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henry-fox-biggest-stan · 10 months

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Alex’s feelings being symbolized as fire and Henry’s being symbolized as water

I made a post like this time ago, but this one is better.

The first example you can see is their zodiac signs. They immediately link Alex to fire (Aries) and Henry to water (Pisces).

Alex’s feelings are fire, intense, they can burn him, strong, when he feels them, he feels them in an intense way (She doesn’t worry about going public with it; feelings don’t consume her the way his do.)

Henry’s feelings are water, deep, they can drown him, clear (genuine), when he feels something, he feels it deep (Every time something terrible happens to you from then on, it doesn’t just stop at the bottom—it goes all the way down.)

Now going directly at the book. It’s present through all of it but specially during chapter 9-10.

Alex is paired with phrases like “having a fire under his ass” or “you’re flying too close to the sun”.

In chapter 9, there are sentences like these “I kind of can’t stop thinking about you all sunburned and pretty” and “with fingers that smell like smoke” and “He watches a drop of water roll down Henry’s perfect nose and disappear into his mouth” Those are little sentences, little symbolism not exactly important to the plot (except maybe the last one, although it might be a reach from my part).

I kind of can’t stop thinking about you all sunburned and pretty

Sun symbolizes life, brightness, positivity, etc etc. This is Alex saying than he can’t stop thinking about Henry happy (and away from the palace). The sun is also made of fire. Who is deeply tied with fire all around the book? Alex.

with fingers that smell like smoke.

Henry spent the day with Alex and his family (Nora is basically family too), on a place really important to him, where not everyone gets to go. This could be Alex being all around, kind of seeping through him. Being obviously in love with him, and that having an effect in him.

He watches a drop of water roll down Henry’s perfect nose and disappear into his mouth.

The drop of water (Henry’s feelings) disappear into his mouth, he doesn’t say them.

There’s also this one

“I guess that makes you the North Star?”

Stars are made out of fire, in some way. This is Alex seeing Henry like how Henry sees him (alive, bright) because when Henry thought than Alex loving him would set him on fire, is not only because Casey enjoys symbolism, but also because Alex was “happy and animated and fully alive, a person living in dimensions I couldn’t access”.

Stars shine in the same way the sun does, but they don’t appear like they do because of the distance between us and the stars. This is Alex seeing Henry like how Henry sees him (I talk more about it at the end of this post), Henry is as bright as Alex, it’s just harder to see because he’s more guarded, he keeps his distance, he keeps himself to himself. Alex is more open compared to Henry, so it’s easier to see Alex as a sun rather than Henry. Meanwhile Alex is fire and Henry is water, through the book Henry gains fire elements. A representation of Alex’s influence on him.

Then at the lake, the symbolism really starts.

The lake is made out of water, the lake is Henry’s feelings (a parallel to Alex on chapter 11 saying Sometimes I feel like a funny-looking rock in the middle of the most beautiful clear ocean when I read the kinds of things you write to me.)

The water ripples quietly around him as he slides his hands up to hold Henry’s face in both palms, tracing his cheekbones with the wet pads of his thumbs.

In this scene, the lake is Henry’s feelings. They were surrounded by Henry’s feelings, so strong (a mix of his own feelings for Alex and how he felt about Alex’s confession) than it was the width of a lake. That’s why they were inside the lake when this confession happened.

The water ripples quietly around him, Henry’s feelings being shown through their surroundings.

Tracing his cheekbones with the wet pads of his thumbs. Alex is touching Henry with wet hands. Wet by the lake, wet by Henry’s feelings. He’s surrounded by them, Henry helped him not take it ten years into the future, and just be, even if unknowingly, so during Alex’s confession, he was swimming on Henry’s feelings. The credit was not Henry’s, obviously, but I think than if Alex never started going out with Henry, maybe this change would have took longer to happen.

His hands are wet, he is affected by Henry’s feelings, and he touches Henry while being affected by his feelings. He tells him about having a fire under his ass and slowly getting rid of it, to which Henry had something to do with, and he tries to confess. This whole line explains the entire scene perfectly.

Abruptly Henry shifts, ducking beneath the surface and out of his arms before he can say anything else.  He pops back up near the pier, hair sticking to his forehead /// Henry spits out lake water and sends a splash in his direction,

Henry gets away from Alex, but he’s still in the lake, still on the water. He’s feeling here, he doesn’t ignore his feeling for “Alex’s sake” (what Henry was probably thinking).

Hair sticking to his forehead, the water, his feelings, are still present. Henry spits out lake water, he tries to get rid of them, somehow. To ignore them, to not focus on his own feelings at the moment.

and sends a splash in his direction, he pushes his feelings away from himself.

as he turns and starts hauling himself out of the water and onto the dock.

Henry is the first one to get out of the lake, apparently, running away from Alex’s feelings, but using the symbolism, also running away from his. Not denying himself what he felt, since he already knew, but trying to ignore it. Trying to ignore his feelings and the fact than Alex reciprocated because that just couldn’t work out. It didn’t make sense than Alex loved him back.

Now chapter 10, this one has the most fire/water symbolism.

It’s dark and pissing down rain when they land in London / Fat raindrops are pelting right into his eyeballs.

Basically, Henry breaking down. Henry's feelings being too much for him to handle, too deep, too bottomless, to keep inside of him anymore. Now, his feelings are the rain. It was dark and pissing down rain. Strongly raining. Henry knew Alex loved him back, and he couldn't deal with that. He couldn't deal than, when it all would eventually end, as he thought it would, he would not only break his own heart, but Alex's too.

At the moment, he still believed than he deserved nothing, than he was only born to be a puppet for the crown. Than he didn't deserve happiness, didn't deserve Alex's love because, what was there of him to love? However, even if he didn't feel deserving of happiness, of Alex's feelings, he still loved him. He loved him strongly like the rain outside.

Rain outside, than, by the way, was soaking Alex.

Alex was soaking in Henry's feelings the moment he arrived at Kensington. One, because Henry's feelings were so deep and strong than occupied all of London, and two, because those feelings were directed specially towards Alex.

Henry paces over to the elaborately carved fireplace across the room and leans on the mantelpiece.

The fireplace. The fireplace has a big part in this scene omg.

The fireplace, who is continuously being described with fire-related elements? Alex.

So the fireplace is a tangible representation of Alex’s feelings, he paces over it. He’s deciding whatever he should accept Alex’s feelings or not. Whatever he should let Alex confess or not. Deciding exactly what to do with them. Because giving Alex up nearly killed him, but if he accepted his feelings, everything else would be so much more complicated. They would have to fight, and as we see later in the scene, Henry doesn’t think of himself as a fighter, but a coward.

“I fucking love you, okay?” Alex half yells, finally, irreversibly.  Henry goes very still against the mantelpiece.

Alex said it, Henry can’t just ignore it or deny it anymore, he goes still against the mantelpiece, he doesn’t pace over it anymore. Alex said it, there’s no turning back.

A small click cuts the silence: Henry has taken his signet ring off and set it down on the mantel.

He takes of his signet ring (a symbol of monarchy, something than probably was passed down to him, which means than it’s also a symbol of history. The prince of Wales signet ring [Charles ring] reads: Ich Dien. I serve. A tangible representation of his service to the country. Of his responsibilities) and he puts it in the fireplace.

The fireplace, which represents Alex’s feelings.

He takes off his ring, takes off monarchy and that sense of expectation than comes with it, and sets it on top of the fireplace. Leaves the two possible futures for him side by side. The ring, meaning monarchy, having to pretend someone he’s not, probably marrying a woman and stay in the same place and system than caused him so much pain. But than, nonetheless, would be the easier choice.

Or, a possible future with Alex. A future they both would have to fight tooth and nail for, and maybe, will not even happen. Maybe they will not be accepted. Maybe it all would turn out wrong. Maybe Alex would regret in the future. But than, even if it’s the most complicated and unknown path, is the one where Henry would be able to be himself for once, and where he would have Alex at his side.

He holds his naked hand to his chest,

He’s not used to not wearing the ring, to have a choice, to decide for himself.

his naked hand, bare, exposed, the real him, how he actually feels about the whole situation, about the choice he has to make. Just Henry, not Prince Henry.

He holds his hand to his chest, to his heart, here we have a little bit of foreshadowing you could say, than he makes the decision based on his heart, on his feelings. He chooses what he feels.

Alex yanks the soggy note out of his pocket, I wish there wasn’t a wall,

Soggy, wet by the rain. Wet by Henry’s feelings. After all, he did put his real feelings on the note. But this is not what it is about. It’s because then more than ever the note was true. Henry did wish there wasn’t a wall, Alex loved him back, if only Henry could accept it, if only there wasn’t a wall.

staring at a point on the mantel somewhere

He stares at the mantel meanwhile he confesses. He talks about how “it was never supposed to be an issue” while staring at the mantel, at the two possible futures for him.

“I never thought I’d be standing here faced with a choice I can’t make, because I never . . . I never imagined you would love me back.”

He was still staring at the mantel. What was he supposed to choose, the path than was written since before he was born, the easy path yet the unhappy one, or the unknown path, the one he didn’t know where would led them but than, still, it would led Henry to a more happy place, even if it will be more complicated.

He never had to think about what he would do given the situation, given than he thought than said situation would never happen. He never had to think, because he thought than he would always continue just as he was, than nothing would come and change it all.

He realizes, suddenly, Henry’s crying.

Henry’s feelings getting out, showing them, not being able to ignore them anymore.

the fire gone out.

This fire could refer to Alex’s feelings, or it could refer to the strong emotions subsiding, before, they were screaming, crying, now it’s calm, in some way.

If it refers to Alex’s feelings, it doesn’t change much. Alex’s feelings before were angry, irritated, he was screaming, trying to understand and make Henry understand than he should have control over his own life, now he’s calmer.

there’s a violent rain lashing against the big picture window, half-revealed by parted curtains.

What if I said than I actually adore this line?

Violent rain, lashing against the big picture window. Henry’s feelings being violent. He’s thinking things through, making a decision, and his feelings are strong, like a violent rain.

Half-revealed by parted curtains. He isn’t showing Alex all of his feelings, but he’s showing him some of them, which is more than he did the previous days, since here Alex is seeing the rain, even if it’s half-revealed by parts curtains. Before Alex came, in the USA it wasn’t raining, it was raining in London. Alex wasn’t in London, so Alex didn’t know about the rain until he came. Henry didn’t tell him about his feelings until Alex went for himself to talk to him. Now, it rains while Alex is in London, where he can see the rain. Henry shows him some of his feelings without Alex having to talk to Henry in order to understand them.

Alex says this some lines later: It’s time, he realizes, to start accepting only what Henry can give him.

He says it referring the Le Monde newspaper, but Alex also doesn’t open the curtains, he settles with the rain he can see through the half-revealed window.

Next to the clock on the mantel, Henry’s ring still sits.

He left it where it was the night before, meaning he’s still pondering over what to choose, except, Henry isn’t in the room anymore. He’s thinking outside, and he left the ring inside.

He makes this decision without monarchy in sight. He leaves the ring behind, it’s weight no longer in him. It’s a decision he has to make for himself, untouched and uninfluenced by monarchy, just him for once.

Just what Henry decides (he chooses his own happiness over what is decided for him) before Henry explains his decision.

Also, clocks (next to the clock on the mantel) can symbolize emotional overwhelm, caused by things like lack of time, or deadlines (Henry was on a deadline, in some way. He had to choose what he wanted to do, he couldn’t put it off any longer). Henry was emotional overwhelmed.

”I honestly have never thought I deserved to choose.” His hand moves, fingertips brushing a curl behind Alex’s ear. “But you treat me like I do.”

Not regarding fire/water but I wanted to add this.

Henry is not talking about how Alex told him than he deserved to choose, but about how he treated him like he deserved to choose.

Is not “but you make me feel like I do”, or “but you convinced me than I should” or anything else, is Alex treating him like he deserves to choose what did it to him.

Surely people told Henry about how he should choose over his own life, but they never treated him with the respect and understanding than one should receive when is in charge of making decisions. Alex held him accountable. He went to Kensington, went off on him for ghosting him, told him than they could figure something out, called him an obtuse fucking asshole, the whole deal.

Sure, the blame was on the monarchy (specially Henry’s grandmother [do not speak the devil’s name]) but part of the blame was also on Henry. Henry decided to run from the lakehouse, Henry decided to ghost Alex, no one forced him to do these things. And Henry endured a lot of brainwashing and manipulation from monarchy, which led to him making decisions like these ones, but at the end of the day, the decision was his. I feel like because of these brainwashing from monarchy most of his actions were excused, people (like Pez or Bea) felt bad for him, understood what train of thought led to these decisions, didn’t told him “hey that was an asshole move”. Alex did. He held him accountable for what he did.

Henry being held accountable this time might have made him realize than he did, in fact, choose to do all that. Mary didn’t force him to do it. Sure, she’s the reason why he did it, but Mary didn’t ask him to, she didn’t force him. Henry did it himself. Which means he can choose for himself, and than he should start choosing good things for himself, not choosing what will hurt him out of fear and resignation.

When Alex told him about how he could choose, how they could figure something out, he was serious. He genuinely believed it could work (and it did). I think than the lack of realism regarding Henry's decisions is what made him believe than he shouldn’t choose, than he didn’t deserve it. Aside from Henry probably never being granted a chance to have a voice regarding matters growing up (like which clothes he wore, etc which led him to believe he just couldn’t choose, shouldn’t choose, than everyone else knew what was better for him [given his position (he didn’t have the same responsibilities as normal people, he had the weight of a country on him, etc etc)] and also since very little his ideas and thoughts were probably dismissed, not only because that’s what almost everyone does to kids, but because if Henry had little control over his life now, in his 20s, imagine as a kid. His parents listened to him, surely, but did his grandmother? For years, since he was a kid, to a teenager, to now, she probably just smiled or frowned her lips regarding if she agreed or not, but never actually took anything he said seriously), it’s the way everyone else viewed what Henry wanted for himself. They viewed it as something unattainable.

For example, I imagine Bea and Henry talking about the future, and it’s always if. Imagine if this happened, if it went like this, if we did that. Never talking about a realistic future, because they didn’t realistically expect a good future (specially Henry) where they could actually choose. Alex makes it real, he genuinely believes it. It had been a long time since people genuinely believed Henry could have a good future made up of choices about his life he made by himself. I feel like even if Pez tried to be positive and talk about how it all would be okay eventually, he didn’t exactly believe it. Pez had been with Henry for years, he knew how monarchy was up close, something Alex didn’t truly know (for this part of the book. Alex heard stories, heard Henry complain, but he didn’t see it up close yet). Even if he tried to be genuine, to bring some positivity, some light to Henry’s thoughts, Henry saw right through him. However Alex genuinely believed it, which made Henry stop on his tracks and actually consider the possibilities.

Alex treats him like he deserves to choose not only because he does deserve to choose, but because Alex doesn’t see why he wouldn’t be able to choose in the first place. Alex has a supportive family, he doesn’t know monarchy first hand, he’s used to making decisions regarding his life, and even though he has heard Henry talk about how constricting and controlling monarchy, he didn’t really thought it would be as bad as it actually is. The idea than Henry literally has no decision over his own life (because he doesn’t. If he wants to do something other people have to approve of it. If they don’t approve, he has to deal with it) is crazy to him, because of own different that situation is to his own. His family supports him, he talks and gets along with everyone in his family (immediate family, at least), and the idea than Henry’s life is not only so so different, but than also, is like if it wasn’t his at all, is baffling to him.

listening to the rain slow to a drizzle

Henry’s feelings calm down, he’s happier, calmer, serene, no longer feelings the same emotions he felt before.

(These below have nothing to do with fire/water, but I wanted to add them)

Alex exhales a laugh. “Aren’t you gonna ask if I know how to waltz?”  “No waltzing,” Henry says. “Never cared for it.”

Waltzing is this traditional dance, normally between men and women. Heteronormativity, you could say.

It was expected for him to waltz with Alex in this moment, as something romantic, but he doesn’t cared to follow these unwritten rules. He makes his own rules. He doesn’t cared for monarchy or appearances, this is him choosing a new life and a new start, making his own decisions rather than what’s expected of him, what’s appropriate.

He removes his hand and there, sitting in the center of Alex’s callused palm, is the signet ring. /// “Keep it,” Henry tells him. “I’m sick of wearing it.”

Henry is sick of having monarchy on him all the time, of wearing the ring, Ich Dien, I serve. When Henry wears it, it means he serves monarchy, he obeys, he gives all of himself to it, he’s part of it. When Alex wears it, is different. Not only Henry giving it to him is a representation of Henry giving away his position, a beginning to Henry fighting for himself, but of Alex wears is, I serve belongs to him now.

