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hello-nichya-here · 7 months

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Yes, Buffy loved Spike

The way people act like that was in anyway left up to discussion by the show is legit hilarious/infuriating.

James Marsters (Spike) has said in an interview that, when Joss Whedon let him know that Spike was gonna fall in love with Buffy in season five, he had assumed it would one-sided - only for Whedon to correct him with a "Oh no, she's gonna fall in love with you too."

And the show wasn't shy about it either. Through seasons six and seven, we are shown Buffy repeatedly denying that she loves Spike - and then immediatelly contradicting herself either through actions or her own words (and even in season five she had already kissed him once after he did not give away her sister's identiy to Glory even after being tortured).

After Buffy comes back from the dead - from heaven - and is dragged to the literal hellmouth, having to crawl out of her grave, she sees the Buffy-bot being torn from limb by a bunch of demons. Naturally, this fucks with her head a bit. She manages to save her friends, but she is still very shaken, and looking like she's not really fully back to her senses as her sister is speaking to her. It really does look like something is very wrong and that she is not at all the same girl we once knew.

Then she hears Spike's voice and goes to see him. Only when she sees HIM, when HE starts trying to talk to her, when HE is the one taking care of her, does she start to properly respond. And, of course, out of all the people there - all of whom are worried about her and that she supposedly trusts way more than she trusts this "fully evil" vampire - Spike is the one to whom she reveals what actually happened to her.

During the musical episode, we see her sing "I touch the fire and it freezes me, I look into it and it's black. Why can't I feel? My skin should crack and peal - I want the fire back" confirming to us that her depression after being taken from heaven was not just a temporary consequence of the shock of it all, and has left her completely disconnected from the people she loved, and from life itself, and that she does not know if it can ever be fixed.

But at the end of the episode, after Spike stops her from basically commiting suicide (because remember, he stopped BUFFY. not the bad guy) she sings to Spike "This isn't real, but I just wanna feel" right before they kiss. And Spike's own song says "I died so many years ago. You can make me feel like it isn't so."

It is very clear that what convinced Buffy to keep on living wasn't just because Spike loved her - she already knew that, and she also her friends and this has not done anything to make her less depressed. What makes her not give up is realizing that SHE can still connect to others, SHE still can have feelings for someone. Only it is with her former mortal enemy instead of her friends and family (she had even said in an earlier episode that he was the only person she could stand to be around) and the kiss makes it obvious that this new bond she has with Spike is NOT platonic.

And the following episode when she tries to pretend it means nothing? It has her acting all flirty with Spike while they're both dealing with the amnesia spell, and once their memories return the episode ends with her kissing him AGAIN.

And during ALL of the episodes she's claming she is totally disgusted by him? She's having sex with him all the time. And when Tara finds out about it, Buffy does admit she's using him, but she refuses to give an answer when Tara asks "Do you love him?"

When Spike brings a date to Xander's wedding , Buffy KNOWS is just to get her jealous and Spike even admits to it - and she admits that, even knowing all of that, it DOES bother her. She is unbelievably distraught after finding out he slept with Anya, and even says to his face "I have feelings for you, I do. But it's not love. I could never trust you enough for that" showing us that the thing stopping Buffy from truly giving Spike a chance is, understandably, the "You're a literal souless creature that needs to feed on people to survive" factor, not because their connection is not genuine or strong enough, or because of her past with Angel.

Not to mention, it makes perfect sense that, during the season she was clearly suicidal, she falls in love with the character that is representing the possibility of her death - their first time even happens after Spike reveals that, for some reason, the chip no longer causes him pain when he attacks her, and thus he actually poses a threat to her again.

Unhealthy? Absolutely. Scary? Fuck yes. Does she get over her "feelings that are totally not love" in the season finale, when she's crawling "out of her grave" again, this time triumphantly, in the sunlight, all brave and finally letting go of her self loathing? NOPE!

In season seven, when she's finally about to go out with a man that is not and has never been evil, her friends are all obviously wondering if this is a sign that she is over Spike - of if she's just pretending to. Buffy's response? THE biggest Freudian Slip she's ever had in the series.

"Why does everyone in this house think that I'm still in love with Spike?"

STILL!

Still. In. Love.

Not "Why is everyone convinced that I fell in love with Spike? I told you guys I liked him, but didn't love him" but "Why do you guys think I'm not over those totally vague, definitively not deep 'feelings' I had and that were 100% not just a code for 'Yes, I am in love with him, but I'm scared it will blow up in my face'?"

