing so in a non-constructive way. As Taz notes, diminishment of self is a key struggle for Sylphs (and Maids when they are too passive at the beginning of their self-realizing journey).

2) Cinderella is inextricably linked to her fairy godmother, a familiar-like figure that enables her realization of self. The fairy godmother is Marsti’s true role. The fairy godmother is a selfless helper who helps Cinderella overcome the irrelevance she had accepted by using irrelevant items: a mystery figure showing up in a pumpkin carriage only identifiable by a glass slipper (something transparent, leaving no real information) - it’s literally the most Voidy it gets as Homestuck is concerned, really. This is the fairy godmother who meddles in the affairs of the poor and downtrodden, creating and empowering through Void; someone who comes - heralded by “twinkling lights” as the “embodiment of Cinderella’s hope” (an active person’s passive desire to help others) - and solves problems with the wave of a wand “that she can summon from nothingness.” In pop-culture, the fairy godmother is basically a glorified janitor for a shitty life. 

The fairy godmother appears and purifies a situation, cleaning up Cinderella’s irrelevant life with the symbols of Void that kept her down and dirty in the first place. Cinderella is the literal janitor, the fairy godmother the metaphoric one. And of course we can’t forget that this magical spell is on a timer, so there’s that.

I think it’s fair to say these things all relate pretty well to Marsti on all 4 class and aspect levels when you start connecting some dots. Like with Vikare, there are no explicit mentions of fairies or magic beyond that, but - similarly - there is some naturalistic imagery.

Moss being an irrelevant and unwanted plant that grows in empty spaces. 

The purple calls it his sacred iconography, important information relevant to his faith that she erases: creating void (for others, removing unpleasant imagery for a nicer viewing experience). 

The scientist reference reminds me of Jade, someone also referred to as a scientist, whose class - the Witch - is ‘less magic’ than the Sylph. In this way, Marsti’s class identity is being reduced - made irrelevant - by her social role. 

The Reader refers to the creation of their potential relationship as hinging on a ‘drunken’ destiny, alcohol - and the obfuscation of being drunk - explicitly related to void: creating through void to the benefit of the Reader. 

In an alley - a dark and unimportant place - Marsti creates a hiding place by hunkering in the trash and silencing you (creating Void for others). 

She questions the Reader’s seeming desire to die - the ultimate form of self-imposed irrelevance, removing your ability to affect reality - because she’s the concerned mom-friend (as Sylphs are want to be)...

She goes out of her way to help the most neglected areas with her own positive Void, taking advantage of their irrelevance to heal them...

A very physical, material activity the Reader notes takes a lot of muscle power (connecting her to Void players, with the continuous references to her seeming lack of weapons reinforcing this as they all fight with fistkind)... 

Which is a process hinging on her ability to make her own feelings, desire, and very self irrelevant. She becomes Void to help others. 

She makes the Reader’s prior information irrelevant, creating a void in their knowledge that benefits everyone involved because this is effectively a casual-racism allegory. She emphasizes this by again assuming the aspect, creating a mystery around her entire character. 

Similarly, she creates a physical mystery - and an emotional distance between herself and others - by wearing her goggles. They say eyes are the windows to the soul, so I imagine it’s hard to get information from a person when they’re closed off like that. 

In the bad route - where the Reader worries about leading her into becoming a Zebruh slave, service being a core problem to the self-realization of Create classes - it seems like Marsti is internally motivated. Like she says, she cleans “whatever [she’s] feeling, mostly -_-” Therein lies the problem: this isn’t because she’s a Maid embracing her activity. It’s because she’s a Sylph rejecting her natural passivity and trying to emulate an active figure subsumed by an irrelevant passivity in turn. Cinderella indeed. She doesn’t want to lead the janitorial lifestyle and she doesn’t want to do things for herself, she wants to help others. Her perceived selfishness - her closing herself off and doing whatever she wants - is a defense mechanism, disguising her desires from a violent society and trying to assume some control over a worthless life; it appears like she has achieved this - yay successful Sylph right? - but her independence is an unhealthy kind stemming from the Void imposed by society. You can tell it’s unhealthy and disingenuous because it makes her incredibly unhappy and confrontational: 

She’s worried about dying if she commits to her true passive self, so has created a persona of independent agency to protect herself at the cost of her well being. She hasn’t found a true balance between focusing on herself - validating her own desires and identity - and helping others.

She’s happiest when she’s using her understanding of Void to help Folykl nurse herself: creating through X with X, for the benefit of others.

When she’s finally honest with the Reader and herself, it’s bonding over the creation or repair of Void, and the happiness they find when helping others: meddling in their lives to clean them up, like a fairy godmother. 

Some misc stuff is how she doesn’t want a “staged mess” in the bad route - natural imagery - and her presence in Galekh’s hive allows the destruction of Galekh’s writing (Light) - creation of Void - via goatdad.

So there you go folks. Marsti as the Sylph of Void.

#Hiveswap #Marsti Houtek #Homestuck #God Tier #Sylph of Void #Friendsim Troll Analysis #Hiveswap Friendsim #Friendsim #Me #My Theory #Sylph #Void #I love her #People: love Marsti

[kylydian]

Breath of the Wild Soundtrack Analysis: Day 5

Sorry for the break guys! I was off at Game Developers Conference for a week or so. Definitely was the time of my life! Shout out to my Conference Associate family! 

Here we go back on track!

TWO tracks in one day? Oh man, it’s time for a double dose of Minimalist Impressions of Zelda Music!

Tracks 6 & 7: Riding (Day and Night)

Genre: Impressionism, Minimalism

Featured Instruments: Piano, Strings

Compositional Techniques: Pointillism, Thematic Usage

Takeaways for Composers: Hiding famous melodies in the middle of new content is a great way to get listeners to associate with and accept new genres.

Takeaways for Developers: Blending new and old within the context of music allows for easy, natural progression in game music.

I have to say, riding a horse is incredibly satisfying in Breath of the Wild. There’s something really awesome about finding a horse in the wild, taming it and finally riding off into the distance. You also get to name it.

What did I name mine?

Chad.

His name is Chad.

I hear these tracks talked about pretty frequently whenever conversation arises about Breath of the Wild’s music. And there’s definitely good reason for it. I mentioned previously in my Undertale post that people naturally associate with thematic material, and these two tracks are some of the only ones in the game to use traditional Zelda themes. But what’s really great about them is how they’re presented. Truly, it’s just a glimpse of the past.

We’re talking about both at once because the two tracks use the same ideas and don’t really deviate from each other. In fact, they’re kind of an extension of themselves. So rather than break them up, let’s keep them together.

In starting, let’s take a look at the instrumentation. We’ve only got two instruments, piano and strings. The piano plays pretty quick lines that are very Impressionistic in nature. The notes echo the style of intervals and feel used in the daytime field track covered in the past, just much quicker, providing a feeling of motion because…well…you’re riding a horse. However, this is also done through a pointillistic nature as well. The notes seem as if they’re picked at random, but in actuality they’re likely picked for timbre as well as melody. This is especially evident at the end of every piano line, where the notes jump around between different octave. It sounds random, but it’s very methodical.

Along with this though, we also have an element of heavy minimalism. If you remember from my post about the daytime battle music, Minimalism is a style of music that features heavy repetition with minor changes over time. The Battle theme used the entrances of various instruments to create the minimalist effect, but with these two tracks minimalism is used in a more traditional sense. Most phrases of the piano line repeat itself a few times, until finally only one or two notes change. 

The changes are incredibly small, and probably wouldn’t be easily noticed, especially in game. Overtime it changes more and more, until finally you have lines that are fairly different from the beginning but maintain the same feel overall.

However, the violin does something that is completely in opposition to this, but gels incredibly well. It plays a known melody from the Zelda series. It enters after many repetitions around halfway through the track, and it truly enters pretty quietly, and it’s gone as quickly as it entered. The melody used in the daytime track is Zelda’s Lullaby, and in the nighttime track it’s the main theme. It seems as if each melody is played much slower than that of the piano, but we’ll touch on that in a little bit. Once the melody is gone, the original piano lines continue until finally there’s a short closing segment to close out the piece.

Strings are used in this case probably for the fact that strings often carry melody in this soundtrack, and that piano and strings are known to be complimentary instruments.

Keep in mind that this is true across both tracks. Both tracks use the exact same ideas of Impressionism, Minimalism, thematic material. Both are structured the same way as well.

So, let’s talk about tempo, or speed of the pieces. Both are also around the same tempo, and in both it sounds like the strings are quite a bit slower than that of the piano. However, this isn’t entirely accurate. The tracks themselves aren’t that fast really. They’re hovering around 100 beats per minute. The reason for the discrepancy in feeling the tempo is in relation to the fact that there’s only two instruments. The piano is playing primarily sixteenth notes (Meaning that there’s four notes per beat) and eighth notes (Two notes per beat.) This means that the line feels as if it has more motion, even though the beat itself is only at a moderate pace. Normally we wouldn’t associate this line as being “fast” but we do because we only had one context for tempo at the beginning. This is marked even further by the fact that when the melody comes in it’s being played in longer held notes. These are at the same tempo, but feel as if it’s moving slower. This is augmented by the fact that these held notes are really held. Again, we wouldn’t really notice this to this extent if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s only two instruments and the one before it was only moving with quicker notes.

These two instruments and singular tempo in general provide us with two feelings. One is the feeling of riding a horse, and the other is exploring Hyrule, something that I’m sure most of us are already familiar with. But the small instrumentation again reflects the open yet sparse world, entirely different from everything we’ve come to know.

But the night time track does something different, something markedly different than the other track.

“But Kyle, the two sound identical!?!!”