Alex doesn’t serve monarchy, he’s not even part of it. Even if Alex and Henry marry (which they do, but Henry abdicates before they do [Henry’s chapter]) Alex is still not welcome inside of monarchy. This is not about Mary, or even Philip, is about monarchy as a concept and what it stands for, and has always stood for. Alex, brown, American, bisexual, Mexican, is not welcomed inside of monarchy, but the ring is not about monarchy being on Alex now.

When the ring was on Henry, it was monarchy, when the ring was given to Alex, it stopped belonging to monarchy itself, and passing to just be Henry’s ring. This is Henry giving a part of himself to Alex. I serve has become not about Henry and monarchy and his country, but about their relationship. Fortifying their relationship, in some way.

he takes the chain off his neck and slides the ring on next to the old house key. They clink together gently as he tucks them both under his shirt, two homes side by side.

Monarchy is Henry’s home, so this can be both of their homes (Alex’s old house, and Henry’s life in the palace) being side by side, or about Alex’s both homes. Again, the ring no longer represents monarchy now it just means Henry, it became Henry’s ring, so Alex here is implying Henry is Alex’s other home, which I believe is the real meaning, what Casey intended.

In chapter 11 there is

If someone like that ever loved me it would set me on fire

Henry thought of himself as incapable of being loved, and the idea of being loved specially by someone like Alex (someone who, in his mind, was the opposite to him—happy, bright, alive) seemed so unreal, than he felt like it would probably set him on fire. Alex was the sun, happy and bright, so full of life he shone. Alex was someone who could be loved. And Henry loved him. And the idea of being loved back by him was impossible. It wasn’t mean to happen, and if it ever happened, it would burn Henry. Because Henry could not hold all of Alex’s form in his hands, since, in his eyes, he did not deserve to hold him, to have him. It would burn him, because Alex was the sun and Henry was nowhere near to deserve him.

This also parallels Alex in chapter 15 describing looking at Henry’s face like staring right into the sun (almost makes Alex want to look away, like he’s staring into the sun. He called Henry the North Star once. That wasn’t bright enough).

Alex describing Henry’s face as looking directly at the sun, parallels this. Alex is describing Henry as the sun, now, Henry is the one who’s bright, happy, and full of life. That’s how Alex sees him vs how Henry’s sees himself. They are each other’s suns. They see each other as the sun, even if the other doesn’t see themselves as the sun. Here, Alex is proving Henry wrong, because Alex’s love is not setting him on fire, since in Alex’s eyes, Henry is the sun, made of fire itself. You can’t burn fire with fire. Henry is fire itself, Henry is made of the same things Henry sees Alex being made of (example: life), he just doesn’t see himself as being made of that, as being worthy of that (example: happiness), and Alex comparing him to the sun proves him wrong, given than that’s how Alex sees Henry, rather than how Henry sees and describes himself.

Meanwhile I said and repeated a hundred times than Alex is fire while Henry is water, this is different, given than this is not based on symbolism, this is a direct parallel.

And if someone like that ever loved me it would set me on fire and the it was like looking straight at the sun are directly connected. The sun is made of fire, and Alex set Henry on fire with his loving. He made a sun out of Henry, changed him for the better.

And there’s also the “He wants to set himself on fire, but he can’t afford for anyone to see him burn” from chapter 12, where Alex just wants to give in to his emotions, to stop tying to hold everything together, but he can’t. He has to keep it together.

#rwrb #casey mcquiston #red white and royal blue #firstprince #henry fox mountchristen windsor #alex claremont diaz #red white & royal blue #literary analysis #pez okonjo #nora holleran #june claremont diaz #bea fox mountchristen windsor #rwrb movie

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stagefoureddiediaz · 1 year

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Costume Meta 6x17

This has been an epic journey to get this meta written! my AuDHD did not want to play ball this week, the battle raged and I prevailed! Later than I’d intended but I hope you enjoy the penultimate costume meta of season 6!

What an Episode from a costume perspective! I was going to do my usual character by character breakdown for this episode but when I started writing it became obvious that this method wasn't going to work, so we have a hybrid thing going on here so forgive me if it appears a bit odd, but sometimes the colour use is more important!!

Bobby

First up, we have Bobby wearing a light grey T-shirt and a black zip front Hoodie. The use of this light, grey and black combination is an interesting choice. When you consider how the only other person in the episode we see wearing black or grey is Eddie (Buck does wear a grey top at the end of the episode, and that’s relevant, but I want to focus on Eddie). This choice is signalling to us that Bobby will be more connected with Eddie story than any other characters in the episode. The light grey T-shirt is neutral on Bobby, but it also represents stability, reliability and insight. The black Hoody represents protection and also authority, the authority in the scene we see him where it is evident with his comment of filing forms on the next shift, but we also see Bobby in that position of authority when it comes to his conversation with Eddie in the sense that Bobby answers Eddie’s question from a position of prior experience.

The navy blue that Bobby wears to the hardware store is a nod to security, but also honesty and reliability. This is Bobby placed into a position of trust, Eddie is trusting Bobby to give him honest advice. Interestingly, the scene from 5x18 where Eddie visits Bobby at home, we get an almost reversal of colour-ways, Eddie is wearing black and dark brown while Bobby is wearing a blue shirt, not dissimilar to the Blue, Eddie is wearing in this scene. Obviously the black and brown Eddie wears is not the same as the navy Bobby is wearing. However, the choice of dark colours in both scenes and one character indicates which one has the knowledge to share. In 5×18. It is Eddie, whereas in 6×17 it’s Bobby, who has the knowledge.

Bobby wearing a maroon button up shirt with the sleeves fully down. I’ve spoken before about how the show has uses maroon in the past as a representation of fatherhood, especially in relation to Buck and Bobby. This shirt is not that because maroon can also be a colour of confidence and passion - the deepness of it as a shade of red speaks of an intensity of feeling - her in this scene it is all visual representation of Bobby’s love for Athena. When earlier in the episode we have had Bobby speaking to Eddie about how he and Athena found and built their second (or third if you’re Athena) chance at love, this shirt is showing us just how true and deep that love for Athena is.

Athena

Athenas only non uniform costume for this episode is this sparkly brown/gold button front cardigan worn over a black tee. we’ve seen her wearing earthy bronze toned and sparkly tops in connection with Bobby a couple of times this season and there is something about the bronze colour representing strength and support and staying grounded and how that ties into what Bobby said to Wendell about Athena making him feel like he was on solid ground. While the use of sparkle is a nod towards the idea that being or feeling grounded by something doesn’t mean boring - that it can still feel magical and ‘sparkly’. It says so much about not only Bobby and Athenas relationship, but also about the wider message of the episode - the idea that grounded love is better than love that is airy and floaty because it is built on a strong foundation.

Athena also has a new necklace - which I've not yet been able to identify so I can't look into meaning if anyone figures it out please let me know - it looks to be either some form of compass or a cross of some sort, but its hard to be sure as we don’t get much time to look at it - I am leaning towards it being a cross rather than a compass because it only has 4 points and just generally looks more cross like to me but unless I can find it it is hard to be sure!

Hen

Hen was out there with her outfit choices this week - first up we have the lilac purple thick flannel shirt with the dark grey and maroon check. Obviously the first thing is the check pattern - so Hen in danger! This could be signalling the danger she comes up against in the episode - Maddie. Or it could be foreshadowing for 6x18 and whatever danger the 118 finds itself in because we know that Hen is trapped in the back of the ambulance somehow! The choice of lilac is a hint that its more likely connected to the conversation with Maddie because lilac is empathetic and compassionate, but it can also be easily offended - all things that connect into Hen through this Madney engagement arc.

We also get this amazing green and yellow cardigan that I can only describe as fizzy and sherbet-y! THis one actually follows on from the orange and brown one we saw her wear in Bucks hospital room - when Chris came to visit him. the yellow and green combination is really interesting and doing a lot of the work in this scene - yellow being communication, while the green is growth and renewal - the fundamentals of this scene - we seen Hen communicate with Maddie (the first tie they've actually had a scene together which is insane!!) as well as show her growth since the last episode - she owns up to her mistakes and her and Maddie are able to move forwards.

Maddie

The grey oversized hoodie worn open represent speaks of Maddies comfort in her own home and in her life more generally. The grey represents stability and compromise, it is a neutral colour and it is considered reliable. In combination with the purple tracksuit pants, purple meaning imagination, inspiration, enlightenment, and spiritual growth, hints of both Maddies initial uncertainty yet growing confidence and enlightenment when faced with the question of marriage, something she had been uncertain of prior to actually seeing the ring.

The black tee is a representation of the power Maddie has - it is close to her chest so the power is with herself at this point in time - she needs to reckon with her own feelings on the matter. The fact that the black then transfers to a blazer means that the things Maddie has to confront are more external - Hen and Buck, but that power very much remains Maddies and ultimately it is her choice (which she has already made before she even puts the ring on).

Maddie in Pink when she puts on the engagement ring is so perfect because pink is the colour of unconditional love. It’s a blend of red and white and speaks to the love for oneself one’s family and one’s partner. It is also a colour of calm comfort in the face of any obstacles that may be ahead. it’s a positive colour and highlights perfectly where Maddie is whilst wearing this pink shirt, she is experiencing a range of emotions and feelings surrounding finding the engagement ring, but we see her taking positive steps, showing compassion and a sense of self confidence that we haven’t seen from Maddie in awhile.

Marisol

So Eddie runs into Marisol in the hardware store wearing a raglan sleeve top with a decal of strawberries and Seattle city with 'Dreamer' written above. So strawberries are considered a food of love and romance due to being heart shaped, not because they have any sort of impact or influence on love, but simply because they superficially look like hearts. The addition of the word dreamer written above it in blue (which makes the word stand out more) really plays into the theme the show has been weaving into the season - about reality v fantasy and or dreams. about how dreams don't live up to reality and about how dreams or fantasy are lacking in substance. To me this is saying that if Eddie were to pursue something with Marisol, it will be lacking in substance, that it won't ever compare to anything he had with Shannon (the thing Eddie has been comparing his relationships to) or anything he already has. The whole scene with Marisol was a sort of jinx Ana reintroduction redux, the tee is just confirming and adding weight to that for us - it is the same colour ways we saw Ana wearing in the Jinx scene - reenforcing all the other hints and signs we we given in this episode (and others) that Marisol isn't going to be endgame.

I also loved the 8 pointed star necklace - 8 pointed stars are more commonly seen as compass roses or wind roses - they show the 4 cardinal and 4 inter-cardinal directions. Compass roses are considered symbols of the freedom to choose your own direction - free to choose the life you wish to lead. I think in this case it was a reminder to Eddie that it is he who is in control of his destiny and no one else. there is also the fact that a compass rose cannot point towards the wearer/ holder because it would mean heading backwards and not forwards.

Taylor

Sorry for the jump scare but the Bitch is back and bitchier than ever!!! Firstly the necklace - this is a Taylor regular necklace - we saw her wear it in several scenes, the first time being in 4x14 when she comes over to Bucks after he didn’t chase her - a pertinent and deliberate choice considering that Buck wears a navy vertical striped shirt in both that scene and in this episode!

Then we have the black top under the plum blazer - throw back to Buck's outfit in treasure hunt anyone??? so plum as a colour is a shade of reddish purple and generally is associated with power, ambition arrogance and magic. with the exception of magic, these are all things very definitely associated with Taylor and especially Taylor in this scene. it all plays into her true nature as someone for whom everything is a story and she will happily sell out for a pay-check and to further her career!

Natalia

The interesting outfit choices continue for Natalia as well. we have the bright red top, generally a colour of passion and romance, but worn under a black jacket and with a black skirt which has flamingos, magnolias, lilies and eucalyptus branches. Flamingos symbolise balance, freedom and individuality. Lilies are most often associated with death and funeral (very on brand for a death doula) while Magnolias are dinosaur plants they predate bees and are considered to be a symbol of stability but also history and and we saw Ana wearing a dress with a magnolia flower pattern (I now cannot find the post I wrote on the subject!!) The foliage is eucalyptus, which is a symbol of strength and protection is also a symbol of purification.

I made a post just after the episode airs about how the necklace she is wearing is Santa Muerte - the grim reaper and I want to go into this a little deeper here. Santa Muerte is a personification of death and is associated with both healing and the safe delivery of a person to the afterlife - the obvious inference here is that while initially her presence may seem healing, if Buck continues to pursue something with Natalia it will only end with her leading him to the afterlife rather than enabling him to live.

The choice to continue the nods towards Natalia‘s job as a death doula is very deliberate. If they wanted to show her as more than a death doula, they would have put her in a necklace that was a nod towards other interests or aspects of her personality, putting her in a Santa Muerte necklace insures her connection with death remains central to her character and continues to emphasise the fact that she is a literal representation of death. Buck reckoning with death and the fact he’s walked side by side with it his entire life is one of the central themes of his story this season so this textual and visual manifestation of that reckoning through his attempts to form a relationship with Natalia and it ultimately only leading to healing for Buck and not a future with death because Buck still has so much life to live. death deals in dying not living and so Natalia has played a part in Bucks healing but she can go no further with him.

There’s also something in the fact that in this scene we get mention of three options for tipping and that it’s Natalia that points this out to Buck when his maths skills (gained through his temporary death) fail him, it continues the theme of three surrounding Buck this season and as this is his second date with Natalia hints that they’re being one further date before he figures it out makes changes which leads to him getting it right – we see the third date play out later in the episode - now all we have left to see is buck figuring it out, making the necessary changes and ultimately getting it right - whether we get that in 6x18 or are going to have to wait until season 7 remains to be seen!

The second date in the episode and the third date we see Natalia and Buck have, her in a denim jacket over a black dress with green foliage and a star jasmine floral design. The star jasmine is a symbol of spiritual Ascension, health and healing, and are commonly found in funeral bouquets across much of Asia. They can also be seen as a symbol of innocent love, and this is generally held mean I love that hasn’t developed into anything substantial or lasting. It’s also worth noting that, apart from the date in the previous episode, Natalia has always been wearing outfits with a large predominance of black, this maintains her ties to death as it is a colour most commonly associated with mourning.

We also have some different necklaces - and these are ones we've seen Taylor in before as well - just to further the necklace links between Bucks love interests and them meaning failure! I’m going to write a meta on the use of necklaces in the show - especially on Buck and Eddies love interests during hiatus as its actually a very interesting and telling topic!

Christopher

Only one Chris scene in this episode and my boy is back in the horizontal stripes - change is coming. The stripes are set agains a cream background and are 2 shades of blue and 2 shades of green as well as 1 shade of brown. The collar of the tee matches the henley Eddie is wearing, while the Hoodie mimics the one we saw Buck in at the beginning of the episode. We’ve seen Chris in blue and green stripes only one other time this season - in Bucks coma dream - when he was also wearing the same hoodie. There is something to be said about the fact that the costume team have chosen to draw a parallel between that moment in the coma dream when Chris is asking for help finding his father with all of its layered meanings and this scene where Chris has been engineering for a school project that requires constructing - a project that comes heaped with multiple layers of meaning as well.

The use of the hoodie to parallel with Buck in the episode itself is also interesting - both scenes involve conversations about Eddie dating - for Buck it revolves around Eddie downloading but not being able to bring himself to open a dating app while with Chris it’s more subtle - Eddie fending off Pepa’s attempts to set him up and a comment from Chris about what’s been distracting Eddie’s attention away from him and this project - ‘are you going to run errands again today?’

Eddie

We start off with Eddie in his trademark olive khaki green jacket and with a black tee. Like I said about the use of Black on Maddie, the black tee is about Eddie having the power in relation to his dating life. The wardrobe department have deliberately chosen to show us Eddie in an outfit which is familiar to the audience as a representation of who Eddie is. The reason for this is so that when we see Eddie out in his various attempts to meet someone the clothes he’s wearing stand out as not being the Eddie we know. It all helps to add to the storytelling of Eddie doing things that Eddie doesn’t normally do, it’s an additional layer that helps to reinforce the fact that his attempts at meeting someone are essentially more to get his Tia off his back than they are to genuinely meet someone.

All of the outfits we see Eddie wear on his attempt to meet someone - to engineer a meet cute if you will are in a limited colour palette - lots of grey with some black and a bit of yellow ochre. It was all very barbie/ken dollesque which had me giggling because Eddie dressing for his surroundings and not as himself screams of someone very much outside of their comfort zone and trying too hard!

First up we have coffee and magazine Eddie in the long sleeve dark grey top with very light grey trousers and a black gilet. This is the most un-Eddie out fit of all the outfits we see him wear in the montage. it is all monochrome and the padded gilet is essentially protective armour - both in terms of colour and the use of a gilet - which Eddie has zipped up pretty high.

Then we get the golfer Eddie - again its all grey and the top has a grey on grey weave that gives the effect of camouflage - someone who is trying to hide in plain sight.