And how does that date with that Not Evil guy, that was revealed to be the son of Slayer, go? Pretty well! It looks like this romance might actually have a chance of going somewhere.

At least until she goes "Look, I know Spike killed your mom when he was souless and all, but if you try to go after him to get revenge again, he will murder you, and I will let him." She also turns her back on her watcher, and father figure, when she finds out he was in on the plan to kill this vampire that is Totally-Not-Her-Boyfriend.

The episode even has Giles directly compare her codependent bond with Spike to what she had with Angel - which again, included her letting Angelus get away and kill people. Sure, Spike has a soul now, he let the dude live to tell the tale since killing his mom WAS an awful thing to do, and if he was attacked again and killed him it would be self-defense - but it's impossible not to notice the very clear "Buffy is protecting her man" tone of it all.

Not to mention, before that, Spike offers to leave Sunnydale since Buffy's potential new boyfriend clearly can help her find demons and thus she no longer needs him around - and she full on says that SHE IS NOT READY FOR HIM NOT TO BE THERE.

Then, of course, there's "Touched." The episode in which EVERYONE is going "We might die tomorrow, lets fuck to cope", and not only is Buffy clearly touched (Get it? Get it?) by Spike's speech about how much he loves her, she asks him to get in bed with her and hold her. And even though they are not having sex, the scenes of them cuddling are being framed as being just as intimate and romantic as the scenes of everyone else making love to their partners. Again, we had Giles full on state the obvious to Buffy: she and Spike might not be sleeping together anymore, but they are VERY clearly acting like they're still in a relationship, even if both are now hesitant to give it a try after literally everything went wrong for them.

The following day, Spike says that it was the happiest night of his life, and when he starts saying that he knows it obviously didn't mean as much for Buffy as it did to him, she corrects him and says it absolutely did. Spike even goes as far as trying to confirm it AGAIN by asking "Were you there with me?" to which Buffy says "I was", which is HUGE considering she had just admited to him the previous night that she had always cut herself off from everyone - Spike VERY much included - due to being the slayer.

"Oh, but what about the Bangel kiss in the finale?"

The one Joss Whedon explicitly refered to as "the show's way of servicing the Bangel fans" aka FANSERVICE? The one that came right out of nowhere as the signature of Bangel's "romantic chemistry" is angsty pining? The one that didn't hold a candle to one of the few Bangel scenes I say absolutely worked, aka the kiss after Angel comes back to Sunnydale to help Buffy deal with her grief over her mother and that only happened after they had spend HOURS together because, surprise surprise, it doesn't matter if they still have feelings for each other, they have NEVER had this dynamic of exes that just casually make out with each other the second they are in the same room together?

The one that happens right before Buffy says "Sorry, you won't be the vampire champion that will save the world, I'm chosing Spike for that role"? The one that is followed by an obviously jealous Angel making it very clear to Buffy that he is bitter she's "brushing him off for captain peroxide"? And then she asks if he'll react that way everytime she gets a BOYFRIEND?

When Angel points out that, again, she just let slip how she actually feels about Spike, Buffy has to deny it because Joss Whedon thought the ONLY way to make sure viewers didn't miss that Buffy is totally an independent woman that don't need no man was to tease both the possibility of a Bangel AND a Spuffy endgame just to go "Sorry, Buffy is gonna choose to be single."

HOWEVER, even the way she does that has changed significantly, as she says "He is not my boyfriend, but he is in my heart." Notice how, unlike all the previous times, Buffy is not trying to diminish what she has with Spike.

She went from "I slept with Spike/said I feelings for him BUT this totally means nothing and I could NEVER love him because he doesn't have a soul like Angel did" to "Look, Angel, I swear that Spike is totally not my boyfriend BUT I will treat him like he is because I absolutely do have feelings for him. Could you pretty, pretty please go back to L.A. now that the fanservice moment is over? I'll even end it with a 'sometimes I totally think of what could happen between us someday' so we can pretend our romance has not been officially pronounced 'impossible to ever be endgame' since season three of my show and season one of your show?"

And where does she immediatelly go to after this? To see Spike. Because she wants another night of cuddling with him. Then The First shows up in the middle of the night to torment her, he explicitly refers to Spike as Buffy's vampire LOVER.

Finally, the final battle is happening, and Spike is about to die saving the world, and Buffy, with tears in her eyes finally says that she loves him. Whedon had even said to Sarah "Be proud of him. Love him when saying it." We even see literal flames as they are holding hands - an obvious nod to the musical, with the "I want the fire (feeling) back", and Whedon basically confirmed it by saying it was a very deliberate choice to symbolize the feelings the characters have for each other. It is the visual representation of Buffy FINALLY accepting that she truly does love Spike.