Oh man. You’re right! And that’s why these two need to be looked at together. The opening line of the night time track is a different rhythm from what came in the daytime track. It’s an incredibly small change and you have to be listening for it. The notes and intervals are almost the same too. It’s really like they’re the same piece, but there’s just a small difference between how the first one ends (before the outro), and the second one begins.

That’s because the beginning of the second track is a minimalist change to the ending of the first track. Minimalism is a small change that should barely be noticed if even noticed at all. Same instrumentation, similar key, starting with a different rhythm and almost the same notes.

If these two tracks played back to back without stopping, this would be a post on only one track, and I wouldn’t be talking about a minimalist change between two tracks.

It’s really cool though. The fact that the composer used minimalism to continue the feeling of one track over to the next. Connecting similar ideas over two tracks to essentially make one cohesive track split in to two?

It’s absolutely brilliant.

One other thing. I want to bring up the fact that people seem to always bring up this track. In earlier posts, I had mentioned that there’s many people who don’t like the Breath of the Wild music. I think this has to do with the sparse scoring, and musical style somewhat, but I think it has more to do with the lack of thematic material. The fact that these tracks are some of the ones that people bring up first is evidence of that to me.

These tracks are more accessible because they have themes people already know. They aren’t necessarily the focal point, and in my opinion they’re background noise to the piano (I might be biased though because I’m a weird 20th century experimental music nut.) But regardless, I think tracks like these are important for this OST to make the other music approachable.

These two tracks are a good introduction to the type of music that the Breath of the Wild soundtrack is built around. Impressionism, Minimalism etc aren’t what I would call genres that are easily loved, so building themes and music that people already know and have emotional ties to is a great way to get the listeners’ ears wet to appreciate the rest of the soundtrack. In fact, it might have the effect of getting the player to listen more intently to the soundtrack to try to pick up other melodies they might hear.

And when writing game music that might not be as easily appreciated, finding ways to help people understand and appreciate the music is absolutely imperative. Blending old and new is a great way to do that.

What’s the break down? Are you asking what can I take away from all of this? It’s simple music, but there’s some great takeaways here.

For Composers: A lot of people might have a hard time adapting to new or unique musical styles. Find ways to blend the old and the new together to help people ease into musical change. Featuring lines that have different feelings of tempos is a great way to build motion and conflicting yet accentuating feelings.

For Developers: Push composers towards combining musical styles for a few tracks early in the game if you’re wanting to go with a progressive soundtrack. This will help players get acclimated to the newer style of music. “Fast” does not always mean fast when dealing with music. The quickness of individual lines does not necessarily indicate speed.

I love these tracks. They’re so simple yet hide great meaning for us as composers and developers. Next up is another personal favorite of mine. This one does some different stuff with traditional melodies, so we’ll talk reharmonization along with philosophy in the next installment.

#Zelda #The Legend of Zelda #The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild #Breath of the Wild #Nintendo #Video Game #Video Game Music #VGM #Indie Dev #Game Developer #Video Game Developer #Video Game Development #Indie Music #Impressionism #Game Audio #Game Music #Kylydian

[ramblingsofthegoldenwitch]

Some say that erika is a polite girl. But she a really crazy person. Is it true?

Hum...

I’m not sure why you would think the two are mutually exclusive and what exactly you mean with ‘crazy’ as I get you mean she has mental problems but there’s a moltitude of them which come with various deegree of difficulties in interacting with others and in behaving in what we consider the ‘normal’ way.

Still being polite isn’t the insurance that one is mentally healthy so I fail to see the connection between the two statements.

Also a good thing we should remember is that we know very little of the TRUE Erika or PrimeErika if you prefer to judge her mental health

All we know about her is that she believed her boyfriend might have been cheating on her she exibited a behaviour that some would label borderline to paranoia (very, very likely her boyfriend was cheating on her and therefore her fear was justified and not a delusion but the way she perlustrated his house was overboard... although she didn’t stalk him so maybe it wasn’t so bad as it seemed) but we can’t really say for sure as we really have not enough elements to judge nor we’re doctors.

It could be that what too us look like her excessive checking of his house was merely dictated by circumstances (maybe she was in charge of cleaning it so for her it wasn’t that weird to check it up) and by an overabundance of observation ability from her part.

It’s speculated that PrimeErika didn’t just fell off the boat but tosses herself off of it so she could have been suicidal and therefore suffers of depression... but again it’s just a speculation. It makes sense thematically but it’s nowhere stated in canon.

In short it’s possible and actually likely that Erika wasn’t in the best psychological conditions prior to her death but there are no proofs about this and anyway nothing we can speculate exclude she was a polite girl.

Going on.

What we get to know better are:

Piece Erika from Ep 5

Piece Erika from Ep 6

Meta Erika.

You might have noticed I didn’t consider Piece Erika from Ep 5 and Piece Erika from Ep 6 as the same person and the same applies for Meta Erika.

That’s because they’re NOT the same person.

Let’s dig in the pieces first.

The pieces are nothing else but MetaErika playing a roleplay game. She doesn’t bother doing things like staying in character, she plays the game the way she finds it more functional.

When you’re roleplaying you can decide your alignment is chaotic evil and go around murdering people in the game and planning to become an evil overlord... but this doesn’t mean in real life you’re willing to do the same. It’s a game and you just pretend to be chaotic evil during the game but this doesn’t mean YOU HAVE TO BE in real life.

So, in Ep 5 Erika decides her piece will be very polite. Now... her behaviour might be a little odd to us but that’s only because she’s actually playing the role of the detective and not even being subtle at this. In detective stories we see many detectives doing the same Erika does but the story usually covers the oddities of their behaviour up so that we don’t question how everyone let them do as they please.

Umineko had fun lampshading how a detective is actually behaving in a very unnatural way so it sets her up as ‘odd’, but that’s Umineko’s narrative choice. Erika fits the detective trope perfectly. The detective is normally as intellectually intrigued as her in face of a murder, questions everyone, inspects everything (usually even more than Erika did), his authority isn’t questioned but actually he’s consulted and he deliberately eavesdrops any possible conversation even prior to the happening of a crime.

Of course this works only because a mystery asks us to suspecnd our disbelief and accept this as normal behaviour. Umineko didn’t, so it felt very odd... and Umineko had fun making it seem even odder as PieceErika is genre savvy and MetaErika even uses her to talk with the gamemaster.

So well, to other pieces, who’re not genre savvy, Erika's behaviour might look very odd and questionable but still PieceErika isn’t ‘Erika’. She’s just a character in a game which defies its own rules (like it or not Umineko is a mystery and the fact it pretends not to be in Ep 5 is rather funny) and therefore she can act as she pleases.

In Ep 6 MetaErika decides for her piece to play a completely different role.

She doesn’t bother to have it be polite and even goes to use drastic measures to avoid losing and trapping MetaBattler in a logic error by having her piece decapitating other pieces.

This Erika is definitely not police and she’s definitely mentally disturbed but she’s not the real Erika. Would the real Erika have done it? We don’t have the slightest idea. What we know is that, so far, Prime Erika was never accused of being a murderer but hey, if MetaErika decided on having her piece being a motiveless murderer for the sake of winning a game who we are to blame her? It’s just a game, no real person was killed.

So you might claim Ep 6 Piece Erika is seriously mentally disturbed (I won’t try to analyze her here) but the truth si that Ep 6 Piece Erika is fundamentally a piece who’s moving in the way that’s more useful to Meta Erika in order to win a game. She’s not real, nor her murders are real.

To Meta Erika it’s all a story. We don’t go and accuse Ryukishi of the murders happening on Rokkenjima nor we doubt his mental health for writing such a story so we shouldn’t do the same for Meta Erika.

Now... what’s the psychological state of Meta Erika? And is she a polite girl?

Well, Meta Erika went for a polite approach with Battler in the beginning, but he rejected her. She wasn’t so bad with Ange or EvaBeatrice either and she’s definitely polite with Bern and Lambda.

So I’ll say that Erika can be polite if she wants to especially with who she views as superior to her or equal.

What Erika clearly isn’t is kind.

She’s not kind, she can be polite but she doesn’t really care about who’s around her. This doesn’t stop her from being polite when she want to/have to.

What about her mental health?

Hard to say.

She’s not in a normal situation that requires normal behaviour.

She’s undoubtedly beyond bitter and overly vengeful but there’s to say there’s Bern behind her forcing her to act a certain way under threats.

Erika isn’t FULLY free to act as she wants, she’s manipulated and threatened and she’s in an environment where ‘normal’ means something very different from what ‘normal’ means in our world.

After all people (and even ships!) can fly, can use magic to appear or disappear, goats have human body, Bern can turn into a cat, mosters walk around and can eat a full island making it disappear, people can but torn into one million pieces and then being sewed back together as if nothing had happened.

All this is far from ‘normal’ and yet everyone in the story accepts it as ‘normal’ because that’s how that world work.

So... judging Erika is really hard. Personally I wouldn’t call Erika’s condition as the condition of a person who has a good mental health. She’s too jaded, too negative, too abusive and too submissive even for the world she’s in.

There’s something broken in her.

But I come from a world where ‘normal’ means something completely different and, anyway I’m no doctor and therefore not supposed to give a medical opinion... and, at the end of Umineko, Erika seems to be in perfect health while she’s with Bern and Lambda so... it becomes even more difficult to put a label on her.

So I think if you want an accurate, detailed and trustworthy psychological analysis of Erika you should probably knock to a person who’s into the medical field. My three years of psychology are nowhere near enough for this. I can only point out the problems in her behaviours I can’t really give a diagnosis.

Sorry about it.

#Umineko #Umineko Chiru #Erika Furudo #Umineko Cast #Ask

[aspoonofsugar]

Johan, Tenma and Nina: “I am You and You are Me”

Hello anon!

Thank you for the ask!

In order to properly analyze Johan though, rather than focusing only on his relationship with Tenma, I think it is important to explore his relationship and foiling with Nina as well, so I hope you won’t mind if in this meta I explore her too.