Then we get hiking Eddie in his grey and black tops with yellow ochre trousers. This outfit is probably the closest we see to real Eddie - but even here the yellow ochre trousers are out of character. He is also fully covered up and wearing a fleece and I’m sorry but out in the sun in LA it doesn’t get that cold in April/May (and we know it has to be around that time thanks to the calendar on the Diaz fridge from previous episodes) so the only reason to wear a fleece is if you are subconsciously making yourself cocooned or protected - essentially unapproachable. The yellow ochre trousers are an interesting choice considering the fact that we had coma Buck in the same colour of trousers and they are out of character for Eddie as well - much too bright normal Eddie is far more muted in his colour choices. These ones are actually even brighter than Bucks from his coma and are much closer to an orangey brown ochre than yellow.

We also need to talk about watches - Eddie wears his work watch to both the coffee attempt and the hiking attempt while he wears his Christopher watch to the golf attempt. We can also figure out the timeline - coffee was indeed first, then he went hiking before attempting golf later on - he has the bandage on whilst playing golf (but no golf glove - another hint that golf is not something he does regularly or ever!!) There is something about the fact that Eddie wears his work watch in the two scenes where we do actually actively see him attempt to interact with some people and the work watch also representing a form of protection - its a piece of his uniform. Yet in the golf scene - the queerest of the 3 scenes we have him wearing his Christopher watch - the scene where Eddie gets actively checked out by a male character far more than the female ones do.

Eddie bumping into Marisol in the hardware store wearing a black top was a choice - I spoke in the Maddie section about black being a colour of power and how her black tee being closest to her skin represented the power of a decision being hers in relation to her engagement. Well the same logic applies here to Eddie - he is the one with the power in the scene - black can also mean aloofness and keeping people at arms length (because of its intimidating nature) and there is the fact that it is the colour of mourning (when worn without other colours as we see in this scene) - we saw Eddie rocking out the black in the hospital during Bucks coma, so fact that we see Eddie walk away from Marisol whilst in this colour speaks volumes for the likelihood of any relationship between the two of them working!

Buck

So so much blue on Buck again in this episode - honestly the weighting towards blue on him this season has been insane and very intentional. I can’t wait to finish the season so I can tally it all up and show you the colour graphs (love a good graph to show all the data!!) for Bucks costuming throughout the 6 season!

I also want to talk about watches for a moment because Buck wears his watch the entire episode and its very deliberately on show, he always has his sleeves rolled or pulled up, he’s wearing short sleeves and the one long sleeved top he wears with the sleeves down the sleeve is tucked behind the watch so that the watch can be seen. There is something in the fact we’ve had such a prominant display of Bucks watch this season specifically and the idea of time - the idea of Buck being up against the clock in some way has been a theme throughout hte season - racing to be able donate his sperm - the race against time to get him to the hospital and get his heart started again - the coma dream was one big race against time and even several of the rescues this season have been about a race against time.

We start off with the navy blue hoodie - a hoodie which it turns out is paralleling Buck and Christopher! The hoodie is over a blue top which is similar to the colour of the long sleeve polo we see him wear later in the episode - we can only see a tiny bit of it at the collar in the scene, but thanks to the BTS we got, we know it is a slightly lighter shade of blue, and that it its a long sleeved tee. So the Buck wearing blue theme continues, but now at the back end of the season we are getting an increasing amount of darker shades - all the blue tops he wears this episode are generally darker in tone than we’ve seen him in this season. This is telling me that the blue theme is heading towards its conclusion and I’m increasingly convinced that the use of blue is about water finding its level. I mentioned the parallel with Christopher, but there is also a less obvious one with Bobby as well - all three of them wearing hoodies - and the only ones to do so in the episode - there is something in the idea of them representing their respective found father and son dynamics with these hoodies and in a season all about family and building a family more specifically and when we’ve had canon confirmation that Buck and Bobby have a father-son relationship, the choice to parallel Buck and Christopher in these hoodies only furthers the fact that Buck and Christopher also have a father-son relationship developing.

Next up is the yellow ochre broadcloth shirt over a black tee - Buck again wearing yellow ochre on his second date with Natalia sure is choice given what I wrote in my 6x15 costume meta about his yellow ochre shirt for the first date. The same dual meaning is in play once again, it is about communication, but it is also about loneliness and isolation. It is no coincidence that immediately after a conversation in the station about Eddie having downloaded a dating app and his Tia continuing to set him up on dates Buck calls Natalia and sets up another date.

The ochre shirt also plays into the theme of Bucks mental health being in a vulnerable place - I think its telling that he made a comment to Eddie about Natalia ‘really seeing’ him and then we get the context that it has been (at least) a bit of time with her comment that she was surprised to get his call and she thought she had come on too strong. That is not the response of someone who really truly feels seen by another person in my book - he would’ve been keen to set up a second date, not holding off. The other aspect of his mental health being in a vulnerable place in this scene where he is wearing yellow ochre is the fact that his math skills appear to either be fading or gone completely. This suggests that Buck is through that initial period of change - that the being different and not knowing what to do with that and that feeling of being all at sea is also fading and that he is now actually starting to find his level - something which we see come into play later with the third date outfit.

Much like with Maddie and Eddies black tee, this one on Buck also speaks about him being the one with the power - the power over his own heart and destiny. The universe throwing Lucy into his path to ‘fluster’ him also plays into the black and yellow ochre combination. Buck trying to pick the perfect place for a date and then picking a badge and ladder joint - somewhere ‘old Buck’ is familiar and comfortable with for a date with someone who supposedly sees him better than he sees himself is a Buck falling on his safety net and in many ways falling back on old habits

Navy blue vertical stripes - now where have we seen those before?!! I’m fascinated by the parallels we get between this episode and 4x14 centred around Buck , because there are a fair few especially in relation to events that occur and the use of colour in both episodes. So Buck in a navy shirt with white vertical stripes opens his door to an unexpected guest - Taylor in 4x14 and Maddie in 6x17. I’ve already spoken about Taylors necklace pendant being the same, but we also get the black and pink parallel as well - Taylor wearing pink over black in 4x14 and Maddie wearing black over pink here. Ew also get yellow ochre parallels in both episodes - Bucks jacket in this one and the yellow ochre jumper he wears when packing to go back to the Diaz house and when Taylor kisses him. We also get the parallel of Natalia running away and Buck not chasing her in the same way Taylor ran away in 4x14 and Buck didn’t go after her because he had family related things going on - foreshadowing through costumes at its finest!! its also similar to the Taylor I love you scene shirt as well. With the costumes paralleling to 4x14 and specifically scenes in Bucks loft from that episode, I think is a deliberate choice - it’s meant to indicate that Buck is at risk of repeating the same mistakes and going down the same road he did with Taylor.

Domestic housewife Buck my most beloved - put that man in an apron, slinging a tea-towel over his shoulder or wearing pink floral washing up gloves and I will melt!! I would like to point out that he wears the white trainers throughout the episode (although I don't know if he is for the bar scene as we don't see his feet!) and he actually has longer length trousers on in this scene too! The thing with the apron is the choice of horizontal stripes - not something we see on Buck ever and that is why this apron is interesting - it plays into my stripe theory so it represents change coming. Oliver spoke about Buck being in a place where if he's going to be in a relationship then the other person is going to have to meet him where he is and accept him for who he is.

The stripes are the perfect think for Buck in this scene - one where things play out in a similar way to the start of his romantic relationship with Taylor at the end of season 4 and one where Taylor herself is again part of the narrative with her appearance on the tv. In season 4 we had Taylor kissing him and running away and then berating him for not chasing after her when Eddie had woken up post surgery and Buck prioritising him (his family).

This diner date scene plays out in a remarkably similar way - with Natalia running away and Buck not chasing her - prioritising Kameron's comfort and issues. Kameron is the representation of life to Natalia's death Buck choosing to allow Kameron to stay and to help her is less to do with the sperm donor arc and more to do with the representation of Buck choosing life over death - choosing to continue living life rather than flirting with his 'old friend' death. This is really really important for Buck - the person whose entire existence has revolved around death and his passively suicidal tendencies. The stripes mark the change - the moment he has learnt from dead Bobby in his coma dream and the moment he essentially makes the choice to choose life rather than death. I'm not for one minute suggesting he's magically healed or anything - Buck still has a long road of healing ahead of him, more that this is a moment where he has made a big step - now that there is some distance between the moment he died and was resurrected and where he is now.

Its going to be interesting to see how and why Natalia pops back up next episode, it would be a massive marker of growth for Buck to actively state to Natalia he's not interested (in whatever form that takes) as we would get to see him break the cycle of his past relationships - him recognising that he has the power of choice - of not going along with things and finding himself in the middle of a relationship without knowing how he got there. It’s an important step for him.

And then we have Buck in grey - there’s actually something really interesting that I’ve spotted in relation to Buck and the colour grey. We haven’t actually seen him wear it that often this season. In fact we don’t see him wear it in season six until after Kameron has become pregnant and all of the scenes we then see him wearing grey in are in someway connected to family, and more specifically children. So we see buck wear Grey for the first time at the end of 6×09 when he’s asleep on the bed. The next time is in 6×12 when he is seeking comfort and falls asleep on Eddie‘s sofa, then in 6×13 when he is cookie baking with Christopher. We can you add this grey knit top to the list, and once again it is connected to the family and children. I want to point out at this moment that Kameron sleeping on that side of the bed with her pregnant stomach positioned where it is is a deliberate choice because it throws back to that final scene from 6×09 when the camera pans to the onesie on the bedside table.

I’ve spoken before about Buck and, his wearing grey being tied to uncertainty and confusion and I think the added layer of family and children is an interesting combination. The fact that we getting these scenes which either directly or indirectly relate to Christopher, along with the impending parenthood of Connor and Cameron through Bucks sperm donation being linked through colour and colour related to uncertainty and confusion, speaks volumes about bucks journey this season, we are being given a visual connection that implies that buck, through his sperm donation is questioning and figuring out the parental nature of his relationship with Christopher.

Whether or not we see this reach it’s full conclusion once Kameron has given birth remains to be seen, however I think whatever scenes we get with Buck talking to Connor about becoming a father in 6×18 may play some part in things clicking for Buck and his full acceptance that he is a parent. The sperm donation storyline is very much about Bucks recognition and acceptance of himself as a parent, we, as an audience might have balked at the idea of Buck donating his sperm because of him misunderstanding the assignment, but the reality is that the journey, this storyline has taken him on, actually leads him to understanding the assignment and if you remember the scene in season five, where he states, he misunderstood the assignment and drew a cartoon heart was a scene where Buck was wearing grey! In fact, in season, five since the misunderstood the assignment scene in 5×14 Buck only wore grey in one further scene – the one in 5×17 in Christopher‘s bedroom when Eddie was packing to go to Texas.

So having Buck in grey - connected to family in season 6 and then also having Eddie wearing blue and it also being connected to family (across all the seasons) in the same episode is making me feel a little bit insane.

I’ve saved it until last - and its why they are missing from the character by character breakdowns - but we need to talk about these specific blue costumes in this episode because boy were they telling a story all their own in this episode! Maddie and Chim’s engagement outfits, Bucks loft date night outfit and Eddies outfit in the hardware store with Bobby.

Blue is a colour of loyalty and trust, security and it is confident, it can express persistence and wisdom, but it can also belie fragility, insecurity and uncertainty. These are all meanings that we see in play with these 4 blue outfits in varying degrees.

Putting Madney - who have had to go through a huge amount of trauma together and separately to get to where they are now - who have had to fight for each other, fight for what they have and fight for happiness, being paralleled with Buck and Eddie - who have also been through a huge amount of trauma together and separately and have fought for each other and are seemingly fighting their way towards their own version of happiness and togetherness is a pretty telling and loud choice!

Maddie is in the brightest of the blues - her’s is the one that is slightly separate from the other three and I feel like that is deliberate (not only because having both her and Chim wearing the same shade of blue in a scene would look weird and matchy matchy!) Maddie is the one who proposes, she is the one who takes control of the situation presented to her, whereas the other 3 are all experiencing varying levels of doubt, confusion and uncertainty. For Maddie (and Chimney) we see the loyalty and trust play out very obviously, we also see wisdom. Maddie is secure and confident in these scenes and the blue being brighter than the others shows us that.

Chim talking through things with Gina - questioning everything related to his decision to propose - he is feeling uncertain and somewhat insecure in both himself and in his decisions. He is in a similar place to both Eddie and Buck in this colour although for obviously different reasons.

The other thing about Chimney being a similar colour to Maddie is that they wanted us to see them as being on the same page - as a unit and a pair. this is the moment we get them in harmony with one another after a few weeks of crossed wires. The use of colour and especially blue (which has its own marital connection - something blue) highlight the trust in their relationship as well as the confidence in it.

The blue top is in line with the many other blue tops we've seen him wearing this season - and so it continues the blue theme Buck has going on. I spoke earlier in the section about Bucks yellow ochre jacket about Buck wearing yellow for the first two dates and mentally being vulnerable etc in the aftermath of his experience with death. well this blue top is the other side of the coin - its about water finding its level. The choice to put Buck into the same shade of yellow for the first two dates - when he felt seen after the first one and then thought he could pick that feeling back up with Natalia, only to find that those things - those differences - are fading and he’s less certain of things and then follow it with blue - a blue that is very close to the blue of Eddie and Chim in the episode - for a scene where the reality of Bucks life - of his being very alive and living his life to the max is such an intentional choice. We have had the resurrection theming around Buck so very heavily in this season, but across the series as a whole and this change from yellow to blue also plays into that theme somewhat. I wrote about yellow representing Judas and therefore betrayal in the 6x15 meta and that concept of betrayal is very much in play here too - Buck betraying all the things he learnt in his coma by pursing someone who sees him for a specific and superficial thing.

‘if what matters to you most is how other people see you than you haven’t learned a damn thing’

but the math skills have worn off and Buck begins to see more clearly and so he transitions to blue for date three - when more of who Buck is is revealed and he is not seen for who he actually is. Its interesting that Buck wears blue, yellow ochre and green in his coma - with the green being most prominent - the mix of blue and yellow with the yellow being the next most prominent colour and now we have him transitioning to blue from the yellow - almost like the coma being green was also about the mixing of who buck was - mixing his uncertainty and vulnerability of the yellow with the trust loyalty and confidence of blue. The blue being the trust in himself, the loyalty to who he is as a person and the confidence that that person is enough. it feels like the colour transition through these three dates is Buck figuring things out and his water finding its level.

I answered an ask earlier in the week about what Eddie being in a blue henley meant and if it would be connected to the time we saw Buck wearing the same Henley in 2x01. I hedged my bets a little bit because we had zero context for the scene(s) the Henley would be appearing in but said I was inclined to come down on the side of it being more bout the fact it was blue than the connection to the scene from 2x01. It does feel good when I'm right and colour theory plays out for me! this Henley is very much connected to Eddie and family - you can read the answer to that ask here if you want a bit more detail, but essentially we don't see Eddie wearing blue all that often and when we do it has always been in connection with family moments be they with Shannon or with Buck or his wider family, and Chris is invariably involved. the shades of blue have varied, but the fact remains that Eddie wears blue in connection with key moments in his family life.

The fact that we have a questioning somewhat fragile and insecure Eddie in blue - choosing to try and put himself back out into the world - asking Bobby for advice - for an outside and honest perspective - someone who is Eddies mirror and someone who he is loyal to and trusts (more blue colour meaning ties) not only connects Eddie to Chimney, Buck and (to a lesser extent) Maddie - because Madney is being paralleled and juxtaposed with Buddie through this episode - through the colour blue, blue but it also ties him to family - especially the concept of building/ rebuilding family and that is something I love - for him and for me!

Thanks as always for reading it means a lot to me and I hope you found it interesting and that it was worth the wait - I’m off to spiral about the finale now!!!

As always, tag list below! Until the next episode! 💜💜💜

@ryderdie @theladyyavilee @leothil @girldadbuddie @kitkatpancakestack @buckscurls @lemotmo @trashendence @elishareads @clipboardsandstethoscopes @comfortbuddie @fiona-fififi @callanee @calyssmarviss @pbandjeremiah @batgrldes @spotsandsocks @livingwherethesidewalkends @idontshitpostbuttheolympicpark @diazboysbuckley @sweettsubaki @shortsighted-owl @sherlocking-out-loud @wh0re-behavi0r @favouritealias @hearteyesdiaz @ktinastrikesback @princesschez75 @bucksbuddie @oneawkwardcookie @leatherati @moniquekatie @wanderingwomanwondering @trickster-archangel @asharadaine @ajunerose @talespinner230 @pop-kam @swiftiebuckleys @xxfiction-is-my-realityxx @butchjerry @mandzuking17 @yelenasbuddie @copyninjabuckley @name-code-black-widow @rogerzsteven @bi-moonlight @usercowboy @inthecarwithaboy @inandoutoffocus @toboldlynerd

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eisforeidolon · 3 months

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I always see this phenomenon. Do you also find it strange that mentality also trickles down to the actor? Jensen gets treated the same way. Which to me brilliantly highlights how stans are unable to disengage from media and get back to reality. Jensen isn’t actually Dean. He’s not supposed to be dying for Jared. He’s not supposed to be catering to Misha. SPN actually isn’t real life…. To your point, the Misha/Cas stans are actually losing the small territory they thought they owned. There’s so much actual representation in media now that their wails and whines don’t carry any weight (not that they carried much to begin with) I’ve seen people outside of SPN fandom rail on destiel for being total bait and not even good bait.