"Oh, but he responds 'No, you don't, but thanks for saying it' implying Buffy was only trying to make sure he would die happy!"

Did you guys forget EVERYTHING ELSE I just mentioned in this post? Or the fact, at that point, Spike is still processing the guilt of all the monstruous things he did as a vampire now that he has a soul again? Did you forget him literally asking Buffy to kill him for what he did and telling her that the soul did not suddenly make him good - only for HER to be the one to say he fought back against the monster inside of him and that she believes in him?

Again, James Marsters gave us his insight on what he felt Spike meant by that line and how he played it: Spike was saying that Buffy COULDN'T love him. Not yet. Because he didn't feel he deserved it yet. It was not the right time for them. Yet.

"Oh, but in the late seasons of Angel, when Spike is brought back to life, he is told that Buffy never truly loved him!" Yeah, he is told that - BY ANGEL! In what world would he, Buffy's ex that has had problems with Spike since long before Buffy was even born and that had already admited that having her pick Spike over him "did not bring out the champion in him", not be extremely biased?

"But you're forgetting the Buffy comics in which she is basically told Angel is her soulmate and sleeps with him during some magical fuckery that made her go mad with power!"

Yeah, and in those same comics, even though it took forever and Whedon just HAS to force the "Buffy ends the story chosing to be single because she can either be a strong female character OR be in a happy relationship" AGAIN, she and Spike became a couple after all of that, with her explicitly telling him WHAT SHE HAD WITH ANGEL IS IN THE PAST, and the ending even suggests is only a matter of time before she and Spike get back together again, this time for good.

Claiming that it was up for debate if Buffy ever truly loved Spike is as ridiculous as if I said "I know we are both shown and told many times that Angel and Buffy slept together in season two, but I actually think it's up for the debate if they truly did" NO, IT ISN'T!

We are shown how Buffy's feelings for Spike grow over time, how her dynamic with him changes, how she is actively choosing him over everybody else after he gets his soul, and both the character and the people involved in making the show EXPLICITLY SAY she loves him.

You can dislike it, but don't expect everyone else to cover their ears and close their eyes to pretend it wasn't clear that Spike's love for Buffy has not been one-sided for a VERY long time.

#spuffy

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brucebocchi · 6 months

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i can't believe i'm saying this but The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You is incredible.

it is the apotheosis of harem anime. it's peak trash. it makes rent-a-girlfriend look like nausicaa. i haven't seen an anime comedy this consistently insane since asobi asobase. it's like every romcom trope got fused together, became sentient, fell into a blender with the panera lemonade, and got mainlined directly into your eyeball.

and i want to be clear that this is 100% intentional. it's funny in all the ways it wants to be. it's meta and self-aware without getting all joss whedon about it, and it doesn't subvert expectations so much as it shoves your nose directly into them. it's basically sneering at you, "oh, you like harem anime? have all the harem anime in the world" like you're homer simpson being force-fed donuts in hell. it is as purely anime bullshit as anime bullshit gets, and it revels in that fact like a pig rolling in shit.

i caught up on girlfriend girlfriend so i could be up to speed on the second season, and this honestly puts it to shame. hyakkano does the harem comedy, the tropey characters, and even the genuinely sweet romantic moments so much better. it's also the first anime i've ever seen make use of the DJ airhorn sound effect, which is instant points in my book.

watch it. i'm serious.

#anime reviews

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jerryterry · 1 year

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There was one inevitable downside (/upside for Tumblr Drama fans?) to all of these poll tournaments coming to Tumblr, and that's "fandom polls being run by people with a massive bias/opinion that they can't help from plastering all over the posts". Like, there's this one New Vegas poll currently running where the OP has a seething hatred for Cass, among others - badmouthing characters in their poll posts, getting into ranting arguments about it. It's inconsequential and funny, and situations like this are a dime a dozen on this site, but seeing this made me want to take a look at this one a lil closer. Because it brushes into something small I've always found interesting about New Vegas: the rumor of homosexuality in the Legion, as well as a wider factor about the writing of companions in general (Under a read-more for length).