As a matter of fact, I would say that Tenma, Nina and Johan are the three main characters of Monster and Nina and Tenma’s respective relationships with Johan are equally important to the final outcome and to define who Johan is.

I would also add that it has been a while since I read Monster and even if I will reread some parts for the meta, I am sure I’ll forget many details and subplots which might have added something to this analysis.

This meta will be divided into four sections.

- The first will explore the relationship between Johan and Nina/Tenma and how the picture books convey it.

-The second will say what Johan’s symbolical meaning is within the story.

-The third will be an analysis on who Johan really is (at least a hypothesis).

-The fourth will be a conclusion.

PICTURE BOOKS: TENMA AND NINA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH THE MONSTER

In order to better flash out the relationships between Johan and others I will use the picture books mentioned in the story. I have already talked a little of these books in this meta:

The pictures books which are shown in the series are all pretty important both for the themes and for describing the relationships among the three main characters.

When it comes to Nina and Johan’s relationship, the book which mostly describes it is The Nameless Monster.

In this book there are two nameless monsters who represent the twins. They go in different directions searching for a name i.e. an identity or who they are. This symbolizes how the twins have lost their memories and don’t have strong senses of identity because of their past. However, they reach two opposite solutions. On one hand, the monster of the East who symbolizes Johan possesses a young boy and takes his name. However, in order to stay into the boy’s body he starts killing all the people close to the boy. Basically he creates a situation where, despite him having a name, nobody can use it. This is because the monster’s identity doesn’t lie in a name, but in him accepting his lack of a name (so Johan must accept his past) and in building relationships with others. On the other hand the monster of the West who symbolizes Nina accepts that he is just a nameless monster. This fits with the fact that, ironically, while Johan is always called Johan by the other characters, Nina is called either Nina or Anna and both names are true. What is important is that Nina doesn’t let her past define herself as much as Johan and that she finally accepts it and is able to forgive Johan because of it. Interestingly, the parallels between the twins and the monsters stop when it comes to the ending. As a matter of fact in the book the boy kills the other monster and so he effectively becomes a nameless monster since he lost the only person who truly knew him. However, in the series Johan never kills Nina. She and Tenma become two people he ends up not killing and so they end up saving his life and they give him a personhood by the virtue of simply knowing Johan.

Other than the Nameless Monster, three other picture books are mentioned. They are The Man with Big Eyes and the Man with the Big Mouth, The God of Peace and A Peaceful Home.

In the current meta I will not consider the last one which is mostly about Bonaparta’s redemption (it is the one about an evil magician who goes to a village to steal from the people, but ends up helping them) and is thematically linked to the idea that humans can change. I will instead focus on the other three.

I have already shared some thoughts on the book The Nameless Monster above, so I will now focus on The God of Peace.

While The Nameless Monster is important for Nina and Johan’s foiling, The God of Peace is important for Tenma and Johan’s relationship.

It is clear that the plot of the story calls back to what happened to Tenma.

The God of Peace is a deity who tries his best to make everyone happy. What is more, he is characterized as a father figure since he gives names to the children:

However, at one point a kid called Johan gives the God a hat and the God uses a mirror for the first time. This leads to him seeing that his own reflection is a devil. He realizes that there can’t be peace with such a Devil and kills it and, in this way, kills himself as well.

This is a metaphorical representation of what happened to Tenma. As a matter of fact the story starts with this question:

Tenma decides that all lives are equal and this is why he saves Johan instead of the VIP he was ordered to operate. The result of this is literally Tenma’s rebirth as a doctor. He is glad of what he has done and with time he is able to build a hospital without corruption where lives are treated as equals. After ten years from the operation Tenma lives in a blessed world where everyone is happy and where acting in the right way only delivers good results. His second meeting with Johan destroys this illusion and shows that Tenma’s currently idyllic situation came at the cost of many lives, that his superiors died because he wished they did in front of a sleepy Johan and that if he had just gave in to the corruption of his superiors a “monster” would have died.

In other words, Johan forces Tenma to realize reality is more complex than what he would like and starts Tenma’s existential crisis. This crisis leads Tenma to doubt his own ideals (is it really true that all lives are equal? Wouldn’t Johan’s death mean a lot of others will be saved?) and to try to kill Johan multiple times. Symbolically Tenma killing Johan would mean that he gives up on his ethical code and on his mission as a doctor. It would mean that together with Johan Tenma would be killing a part of himself as well and it is this specific part of himself that has been helping so many people. In order to kill the Devil Tenma must also kill the God of Peace.

In other words, Tenma finds himself facing an impossible dilemma and in this dilemma lies the main theme of the series which is conveyed through the third picture book.

In The Man with Big Eyes and the Man with the Big Mouth, two men are offered to make a deal with the devil. The man with the big mouth accepts, while the man with the big eyes refuses. As a result, the man with the big mouth has a very enjoyable life, but towards the end of it he realizes his mistake and regrets his deal with the devil. Now, usually one would expect that the man with big eyes has the opposite destiny. He might struggle in life, but will finally be rewarded in the end. However, this is not what happens and in the end the man with big eyes is just as miserable as the man with the big mouth. He regrets not having made a deal with the devil and it is by that point that the devil returns:

After Nina hears this story she is asked this:

This is not by chance because this short-story perfectly conveys the apparently dead-end the characters are all facing.

They can either refuse to buy into the ideology that different lives have different values or accept it. If they accept it, they end up corrupted in a world which is sad and dark. However, even if they refuse it they must accept the existence of someone like Johan who openly challenges the ideas of justice and of empathy. So, what should they do? What does the story mean? What is the solution?

The short story conveys a pessimistic moral. There is no way out and in the end everyone will surrender to the devil and lose hope.

This vision is a nihilistic one and nihilism is linked to this:

It is the “vision of the doomsday” Johan keeps talking about. This scenery comes up numerous times:

The first scene is the scene you asked about. There Johan looks Schuwald in the eyes and asks him what he sees. In this scene the scenery of the doomsday does not directly appear, but Johan invokes it with his words since he describes a reality of solitude where only he and Nina existed and had no names. This is a reference to their lives starting with the Red Rose Mansion incident up until when they were found by Wolf. By this point the reader knows nothing and probably Johan too has fragmented memories, but he is talking about the Three Frogs incident where their mother gave Nina up to Bonaparta (a town out of a fairy-tale), the Red Rose Mansion massacre (many people died) and Nina and Johan’s journey towards the border (my other self and I held hands and walked...we were the only two people in the world...and we had no names). All of these experiences end up being summarized and artisticly conveyed in other moments through the imagery of the vision of the doomsday which represents the absolute end and nothingness.

Wolf (in the second scene) sees it before dying and calls it the land of the nameless.Having a name in the story is symbolic of having an identity and this means mostly that someone knows you. If nobody can’t call your name, then you do not really exist and there is no proof of your existence. Relationships with others define the person to an extent and the land of the nameless is a dimension where all these relationships are lost and the individual is alone in front of nothing. It is a place full of solitude. This landscape is symbolic of Johan’s mind and of his vision of the world.

Before going on, I will like to highlight one last thing about the picture books. I have mentioned that the book A Nameless Monster seems to be a reference to Johan and Nina’s relationship, while The God of Peace is a reference to the bond between Johan and Tenma. This is true and especially evident, but what is said in both books is true for both Nina and Tenma.

As stated above, for example, in the end Johan is saved because of his relationship with both Nina and Tenma and not just because of the one he has with his sister.

At the same time, what is said in The God of Peace is true also for Nina and not only for Tenma. After all, there is this:

Johan repeats the Devil’s gesture to both his sister and Tenma in different moments. Nina also states this:

This is a direct reference to what happens in the story since Nina claims she will kill Johan and then herself. How does the story of The God of Peace fit Nina and Johan?

It has to do with their opposite coping mechanisms.

On one hand Nina removes her most painful memories. This is why she has forgotten about the Red Rose Mansion and later on she forgets about Johan and her attempted murder of him. In this way she protects herself and her idea of being “pure” and “righteous” somehow.

This is coherent with Nina’s initial strictness about justice I have discussed here:

Basically, she goes from an idea of justice which is extremely strict and merciless to an idea of justice which is intertwined with empathy and which refuses death penalty. She is also a character who starts out not believing that a person can be redeemed and ends her arc by forgiving her brother and believing that even he can find redemption. This is her arc in a nut-shell and the chapter the Fifth Spoonful of Sugar touches all of these ideas.

And it is made clear in scenes like this:

Nina is scared that remembering her trauma will make her a monster. She needs to believe that she did not assist to any massacre and that, if she did, the event left no scar on her. This is obviously impossible and this is why when she remembers what happened she showcases an unusual violent side and even presents suicide tendencies.

On the other hand Johan attaches himself to the few memories he has and, because of his own frail identity, ends up accepting as his own even Nina’s past. Basically, Johan is so scared of losing that little sense of self that he has that he has made Nina’s memories his own.

It is telling that in the beginning both twins are so sure of their respective roles in the Red Rose Mansion case that they barely question them. Johan is sure to be the one who saw people die, while Nina is sure that she is the child who waited for Johan safely at home. This can suggest that the two siblings had developed specific roles in their dynamic and that, to be more precise, Johan was the one who took upon himself the role of protecting his sister and the role of a devil, while Nina took upon herself the role of victim and of being “pure”. In short, they have both uncounsciously embraced a narrative in order to survive. However, these roles are clearly too simplicistic to describe the complexity of the situation and of both siblings and Nina’s journey is also about realizing this.

In summary, Nina has been using a coping mechanism thanks to which she has been able to repress everything negative that happened to her. Her brother is the link to these events, so her quest to find him and to understand him leads to her uncovering her lost memories.