@holding-out-for-hea

Addressing this in a new post because I go on a bit (as per usual).

I have always found fans who treat actors like they're fictional characters rather disturbing. Whether we're talking in the sense of seeing them as actually being their characters (it's a job, ffs) or in the sense of thinking the RPF fans write must be trufax (you don't know these guys, ffs). Or both! It is an indicator of someone who has problems separating fiction and reality and strikes me as just creepily dehumanizing at its core. To be clear, I'm not talking about fans who are genuinely joking around, but I feel like sometimes the line can get so easily blurred between joking and “joking” I personally prefer to avoid even that for the most part.

As to the latter, yeah, that's why I've always scoffed at the assertion SPN's legacy was going to ultimately be heller positive in any significant way.

The first problem is that to believe D/C was ever a thing (or going to be a thing) in the canon pretty fundamentally required a deep dive into the fandom for the ship. Even if you wanted to, it's a lot harder to take meta whose underlying thesis is predicated on the existence of totally real signposts about the obviously intended ending of the show seriously when the ending of the show has aired and was so hilariously Not That. It's a lot harder to fully immerse yourself in an echo chamber of true belief when there's no active and prolific new reinterpretation content to be surrounded by on a weekly basis. It's a lot easier to see how cynically bait-y and baseless Misha's statements about the canon and Castiel's final scene were, given the nothingburger that's actually there. At the heart of it, so much of the necessary credulity relies on there being an active community to bolster it with years of sunk cost investment and ready-made nonsensically elaborate conspiracies to explain why it was totally going to happen but didn't.

The second problem is the hellers remain hung up on insisting D/C was some kind of uniquely important cause that NEEDED to be canon because it was fundamentally more important than not only SPN's actual premise on the strength of platonic love, but better representation than any other show's potential LGBT+ romances … because reasons. Aside from the usual arguments why that's absurd, i.e. it's just their personal obsession speaking and they constantly insist their ship is "proved" through toxic stereotypes which actually underlines the opposite of what they intend? They have also really showed their asses by vocally and obnoxiously crying it's totally unfair and doesn't measure up to what SPN could totes have done if they weren't cowards when other media canonizes popular ships like with Good 0mens. As you say, the more time that passes the more common it's going to be to have genuine, well-written LGBT+ love stories incorporated into new canons to be contrasted against D/C fandom's 'two dudes who were never each other's first priority, often treated each other like shit, and explicitly stated their feelings were familial … but looked at each other + obvious jokes = the greatest love story (n)ever told and the writers owed me!'. Even to someone completely unfamiliar with SPN and therefore unaware they entirely queerbaited themselves despite the show's content? The longer ago the show ended the more irrelevant and unimportant to good representation the ship not being canonized becomes, when it wasn't particularly relevant to begin with. Sure they got some sympathy from the unaware about That Scene followed by an angel-free final two episodes (though a lot of the buzz was just memeing the scnee because it was That Cringe even sans context), but now? Why not go watch something else that actually has representation instead of whining about a show from 2005 that ended in 2020, after all? It's old news, if you hated it that much there's newer better LGBT+ content out there being made every day!

So yeah, not only is there no there there, especially in comparison to any real love story? But the most obnoxious shippers continuing to loudly make genuine real life issues and other canons' legitimate LGBT+ representation about their bestest realest most totally canonest ship ever D/C that they were also totally cheated out of? It can only become even more obviously ludicrous and self-serving - and it was pretty blatant to anyone with a modicum of discernment and familiarity with shipper behavior to begin with.

#destihellers #fandom issues #long post

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i-am-autistic · 2 months

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And finally on Nancy's character I do have to say I find it weird people problematize inherently the act of sexualizing her in the show or her having romance in the show. Or just generally like not to say Nancy's depiction is entirely devoid of misogyny but inherently I don't find anything wrong with a sexual depiction of such a character and I find it weird people do. It's also somewhat misogynistic I feel that the 1000000 gratuitous depictions of sexuality that exist in males teen fiction is like not even allowed at 1% for characters that are meant for women for some reason cuz everyone knows women are sexless. It's like.......people realize women and teen girls get horny, have sex, romantic lives, etc right like it's not a very unique thing to sexualize them or make romance important for them. Sure I'd argue most depictions in pop media is problematic but not all. I hope people will understand sexualization=acknowledgement of sexual life not simply for the purposes of male gaze enjoyment. I get that there is a feminist push for more diverse representation, I just think it shouldn't color the actual analysis of what is there. It's not impossible to have both characters who are and aren't into romance. It's just that is blatantly a part of Nancy's character that she loves people deeply of which her boyfriend is her scene partner in about 80% of the show, it is genuinely ridiculous to pretend like the development she had was independent of him or that it is uniquely true to the character for her to have an *independent* ending . Obviously there is gratuity and crossing the line wrt gratuity but I'd hardly say Nancy in the show is sexualized gratuitously in the sense of her having a ton of sexualization, it's mostly present in the show as merely an acknowledgement of her sexuality rather than a focus or gratuitous. And that's just good honest writing.......like would it be better for people if two horny teenagers got together and the sex was just not acknowledged like they're the scooby gang. Just like Jonathan and Nancy sitting there fully clothed in S3. Also as a third thing, this is a hot take and I don't mean it to anyone who enjoys those tags, makes fanfics,fandom content or anything for them. I enjoy a lot of it and everything is allowed and supported by me in fandom. I'm talking very specifically about a very small subsect of posts I saw just after S4 and not broadly about this community or 99% of the posts I see from it. But I just don't get like as someone who ships a lot of the queer ships in the show(Loudly Jargyle and quietly Ronance and Byler while also supporting most others just not actively shipping them) l don't get people who want to generally downplay the role Nancy and Jonathan have had in eachothers lives. As I enjoy both of them and enjoy them as queer characters it is weird to me in both fandoms that sometimes you find people who discard the opposing character and as someone who enjoys both it kinda sucks to read. Like hey....queer people can like people of the opposing gender and have relationships with them too, it's not like awful to acknowledge that the romance was deep and loving. Not that everyone is like this, just there are some fanfics that feel like they put in the effort to put the other character/romance down and I'm like damn. I get that some people just don't want to include like an entire paragraph about Nancy talking about Jonathan's hair when they want to write lesbian sex. The above hot take is kinda separate from the rest of the post. What I guess I mean to say is it's weird to me that we get so puritan with stuff we go back to the 50s with the misogyny like some people really want women to be depicted as like sexless and romanceless and they don't enjoy romance or sex and their romantic or sexual partners are not allowed to be important and they can't enjoy or just have sex. Also men can do all these things with no problem and it's often endearing for them to do so.

#jonathan byers #nancy wheeler #jancy #stranger things

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matan4il · 3 months

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Hi Lovely!

I know right now you have more important things to post about but I just wanted to let you know that all your posts about MileApo a few months ago got me curious and I am now deep in the Thai BL world.

I don’t usually consume non-western media because I can find it hard to connect with the cultural and social mores of other countries, especially Asian countries where they tend to lean more conservative than where I live in Australia.

However, as a queer person who craves queer representation in media, being able to watch all these series where these queer relationships are treated the same as straight relationships and aren’t there just for the sake of representation or for one of the characters to die at the end has been so refreshing.

That’s not to say I don’t think there aren’t issues with some of these relationships in the series, but overall it’s been enjoyable getting into the Thai BL world. It’s also so refreshing seeing actors who are comfortable in their sexuality and gender.

So thank you for your introduction to a whole world I didn’t know existed or that I needed, no matter how inadvertent.

Wishing you all the best for the upcoming year!

p.s. I’m looking forward to reading you Buddie meta for S7!

Awwww, Nonnie! :D

I'm really glad you got into something you enjoy, and gave you something that we all, as queer people, need and tend to lack, thanks to my posts. *HUGS* And if you also follow Mileapo, then I'm extra honored for having brought them to your attention. They seem to be genuinely good guys, and I'm happy about anyone supporting them. And if they truly are a couple, and will at some point come out as such, then they'll be even more deserving of, and in need of, support.

For the fun of it, here's a cute, short Mileapo vid.

Yes! I like that the BL world can feel very gay friendly, even if sometimes it's almost unrealistically so, and I particularly liked the Kinnporsche take on it, where the existence of homophobia in that world was acknowledged, but within the social circles Kinn and Porsche moved through, it has almost no effect. It was nice and refreshing, so I actually addressed it in some of my Kinnporsche meta posts, which should be among the posts in this tag.

And you're so kind, expressing this lovely sentiment regarding my Buddie meta. Thank you! <3333 OMG, Mar 14 isn't that far away anymore, is it? I can't believe Buddie is returning to us soon! :D I'm looking forward to s7, and obviously, hoping we get canon Buddie this season... Christopher has suffered enough, having to watch his moron dads be clueless about their feelings for each other. XD

Sending lots of hugs and love to you from Jerusalem! xoxox

(if anyone's looking for my fandom content, you can find it here)

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chaotic-super · 8 months

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One thing I love about 'A Different Kind of Alien' is how deep the hurt and anger of losing your culture or having assumptions projected onto you because of said culture is. How much many immigrants have to give up culturally, willingly or otherwise, just to reduce ridicule. The fact it's barely touched on makes it feel like there weren't many PoC writers on the team or they got overshadowed. So much of the stuff involving aliens feels like it comes from a Eurocentric view of other cultures and/or a US Militaristic perspective. Intentional or not So much of it feels like it boils down to 'you are a potential threat, therefore we must have a lot of control over you to ensure you don't become one'. And this can manifest in many ways, taking away their tech just because they're more advanced than Earth's, the threat of imprisonment. Luckily J'onn is a good person, but that power can be abused so easily in the wrong hands Sorry for the rant. I'm just so glad that another person has given Kara a more fleshed-out feeling regarding her being an alien and how much that can make her feel like an outcast, even with the support group she has. It feels very similar to how I've often felt sometimes being the only Asian person in an almost all-White town or school. No matter how long you've lived there, no matter how much culture you share with them, they'll often find something that makes you different. They might even view you as dangerous just because the country your ancestry comes from has been the topic of political debates. Just because you exist

First of all, thank you so much for this message. Everything you have to say here is so incredibly important.

Second of all, I have to admit that I don't fully understand the struggles that I wrote about in my fic, and I won't ever be able to understand them as a white person. The 'otherness' that is forced onto poc is something that nobody other than those affected by it can truly understand. However, I'm glad that I managed to capture it to at least the point where people can relate to it and hopefully it brings some form of comfort, joy, or just the feeling of being seen to those that read it.

However, this also lends to the point that while I'm not a poc, I managed to write something that touched the hearts of people in whatever way and showed representation, something that the writers of SG never managed to do to a meaningful level, something that is clearly possible if the time and effort is put in and that makes what they did (or didn't do) so much worse.

Writing fics obviously isn't going to change that but all I can hope is that on some level, maybe I could influence one person to think about how they treat people or even just to make one person feel seen.

Thank you again for this message and thank you for sharing your own personal story too.

#important stuff

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gg-selvish · 1 year

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i saw your post and i realized that i definitely haven't left enough comments on your ao3 works for how much i enjoy them, so here. i wanted to let you know that you are one of my favorite, if not my all-time favorite, dream team writer. i love to read your nsfw works because they're hot and sexy, yes, but also? you have one of the best characterizations of the guys that i've seen, ESPECIALLY in nsfw works. i have had to almost immediately click off of so many fics because they just don't get the characters and their dynamics right imo, but your fics? i read them over and over. every single time i get an email that you've updated or posted a piece, i genuinely get so excited when i see that it's you.

your karl/george series is something that i will love forever and ever. i'm ace and i adore the way you portrayed karl and his sexuality in every one. it's so refreshing to find a good nsfw work that has a well written asexual character!!! i may not like knf as a ship very much, but i love them the way you write them so much.

there's so much i'm probably forgetting to say right now, but just know that i thoroughly love everything i've read from you. your works are amazing with and without the nsfw parts. please know that there are people out there (me) reading your fics for more than the smut. you deserve to know that.

okay wow um this is a lot in a very good way but i'm definitely overwhelmed? normally when i get nice stuff like this i just say thank you but i've been in a chatty mood today so i'm going to turn this into A Thing if u dont mind... i really, really appreciate this. i've had a strange experience in this fandom where the whole time i've been here i've had a pretty even split of 'you're a delusional freak and i hope you die' and 'you're my favourite author please never stop posting' and my brain doesn't really know what to do about the black and white of it so normally i just move on and block it out but that's lead to me being incredibly insecure about myself and my work so i'm going to try really hard to process this and internalize it lol

so again, thank you so much for saying this to me. it really means a lot to me to hear that people like my fic because it takes up so much space in my brain and sometimes i get worried i'm only still getting any positive acknowledgement out of obligation and less so because what i'm doing is actually worth a compliment. i've felt really bad about my writing for a while now and it's nice to hear from someone who isn't my established friend that it's worth reading. and enjoyed too! wow thats crazy to me genuinely. i really do think im shit most days. especially my works of the last stretch.

regarding you (& only you) this is a lot easier for me to hear. i love that series so much and it makes my heart happy to know other ace people appreciate it and view it as positive representation because i'm asexual and always worry it reads as just porn. this comes into play with the comments thing again... me putting a lot of personal experience and deep thought into dynamics with no pay off. obviously i'm not saying every fic in that series is groundbreaking or even worth reading, but idk they each have a piece of importance to them. at least to me. i was just saying the other day that in my lapses of writers block i get anxious about the last thing i've posted being not my best work. in this current hiatus i'm in i'm actually quite content with EASE being the latest work in my recents. sure rules is unfinished but i kind of hate that fic so whatever. EASE is good. i love how that turned out and i'm proud of it and comfortable with that being the first thing people see on my profile

all insecurity and internal pressure aside i love writing for this fandom and hope i can do it for at least a little longer. i'm immeasurably grateful that people are willing to still read what i create, it makes creating it a little easier. i sound like a broken record but really thank you for this. it means more to me than you could know.

#genuinely getting teary over this #<- guy who doesn't take compliments well #ask

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siflshonen · 2 years

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Part 2 of An Entire Presentation about Bakugo Katsuki for your Discoursing Pleasure

Link to Part 1!

This is Part 2!

Gettin’ right back into it. I’ve written a lot about Bakugo’s visual presentation and obvious genre cues, so now we can start digging into the boy himself.

I could not possibly unpack all of honne and tatemae. In fact, I’d hazard a guess to say that, compared to the grand scheme of all Japanese media, the portrayal of it in BNHA ain’t even that deep or complex. But the fact that it exists at all and has bearing on these characters is worth noting. Actually, this concept is really important to understand when viewing or creating anything set in Japan.

In my opinion, the most important thing to understand about Bakugo as a character (and the greatest compliment I can give Horikoshi’s writing for many of his characters) is that he has more than one motive at any given time. He may not express them all well or completely (this is usually one part “he’s bad at communicating” and one part “he is upholding his tatemae” and sometimes another part “In order to discuss this he would be giving out sensitive information he’s been trusted not to share” and also sometimes one part “holy crap the other people involved in this situation are truly not ready to talk about it! Good luck navigating that, Bakugo!”)

Conflicts born from a character’s honne conflicting with their tatemae is a common theme in Japanese drama. I guess if I were to try watering it down to give an easy example, it’s kind of like when characters have to choose between themselves/what they love and some duty they must carry out.

If you ever think Bakugo is being completely honest on the surface, you’d best make sure he’s not putting on delinquent airs or smiling his most terrifying battle-ready smile. And even then, you’d best think about why he says what he says before you get a good picture. Tatemae, the delinquent thing, a literal hero mask... He has a lot of masks. He uses them all. But he’s consistent even when he switches between them or fails to articulate himself well. It’s interesting to analyze what’s true and what’s an assumption when it comes to other characters’ interpretations of him.

Basically, he’s childish, clever, and tricky, but he’s consistent.

Honne and tatemae are complicated. Obviously. But what Bakugo’s play with these concepts and his delinquent shonen protagonist self-portrayal have in common are their use as tools to express individuality simultaneous to defending and obscuring the self from others. It’s a paradox.