OP literally says "If you tell her you're a gay man, she calls you a nazi", so lets take a look at the line they cite for this:

There's multiple points where characters joke about the Legion having similar prominent homosexuality to the actual Romans (which was notable enough that there's straight-up a "Homosexuality in ancient Rome" Wikipedia page). For example:

- Veronica

- Major Knight

What's interesting is that the one character who talks about his direct experience with this subject, Jimmy (a former Legion slave), actually says something that contradicts that last quote:

This opens up the likely possibility that it's NCR propaganda - a homophobic lie to emasculate the enemy. Even if maybe it IS something common in the Legion, it's something frowned upon and is at best a rampant open secret. Either case makes Major Knight's quote provably false.

Regardless, it's a wide non-Legion belief that homosexuality is common and accepted in the Legion. If the source of that rumor IS cooked-up homophobic propaganda, it's interesting that it hasn't worked on the only characters who talk about it. All three of those quotes not only have no ill will toward the idea (Cass immediately states it's not an issue AND notes how common it is behind closed doors), but two of them are mentioned in a context of longing: Veronica's quote is immediately followed by her being angry that only men are allowed to be gay, wishing the same for lesbians. Major Knight's quote is in the context of him having to hide his homosexuality at work -- which sadly makes it clear that the propaganda was likely more effective in general than on the one straight character who mentions it.

I'd say it's funny that OP has a hatred of Cass for being homophobic despite being one of the few characters in-game who makes an explicit statement of not having a problem with homosexuality (I for one would've loved to see Boone - the biggest NCR bootlicker around - make his stance clear on the matter). But admittedly it IS tactless and clumsy to make a backhanded comparison of gayness to the Legion (that statement's obvious expository purpose aside). They also read "there's a lot more of that in the Mojave" to mean "ew, it's not this bad where I come from!", but Major Knight makes it clear that where she comes from is actually MORE supportive. As well as another comment she makes about having slept with women while drunk, which OP construes as likening homosexuality to a drunken mistake.

Like, relax. Yes, "I have no problem with it" isn't the most heartfelt statement of support. But the most Cass' words betray about her is ignorance. I think it's clear she's well-meaning but ignorant, and for the most part intentionally written that way. Most of the companions have intentional personality flaws - Cass is crass, tactless, and stubborn. Arcade is an idealist to a fault (in the game's opinion). Boone is blinded by loyalty to a flawed system despite enacting the worst parts of it. Veronica talks like every line was written by Joss Whedon. The others' flaws are a little more external, but ALL of the companions are intended to be flawed and have pros and cons (while not entirely equal), and all are still intended to be well-meaning people despite this.

It reflects a realism in the nuance of human beings. In general, the writing often tends to rely on this "no black or white, ALWAYS nuance" approach to an almost frustrating degree - like I WISH you could get a better ending for the Followers in a "did everything right" Yes Man ending, even though I know the phrase "did everything right" itself goes against the core philosophy of NV. The poll thing was intended as more of a jumping-off point to talk about some stuff in New Vegas I find interesting rather than a response to that post, but honestly - I know Tumblr has a bit of a problem with seeing nuance, but have a little faith in the writers, will you?

Oh. They... think the game itself pushes the idea that "all fascists are gay"??? How can you be a fan of this game yet have such a low opinion of its writing? Such a lack of critical understanding? This person says "According to my academically trained eye..." and then goes on a series of reaches that critically misunderstand the text in a really unfavorable way, just because they were (understandably) offended by a clumsy offhand statement a character makes and immediately clarifies. And they chose to run a poll despite their open hatred for some of the characters involved (they also seem to hate Boone, for obviously more understandable reasons). Interesting choice.

What's funnier is that OP's open disdain for this character makes it more likely for Cass to win the poll on account of spite votes. Cass would've absolutely been buried by Arcade and Veronica in any other scenario.

Anyway, here's a YouTube comment I found while grabbing these quotes that I found funny:

[Transcripts of screenshotted quotes are available in the alt text]

#fallout new vegas

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lelliefant · 1 year

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If you want to know why the Loki fandom has drifted away, just look at what Disney/Marvel did to him.

He was incredibly powerful—they made him weak and helpless.

He was smarter than everyone else—they made him a fool.

He was a prince—they made him a corporate office drone. They literally put him in a cubicle.

Loki was an alien—they made him an ordinary guy.

He was flamboyant and colorful—they put him in beige. They actually made him act as if he was excited to wear a beige uniform.

The real Loki would never have tolerated a uniform of any sort, much less something so bland. He was never a soldier or a cog in the wheel. Loki is the piston.

Loki was a deeply wounded, angst-driven son with complex motivations—Disney made him an uncaring narcissist who suddenly sees the error of his ways (in one episode) and has a total personality swipe.

Loki was iconoclastic—they made him ordinary.