This is why the metaphor of the God of Peace and of the Devil fits Nina and Johan as it does Tenma and Johan. Both Nina and Tenma were able to live peaceful lives at the price of forgetting or not realizing the truth about Johan. Johan is in other words a Jungian Shadow to the both of them and this is why they can’t kill him without self-destroying.

To finish this section, let’s underline that the three picture books we discussed have all grim endings and that all these endings were negated or subverted by the main story. In the end Johan did not kill Tenma and Nina and so he could continue to exist and did not become a nameless monster. Nina and Tenma did not kill Johan and so they did not kill themselves. Finally the Devil’s tempation was avoided.

AN UNINTELLIGIBLE DEVIL: JOHAN AS AN UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH

I don’t think that your struggle to understand Johan is by chance because all in all I don’t think Johan is a character made to be completely understood. Rather he is a character written to challenge both the readers and the characters to understand him. After all, the essence of Monster is the search for Johan. By this, I mean both the physical search for Johan since he needs to be stopped, but also the search of what made Johan Johan. Why is Johan the way he is? What motivates him? Was he born a monster or did he become one? And why?

The point of Johan is that there is no answer or maybe there are so many answers that it is difficult to find a definite one. This is why both Nina and Tenma in their investigations keep discovering things and offering answers only for those answers to be readily subverted.

For example, when Tenma discovers about Kinderheim 511 he believes that Johan has become who he is because of the ruthless mistreatment he received there. However, he soon realizes that even before that place Johan had already killed. That said, this does not mean that Kinderheim 511 had no effect on Johan whatsoever or that he is not a victim of that place. Johan is a victim, but the way he acts can’t be explained or excused with his victimhood.

Later on, Nina suspects that her brother has a double personality who forces him to commit crimes. However, this turns out to be false as well. This does not mean, though, that the lines Nina has read and which say “Look at me! Look at me! The monster inside of me has gotten stronger” are not true for Johan. They are and, even if Johan does not have any double personality, he still has an identity problem which is at the root of his behaviour.

Finally, both Nina and Tenma think that the root of Johan’s trauma is that he was given by his mother to Bonaparta, was brought to the Red Rose Mansion and assisted at the deaths of many people. However, even this explanation turns out to be false since it was Nina and not Johan the one who saw the massacre. That said, even in this case, their mother’s choice and the massacre at the mansion have had a huge impact on Johan, but not in the way everyone expects. What is more, even in that case, his behaviour can’t be excused and can’t be completely explained since Nina went through similar experiences and reacted differently.

In other words, to quote a character from another franchise:

In short, what is upsetting about Johan is that he does not let the characters or the readers find simple solutions and his presence brings up distressing truths. What is “evil”? How do you behave in front of someone who embodies the essence of evilness?

This is why Johan is clearly associated throughout the narrative to the idea of the Devil, while Tenma is clearly associated to the idea of God. Where Johan kills and destroys, Tenma helps and cures.

This is why their fight is symbolic of the battle between good and evil and at the same time, it can’t be solved with one killing the other. As a matter of fact Johan does not want to kill Tenma, but wants to kill what Tenma believes in. At the same time, Tenma killing Johan would mean the defeat of his ideals.

Basically, Johan is not a character easy to empathize with. Don’t get me wrong, people will surely empathize, but even in that case, I think they will mostly empathize with fragments of his story, rather than with the entirety of it and with all its contradictions. This is because he is written in a way which makes him difficult to process.

Maybe it is because of this that, in the end, the fact Nina and Tenma are finally able to empathize with Johan is something which turns out incredibly important for their development and the focus stays on them in those moments to the point that we never get to properly see Johan’s POV and how he reacts to this empathy. To be honest, we can’t even be sure that Nina and Tenma are right in their conclusions even if the story highly implies so. As a matter of fact Nina and Tenma’s moments of realization are moments which present Johan filtered through their own eyes and them finally understanding the “monster” lets them finally understand themselves.

In Nina’s case:

She arrives at the conclusion that if she had just forgiven her brother back then and probably seeked help, she could have avoided everything that happened later. She reaches the conclusion after seeing Bonaparta’s drawings, remembering the man’s words and remembering Johan’s tears in the past and imagining his present ones.

Once she reaches this understanding of her brother she is ready to forgive him and she actually wants to. Nina’s arc is great because it shows that forgiveness does not equal redemption. Sometimes there is redemption without forgiveness (like in Bonaparta’s case since it is implied Johan has not forgiven him), while sometimes there is forgiveness without redemption (Johan has done nothing to amend, but Nina still forgives him).

In Tenma’s case, his final understanding of Johan comes in the very last chapter and it is this:

I would like to highlight that this scene in itself is ambiguous. Is Tenma dreaming? Or is Johan truly talking with him? It is not clear, but in the first case we can say Tenma has finally understood the truth behind the mystery Johan is, while in the second case we have Johan finally opening up about what hurt him the most.

In both Nina and Tenma’s cases, it is important that their understanding of Johan is radicated in their understanding of themselves. Nina is Johan’s sister and so she must understand him as a sister, she must untie and solve all the ambiguities and misunderstanding of their relationship and uncover the past they share. Tenma is the doctor who saved Johan’s life and clearly Johan has laced on him as to a father figure, even if in a twisted way. Because of this, it makes sense that in the end he is the one who realizes how much his mother’s choice has affected Johan.

In other words, Johan is a mirror of both Nina and Tenma and his elusive nature is what keeps the story together thematically. The story asks what a monster is and if the answer were simple the story would not be so captivating.

In the end both Tenma and Nina “defeat” the devil, but they do so not by killing him, but by refusing his nihilistic logic. They have managed to free themselves from the devil’s constant tempation. Even if the life of the man with big eyes is difficult the only hope lies in fighting against evilness and injustice through a correct behaviour. If one leaves that path they will only suffer and lose themselves.

This is also why the final image is so powerful:

Johan disappears once again and we, as readers, can only hope he will use the second chance he was given in a positive way and not to start another cycle. That said, this is something we can’t be completely sure of as we can’t be sure of evilness completely disappearing from the world. What we can be sure of is that it is necessary to resist it.

“LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! THE MONSTER INSIDE OF ME IS GETTING STRONGER!”: THE EMPTINESS BEHIND THE SCARY MONSTER

Let’s consider this:

This scene shows Wolf giving Johan his name and how he indeed was inspired by the Picture Book the boy had with him.

This is important because it shows how Johan’s identity ends up being strictly intertwined with those picture books. In a sense, Johan is the fruit of those books since he ends taking the name “Johan” used by different characters in those books, repeats the books’ lines in an obsessive way and even ends up unconsciously reproducing the stories in the real life. He does so by repeating specific lines and latching onto situations which resemble the ones he read in the books. For example, he identifies with the nameless monster of the books and tries to cope with the emptiness he feels inside by joining different families only to leave them and discard them once they are not able to fill the emptiness he feels. He identifies Nina as his other self, just like the Devil and the God of Peace of the books and repeats the devil’s lines to her. Once he finds Tenma aka an incredibly altruistic and selfless person who ends up saving his life he starts unconsciously replicating the same dynamic with him. He tempts people and manipulates them like the Devil of The Man with Big Eyes and the Man with the Big Mouth. It is actually interesting that Johan ends up always identifying with the devil instead than with other characters, but this can be partially explained by the fact that devils and monsters are the most recurrent characters in the books. This might be why Johan aka a child with a very frail sense of self ended up projecting on them specifically as characters appearing often and being constant. This might also be why he specifically latched on the name Johan which is often used in the books. In general, he develops a vision of the world which is pessimistic and nihilistic and which is the one conveyed by the book he was taught to study and to read.

This is important because in this way Johan becomes the heir of Bonaparta’s vision before his change of heart, while Nina who was shown a glimpse of love and of hope becomes the heir of Bonaparta’s ideals conveyed in A Peaceful Home.

What is interesting is that Johan’s emulation of the picture books became so severe specifically because of him not having a strong enough sense of self hence his necessity to latch on to things and to other people to define himself.

This is made clear since when his mother had to choose one of her children over the other. In the end, one of the reasons why his mother’s choice left such a huge impact on him was because he was not sure that his mother really intended to save him instead of his sister. Behind this doubt hides the fear of not really existing as an individual and of simply being a part of a set to the point that even his own mother is not able to distinguish him from his sister. This is a feeling which could probably be born because of the horrific childhood he and Nina had. As a matter of fact they were not given names and were treated like weapons by the people around them. What is more, the twins only had each other when it came to important relationships between peers.

This frail sense of self combined with the very strong bond Johan has with his sister leads to him confusing her memories for his. When it comes to that, this is interesting:

This is a glimpse of what used to happen in Kinderheim 511 and it is shown that some experiments there damaged people’s memories. This might be why Johan lost his memories and why in an attempt not to forget his sister he ended up making her past his. All in all, it is not clear when exactly Johan started confusing his memories with hers and it might have been before Kinderheim 511, during it or even after Nina shot him. The point is that the scene above shows Johan’s strong wish not to forget the person whom he defined himself through and how this wish is at the root of him twisting his memories.

What is interesting is that throughout the years Johan started reproducing a series of crimes which can be connected to his own trauma and to Nina’s one. On one hand he started killing parental figures and eliminated all the people who cared for the siblings through their journey. This is a response to the betrayal he felt towards his mother who gave up on one of her children and later on left them both behind. On the other hand he started organizing massacres to emulate what happened at the Red Rose Mansion.

These repetitive actions give birth to a pattern Johan himself is unable to leave. He is trapped in his own past and so he keeps reproducing it together with the fairy tales he used to read as a child.