If you are an individual who has ever tried to “pass” in your current life or former life, you probably understand the paradoxical nature of doing such a thing. If you don’t, that’s completely fine. Bakugo is a cruddy teen boy with authority problems who is trying to figure himself out. That’s all you need to know.

However, speaking specifically to the LGBTQIA audience: there sure is a HECK of a lot of correlation between all these factors.

To western readers in the pertinent weeb community, it’s a well-known observation that Goku-esque shonen protagonist types come off as being somewhere on the grey/ace spectrum. This isn’t definitive for any of these characters, but is just something to keep in mind about how certain demographics perceive these characters.

In Bakugo’s case, he is absolutely and completely uninterested in romance or girls, and not even in the “ew cooties” or “that would be embarrassing!” way. His antipathy and boredom with the concept seems sincere. (And if he’s even so much as emotionally interested in anyone, it’s a specific selection of other guys in his class.)

There’s not a lot of representation in media that the asexual and aromantic communities can turn to, so it may as well be found in characters like Bakugo.

While this demographic is not interested in connecting with a queer or queer-coded character because they relate to that experience, Bakugo’s, um, canon relationship with characters like Deku or Kirishima endear him to fujoshi. It’s important to note that fujoshi often (but not always! Not always! The fujoshi community is huge and wildly different in different countries) are homophobic in real life but enjoy the fantasy of two dudes in love for their consumption. The fujoshi view and appeal drawn from the idea of Bakugo potentially being in love with another male character is completely different from folks who are actually part of the community!

Anyway, that’s enough about all that gay shit for now. Back to the questions that really matter.

If you are still calling Bakugo “the Vegeta”, I must repeat: PLEASE call him “the Tetsuo Shima” instead! Please! I love Vegeta, but please let him rest! He has enough associated inspiration and discourse around him!

If you’re still calling Bakugo “the Sasuke” at this point in the presentation, however, you imply I have permission to hunt you for sport. :)

What is victory? What is success? What is a Hero? What makes someone heroic? What does it mean to be the best? What the heck does Bakugo actually want?! Motives are really important when connecting with a character!

So much. He wants so much and yet so little at the same time. I pray he one day receives validation in a way that actually matters.

For those that see through Bakugo’s facades quickly, his motive is heartwarming (and kind of cheesy but in a way I love to see.) For those that may not see through his facades so quickly, it’s fun to try and puzzle it out.

And even then, he can do so with about as much sophistication as a kindergartner writing their name. He’s good at lots of things, but communicating is not one of them.

It’s about the journey, you know? Bakugo’s emotional maturation takes us on a journey.

“IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE LIKE THIS!”

The ending of the Sports Festival - and every ham-fisted “I should be your rival!” overture he makes towards Todoroki for the duration of the arc - will forever be my favorite showcase of how Bakugo always has more than one motive that he can’t express AND how bad he is at communicating in a general sense. Props again to Horikoshi - the BNHA Sports Festival arc may be my favorite shonen tournament saga ever. Bakugo’s antics in and out of the ring are a major reason why. I think even people who hate Bakugo’s guts could probably agree that his involvement sets the stakes and keeps the energy and drama of the whole thing moving forward.

We love a boy who catalyzes all conflict and causes the other characters to shine by being placed his opposite.

Anyway.

Being able to articulate such a thing is a victory in and of itself! You can do it, Katsuki Bakugo! You can adjust to your society! You can make friends! You can communicate with Deku! You can surpass All Might - whatever that means!

“Is Bakugo gonna win?” Talk about embarrassing if he doesn’t!

Characters in Japanese works often have meaningful names. It’s like a label of what they do or a big ol’ flag over their head signalling to the reader exactly what they are about. While a character’s name can be given to them ironically, Bakugo’s is not. But on its face, it’s a comically blunt name for a guy initially introduced to us as obsessed with being the best to the point of self-detriment. It’s a massive expectation and obligation for him to carry.

The family name Bakugo (large explosion/huge boom/big bomb) isn’t that deep, either. Bakugo is a boy who blows stuff up. Shocker. His given name is the point of interest.

Japanese given names (in real life, in fact) often draw from the names of the parents. Bakugo’s father is named Masaru (which means victory - I’m not going to get into the weeds about why it’s pronounced differently in this context) and his mother is named Mitsuki.

If you put the last character of Mitsuki’s name on the back of Masaru’s, you get “Katsuki”.

His name is yet another clue that he’s a character with a journey for self-improvement.

For the purposes of this discussion, Bakugo’s concept of “self” can also be “the self as molded by the society of which one is part of.”

His personal social obstacles aren’t only about his relationships with others. He is also grappling with his relationship with himself.

Bakugo will get over himself! You take that little hand, Bakugo! Grab it and never let go! That’s the ultimate victory here, apparently.

At a pivotal point in the series, Deku refers to Bakugo as “someone closer to me than All Might”. For Bakugo to regain that standing and maintain it is an abstract but legitimate way to “surpass All Might.” I’m not saying this is THE singular way to interpret the goal (in fact, I can guarantee that it isn’t), it’s something to think about.

Bakugo authentically wants to be worthy in the eyes of the people that admire him and he authentically wants to atone for everything he’s done wrong.

Speaking of what he’s done wrong.

BNHA does us the service of casting some shades of grey over the reality of Bakugo and Deku’s situation. Cancelling Bakugo over bullying Deku without acknowledging the series’ point that the motive for “evil” and pressures that inspire it are bigger than just one person is, well, reductive.

Besides, Bakugo is more entertaining as a character in part because he is legitimately nasty upon his introduction. Who wants a toothless first-act nemesis that isn’t a threat? That’s boring. That’s so boring. I’m bored.

Also, this presentation won’t go into too much detail about it, but Bakugo and Deku’s status as childhood friends/osananajimi with an early falling out is interesting. It’s an interesting take on the osananajimi trope in anime - particularly in how it alters the understood interpersonal boundaries between Bakugo and Deku as bully-and-victim. Here’s a Reddit thread discussing osananajimi in Japanese media to give you more to think about.

Manga readers’ mileage may vary when it comes to when exactly they believe Bakugo first wanted to apologize to Deku for bullying him, but he definitely wants to do so earlier than when it actually happens in the manga. It’s an interesting internal chemistry to watch him grapple with even if he doesn’t deliver entire soliloquies about it.

Audience anticipation regarding Bakugo’s apology (and the constant denial of it) is a major source of the narrative tension. Horikoshi does a great job of making the audience care about this moment by making us care about Bakugo and the hoops he goes through to tell Deku that he’s sorry.

Also? Deku shares some responsibility in why he and Bakugo could not communicate for years. Bakugo’s faults are glaringly obvious, but Deku is not innocent, either. Deku is also prone to feeling authentically guilty for inconveniencing others or making them feel lesser. He doesn’t realize he’s done this to Bakugo (he never meant to do so! Deku is naive to many things including the thoughts of others and their perception of him!) and thus it’s Bakugo’s challenge to even start this conversation without making Deku feel bad about it.

Making the wronged party feel guilty is not the best way to deliver an apology.

In fact, Bakugo does the most legwork between them when it comes to communicating. Bakugo leads the way on the emotional development and goes out of his way to support Deku whenever he can without overstepping the tentative boundaries between them. To tie this back to the honne and tatemae discussion: sometimes (only sometimes. Not all the time! Sometimes he is just a shit in sincerity) Bakugo’s bad attitude is a security blanket for them both!

Bakugo is “that one character who is angry all the time”, but manga readers know why! There’s a lot going on to motivate that anger for a lot of different reasons!

I’ve heard fans call this character Katsuki “malicious compliance” Bakugo in discussions before. It makes me smile every time.

I touched on it indirectly during the discussion of Bakugo’s individualism presentation and involvement with Best Jeanist, but he really is invalidated at pretty much every turn in the story with a handful of notable exceptions (and when he is validated and praised, he has a lot of trouble accepting it.) It’s just more fuel to the fire. He doesn’t do the nasty stuff he does in a vacuum.

This is a little bit of high-level abstract talk, but I think the association isn’t an unfounded or unique one among genre fans. BNHA explores the idea of people acting as symbols more than once (All Might as a symbol, Shigaraki as a symbol of peace, Bakugo as Deku’s personal symbol of victory, etc) so it’s not too bonkers to apply his character change as an allegory of change for the things he represents (those things being shonen as a monolith and the "base state” of BNHA society.)

But yeah! Bakugo is grappling with a lot and he’s our primary and most self-critical lens of these factors.

Sometimes, in a story, it’s not about what you do but how you do it. Horikoshi has done a great job in portraying this character!

(Also, Lord forgive me for using his given name outside of the necessary example slides about his given name’s meaning. I’m not changing this slide.)

For context, that guy in the corner screaming “YOU MEAN HE’S GOTTEN CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT?!” is, in fact, talking about Bakugo. That’s Neito Monoma, a character who embodies collectivism much like Bakugo embodies individualism, and they hate each other’s guts.

As an older reader, I appreciate that not every little thing is spoon-fed to me. I gotta use my own eyes to read the visual information like the chosen values placement, composition, expressions, and panel placement as well as the text. These compliments extend beyond Bakugo, but Bakugo’s scenes are often places where Horikoshi really shines when it comes to character acting.

You thought I’d already described all of Bakugo’s facades? Nope!

Hi, Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion. I'm so pleased you could join us today for this discussion about aggressive, egotistical tsundere characters who wear red-orange and have complicated feelings about the main character of their series.

Bakugo is annoying. As a sincere fan, I’m telling you that he is annoying. Somehow, he makes it work. It’s part of the package. While he’s not as bad as a moe-style tsundere squealing “it’s not like I like you or anything!” the trope is the same.

As subtle as some of his storytelling can be, just as much of it is comically unsubtle. Ochako Uraraka seeing right through him and eliciting that look of panic on his face is a personal favorite bit of content.

If you didn’t look into that Reddit thread about osananajimi/childhood friends I linked earlier, here it is again for your convenience.

Before I start with this, I want to point out that there are non-romantic osananajimi relationships between same sex characters in lots of media. There’s also plenty of platonic opposite sex osananajimi portrayals. They follow their own set of similar tropes, but what’s interesting about Bakugo is that he incorporates these tropes as well as the (love interest) girl osananajimi tropes.

Osananajimi relationships are often used to evoke security and safety as well as an idyllic past. Depending on the thesis of the work, the main character generally either ends up in a relationship with the (traditionally Japanese in appearance) osananajimi as a representation of maintaining tradition and honoring the past or they end up with the (foreign-looking, exciting, and contentious, and often a tsundere) girl who challenges the main character and represents the future and the outside world.

Bakugo is an osananajimi figure, but he is also a loud, blonde tsundere who is a catalyst for change and mystery for the main character. In conclusion: BAKUGO IS BEST GIRL!

Speaking of the ladies.

The biggest success of this “girl power moment” is that it has a nice execution, isn’t cloyingly preachy (because let’s be real - Aizawa gives a full sermon over to the audience over this), and doesn’t come off as insincere.

What else? Oh, right.

The translated pages I pulled are some of the most unflattering to Bakugo’s speech, but I’ll be honest: I kinda prefer this part to be translated in such a way.

Go cry me a river, asshole. But only if you build me a bridge and then get over it.

I’m goint to note that Bakugo never refused to save people at any point in the story. The main point of this is that saving people was never his primary route to “winning” against a threat. It’s more that saving people was an afterthought and a functional solution to getting people out of the way for him to kick some ass.

He entered UA High School with the assumption that he was going to be a combat Hero, but learned to be a rescue Hero instead.

Thats’s what it’s all about! Victory over the self!

What, the rude exterior too much for you? Are you still falling into the trap that everything he does on the surface doesn’t have a deeper motive and intentional use behind it?

God bless Kirishima Eijiro for figuring out Bakugo’s tics. God bless Todoroki Shouto for enduring them. God bless Toshinori for, like, recognizing that Bakugo isn’t evil but is instead a stupid teen boy who cares a lot but screws up a lot.

My personal favorite Bakugo manga face is on the top left corner.

I don’t spell this out in the slides, but part of Bakugo’s popularity stems from the fact that he has some of the best background gags. I don’t find him as funny in the anime, but in the manga he consistently makes me smile.

I included some well-known anime shots in here, too. If you don’t appreciate him at his, y’know, all of this, you don’t deserve him on the bottom left. It is my pleasure to mean it from the bottom of my heart when I say, “HE IS THE UGLIEST AND NASTIEST BOY IN THE WORLD AND HE SUCKS!” and then be completely serious when I turn around and scream, “HE IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BOY IN THE WHOLE WORLD!” to anyone who says any different. I’m not even referring to his appearance, but his general demeanor. I strongly believe this is always how one should feel about their favorites. This is the correct amount to care about one’s favorite fictional character.

I adore his hero name and I will fight anyone who doesn’t. It’s stupid and self-aggrandizing, gives Best Jeanist the middle finger, and is also points out the fact that he realizes he has “reached enlightenment” after figuratively dying and has ascended to godhood.

Also, his Hero name announcement provides comic relief and an in-story morale boost in the middle of a horrific battle - all while he’s bleeding out on the ground. If that doesn’t exemplify Bakugo’s penchant for redirecting the mood, I don’t know what does. He could’ve just said “I’m still alive!” but instead made the choice to pull a stupid stunt.

Thank you for your time!

#bakugo katuski #katsuki bakugo #bakugo #dynamight #bakugo presentation #my hero academia #mha #heroaca #boku no hero academia #bnha #bnha meta #mha meta

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c-is-for-circinate · 3 years

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Wait, isn't "anti" stuff more like "anti-pedophilia" and stuff? Like, you have a point about anti-porn attitudes, but from what I've heard just "anti" on its own means against stuff like kid porn and incest porn and legitimately f*cked up sh*t like that.

Okay! So this, I think, is actually a great example of what I was talking about, and a really useful thing to understand. (CW rape, child abuse, etc)

Smarter people than me have written much better essays about why policing thoughtcrimes is a bad road to go down, and I will probably reblog some of them next time they cross my dash for more context. What I want to talk about is the trigger mechanism, the ‘oh, this looks like danger!!!’ immune response in how we look at different kinds of porn, and how that applies to anti culture.

Here’s the thing: I am anti-pedophilia. I think that, for most people, that’s a stance that largely goes without saying! Adults who prey on children are bad. I’m also against incest; relatives who prey on their family members are bad. Above all I oppose rape. Sexual predation of any kind is bad. In fact, I’d say that’s the most important item on the list. There is plenty of room to argue about where the lines are between ‘adult’ and ‘child’ and how teenagers fit in the middle, and there’s plenty of room to get historical about the lines between ethically terrible incest, distasteful-but-bearable “aristocratic inbreeding” between distant cousins, and the kind of consanguinity that tends to develop in a small town where everyone’s vaguely related to everyone else by now anyway. The core of the issue is consent, and it has always been consent. Pedophilia and incest are horrific because they are rape scenarios where the abuser has far more power and their victim far fewer resources to cope, both practically and emotionally; because harm to children is, to us as a culture, worse than harm to adults, for a lot of very valid reasons; and because they constitute betrayal of trust the victim should have been able to put in their abuser as well as rape--but they are all rape scenarios, and that’s why they’re awful.

These things are bad. It is good for us to have a social immune response system that recognizes these things when they’re happening and insists we step in. That is a good thing to develop! It helps us, as a society. It can help the people being victimized. It’s the same reason educators and childcare workers in the US are all mandated reporters, why we do background checks on people working near kids. These things happen, and they’re terrible, and it’s good that we try to be aware and prepared for them. (Though obviously studies show we’re a lot less good at protecting the vulnerable than we’d like to pretend we are.)

The question is: why does that same social immune response trigger, and trigger so angrily, in response to fiction?

Anti culture is fundamentally an expression of that social immune response. Specifically, it’s that social immune response when it is set off by a situation that, while it has some similarities to the very bad real-life crime of sexual predation including pedophilia and incest, is in and of itself harmless.

If you’re instinct is to flare up in anger or dismissiveness because I’m calling these things harmless, I want to ask you to just take a deep breath and bear with me for a bit longer. What you’re feeling right now is an allergic reaction.

Humans tell and read and listen to stories about “legitimately fucked up shit” all the time. It’s part of the human condition. It’s part of how we process those things happening, not just to use, but to other people in the world around us. It’s part of how we process completely unrelated fucked-up shit, playing with fears and furies and insecurities that we all have, through so may layers of fiction that we don’t even recognize them any more, playing with power dynamics in metaphor and making characters suffer for fun. Aside from the fact that literally all stories do this to some extent or another; aside from the fact that drawing lines between ‘ok that’s good storytelling’ and ‘that’s too fucked-up to write about’ is arbitrary, subjective, and dangerous in its own right; aside from all of that, these stories are stories. All of them.