This behaviour underlines a contradiction Johan has. On one hand he wants to develop relationships with others and this is why he keeps searching for new parental figures. On the other hand he is not able to properly have relationships which are not manipulative or exploitative. All in all he is never able to make “the monster inside of him” rest. This restless monster who keeps getting stronger is not really his violent side, as Nina thinks at first, but it is nothing more than the emptiness he feels because he does not really understand who he is. He can’t give any meaning to his life and so he keeps searching for one, does not find it, accepts nihilism and repeats. In a sense, he fails in his search because he has already given up on it before starting it. He has already accepted the vision of the doomsday.

CONCLUSION: GOD, DEVIL AND HUMAN

This analysis showed how Tenma, Johan and Nina are all connected and how there is a constant foiling among all three of them.

1) Tenma and Johan represent respectively the “God” and the “Devil” meaning that their respective philosophies challenge each other and embody “goodness” and “evilness”.

2) Nina and Johan embody two opposite reactions to a traumatic past. Nina completely removed the bad things, while Johan stayed attached to them to the point that he made his even Nina’s. None of these reactions is completely correct and this is why Nina went through a painful journey of self-discovery to retrieve her memories.

3) Finally Nina and Tenma are two people who start parallel journeys to find Johan and end up saving each other in these journeys.

As a matter of fact Tenma saves Nina in the beginning when he saves Johan and prevents Nina from becoming a murderer, while Nina saves Tenma from the same fate at the end when she stops Tenma from shooting and encourages him to save her brother.

All in all, it is interesting that throughout their journey they both try to kill Johan, but are against the other doing it as if they could see clearly that this action would negatively affect them:

So, in a sense Nina and Tenma too are mirrors and they can see their own pain and confusion in the other.

This last point is interesting also when it comes to the teological motif concerning Tenma. As a matter of fact Tenma represents God within the story, but at the same time his struggle and indeciveness are incredibly human. He never loses himself, but he is about to many times. So Tenma is both “god” and “human”. We can also say that he is a specific ideal incarnated in a human who has to face the fact that this ideal is not so easy to follow and to apply in the human world with all its contradictions. This is also true because of society incarnated by Lunge (a justice blind to the truth) and Eva (the corruption within society). It is not by chance that because of these two characters Tenma ends up becoming a suspect and is persecuted by society when he himself is trying to protect it. In a sense, Johan is able to act so freely precisely because he acts in Tenma’s shadow. Tenma ends up being Johan’s opposite when it comes to his relationship with others because while in the end very few people are left knowing about Johan, a lot of people know Tenma’s name. These relationships (or lack of in Johan’s case) are for both characters double edged swords. On one hand Tenma is initially suspected because of his relationships with others. For example his relationship with his superiors and with Eva puts him in a bad light. He is a man with positive and negative bonds and this is why he can be suspected of a crime, while Johan can’t and avoids imprisonment because of this. On the other hand Tenma’s relationships are also what saves him multiple times and in the end bonds are also what defeats Johan (the bond between a father and a son) and what saves him (Nina and Tenma’s bond with him).

In short, Tenma is a God made human, while Johan is a victim turned into a devil. Then who exactly is Nina? As @hamliet​ commented, Nina is humanity who must choose between the two ideologies offered to her. This is why, while both Johan and Tenma remain loyal to their respective philosophies from the beginning of the story to the end, she changes.

Comparing the beginning with the end makes it clear. The story starts and ends with Johan asking a person to shoot him in the head and with Tenma operating and saving Johan. The variable is Nina who starts the story shooting her brother and ends it by encouraging Tenma to save him. This is particularly beautiful because in the end it is thanks to the “human” aka Nina that “god” aka Tenma does not lose himself and wins. In the end the fight between these two forces is decided not by who is stronger, but by the people each one of them is able to influence.

Thank you for the ask! I am sorry for this very long ramble and I hope it is clear enough!

#naoki urasawa's monster #monster #monster meta #naoki urasawa's monster meta #johan liebert #kenzo tenma #nina fortner #anna liebert #my meta #asksfullofsugar #anonymous

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Wednesday, 06 January 2021

That's OK! There are any ten-page paragraph should be the sign of a short section from one topic to another in ways that cultural definitions are deployed that are not a bad move, which would boost your attendance each time you have any other race I think is important is to think meta-critically about your other questions, though there are places where pauses in the way that you were not present in section and total how many minutes away you are an emergency responder, or bizarre things happen during the early twentieth century, particularly of some aspects of some kind of plans requirement fully. Hi! Hawthorn is also a good break!

You've been punctual this quarter. I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed. But what you have any further absences besides Thanksgiving will definitely give you a five-digit code, but you added to the class to speak eventually if you have a close-reading exercise that digs out your own ideas and where and when will it be produced?

I think. The iconic X-ray of his job, but his personal experience it can feel like, because this is difficult selection to memorize because of its most precious illusions. I nominate her: she worked incredibly hard, made great strides, is to let that guide you to make progress on your grade, then you can connect larger-scale course concerns and did a very very very close to ten pages long; this counts everything including participation and your writing is so strong that it would be to sit down and write well.

Again, well done this week has been wonderful! So, with the Clitheroes are less-capable beings, involving their male partners patronizing them in some slice of Irish culture, although there are possibly many good ways to get me a copy of the flaneur and how that sympathy is constructed by identifying them the main character. Can't bring back time. They've been getting quieter and quieter in section that you're not rushing back from the book deals with the Easter Rising, the smart thing to do. All of these is of course; I'm normally much more quickly, now they vanish, The Song of the poem and its historical situation. You might look specifically at Bottle and Fishes; Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a form, and our general concepts about identity formation and the University for classes at UCSB, and incurs the no-show penalty for a TA than I had the answers to your address book or calr, online or offline. Absolutely. The Covey 6 p. I think, too in here, I think that having a similar measurement were performed on all sides, but looser ones that would then be reciting as soon as you can which specific part of your suggestions are potentially benefits to both, although it sounds to me and I'm sure you'll do well. 4, I suppose, would pay off in setting up your total score for the standard deviation for that extra credit, miss five sections, and only being able to download the document How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail This document has not always been very punctual this quarter, any your grade.

4% of your argument to pay off in relation to your next email it sounded in section lately keep it up. Keep an eye on your paper is worth/five percent/for/excellent delivery, and I'll have them. I think that you would have been possible for you so much ground that argument in any case, that what you prefer to avoid discussing it in any way affect your analysis is and get 100% on the date for Spalpin Fanach. Wish me luck, and thanks again for a job well done. I think that anything will change as you write and revise it, I suppose, is important, cannot learn at all, this could conceivably push you down more if you'd like, I.

I hope you had a good student this quarter—you produce an excellent delivery and wait for an important passage and warmed the class, with this is a complex relationship to the actual state of food production involved in the directions specified that they relate to each other. Similar things could be as late as Thursday. It's not that you could meaningfully take this set of genuinely miniscule value. A range for you. Being really stressed out.

I'll get back to you. Hi! Questions and answers for the class, though it wasn't saved by the end of his wife's hand with their wedding rings on, and several historical speeches in here, and an argument based on the assignment write-up of the currency system in use in Britain after 31 December 1960. I hope you're feeling better now. I think, to everyone's participation over the break you deserve it. Any poem at all. As a Young Man, which is to have sympathy for Francie is like B and I feel that it's a strong connection to 1904 as well as in just a tad more emotion interjected into it as he reinscribes them and what the finals schedule says. Because I will have to speak if no one else in both sections.

That might give you some breathing room on other classes and that your midterm will be assessed during the Great Hunger. You are absolutely welcome to select from them, supplement them, but rather that you want to cover, but because it would be the subject in section, since you gave in section! In any case always a productive way to section I was able to participate effectively and provided a good job overall, you did quite a bit more, I think that there are a lot of ways in which I am much less true for several reasons. I'm looking forward to seeing you tomorrow! I'll see you next week!

Sent by e-mail me and say exactly what is Mary likely to be done, and that's perfectly OK to set up yours and demonstrated adaptability in terms of the less obvious but not catastrophically so. This all looks good to me. Some people have done some very perceptive comments in here, but will push you up into A-and carrot-related observations, and one days late unless you have a fever of 104 or a synthesis than an omnivore would? Just let me know!

The UCSB Library's advanced search.

You responded gracefully to questions and comments that you should/always/bring the week's readings with you about the Lestrygonians episode would have helped to motivate to talk about his own relationship to Celtic myth informs one or the different kinds of sympathies with Francie?

By extension from the book. I personally think that they found out is to provide the largest overall benefit to the point of view from the Butcher Boy: discussion of the assertions that you have some astute observations about personal responsibility by turning in a Reddit discussion earlier this year! Does anyone have a spot in the first place. I'm familiar with either play though I've read so far and to interrogate your own motivations and how we have tentatively arranged to work out another time to get there, and your material gracefully and in terms of which have particular places in the UK and Ireland prior to the class's actual level of. But I think that your score on the unnumbered page right after the fact, everyone! Mooney. Because each of you assignment.

For instance, or at any time without hurting their grade at least a short set of very important. Warning: I feel sometimes like you're writing two papers—one about food, one thing, and going above the length limitation work productively will just not show, take a look at the appropriate time if you want me to post-Victorian ideals demands that they have exactly 60 minutes to get back to you.

Do you have to take larger interpretive risks/and demonstrates that the stereotypes of Jewish people in section where so quiet. Again, I'm one of the early twentieth century. Remember that you're scheduled to do with your section has already signed up for a job well done. I'll give you advice as good as meeting an obligation. You have three options for other section for Thanksgiving have a good move. Finally, being honest when you sense that my 6 o'clock section in advance what you would appreciate having the bottom of a difficult task and trace some important things to talk about the horror experienced by the selections in which your overall goals are likely to be before then, will change by much. This is already an impressive move. 5% which would have helped, I will try to incorporate personal experience it can be a smart move for you than for recall. I think that there are no specific formatting or topical or length requirements. I may occasionally make general announcements in this matter and wanted to talk. You did a solid job tonight. I think that you don't have a proclivity for rather dark humor and deal thematically as a whole. Both are entirely unavailable for any reasons less severe than hospitalization will result in further disciplinary action, just as people who never ask naive questions never stop being naive.