Even the ones about rape, about incest, about pedophilia. They’re words on a page. No real children were harmed, touched, or even glanced at in the making of this work of fiction. This story, pornographic though it may be, is part of a conversation between consenting adults. (And if a teenager lies about their age to consent, that is a different problem altogether.)

Stories in and of themselves, no matter what they’re about, are no more dangerous than a crate full of oranges. Which is to say: utterly harmless, unless all you have to eat is oranges, all day every day, and you find yourself dying slowly of nutrient deficiency--which is why representation matters. Or unless someone wields one deliberately, violently, as a tool to cause harm, and someone gets acid in their eye--which is the fault of the person holding the orange. And unless you happen to be allergic to citrus.

The key here is this twofold understanding: First, the thing that hurts you can also have value to others. Real, legitimate value. Whether you’ve undergone trauma and certain story elements are straight-up PTSD triggers or you just don’t like orange juice, that story, those tropes, that crate of oranges may be somewhere between icky and fundamentally abhorrent--but we understand that that is still your reaction. Even if you don’t understand how anybody could ever enjoy it; even if every single person you surround yourself with is as sensitive and disgusted and itchy about this thing that makes your eyes hurt and your throat stop working as you; that doesn’t make it true for everyone. That doesn’t make oranges poisonous. No real children were involved in the writing of this story. It is words on a page.

But, secondly: the thing that has value to others can also hurt you. Just because a story isn’t inherently poison doesn’t mean it can’t cause you, personally, pain. That’s what a PTSD trigger is: an allergic reaction, psychological anaphylaxis, a brain that’s trying so hard to protect its own from a threat that isn’t actually present (but was once, and the brain is trained to respond) that it causes far more harm and misery than the trigger itself possibly could. And no, it’s not just people with PTSD who sometimes get hurt by stories. There are many, many ways a story can poke the part of your brain that says, this is Bad, I don’t like this, I don’t want to be here. The story is still, always, every time, pixels on a screen and ink on paper. The story causes no physical harm. But it can poke your brain into misery, it can stir up your emotions, it can make you want to cringe and run away. It can make you want to scream and fight and go after the author who brought this thing into existence. It can make you hurt.

This is an allergic reaction. This is your brain and body, your reflexes and instincts, trying to protect you from something that isn’t really happening. And just like a literal allergic reaction, it can do actual harm to you if it gets set off. This is real. The fact that stories can upset you to the point of pain and mental/emotional injury is real, even though it’s coming from your own brain and not the story itself. There are stories you shouldn’t read. There are stories I shouldn’t read, regret reading, will never read, because they hurt me. That doesn’t mean they’re the same stories that would hurt you. That doesn’t mean they don’t have value.

And, finally:

If getting upset about stories is fundamentally an individual person’s allergic reaction, their brain freaking out and firing off painful survival instincts in the face of a thing that isn’t, in and of itself, a threat? Then the anti movement is a cultural allergic reaction.

Fandom as a whole has a pretty active immune system, which doesn’t mean we have a good immune system. We try very hard to be aware of all the viruses and -isms and abuse and manipulation and cruelty, both systematic and individual, that exists around and within our community. We’re primed and ready to shout about things at all times. The anti movement is that system, that culture, screaming and shouting and fighting at a harmless thing on a grand scale. It wants to stop that thing, that scary awful thing that trips all of its well-primed danger sensors, at all costs. It’ll swell up and block off our airways (our archives) if it has to. It’ll turn on the body it came from. It’s scared and protective and trying to fight, and it’s ready to fight and destroy itself.

Luckily, fans and fanfic and fandom and fan culture are a lot bigger and older than they often get credit for, and it’s not like these cultural allergies are anything new. We could talk about shippers and slashers in the X-Files fandom in the 90s. We could talk about the birth of fandom in the days of Star Trek. We could talk about censorship and book burning going back centuries. We survived that and we’ll survive this, too.

But god, does the anti movement my throat and eyes itch. Man is it irritating, and sometimes a little suffocating, to realize how many stories just aren’t getting told out of fear of what the antis will say. And that’s the real danger, I think. What are we losing that would have so much value to someone? What are we missing out?

#fandom #anti culture #anti-anti #I guess?#asked and answered #you are not WRONG or BAD or BROKEN if a story hurt you #but neither is the story #Anonymous #anti discourse day

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walkuntilthedaylight · 3 years

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The people have spoken! How can I not give them what they want?

I'm gonna put this all under a cut, since it's a bit long, and also because it's highly interpretative/speculative and not everyone likes those kinds of posts as they can be rather subjective and, I suppose, invasive. I want to give two major caveats to my thoughts below: first is that I tend not to buy the idea that Paul was the "stable/normal" Beatle, mostly b/c I view marijuana dependency and workaholism as addictions and I take them pretty seriously. Second is that I really do love this kind of tabloid/gossip/personal account shit; I think it should be taken with a handful of salt, but I don't think it should be entirely dismissed out of hand either. I read this stuff like I'm piling up sheets of stained glass: I'm intrigued by the places where the colours blend and overlap, and ignore things that fall outside the prism. Anyway, let's dig in:

Okay, so what I found fascinating about 'Body Count' is that it's one of the only sources which observes Paul McCartney's mental health during the period between the India trip and when the band breakup really got rolling. I think it's overall a fairly self-absorbed text that definitely has some lies and exaggerations peppered in there to make things spicier and more dramatic, but its broad characterization - as I mentioned in my first post - isn't exactly libelous or out of left field. Some elements that make me think it's generally if not wholly authentic are: Paul's simultaneously forceful and dorky seduction style, his terrible Liverpool diet and poor housekeeping, the bouts of thrill-seeking recklessness, avoidant adventure crafting, dark moods when drinking non-socially, the occasional hot and cold bouts with the Apple Scuffs camped out at his gate, and the way in which he underplays his drug habit, which is SO "in truthfulness we spent most of the filming of Help! slightly stoned":

These details are so bizarrely specific and have significant overlap with both sympathetic and spurned personal accounts of Paul I've read in the past, so I believe Francie is just telling "Her Version Of The Truth" here rather than crafting a piece of pure fiction. The most important and revealing anecdote in the book is this one.

There's no reason not to believe this is a fairly accurate representation of something that actually happened, imo, since we know that anxious purse strings were an ongoing issue in the unusual turnover rate within the band Wings, and there are plenty of confirmed and rumoured cases alike of extended family members feeling entitled to a "piece of the pie"; this is just like, the kind of thing that happens to working class people who get catapulted into fame and fortune. And Paul in particular already had deep-seated financial anxiety for whatever reasons he'll never fully admit (as is his right, but I think his offhand claim that he "once heard some adults arguing about money and that's why" might actually be alluding to having heard some adults - y'know, like his parents - arguing over money fairly frequently). What esp interests me about the anecdote is the way Paul seems to connect the conflict b/t his dual "identities" with these financial expectations. Perhaps the CAPSLOCK emotional hysteria related in the book is puffed up for drama, but it does bring to mind one of the most revealing comments Linda ever made about their relationship, which is that Paul needed to be told he would still be loved when the cameras weren't rolling. And that's the thing: Francie caught Paul at the exact moment that the pillars of his Smile-For-The-Camera "Beatle" identity were collapsing; the dissolution of his relationships with John and Jane.

Whatever all this could possibly mean re: the breakup of the Lennon-McCartney partnership is a post for another time. What I wanna do instead is apply the level of speculation we usually reserve for that relationship to the endpoint of Paul and Jane's courtship.

So like, Paul and Jane: I know people are resistant to this specific POV, but I honestly just don't... think it was that deep? "Not deep", mind you, doesn't mean "not significant". Paul was obviously Jane's first love (u never forget), but the feeling I get from Paul's side (as a subconscious process I mean) is that Jane's importance was primarily as a lynchpin in his London Socialite persona. He loved her family, he loved the friend group, the artistic scene dating her gave him access to, as well as the leg up he got in the class system, etc. He liked to be the kind of guy who was dating Jane Asher. But I don't know that he was the guy who was dating Jane Asher, you get me? When people describe their "great love" they accidentally tell on them (Cynthia innocently describing Paul as being pleased to have her on his arm like a trophy; John: "it was an ordinary love scene"; Alistair Taylor noting that Paul was humiliated by the breakup). Paul's a serial monogamist who U-Hauls like a lesbian, of course, so he definitely took the relationship VERY seriously, but it's telling that all of his love songs to her were either about hitting a brick wall in arguments (certainly not dreamy, fond, yearning of "sunday morning fights about saturday night"; and occasionally expressing hints of class tension too), or completely non-descript Guy With A Guitar Trying To Get Laid shit. I could extrapolate a lot about Linda just from listening to McCartney I/RAM and the Wings discography, but 'And I Love Her' doesn't tell me a single thing about Jane besides that she's pretty. It could be about literally anyone the same way 'My Love' or 'Maybe I'm Amazed' could only be about his dynamic with Linda. Some of this is obviously the natural result of getting older and gaining emotional maturity; what I'm saying is that Paul's behaviour and self-expression in this relationship does not suggest to me that it was one in which his emotional maturity was able to develop or flourish.

I want to stress again that I don't think this belittles the significance of the relationship or makes it "bad" or "fake". Like, sometimes hot people just date for a while in their teens and twenties and love each other without necessarily unlocking their inner emotional cores, usually because they don't know how to. It's, like, fine. You need to experience relationships like that as stepping stones. I simply believe that this sort of front-facing social importance being prime in the romance is a major factor in why it ultimately didn't work (and probably in Linda's reported lingering jealousy of Jane, who wasn't just an ex, but also a symbol of the life Paul ditched to build a new identity w/ her, and sometimes still pined for). With Jane, Paul was dating the "right" kind of girl (didn't put out on the first date, erudite and middle class, as serious about her career as he was, a good "celebrity" match), but the relationship often wasn't doing what he wanted it to do. Francie's observation is that by 1968 it also wasn't doing what he needed it to do either. This is the overwhelming "mood" in her affair with Paul McCartney: that he needed something very badly from a romantic partner that he just was NOT getting, and Francie couldn't figure out what it was either:

(note that she means "queer" as in "mad", not "gay")

This was an EXTREMELY roundabout way of asking: well, what WAS it that Paul needed a relationship to do for him? And I think this is Francie's big, accidental insight. The most scandalous claim in 'Body Count' is that Paul told Francie that he hit Jane and it "turned her on".

I personally think this is p. absurd absent any real proof to back it up, but like, what is Francie actually saying HE'S saying here? If she's exaggerating or lying, she's trying to make it believable within the psychological parameters laid out, right? It's not an expression of some secret desire to dominate women she's accusing him of, but emotional disturbance and confusion at the idea that the woman he was with might like that sort of forceful, masculine violence more than his softer, feminine side, which he was - yeah, we all know it - deeply insecure about.

Regardless of whether specific details are true or false (and I think there's both in this story, all hyper-magnified to make it, y'know, a ~STORY~), I think what might be true is the emotional undertow of the retelling, that this all taken together is actually representative of the side of Paul McCartney she was exposed to, at a time when his public and private facades had both become unbearable to the point of cracking and the drug-fueled optimism of the Summer of Love was getting scrubbed off of everyone and everything. It's the Paul McCartney who eviscerated frogs because he was worried he was too "soft" for compulsory military service. The Paul who modelled his masculine teen behaviour off John Lennon's fake "Marlon Brando" swagger, but was actually more fond of the velvet "Oscar Wilde" interior.

What's SO FASCINATING about all this to me, is I deeply believe that one of the key factors in what makes The Beatles music so unique and compelling is that both the songwriters experienced psychological strain from the tension b/t their parochial socially-defensive "masculine" pride, and their sensitive "feminine" core, the latter of which they were able to express in the unburdened emotionality of their music. The reason I care about doing these totally unhinged psych analyses is because I do think it reveals something about the underpinnings of the music, as well as the reasons why the band was such a hysteria-inducing phenomenon (the rise of psychology, imo, is almost as important as the rise of industrialization as a defining factor of the modern and postmodern eras; mass psychology can be understood and wielded in precise ways, and The Beatles were one of the first empires built on that). The subconscious drives caused by this tension have been ENDLESSLY picked apart re: John's psyche, but Paul's "mirrored" issues are very under-discussed (mostly b/c he's still alive so people are a little more leery about putting him on the "couch" as a historical figure). 'Body Count', intentionally or not, painted a portrait to me of someone who was drowning in their own ill-fitting celebrity "suit", collapsing under the weight of "Being" "Paul McCartney". A guy who desperately needed some sort of space to be vulnerable without feeling emasculated for doing it. By 1968, there was no one in his life anymore - and maybe there hadn't been for a while, or ever - who was giving him this space.

In other words: the thing he needed to avoid going "stark raving queer and killing himself" was simply someone who would love him 'after the ball'.

EDIT: read the comments for further clarification and discussion! ;)

#/#//#///#////#/////#the beatles #mccharmley #analysis #long post #Talking About Paul The Way I Talk About John lmfao #Taking Tabloid Bullshit Seriously #(if not literally)#*gets out my fake spectacles and jumps into the psychiatry armchair*#idk if i laid out my thoughts v well here but i hope it satisfied all the people who asked #i also tried to warn what genre of post it was for those who hate this kinda thing lol #i feel like i have more to say re: how toxic 'The Beatle' facade got for all of them by this point #and paul and john's mirrored post-india breakdowns #but francie's perspective is specifically on how it felt to be the girl he used to divebomb his relationship with jane asher SO

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ectonurites · 2 years

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I'm sick of people in this fandom who talk about babs like she's important disabled rep and then proceed to view her as like, a token character in a batman or robin-focused story. In fanon I see her personality often reduced to:

• disabled

• hacker

• girl

And sometimes, if people are feeling generous

• love interest

• can hit people (despite being in a wheelchair!1!!11!)

Which is kinda fucking stupid. Like, literally I see fics that include babs to literally only say she hacked something and is in a wheelchair, and then do not mention her again.

The thing about babs is that she's good rep because she's a complete character who also happens to be disabled and not a psa on disability disguised as a character. Meanwhile fanon people include her to make their fics feel more diverse while also clearly not caring about the character. It feels like people are trying to prove their morality through fanfic by collecting different "types" of characters like pokemon cards. I'm tired of it

(Sorry for the rant it's been on my mind and idk who else to sent this to. Also I'm ignoring n52 onwards rn)

Oh yeah, no need to apologize, I'm with you there big-time!

I don't really have that much to add, you summed it up really well. In general people will always reduce characters to base traits in fanon, but in a lot of situations it's just annoying rather than harmful (like Tim, for example). But there's a kind of hypocrisy that comes along with that tendency in situations like what you're describing with a character like Babs- where they'll laud a character as being complex and good representation and then turn them into something flat and not representative of their actual canon self... it's always shitty.

The pokemon card analogy you used hits the point really well I think, it just feels very hollow the way she gets used sometimes. Like obviously every story ever isn't going to utilize every character in the best possible way- the batfam is big and things focused on a lot of them can get bloated fast and not go too deep into any one character. But the fact that it does feel overwhelming how often in fan content she'll exclusively be a support role rather than a focus is... telling.

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burgerpocalypse · 3 years

Text

I've been trying to run through some free games I got from the Epic game store, specifically Grand Theft Auto V, Creature in the Well, and most recently Night in the Woods. I quit GTAV about 60% of the way because it sucked, and I can't beat the last area of Creature, so that leaves me to talk a little about NitW and the emotional turmoil it gave me.

Upfront, I'm not interested in games with heavy emphasis on story, least of all visual novels or whatever you want to call this game. However, I've heard mostly positive things about Night in the Woods here and there for the better part of the previous decade. That and the fact I got it for $0 convinced me to finally try it out.

Night in the Woods is an adventure focused on exploration and character drama. Mae Borowski, the protagonist, is a college dropout that just moved back to her Rust Belt hometown for mysterious reasons, and becomes entangled in suspicious happenings. The player will traverse the aged suburban sprawl and rural outskirts of Possum Springs, conversing with family, friends, strangers, and everyone else, uncovering secrets and opening wounds along the way.

Seeing as how Night in the Woods is primarily a story, I'll mostly be discussing that, so look out for spoilers, yo.

After spending two years away, Mae attempts to reconnect with her previously closest friends Bea (an idealist goth whomst had considerable familial and financial responsibility thrust upon her at a young age), Gregg (an anarchist punk with bipolar tendencies), and Angus (an incredibly nice man). Mae pushes the story forward by hanging out with Bea and Gregg, and sometimes Angus. This will often involve going to social outings, running errands, committing crimes, and so on.

Other than her friends, Mae will also have opportunities to interact with her parents, various citizens, and vagrants. whom provide flavor and history to the world while also bringing some of Mae's muddled past to light. The player will traverse environments through walking and jumping around, with the occasional platforming feat required to progress or access certain areas. Occasionally, you'll be presented with small minigames, like a Guitar Hero-clone or red light/green light shoplifting, and a game-within-a-game dungeon crawler that pissed me off to no end. While most activities in the town are benign, certain important events will move the day along and lock you out of further exploration.

Early on, Mae's group stumbles upon a discarded arm and some cryptic dialogue from a few characters. After each day, Mae experiences strange dream sequences that involve platforming segments and surreal representations of her friends and the town. Several hours of gameplay later, Mae witnesses a kidnapping on Halloween by what appears to be a ghost.

In the midst of all this, Mae hangs out with her friends and discovers what they've been up to in her absence. Bea runs the family business for her father, who broke down after her mom died, putting them in dire financial straits and preventing Bea from leaving Possum Springs; she bears resentment towards Mae, since she dropped out of college and came home for no apparent reason while also not maturing at all. Gregg is aimless, sporadic, and uninhibited, while his boyfriend Angus is neat, tidy, and overly helpful. Their relationship appears strong, and they are planning to move to a new city together, though Bea is convinced it won't last.

Mae does her best to strengthen bonds while suffering from a variety of stressors, like her family's money troubles, her self-destructive tendencies and dissociative episodes, and ominous celestial beings invading her mind. This sometimes leads to inadvertent and painful social situations, especially with Bea.

Mae attempts to investigate the supposedly supernatural happenings with the help of Bea, Gregg, and Angus, while her mental health steadily declines. Eventually, the group travels deep into the woods (at night) and stumble into a cult, after which Mae suffers a great fall and enters a coma. After waking up, Mae then attempts to confront the cult head-on, though her friends arrive to help. They enter a cave, find the cult again, discover the eldritch horror they serve and explore her personal connection to it, accidentally cause a cave-in and trap the cultists, escape the cave, and try to make sense of what happened after the fact.

Now, don't get me wrong. I rather enjoyed Night in the Wood's story. I really liked all the characters. I loved the dialogue. Even the platforming and various minigames were fine, if simplistic and occasionally annoying. The structure of this paragraph seems as though it's leading towards a big 'but'. I just wanted to say that I really liked the game, even though I don't generally enjoy video game stories, and especially not video games primarily about a story. Though I'm not from a run-down midwestern town, and obviously don't have the same sort of personal relationships she does, Mae's emotional strife and insecurities really resonated with me. Her personal thoughts and reactions often made me just stop and think about the many mistakes I've made with the people I care about and all the relationships I've ruined.

However, if the plot wanted to spend so much time on Mae and her friends, it should have been about Mae and her friends. Conversely, if it wanted to be about a spooky cult in a small town, it should have spent much more time on a spooky cult in a small town. The plot is torn between two diametrically opposed focuses, those being Mae's struggles to maintain relationships and her dealing with suspicious supernatural occurrences in Possum Springs. So much time passes before anything really happens with the cult and cosmic horror that I feel some people might even forget there is a cult and cosmic horror, and Mae isn't just experiencing a psychotic break for no reason.

In the end, the cult goes unresolved, and it's unclear what the relationship is with the residents of Possum Springs, or what its powers even are. I don't need the game to explain every aspect in detail, but no one appears to be affected by the existence of the cult and its god other than Mae. My brain was going into overdrive looking for clues, making patterns, identifying red herrings, anything that might help me understand the mystery, when in reality there was no mystery to understand.

There is also a severe lack of actual choice or decision making in terms of dialogue, and a distinct absence of any real challenge in gameplay. I definitely felt that this story could have been more efficiently told if it were in a book, usually after spending a few minutes walking around trying to find something important and

It doesn't help that I sometimes accidentally skipped certain segments, since it's not always explicitly clear if an action will push the day forward and lock me in. I even completely missed a third of the investigations since I chose to check out the historical society building with Gregg second when the game expected me to do it last. This sort of problem led to me giving up completely on other story-focus games like Kentucky Route Zero since I constantly skipped and missed chunks of stuff or did things out of the intended order and ruined the flow of events.

Now this has obviously gotten a little too long, so I'll just wrap it up by saying that Night in the Woods is great and I recommend it. It made me feel feelings, deep feelings, like I was moments away from crying on more than one occasion.

Thanks for reading. I have a lot on my mind because of this game, so I hope it was worth your time.

#night in the woods #nitw #mae borowski #video games #review #coyote

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life-rewritten · 3 years

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Lovely Writer (5-7)- The Fantasy of Love: The Search for Family, Freedom and Love

Wow it’s like I haven’t written in so long on here. You know this because I literally have to analyse and break down Lovely writer episode 5-7 and catch up before tomorrows episode, these episodes just by themselves are packed and full of depth and meta and it takes ages to comb through the information and present the results. But I’m back and I have so much to say, I feel so incredibly worried and scared for our babies as they deal with the villains of the show, but I also can’t help but swoon at the themes of the show, and why they’re important for representation in BL to be shown and discussed. Lovely Writer continues to be fluffy, cute BL on the surface but deep within a powerful medium for conversations about LGTBTQ representation and more. Isn’t it brilliant? And with two incredible Bl couples there’s so much to break down and analyse. So let’s break down the fantasy of BL love and why it’s a massive theme in the show.

Gene and His Fear

Gene’s reactions to people are in a way very similar to someone who is going through a stereotypical situation, and at first I didn’t understand why he had such a certain mistrust in people like for example although it was understood his fears and worries about Nubsib, he reacted in a way that seemed very extra and over the top in episode 6. The reason why this feels extra is because he made the audience feel like Nubsib must have been a horrible person to him in the past for him to go into a panic attack and break down over the fact that he lied about his identity and it is Sib. Obviously the reason why he was panicking is because he had realised he had fallen in love with Nubsib and he thought he was a victim of a practical joke wherein he fell hard but Nubsib’s feelings were insincere. It seemed like he felt scared like the one person he trusted and felt truly himself and comfortable with (who Nubsib always seems to be for him even in childhood) was fake and not possible path for him. This points back to the doubts and ideas Gene holds about himself, he doesn’t have social anxiety but he does have a form of discomfort that makes him feel he doesn’t belong with others, like he’s different, he’s ‘abnormal’ this points to his internalised struggle with his sexuality and being with his friends who want him to be truthful, it points out to his struggle with being imaginative preferring toys and childish games over the games his peers preferred at a young age, him being a BL author when normally it’s not written by men etc. He tends to want to hide and shield himself from others by entering his own imagination hence why he finds writing a safe space. The one person he found comfort in sharing all his fears with or embracing who he was is Nubsib, this is why his walls broke in shock realising that all Nubsib did was a lie. And really not going to lie Gene’s comments to Mhork about people assuming that because he’s a writer he’s an introvert did throw me, because I do see him as that, he has a lot of trust issues that’s what it seemed like to me, someone who doesn’t trust people, or like confronting or dealing with situations because he feels alienated or different from others, someone who doesn’t like being vulnerable with people because he’s afraid of it being used against him. That’s fine because when he’s angry at Nubsib those reasons make sense to me why he broke down in that way, it pulled on all of his hidden insecurities, all of his fears about never finding someone else that gets him, all of his worries that he was always being mocked or looked down upon that other people could tell he was different, that he was weird, that he didn’t feel comfortable with them.

Because he’s meant to be like this when Nubsib’s truth gets unveiled, he’s going to be terrified, go through the panic attacks, go through the break downs and flooding of emotions that were hidden deep, this is why his reactions are extremely dramatic and intense. That’s what I thought. But what Gene tells Mhok is that he only pulls away from people when he writes to focus, and that’s fine but it didn’t add up with how he acts with others when it comes to social situations, sure he’s polite, and sometimes agrees to go out and do something with others, but we can see he tends to feel stressed, uncomfortable and annoyed with how people behave, especially when it’s not what he feels like doing (this happens both as a child and also as an adult). The second confusing thing I had to process was that Gene is wealthy. I did mention in previous episodes that Nubsib and Gene have mirror characters with Hin mirroring Gene, and Aey mirroring Nubsib’s situation, however one of the differences between them and their mirrors is the idea of privilege and ease of life. Gene isn’t as desperate as Hin to be a writer because he doesn’t have to prove anything, he’s fully accepted at home, he’s immensely wealthy, has a writer mum to seek advise from, and most of his family support his dreams (will break down the father later), Hin has none of that, in fact he’s even more desperate to make it to writing by doing BL because he is suffering from lack of wealth and prominence in the industry. Nubsib is given semi permission to do whatever he wants, to change his name to do acting but he always has a place back home, he also as well has prominence and isn’t desperate either to have his acting dreams come through, because he can be protected and taken care of since he’s the heir of his father’s company. Aey has none of that, Aey’s family is toxic, forceful and abusive and he doesn’t have any choice but to cling to acting for freedom. You seeing the similarities and use of mirroring in the show?

It’s really important because it again makes us understand why Gene and Nubsib are going to be probably victims of Hin and Aey who feel like they have no choice but to commit to their desperation and get rid of whatever will stop them. Gene and Nubsib don’t need to do that (though they have other problems) and instead actually take what they do a bit for granted, for example even if the BL industry is corrupted and Gene isn’t happy to write for it, he’s still making money, is being observed and talked about whilst Hin isn’t getting that and he wants to write BL authentically. It’s the same as Nubsib, although the industry makes him angry, he also takes for granted what he has, he’s not careful even when warned about how his actions with Gene could lead to the production of the show failing, he’s just set on Gene, again I agree with them but when you look at the fact that Aey has no choice but to be this way, to have the ship with Nubsib if he wants to survive and make it, Nubsib’s actions start to seem privileged, and selfish. This is why Lovely writer is a great show, none of the characters are all good, and none of them are all bad, it’s all about humans who have flaws and act like real life people with issues they need to grow from and learn from whilst dealing with the fear and pressure of the BL industry as a whole.

Again the villain of the show isn’t the characters it’s the industry its self, the system, the rules and the way things are done. That’s what the ultimate villains are here and also the traditional rules of society that entraps the characters (will get into this later). Again the being rich and successful since his childhood might also explain why Gene doesn’t let people easily into his life, Gene may not trust people either because of his status, his family’s name, his reputation. Again it brings up the idea that he could be used when he’s vulnerable for something else and tricked and played with if people know his truths and insecurities and use them as weapons. You could also argue that Gene wants to run away from the rich things in life even though he is comfortable with how he lives (Plus he probably made enough money from Bad engineer to move out), it may also allude to Gene not wanting to be known for his father’s wealth and status, and the reason why he clings to writing so desperately is because he wants his own success, his own freedom, his own earnings from what he loves to do. One of the themes with all 4 characters especially Aey, Gene and Sib is Freedom, as much as ambition is important to them it’s because it’s the only way to get them to escape the life that they have been forced to grow up in because of their parents, rules, obligations and demands. By finding their own paths, and clinging to it desperately they all find a space to breath, to be their true selves and have no chains holding them to other traditions, rules or jobs that they don’t want to be in.

Fathers and their Traditions

Gene’s father seems like also a source of his insecurity in himself, he looks like he fills Gene’s head with worries and doubts and fear that he’s not doing what he’s meant to do. When the father suggests to Gene that he should return back home, I know that look on Gene’s face very well, it’s anxiety, worry and fake smile to find an excuse why that isn’t possible. Gene’s mind knows his father doesn’t approve even though he smiles and fakes his way of looking like he doesn’t mind who Gene is, what Gene does. But it’s starting to be clear the father is homophobic, in fact it’s so clear that he sends Gene of to boarding school when he’s 14 just because he thinks and fears that Gene may be queer, he also tries to bring Gene back home because it’s easier for him to stop Gene writing Bl then. In fact this is another theme of the episodes since we were introduced to Aey’s story, the mirroring of the fathers in the show. The fathers are starting to have a pattern, and it all points to tradition, obligations and conforming to societal norms. All Nubsib, Gene and Aey have all ran away from home because of this pattern. They’ve all pulled away from their families to focus on their dreams, this also includes Hin though it’s unsure if his parents are as bad as the others or if they are supportive and understanding. Aey’s father is the most traditional and outspoken, hence he’s abusive, vile and obtuse with how he speaks to Aey. He chains his son down and punishes him because he tried to flee and find happiness and love (with a boy heaven forbid!) and when Aey’s lover wasn’t who he said he was, wasn’t faithful and and was a coward he uses that opportunity to constantly put shame and emotional abuse on Aey making him carry the burden and weight of the father’s manipulations, and making him feel alienated and alone with no one to trust. It’s disgusting and it was horrifying. Now Gene’s father is different, also manipulative on the surface but doesn’t show it outright to his son who though has been imbedded with the same insecurities and self-deprecation when he thinks he’s not fulfilling what is seen as right/ traditionally normal.

This is probably why Gene does have these secret avoidances of who he was for a while, because he already had a vibe from his father since the childhood days, he probably understood later that his dad intentions made him feel alienated from what he wanted to do, and what he felt comfortable with. This is why when his father keeps silent whilst others are praising his show, and book he notices but keeps silent, because he knows he will soon go back to writing in his own home comfortable and himself with Nubsib. Nubsib’s father is not yet introduced but from what we have heard of him, he also falls into the line of responsibility and obligation because Sib is going against his fathers wishes by choosing to chase after Gene and become an actor, he’s breaking away from the tradition in his family preparation to take over his father’s company. Likewise we see that when Sib was a child he was also like Aey abused by being forced to give into pressure of doing what is seen as right and appropriate for a rich child. He was abused by his piano teacher and his mum turned an eye, refused to listen to him and punished him each time he tried to be free from that. Again although Sib’s father isn’t there, his absence shows what his role is too, he felt just as stifled by his father as his mother and he wanted to get away from it all. Gene was his escape from that, from all the duties, obligations, and neglect. They found each other and both ran away to play in an imaginary world together, this kickstarted Gene’s love for creativity and writing, but also kickstarted Sib’s devotion to Gene who paid attention and showed him love and care. So the parents are tied to this theme of entrapment, and force and order, with closed mindsets, ignorance and old fashioned ideas about what real ambition is, they become obstacles to their children’s pursuit for purpose, freedom and love. They are also the second villains of the show because they represent that idea of society and it’s traditional conformist norms being a barrier to people’s liberty of self. A theme always readily explored in the BL genre.

MhokAey: Fantasy of Love vs Resentment of Trust

We need to discuss about Aey and Mhok. A lot has happened to them since I wrote my previous analysis. Including the whole reveal that what they are is more than just friends but it threads a line between unrequited and toxic requited feelings. There’s a lot of confusing feelings about them, a lot of angst and drama and hate and mistrust to do with their story. Mhok is at the center of this. I remember analysing his character using Bad engineer mirroring outline that he was like the character he plays Tawan, he’s also like a second lead romantic interest for Aey, he comes second but he’s devoted to making sure Aey is safe and he’s devoted to trying ensure Aey doesn’t snap or leave his humanity and morality behind. Mhok and Aey like Gene and Nubsib (surprise surprise they also mirror them, with same themes and ideas) have known each other since they were children, Aey was cruel and heartless at that time due to the pressures of the environment he was in (from the father’s pressure and Aey being submissive to his father’s wishes) because of this Aey seems to have been angry, hurtful and callous all the time, including to Mhok who watched him and feared for his state. However Aey later finds freedom and happiness as he falls in love with Time, Time makes Aey finally want to give up all the pressure and obligations and be himself, except Time wasn’t who he said he was and when Aey’s father posed an obstacle after Aey’s jealous sister outed him (though I think she’s not the only person behind this I’ll explain), Time ran away with the money they saved up and left Aey damaged, broken hearted and destroyed.

Sadly what happened next is Aey also found Mhok to be part of this family’s bretrayal, and so he avoided Mhok and thought Mhok is using him to try and be seen as a good son/son in law to his wealthy family. The reason is why would Aey think Mhok is to blame? Unless in doing something stupid as always to protect Aey, in maybe knowing Time wasn’t who he said he was, and in anguish of his unrequited love for Aey, Mhok is the one who outed Aey to Earn which then led tothe catalyst? Why not? We don’t know his role during the time, Time was in Aey’s life, for someone who seems utterly devoted and possessive and at times jealous about Aey’s love interests (this includes him being jealous each time Aey and Sib interact or kiss), Mhok in order to protect Aey, his goal by the way, probably told Earn to find a way to stop it from happening but Earn hated Aey and used it as an opportunity to kick him out and make him lose his beloved son status because she was jealous. This is why Mhok cannot speak up when the father berates Aey about Time because he’s the one who probably started it.