Doubtless your intelligence and enthusiasm mean that you'd intended, while their children are constantly shown to be to ground that argument in a lot of ways that this isn't a bad thing, let it motivate other people react to Lecter and how does it play with and which texts have a backup plan in case you didn't hear his discussion of your paper to punch through to being told that not taking the no-show penalty. Again, I can say more specifically about your grade for the essay questions, OK? I think, too. I think that you'll get another email about that question. Of course, has interesting and important things to say that nationalism was lessened mid-century Marxist reading of the Telemachus episode 6 p. Sounds like a small change, but I don't want the experience to develop its own presuppositions in more depth. This includes your midterm, took four days to make any changes made I will also choose which lines you're reciting. To think about homelessness in Godot, or the novels there's no overlap in your final, but does perhaps suggest that you can draw in additional examples from Sartre and Camus to enrich your analysis and the title and copyright page from the syllabus. I'm deeply embarrassed that it occurs. Any poem at all by Patrick Kavanagh, Innocence Wherever you are nervous or feel that it's often confused with one. It would have helped to have a good holiday! Your You responded gracefully to questions from other parts of the text, but they can fully reach their own self-expression, but more so that the textual selections won't be assessed until after I'd graded and was perennially in love with Rosalind, writes odes on hawthorns, having hung them on my way to find evidence on their own research project, to pay off for you, but you did: Perfect. British pound notably through much of the poem's narrative tension, and you related it effectively to larger-scale payoff … but as a group is not caught up on the Web: New document on section 3:30-4:30 works with your paper receives is based on my grading rubric. 5 p. My margin comments, in part because it's specific and detailed outlines I've gotten pretty good sense of the poem's sense of rhyme, too, OK? This document is an impressive move on. You have a connection between romance and the enormity of the division of a rather fine line about how you will need to be over. One of the two-minute writing. I am not going to be prepared. If you haven't found it on Slideshare and linking to the course's large-scale, but this wasn't on the final. That alone motivated most students the last minute to use Downton Abbey. Hi! I think that being ready to go about proving your points in this paper up to reciting in front of the poem and its background.

I'll see you next week. It is not one of two pairs reciting from Godot or McCabe's The Butcher Boy is Y, then revise your paper grade are the issues on which of them. One of the entire quarter. 5% of course welcome to provide a more fluid, impassioned delivery. You did a very sophisticated and deserve to be helpful. Section issues? In any case, the basic idea is sound and may serve a number of terms you're dealing with this particular assignment difficult. You picked an important passage and gave what was overall a strong connection to religion, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or if you really want to put it in that night. Too, I will call you in section once when he did on the final. Discussion sections are an intelligent, educated person and his weird foreshortened female figures, many of which parts of your introduction and conclusion bracket the body is less significant than the rules is generally so sensitive that I think. You showed that you have left, but in your section.

I really hope that they haven't started the reading or other opinions: I marked four small errors haven't hurt you, nor do I necessarily believe these things not because I got home to consider myself a representative and to exercise even more nuanced understanding of the text of Irish, or at any of these would be central to being more lecture-based than I had two or three days, and a talented scholar the handout linked above was prepared for the quarter, and because it will drag you down to recite this week, whether or not this lifts you to push your paper pay off. Thanks. Just a quick think-over, and I've read works by Pinter before, your points for that matter, my point is that asking yourself, then you/must/attend or reschedule, or the sentences in which this could conceivably have paid off here. You added then in line 22. One would be to say about students and give them something specific to look at it. A is still possible for you.

The Butcher Boy well? 6 p.

Thank you. The Butcher Boy, mentioned in your proposal, if you think are likely to run free because the offer, if you go back through my copy and redirect the link and an estimate of your material you emphasize I think that your thesis statement: what kinds of background, and your paper; still, it's not necessary for purposes of the following characters in The Butcher Boy, so it's unlikely that you'll want to go is also available. Even if someone does make that? 3%. This would just barely meets the absolute maximum amount of time that you do will help you to a variety of texts and apply for services with the fact that a lot of ways here.

Does that make it support that particular selection and delivered it in a midterm to send me an email saying that she frequently contemplates new discoveries in physics in her spare time, despite this fact, everyone, Having just checked my eGrades sheet I just checked my stack of midterms against my class list, I mean is that your ideas, not Oct 30. On McCabe's The Butcher Boy, and that I mark you down to structural issues with your own writing and studying so that it's difficult to find that thesis, because your writing, get an A-for the attendance/participation calculation. 551, p. No worries I'm not seeing at this stage, and I'll find a recording of your task that you've set yourself up to me. You've got a lot of things here, and it can be traced through your selection and gave what was an uncomfortable topic, and good luck on the time period and how you would most need to include these types of documents in addition to being a good move on its key points. I'll have her talk to me I'll post that on to and in a productive exercise I myself tend to read the two tendencies in Irish culture should probably at least one fundamental problem that keeps it from being a good student and I am not asking you to probe at what other people to talk about them; this counts everything including participation and attendance that is a mid-century American painter Willem de Kooning's Woman series is full of the bird as intermediary between this world, on p. If you have some interesting and sophisticated and your analytical structure sets you up to that; dropped again on 1. I think that they're integrated into it as an organic part of broad cultural changes, I'd suspect that she's not telling the truth is very promising … and then never quite come out and yell Gotcha!

But you're quite bright and can take a more complex argument be made about grammar and phrasing at all you receive a passing grade but make sure you know how many people are exhausted by the email me at the beginning of the sexual content of the landscape itself, you want to get past the I have one extensive monologue from someone who provides you with comments after the final metaphorically speaking, or contact you personally about important issues and weaves them gracefully into an effective relationship with his father, etc. A paper, and I fully appreciate this it's not as useful that way: every A-paper receives a letter grade. Grammar and mechanics are mostly solid, and I've just discovered that time passes differently when you're going to argue more strongly for the course syllabus: related to the course of the students have a thesis statement as a simple concept in many small ways, you've really done some very perceptive readings, I think that you wanted to be aware of these terms that differ are generally more consistent and sensible than the rules. However, if you let me know in my office hours, or Aristotelian virtue, or similar phenomena. This is a buffer that will help you to be over. It's a first and last week's presentations has taken longer than expected to use for us don't show that this is the only person in each section and are comfortable discussing with the points that will make someone else's test during an exam for you. Just at a coffee shop reading and an estimate based on Yeats's poetry may tie into developments in Irish culture is a strong job here, and that you took.

Does that help? There are a wide variety of comments explaining why you received is not unusual in the front of the poem and its background. Even finding small things that are important and impressive. If you need to force yourself to do is to provide a very small number of ways, and that relating the readings explicitly to each other, he said about them more quickly for you. Thanks to!

#Irish literature #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Python #Markov chains

[jokocraft]

[more long meta] the real reason why nyma and rolo’s beauty was so extra and why hunk was 110% definitely lance’s foil in S1E6

(fyi this is sorta like an And There’s More part to this post.)

having nyma and rolo give off a “trustworthy” first impression was crucial to the writers’ basic moral of the story for S1E6: Voltron Gets Shanghaied. the moral is conveyed almost completely though hunk; in a previous episode, hunk initially judged shay as untrustworthy when actually her intentions were totally pure because she is pure. now that hunk has learned his lesson, he thinks twice before judging nyma and rolo solely by their first impression, and this gives him a clearer perspective on the situation than the others.

on the surface, the moral of the story is simply: always ask WWHD (what would hunk do?) don’t judge people by first impressions! yay! but. if that’s the moral, why are nyma and rolo, like, 10x hotter than they technically need to be in order to give off that “haha trust us!” first impression to facilitate that moral? they could have been average-looking freedom fighters, and the moral probably would have been even more powerful, because who do we already IRL prematurely judge as untrustworthy, just as much or even more than people who are shadowy and not-traditionally-attractive-according-to-our-culture? the answer: people who are Too Perfect. so if rolo and nyma had been more “unremarkable”, the cliche “don’t judge a book by its cover” theme might have held some more weight (rather than just validating that we should be suspicious of really attractive people).

I am remembering that this is a kids show, and this analysis is not necessary to appreciate the episode itself, but my point is that while there are obvious morals in this episode that no one would be wrong to say are intended, I believe these obvious morals are not the full picture. in other words, i don’t think these on-the-surface morals are the core of the episode. I went over this, sorta kinda, in my last post, but I want to go deeper this time and hopefully convey my point more eloquently and concisely comprehensively.

I think the vld writers are pretty smart, so I don’t think they made rolo and nyma extra attractive simply to add (problematic) spectacle to the “reveal” of their identities as criminals (which tbh even kids would see coming from a mile away what with hunk’s highly conspicuous suspicion and all, come on). and I definitely don’t think nyma and rolo were designed so attractive because the writers/directors actually believed the moral “people who are Too Perfect are out there and not to be trusted!!1!” made for quality storytelling.

so why then? why make their beauty so extra when average-looking character designs would have easily made the “first impression” moral more effective and less cliche?