We see that for Aey’s safety and ensuring he doesn’t go too far with his anger and callousness, Mhok goes behind his back constantly warning others about Aey’s motives (this irked me because the way he describes Aey as like this monstrous scary creature makes me wonder why he would think Aey could trust what he sees in him as love). Mhok tells Gene to be careful of Aey, he takes the blame and says he would take the fall if anything happens, it shows that even though he says Aey is awful, he’s happy when Aey shows some sort of vulnerability or selflessness but it also shows he does love Aey unconditionally. But how can Aey trust Mhok if he is connected to the Time situation, if he doubts Mhok’s goals and he understands what Mhok thinks of him and says of him to others. Of course he wouldn’t trust Mhok because everyone makes Aey feel like a monster, his father does this every day, everyone says they know he’s awful, cruel and callous, they know he can hurt people, they tell him this, and Aey holds on to this, he believes this is how people see him and in order to survive and get what he wants he has to manipulate others and be seen as kind and vulnerable on the surface to not suffer the same pain he goes through with his family and the people who judge him on his past . See how Mhok’s unrequited love borders on toxicity as well?

In order to make Mhok suffer because of his thirst for vengeance, and his bitterness and pain of feeling betrayed by him Aey kisses Mhok and pulls away pretending to be unaffected. Of course he is like this, he’s filled with anger, hate and distrust of everyone his goal is to hurt the ones who hurt him even if he senses that there is an attraction, there is vulnerability and authenticity with himself when he’s with Mhok. There’s a weakness which is why he succumbed for a while with the kiss and the hug, Aey was in pain and some part of him trusted Mhok’s embrace, but it switched back because of fear. For Aey Love is a fantasy for him, because love has caused him nothing but pain, the only way he can use love now is to manipulate and escape the clutches of his family and survive and be free. Love isn’t the goal anymore, so he uses the fantasy of BL love which fans cling to, to make people love him, to make people praise him, and in order to do so he focuses on Gene as an obstacle to him and Nubsib’s fake relationship. Without Nubsib the show won’t be a success, if the show isn’t a success he’ll be seen as a failure and his father would be proven right, and without success he’d be left alone, tired, abandoned and betrayed. See why he’s more desperate than Nubsib when it comes to acting? Gene mocks BL and says it’s a fantasy of love, and with Aey he’s right, Aey uses the industry’s idealism of the corrupt fantasy of BL love to get his gain. But can you blame him? And is Mhok really doing right in his aim to protect Aey from going past the edge?

The reason why we get Gene’s mum talk about authentic LGBTQ movies and then have Gene say that BL shouldn’t be part of that is exactly what Tee is trying to call out as the director of the show. But Tee is using Lovely Writer to be a place for representation conversations, we have had conversations about internalised homophobia, coming out, sexuality, authenticity of relationships, we’ve had consent shown by the main couple so Tee is very serious about representation and trying to make this show a medium where things are serious and done correctly. Yes Mhok and Aey are very toxic for now because even though they representing authenticity of love, because there is something they both can’t control that is connecting them to each other, they’ve known each other for so long and can’t help but be tied together because of those feelings. Mhok is devoted to Aey even though he acts opposite at times, but because he doesn’t know how to show love accurately, he fails repeatedly with how he tries to show love, trying to fit in the situation with logic but also trying to hide behind the scenes so he can keep an eye on Aey, on the situation, so he can have control over it. Mhok has certain stereotypical ideas about Aey imbedded from their childhood together making him know Aey is manipulative, cold and mean but despite the fact that he thinks this way, he just thinks Aey can have a chance to turn around and truly be happy by forgiving others and himself. Mhok knows he loves Aey for who he is but at the same time, he dislikes that Aey is morally grey and he wants to stop Aey from making more mistakes to himself, to protect everyone around Aey that may be hurt in the crossfire of his bitterness. Because Aey has been burned by the pressure and betrayal of the family dynamics he has, he becomes also without meaning to a version of the person he hates; his father, he becomes manipulative, sneaky, and aggressive with how he does things. It also makes sense that as he was suffocating when he was younger that he turned colder and meaner because he needed somewhere to let out the hurt and pressure of being the perfect child and perhaps Mhok really was hurt by this with that action. His character makes sense to me because it’s not okay but it’s understandable. Mhok knows Aey in and out, in fact he knows Aey’s family is toxic and so does what he does to show love by being chameleon like and putting himself directly into the family, hiding to try and find a way to protect Aey from the dynamic, this is why Aey misunderstands that he’s trying to replace him and please the father, get into their good graces to take his place but Mhok is doing it for Aey.

The themes about trying to find out what’s authentic and what’s not, manipulation and masks in order to hide and be near the one they love mirrors Nubsib and Gene’s romance path too, this is why I said their outlines mirror each other, whilst Aey like Gene feels hurt by the fakery and feels mocked by the mask of Mhok/plans of Sib, Gene and Nubsib have managed to communicate and reach an understanding about the truth about their relationship.

The Authenticity of Lovely Writer

So there’s a theme/question about the fantasy of love for these two couples because at a point both Gene and Aey doubt that the love of their partners is real, they believe it’s a trick, fake, joke. That they’re both doing this for power, to have control over their weakness and vulnerability to use that against them. Gene is weary about people but finds himself automatically willing to trust and understand Nubsib because of what he represents to him safety, comfort and warmth, and freedom. Aey on the other hand has become jaded with love and finds Mhok instead as his place to hold resentment, anger and pain for the past. No matter how much he wants to try and move on, try and hope for a better dynamic (as we saw he tried in episode 4), they constantly shatter that hope and by episode 4 he’s done, and also includes Mhok with that memory. So Aey and Mhok are in a toxic state because there is no chance for communication, no revealings of truths, and Aey is in a broken mindset, resentful of himself, resentful of everyone, and resentful of love.

In a way the fantasy of love is a perfect theme for Lovely Writer, since Gene is meant to learn that BL is only corrupt because own voices aren’t there to help write serious stories or avoid problematic tropes. As Gene falls in love with Sib, he realises that just because things may seem fake or shallow doesn’t mean that they are, you need to be open, to think about it in a different point of view, you need to also learn to accept the truths and overcome your prejudice and stigma with those things. It’s important to note that although Nubsib starts of using inauthentic means, his love for Gene is real, which is ultimately what Gene accepts in episode 7. It’s real and he should stop running away from what he’s feeling just because of old fears and worries that it’s wrong for him to be his true self and love what he loves. I hope we get to see Aey go through his own journey to this too, as he’s about to fall even more and regress with his anger and desperation, I hope Mhok does more than just sitting behind the scenes if he really wants his goal to be to save Aey from his self and resentment. Mhok needs to be braver, to show up and make Aey see the truth about what he feels, just like Sib did with Gene. Because at the end of the day if the love is authentic and true, Aey won’t be able to avoid the truth, Aey won’t be able to hide or run anymore like Gene was doing, Aey would want to start slowly hopefully stop seeing Love as just a fantasy but something real. Obviously we’re more half way through and this means the big guns are going to be out. It’s time to tackle the villains, to see them shed their skin and show their true colours, It won’t be easy and we may have some regressions because of fear but our couples will overcome it and find them selves through it, at the end of the day hopefully they end up getting their freedom, love and happiness. As for now I continue to love this show, and I continue to praise it’s depth and meta. Let me know your opinions on the episodes so far. What do you think about MhokAey and SibGene,who’s more pitiful? Let me know.

#lovely writer the series #lovely writer #thai bl #bl series #bl drama #april #cwg #nubsib #NubsibGene #kaoup

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thewhitefluffyhat · 3 years

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Thoughts on SatoRika

Surprise! It’s not yuri!

Have a whole essay on that topic, because whoops, I seriously haven’t been able to think about anything else since the translation of Ryukishi’s Satokowashi Blu-ray comments was posted.

On the Interview Itself

If somehow you’re not familiar with the interview excerpt in question, it’s from here.

Yep, that’s right, Satoko and Rika are just friends! :)

Look. If Ryukishi meant “Satoko is motivated by something deeper than lust” or “it’s not just romantic love” or even “they’re friends and lovers” - he would have said that. Instead he denied the possibility outright.

So although the surrounding remarks dance around it, I can’t see anything but the most disappointing intention here. It even follows a bunch of the usual clichés for this kind of creator denial too. Ah, where would we be without the classic “”let’s not put any of those *shudder* labels on this pure relationship!””

Of course, with the context of the horrific actions Satoko takes in the anime, my first reaction on reading these comments was to laugh. Torture and murder are fine, but adolescent romance? Actually using the word ‘lesbian?’ Oh no, now that relationship isn’t ~innocent~ enough anymore!

Meanwhile, that backhanded “it might be considered a yuri” is just the most exquisitely rotten cherry on top of the freezer-burned sundae. In other words, sure, SatoRika can be ‘yuri’... just specifically not queer yuri. (As though yuri as a genre doesn’t already have an ambivalent relationship with queerness…)

It’s so ridiculous the whole exchange almost sounds like a parody.

It’s also is precisely what I was I was afraid of. Eerily so, in fact.

What I Feared and Why

If you recall one of the essays I wrote at the end of Gou, I brought up exactly this possibility:

Because the thing about getting invested in an implied queer relationship is that’s it’s like Rika’s present box. Maybe sometimes what’s inside is truly a gift. But in most timelines, you’ll just get sucker punched and feel foolish for being so hopeful in the first place. Are these characters and the relationship actually gay, or was it all in your head and the final episode is going to shove them at a random het love interest at the last minute?

And what do you know, the present box really did contain a punch to the face! Oh boy, I sure do love having my most cynical predictions prove right! *wipes away K.O. ink*

My own frustration and bitterness aside, I want to be clear that the problem here isn’t this specific case of “but they’re just friends!,” it’s the pattern of this happening.

Like, obviously, SatoRika was never going to be “”good”” queer representation. (Whatever standards you have for that, haha.) At best, I’d hoped I could maybe recommend SotsuGou as “kinda trashy, but fun” representation. Lesbian Time Looper Thunderdome had such a nice ring to it, you know? Especially given the abundance of straight time travel romance stories these days.

I’m also quite sympathetic to the argument that romance isn’t necessary to have a deep, important, and meaningful relationship! But somehow, “they’re just close friends :)” never seems to be invoked as a sincere critique of amatonormativity. Hence why you don’t see this comment attached to straight, cis relationships (you know, where it might actually have a point), but always and only for queer (and/or interracial) relationships. A pattern that makes it quite clear this is really just a shallow excuse.

Now yes, on the face of it, there genuinely isn’t much wrong or offensive in what Ryukishi said. If anything, calling out his support for same-sex relationships and leaving the definition of ‘yuri’ up to fans is probably more sensitive than these types of interviews usually go. But I’ve found that even after taking a few weeks to let my anger settle, those well-intentioned consolation prizes don’t really make the sharp sting of disappointment go away.

Once again: never trust in anime not explicitly labelled ‘yuri.’

[Warning: Next section contains some vague discussion of Umineko and Ciconia spoilers.]

On Umineko and Ciconia

I also found these comments particularly egregious coming from Ryukishi. This is the rhetoric I would expect to come from the mouth of a Disney executive, not the author of Umineko.

Indeed, when I first read Umineko, I didn’t believe for a moment that the author of Higurashi would ever write a canonically queer character. I thought at the time that any hints to the contrary were empty fakeouts. I wouldn’t be foolish enough to take the bait that easily!

…But as it turned out, I was shooting myself in the foot with that attitude when it came to Umineko’s mystery. As such, one of the messages I took away - one of the many interpretations of “without love, it cannot be seen” - was that maybe I shouldn’t be so paranoid. That at the very least, I should have extended more trust towards Ryukishi that he was writing queer themes and queer characters in good faith.

Welp, so much for that! Heck, given how heavily SotsuGou has also been teasing at the Lambda and Bern connections, I’m now fully expecting the witches to get converted into “just gals being pals!” too.

Oh, and just to drive home the point even further? The above screenshot isn’t from Umineko, it’s from the even more recent Ciconia. Phase 1 has a whole scene that emphasizes that one character loves another regardless of their gender and/or sex. And this moment and relationship is explicitly framed as a romance. (Though like [REDACTED] in Umineko, unpacking everything discussed in that scene would be another essay…) Makes the whole nonsense about Satoko and Rika’s friendship ~exceeding gender~ even more of a bizarre double standard!

[End spoilers]

On SatoRika in SotsuGou

Speaking of double standards, I think that’s ultimately why I’m so frustrated with all of this. I enjoy plenty of mystery stories without queer characters. (Have y’all watched last season’s Oddtaxi? because it is GREAT.) I enjoy plenty of stories of female friendships. (A Place Further than the Universe is seriously a treasure!)

What I don’t enjoy is the cognitive dissonance of watching something that looks and sounds exactly like an obsessive romance being served to me as “”friendship.”” Look, I had close female friends when I was Satoko and Rika’s age and buddy let me tell you we did not make solemn promises under a shooting star and lovingly hold hands as a sweeping duet swelled in the background lmao.

The worst part is, I can’t even smooth over Satoko and Rika’s portrayal with aroace headcanons either! Literally the only reason Rika’s crush on Akasaka exists is to demonstrate that she’s interested in guys. And even if the anime doesn’t pull that specific card out of its back pocket, there’s already too much yuri bait for me to take the story seriously as ace representation anyway.

On the Rest of SotsuGou

There’s also the broader context that SotsuGou just... hasn’t been that good. The biggest “answer” of Oniakashi was that (again exactly as I feared), there was no greater meaning to the over-the-top gore. Keiichi and Rena’s fight happened precisely as depicted, the director was just bad at portraying impactful horror.

And so, Ryukishi’s comments on Satoko and Rika trace the same line. Turns out there is no greater meaning or implication behind all the SatoRika teasing. It was just Passione randomly throwing it in and distorting the story in the process, as they so often do.

This situation as a whole is strongly reminding me of how I lost interest in Magia Record as well. It’s the same arc of the story’s overall quality disappointing me, so as a result I was clinging more and more to what little joy I could find in it - making up elaborate (and often queer) headcanons. But as soon as those pretty headcanons got torn away, the fragile house of cards fell apart. What should have been an incredibly trivial thing - oh noes, my interpretation of a character isn’t canon, how ~terrible~ - actually turned out to be the last load-bearing tether keeping me connected to the story.

And now, as with MagiReco, that tether for SotsuGou is snapping free.

On SatoRika outside of SotsuGou

I have to say, it really sucks the fun out of the official art given the reveal that it’s all cynical and empty pandering. The recent Mei units (and their associated stories) are especially bad in that regard. There’s some awesome stuff in there (Satoko and Rika tearing apart the good wife/wise mother ideal - hell yeah!), but any effect is clumsily undercut whenever I remember Ryukishi’s comments. :(

Meanwhile, on the fandom side, I keep zigzagging between being happy and depressed whenever I see SatoRika content.

Happy, because I find it quite entertaining to watch a fandom collectively and spitefully reject a direct Word of God from the author. And because gosh darn it, I do still like the characters and their relationship!

But also depressed, because I once again see the usual cycle of yuri fans coping by trying to spin a creator’s comments into something more palatable. “See, what the Ryukishi really meant was…” “If you interpret the interview this way…”

Unfortunately, I’ve been there, I’ve done that. And I’ve found it to be a draining, losing battle that left me with nothing but wasted time and slowly increasing disappointment for my efforts.

No thanks, I already did the Rebellion fandom schism again. I really don’t want to replay this garbage game too...

Moving Forward

It was always going to be an uphill battle to find the time and energy to catch up on the past few months and get back into the swing of weekly Higurashi posting again. But I was all set to do it, I even had an analysis of the first two episodes partially drafted… and then I hit that interview.

And all that energy and motivation vanished.

Which is why it’s taken so long to even put up this post - I kept hoping I’d at least regain the interest to do a full episode analysis post to accompany it but… nope.

So, while this essay is mainly a self-reflection exercise to try to pin down why I’ve been feeling so little motivation to participate in the fandom, it’s also an explanation for that total silence. I’m so sorry, all! D:

As for moving forward… well. To be honest, I don’t have a lot of insights other people haven’t covered better already. These recent episodes have been awkwardly slim pickings analysis-wise, given how straightforward the solution has been. So I don’t think I’ll be going back to weekly posts, at the very least, unless something else major happens.

Meanwhile, I’m also not one to hate post, when I can spend the time doing literally anything else.

You know, like watching anime I can enjoy without giant caveats.

(Actually no that’s a lie, what I’m really going to be doing is watching the Magia Record anime alongside Sotsu because oops I’m still terrible at giving up on stories even when I’ve run out of hope. :’D )

#when they cry #higurashi #higurashi gou #higurashi sotsu #satorika #furude rika #houjou satoko #satokowashi #umineko #ciconia #higurashi gou analysis #higurashi gou critical #my ramblings #my higurashi gou sotsu meguri thoughts #hey brain #now that I've got this out of my system #can I PLEASE have my motivation back

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