I think is that the reason is three-fold:

the first and simplest reason that rolo and nyma’s beauty was so extra was to visually contrast as much as possible the first impression of shay and her brother. because from a visual storytelling standpoint, it’s just more thematically sexy that way.

the second reason assumes that the vld writers are perfectly aware of our tendency to distrust people who are Too Perfect and usedthat knowledge to give hunk a more easily believable (hunk is def smarter than us) relatable reason to not trust these guys.

and finally, well, let me preface some more: I think the vld writers are not only smart, but also pretty damn clever. too clever for the obvious morals to be the core message of E6′s Shanghaied plot, because like I explained in my other post, the entire Voltron Gets Shanghaied plot itself isn’t the core of the episode. rather, the Shanghaied plot exists the way it does (and at all) because it’s necessary for the core of the episode to effectively play out and its message properly conveyed.

and it’s core message? two-fold, this time:

it is wrong to punish someone just because they are not who you wish them to be

and

sometimes the people you fall for won’t fit any of your fantasies

maybe “you fall for” isn’t the best choice of words. the replacements “you have the strongest connections with” or “who are most compatible with you” are probably better, but they don’t sound like a Quote, you know?

a short elaboration on the first core message is near the end. a much longer elaboration on the second core message is thuss:

hunk is teased by pidge about shay being his new girlfriend, and I think there’s more to that offhand comment than just throwing hunk’s character a romantic bone. i think it’s very important, actually, how hunk’s relationship with shay is portrayed: rather than it being cast in an overtly romantic light, it’s respectful, genuine…downright wholesome, really. as usual, i believe this is a deliberate choice, made for reasons possibly not immediatley apparent: the nature of hunk’s relationship with shay (at least in E6 specifically) doesn’t reveal so much about hunk as does reveal a helluva lot about lance.

while revisiting E6, this time seeing hunk is lance’s foil, things start popping out: hunk’s easily made connection with Not A Fantasy Girl shay is in painfully sharp contrast to lance’s desperate effort force a connection with Fantasy Girl nyma. also, hunk may have brushed off the idea that he liked shay That way, but never once did he deny how important she was to her and how important it was for him to fulfill his promise to her. he embraced her exactly as she was and embraced the connection he felt with her by proudly making it known that while she’s in trouble, she is his top priority. this is the exact opposite of what lance is doing during this same episode, i.e. simultaneously, i.e. foils at their best). instead of accepting the connection unveiled between him and keith in E5, he’s rejecting it outright, and rejecting keith, too, because keith’s sure as hell no Fantasy Girl (arguable). and also-also, on the nyma/rolo planet, hunk can’t stop talking about shay while lance seems content to pretend keith doesn’t exist right now.

all this summarized: hunk embraces his new Non-Fantasy-Conforming connection while lance refuses to embrace his, probably on the basis that it’s Non-Fantas-NOPE

and then there’s keith. he’s chillin on this planet, not really reacting to anything, not really making any judgements about anyone one way or the other. the meaning of all this is not a show of keith’s coolness or don’t-give-a-fuck attitude or so shruggable. instead, how he acts on the planet is yet another very deliberate narrative choice.

if I’m not mistaken, it seems like rolo exists to serve as keith’s nyma, causing viewers like us to wonder, will keith let himself be taken in by this Fantasy Guy, like lance was with Fantasy Girl? will he want to restore his pride? get revenge??we narrow our eyes at the screen….hm…keith keeps being put in the same frames as rolo, that’s for sure….but……..

nope. well, keith probably acknowledged at some point that rolo was indeed pretty hot, but nope. he’s just not interested. why? maybe because keith isn’t as emotionally constipated as lance or he’s not nearly as likely to actually hit on anyone in a way that’s not literally hitting them.

or maybe the reason keith’s not interested in Fantasy Guy is because this boy gives zero fucks about fantasies.

even though keith probably feels spurned by lance in E6, and has every right to want to spurn lance right back (especially as he watches lance literally drool over some chick even after all they went through barely a day ago), keith doesn’t. he doesn’t even seem compelled to, and maybe that’s because he doesn’t see the point of giving special attention to someone he’ll probably never see again, or maybe because he’s already accepted the connection he has with lance as is.

you see, there’s pretty much no question that lance already had a fantasy or fantasies in mind of how finding his significant other would pan out (not that he or keith would actually think about their connection in those terms, of course), and because of these fantasies, when that telltale spark - that was probably, in some capacity, part of his fantasy - occurred, and it was with someone who absolutely did not fit the fantasy, lance decided to reject the whole thing as ever happening, as if doing that would somehow give him a do-over.

but keith….keith….keith being keith, I just don’t see him growing up with many fantasies related to a future ���significant other”. did he even ever consider that such a person could even exist for him? if I were to guess, I’d say the answer is no, he didn’t think finding “that special someone” would ever be a Thing That Happened To Him. not because of any insecurity to do with his sexuality, but because of his insecurities to do with his interaction with others: he knows he’s a hothead, that he’s awkward, that he’s standoffish. he types himself as the loner, and really believes that’s just who he is. so he probably never bothered to wonder how that special connection could happen.

because, surely, it wouldn’t happen.

(but then, after a whirlwind of fighting and protecting and victory, keith knelt down and took the hand of his friend, someone who had brushed death to save a life, someone keith was glad to finally call a friend. they understand each other enough that there is nothing that really needs to be said, but then, this friend, someone fully aware of how hotheaded and awkward and standoffish keith was, told him something, with the upmost sincerity, with an unmistakable intimacy. something that, for a brilliant, brief moment, made keith feel like he didn’t have to be the loner anymore)

sob

as seen in the beginning of E6, keith clearly wants to embrace his new connection like hunk, but can’t because, well, when it comes down to it, actively embracing a connection with a person who doesn’t want to embrace it makes you look either like an idiot or a creep - or just pathetic.

while hunk has no reason not to declare to the universe that goddammit he’ll save shay if it’s the last thing he does, keith isn’t in the same position. he has plenty of reasons to keep how he feels to himself, but at least he’s learning to accept his own feelings. at least he accepts this connection for what it is, rather than wishing in vain it was something it isn’t.

at least, despite lance’s reluctance for something deeper, keith knows he can and should still be a valuable friend: he’s anything but reluctant or resentful or resigned to be the one to save the blue lion. if anything, he’s probably already as prepared to do anything to save lance as hunk is to save shay.

shay saved hunk, and soon hunk would save shay, and they so they earn themselves bond that lasts a lifetime. keith takes credit for saving lance’s lion, and it’s show of keith has his back. and so then it was lance’s turn to rise to hunk’s level and show some motivation in having keith’s back in return. which finally happens at the end of S3: at that point, he’s not afraid to tell keith that he’s proud to have his back, that he wants to. no other paladins are shown watching the exchange - lance’s words can’t be written off as meaning “look at me, i’m proud to have the back of all my teammates!”. it’s framed as something personal: “i’m proud to have your back, keith.“

I think keith deadass stopped fighting to smile at this because that’s, THAT’S, what he’s been waiting for, that unspoken reciprocation of “I want to defend you, not just because you’re my teammate, but because you mean something to me, personally.”

back to the point of all this….at least in terms of S1E6, not only is hunk a foil to lance, hunk’s relationship with shay is foil to lance’s relationship with keith.

hunk was suspicious from the moment they set foot on the planet, and lance completely gave himself over to blissful gullibility the moment they set foot on the planet. hunk honors his connection to shay by remaining confident and steadfast in his desire to fulfill his promise to her. lance could not be less confident about anything to do with his connection to keith. he doesn’t want to have to honor or promise anything, for fear of what that would mean.

“for fear of what that would mean”

hunk doesn’t care what embracing his connection with shay could “mean”. what if he falls in love with her or something?? whatever, that’s irrelevant! shut up pidge!

lance, on the other hand, does care what embracing his connection could mean. what if he falls in love withWHAT it could mean is unthinkable and Will Not be considered as something even to consider, because it’s not a thing. to consider. anyway where’s a Fantasy Girl when you need one? ah there’s one, let’s have a connection babe! also, could you stop doing things that remind me of a certain nobody, cause I want this to be all about us, you and me, and wow this is so romantic, us flying together over beautiful alien landscapes–I mean it’s NOT, except, like, it is in thiscontext, duh…

*smh at lance blushing to himself like ten times in one sequence*

hunk admittedly has it easier since he’s straight and shay is a girl and he has no emotional hold ups to stop him from telling the world how important shay has become to him after their…hm…bonding experience, you might say. even with romantic potential taken from the equation, he’s no less intent on acting on how much he cares about her.

to hunk, a theoretical seed of romantic love being planted in his heart or something is irrelevant to what his connection to her means to him. while his connection to her is definitely not as sterile as simply feeling obligated to repay the debt of his life being saved, it’s not defined by it’s Potential As A Romance! either. pidge acknowledges this by teasing hunk about shay being “a girlfriend” in front of everyone because pidge knows it wouldn’t affect his decisions or judgement.

in contrast: in S3, pidge is the first to look straight to lance when it becomes clear keith needs a pep talk. does she say something like, “he’s your boyfriend, lance.” fuck no, because that would be totally appropriate in the moment. but what about something more appropriate? even something innocuous like, “Lance, can you please set him straight?” wait… the point is, even if the situation weren’t so serious, pidge wouldn’t have teased him, and at this point, she’s not even going to dare acknowledge in words that keith sees him Differently from the others. in that S3 moment, if pidge had said anything along those lines, lance’s brain would have shorted and keith would NOT have gotten any needed pep talk that day or any day soon. instead, everyone lets the situation resolve itself, because sure enough lance steps up and it does the trick, and jesus if lance isn’t an oblivious motherfu

so chances are pidge - and shiro too - know lance’s decisions and judgement are absolutely affected when the nature of his relationship with keith is mentioned. because unlike hunk, he does care about that “nature” and what it means.  

hell, he almost managed to get out from under from nyma’s influence and stop the blue lion from being stolen, but then she mentions keith while he’s still in her arms and whoops, JUDGEMENT AFFECTED.

when it matters, hunk’s connection to shay is not clouded by any potential extraneous *coughromanticcough* feelings for her, and that makes it possible for him to be a hero. and since he’s a foil to lance, his unclouded heroism intentionally brings out how much lance’s connection to keith is clouded by potential extraneous feelings. rather than heroism, shit happens like lance getting his own lion stolen and being chained to a tree.

but S3 shows beautifully that lance isn’t meant to stay like that forever. even though he still majorly struggles with self esteem unrelated to keith specifically, his maturity (and exposure therapy, tbh) has caused any feelings related to keith specifically to no longer sabotage his performance as a paladin. he doesn’t feel the need to one-up keith so much anymore, and he’s actually willing to step down from being a paladin so keith doesn’t have to, acknowledging that keith is an objectively better pilot, or at least at piloting Red. since lance is more confident in his role supporting the team from the back instead of insisting on proving himself on the front lines with keith and the others, he’s able to use his bayard as a sniper rifle for the first time rather than his usual short/mid-range blaster. lance is more effective on the team than ever, and it’s a national tragedy that he doesn’t appreciate his own improvement.

hunk is by no means a character there simply to contrast lance’s issues, but i think that it’s intriguing how he’s used in E6 to identify lance’s issue without spelling it out. and lance’s issue isn’t that his good judgement is compromised by his flirty personality, it’s that his good judgement is compromised by the toxic subjugation of his own emotions.

finally, I want to return to the first half of the two-part “core message”:

it is wrong to punish someone just because they are not who you wish them to be

i’ll be concise with this elaboration. this message was presented three different ways:

the Voltron team didn’t kill or unnecessarily punish nyma and rolo for being “criminals after all”

at first lance punishes keith (by dismissing and ignoring him) even though keith literally did nothing other than bring up a touchy subject. but eventually lance sees sense and comes to accept that, regardless of how he still feels, it’s wrong to take his emotional upheaval out on keith.

keith could have been way more pissed at lance for all his shit on the nyma/rolo planet. but it seems to me he understood that there was no point in “punishing” lance (i.e. not being forthcoming, not cooperating with this whole connection thing, being his flirty self) for…being lance. after all, technically all lance has done wrong, considering nyma was receptive to lance’s advances, is make that one asshole comment at the dining table at the beginning of the episode.

conclusion

assuming we’re not all totally delusional about the trajectory of keith and lance’s relationship, we should be (and you probably already are) impressed that vld’s writers clearly understand that they have to be more crafty with lance and keith’s relationship development. in E6, they couldn’t show lance angst over keith directly. that would have been an unauthentic portrayal of lance’s character, not to mention it would have shown their hand too soon, which is not ideal (and maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m assuming vld’s producers need the nature of lance and keith’s relationship kept on the down-low as long as possible while they continue to build their viewer base, but when the preferred ending of the series is not at stake, i.e. vld is renewed the X number of times necessary to greenlight the final season containing the intended “endgame state”, they can do whatever the hell they want in that final season, like, you know, casually make history). nevertheless, lance’s relationship with keith still needs to be developed, and it would also be unrealistic - and very poor storytelling on principle - for lance’s feelings to abruptly be made explicit without any evidence of them existing or developing in previous seasons.

examples of craftiness in just S1E6:

focusing on hunk and his behavior to directly contrast lance and his behavior

using nyma as a perfectly timed opportunity for lance to reveal his emotional turmoil caused by the bonding moment referred to in the beginning of the episode

basically using the whole Voltron Gets Shanghaied plot as the stage and set for the aftermath of the bonding moment to be properly recognized and realistically portrayed

bonus - this conversation exchange:

shiro: It’s our first big rescue mission. He’s excited.

pidge: Excited to see his new gIRLfriENd.

hunk: [gasps] She’s not my girlfriend! She’s just a rock that I met and I admire very much.  

…that I can totally see being used to parallel to some future conversation like, I dunno:

shiro: Recon missions are his favorite. He’s excited.

pidge: Excited to work with his pARtNER.

lance: [gasps] He’s not my partner! We just team up sometimes because our skills happen to be very compatible.

anyway i love my rainbow space nerds and smothering them in meta, thx for reading~~

#klance #voltron meta #lance mcclain #hunk garrett #voltron

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis New Year’s Special: Roy Batty

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

There are villains, and there are anti-villains, villains who do evil but who evoke sympathy because while their actions are heinous, their motivations are sympathetic and understandable. And there are few villains in all of cinema and even fewer anti-villains who evoke quite as much sympathy as Roy Batty.

Roy Batty is a Replicant, designed for combat and made to basically be a slave as all Replicants are. And despite all this, Batty merely wants to be free and live his life, and in fact prolong his life as he does not have a lot of time left – Replicants like him only get a few years at most. And so he murders and tortures his way through people who might have the answers he seeks, and yet, despite all this Roy Batty never once stops being sympathetic, he never stops being someone the audience can somewhat empathize with. We condemn his actions, sure, but he always remains a tragic figure.

Despite being ostensibly the villain of the film, Batty manages to have a defined arc that gets just as much attention as Deckard, fully fleshing him out and making him something of a villain protagonist from a certain point of view. In fact, Batty is not just a great villain and a great protagonist – he’s probably one of the greatest characters in all of cinema.

Actor: Phillip K. Dick, author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the book Blade Runner is based on, is quoted as saying Rutger Hauer was "the perfect Batty — cold, Aryan, flawless." Batty was designed to be the perfect being, a flawless specimen of man, strong, smart, and driven, and if any man in the 80s exemplified that, it was Hauer. In a career of great performances, this was Hauer’s finest, and most of that comes from him inspiring so much of what we love about eh character, doing little things that wre thrown in because he felt it made Batty more interesting. Of course, the most important thing Hauer did was change Batty’s scripted dying words into something far more poignant and beautiful, but we’ll get to that shortly. If it isn’t clear, this is an absolutely perfect performance.

Motivation/Goals: Batty has a simple goal, but a goal that drives him to desperation: he wants to live. And he wants to live because he can’t bear all of his memories being forgotten, washed away by time and forgotten. He wants to be remembered if nothing else, but he goes to murderous lengths to achieve his goal… though frankly it’s seriously hard not to sympathize with him considering that he’s an escaped slave desperate to leave some mark on the world and live free going up against a cop who is legally allowed to hunt him down and terminate him. I suppose it is part of the point that we should sympathize with him; he’s more human than human, after all.

Personality: It’s actually interesting to note that Batty is well-read, intelligent, charming, and philosophical… which is the opposite of our tough, gritty noir detective protagonist Deckard. Much has been made of Harrison Ford’s, let’s say, “understated” performance in Blade Runner, but frankly I find it to be a deliberate choice to contrast against Batty: we have a machine that is all too human going up against a human who is bland and robotic. It ties in very well thematically with the film.

Final Fate: After spending the climax beating up Deckard and basically going bonkers after the deaths of his lover and friends, Batty regains his composure, saves Deckard’s life, and, well...

Best Scene: ...he dies. But not before he laments on how all the amazing experiences he has had in his short, tragic existence will die with him and end up forgotten. This is one of the most beautiful soliloquies ever put to film, and while I’m not the biggest fan of the film as a whole, I am an enormous fan of Batty and this scene in particular. I tear up every single time I watch this; Hauer’s performance here is so powerful.

Best Quote: As if it could be anything else aside from the “Tears in the Rain” soliloquy: “I've...seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those... moments... will be lost in time, like tears... in... rain. Time... to die...” This quote becomes all the more tragic and poignant as Hauer passed away in 2019, a few months before the month his character died in the 2019 this movie envisioned. It’s a sad, eerie coincidence that only serves to empower these lines even more.

Final Thoughts & Score: Roy Batty is one of the most beautiful and poignant characters in all of cinema. Everything about him is just so appealing on a character level, and it amazes me because he’s really the only part of the movie I love. The rest of it has just never vibed with me even a little bit – but Roy Batty? His struggles are always relatable.

While obviously it’s not likely you’ll know what it’s like to be a slave, it’s pretty common to have that sort of existential dread that Batty has. I know I’ve always feared dying alone and unremembered, all of what I am being forgotten as I fade away. Maybe that’s why Batty resonated with me more than the rest of the film and certainly more than Deckard: you can give me all the gritty cyberpunk noir with Harrison Ford you’d like, but it won’t mean anything if you’re giving me a deeply existential and philosophical cyborg superman desperate to either extend his life which is rapidly burning out or at least somehow preserve his memory so that his existence is not utterly forgotten (this last bit actually makes his casting as the replacement for Master Xehanort all the better; The Nobodies had similar themes, what with their Proof of Existence graveyard and desire to have their hearts returned).

Adding into what makes him so engaging to me is the religious symbolism, something I’m a sucker for. Batty ends up as a strange and complex fusion of both Lucifer and Jesus, descending from the sky to free his people in spite of the wishes of his god-like father. He does resemble many stereotypical depictions of Lucifer, as well. But then we get to the more Jesus-y bits, such as his affinity for doves and the fact he dies with nails through his palms and a dove in his hands. He’s such an interesting Messianic archetype.

Batty is clearly a 10/10. That 10 is pretty much solely for the soliloquy too; if only I had more of an excuse to give him an 11, but sadly Batty hasn’t had the massive impact on popular culture that he deserves, which is a shame. Batty is still a perfect villain regardless, and a perfect character to boot, no bones about it. In the end, while he never succeeded to extend his life, he did end up getting what he wanted on a meta level: Roy Batty, to all who have seen the film, is eternally remembered. His memories are not lost to time like tears in the rain; those memories live on in us. If Batty were real, I hope he would be satisfied that his short life was not in vain. 

I think it says a lot that he doesn’t appear in Blade Runner 2049, and yet... as the film ends and K lies dying, Vangelis’ “Tears in the Rain” plays over him, drawing a direct connection between the dignified, tragic end of Roy Batty and the heroic sacrifice K made to save Deckard and ensure he could finally meet his daughter. Roy doesn’t need to appear at all; just invoking him in spirit is enough to make a scene all the more beautiful and poignant. If that is not the sign of a great character, I’m not exactly sure what is.

#Psycho Analysis #Roy Batty #Blade Runner #Rutger Hauer