They took the most interesting and volatile character in the MCU and warped him into an Everyman role, and somehow everyone bought it. Apparently because they used the same actor with the same face—?

Really think about it. If another actor had started playing Loki for the series, they couldn’t have pulled it off. Series Loki is not the same character as Loki from Thor 1, Avengers 1, and Thor 2. He’s as different as the moviemakers in charge of the productions are. (The directors of Avengers 1 and Thor 2, Joss Whedon and Alan Taylor, simply had the grace and humility to take their cue from the original vision of Kenneth Branagh.)

If you don’t actually pay attention to Loki’s character, motivations, logical action, or his history, and you’re only interested in being entertained, I guess it doesn’t matter. This is just a superhero movie character, so who cares if they turned him inside out to conform with a simpler, less challenging archetype?

He’s their property, after all. They can use him however they want to. If they want to chew him up and spit him out as a naive, lovelorn mensch because that’s the Disney protagonist formula, they can and will. If they want to put him into a buddy-cop procedural, as if he were an ordinary human person whose shtick is a magic kit, they can.

A lot of you who are constantly defending the Loki Series are not really thinking about it. Maybe you’re just happy he has a show to his name. Maybe you don’t care; you just want more “content.” Maybe you don’t want someone spoiling your fun.

Maybe you think you’re being the loyal crowd by “defending” Loki. You’re not seeing that Disney did worse than kill him off—they unmade him. They put the God of Mischief into a blender with the Disney formula, audience response data, standard storytelling tropes, a limited range of plot lines, and a great deal of money, and out came this golem with Loki’s face on it.

You might revile me for saying all this because that’s easier than facing the truth or questioning the Powers That Be. There will always be people who can’t tolerate having their beliefs challenged.

I have seen nastiness on this hellsite toward people who question and protest what the majority accepts—but that’s just a reflection of the real world. It’s never going to work out well for those of us who see things differently and who don’t shut up about it. So, why do we keep annoying everyone with our dissenting opinions?

In my case it’s because I actually do care about Loki. I care enough to tell the unpopular truth, as I see it. Because, to me, Loki isn’t just an MCU character. He is representation.

He was a survivor of abuse and scapegoating by his own family. He was an outsider who defied convention and took on great challenges, despite everyone in his world trying to push him down. He shirked the role he was forced to play and chose to define himself instead. He saw the hate and scorn directed at him from all sides and laughed.

He struck out on his own into the unknown—which is incredibly hard to do, even if you had been given the support to believe in yourself.

The Loki Series did get one thing right: Loki is a survivor. He’s survived misinterpretations before, and he will survive Disneyfication. Maybe the public will tolerate a warped mischaracterization of him for a while before they lose interest, but the God of Mischief prevails. Thor1 Loki will always be there, smirking triumphantly from the shadows.

#loki #tom hiddleston #disney+ marvel #MCU #Disneyfication #actually loki #loki deserved better #loki deserves better #loki laufeyson #loki odinson #thor #avengers #kenneth branagh #alan taylor #joss whedon #anti loki series #anti disney

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beyondthisdarkhouse · 1 year

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Feeling really nostalgic about July 17-18, 2008, the last time I believed in Joss Whedon

It was just cool, you know? Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog dropped in three separate pieces over the course of the week. We'd get 15 minutes of story, and then two days to froth over the whys and wherefores in Livejournal comments before the next piece came out. And those days were so good.

Buffy fans are so fucking smart, y'all. They could combine academic rigor with unselfconscious fangirl squee. Squee was a hermeneutical method, a mode of interrogating the text--one we often dismiss and diminish, because if there's anything grosser than teenage girls getting goopy over a vampire they like, it's 30 or 50 or 70-year-old women getting goopy over a vampire they like. But it's similar to what I've seen called a "redemptive reading". You approach a piece of media specifically looking for its best parts, the pieces you love the best, and you allow yourself to fully embody the joy of liking something and caroling your joy to other people who like it too. In a perpetually burned-out time, squee can be like a desert oasis.

So the people who liked Buffy and Angel and Firefly watched Doctor Horrible in a manner both squeeful and intersectionally feminist, and saw all the amazing interesting things it was doing, showing how insecure geek masculinity fundamentally self-sabotages the main character, Billy, because the relationship he wants has been there in reach for months, and it's his own perception that he needs to be an alpha male warrior that has kept him from it. It interrogated the entire genre of costumed heroes, with two men thumping their chests and comparing their dick sizes, and none of them doing anything as direct and helpful for their society as Penny, the woman who stands on sidewalks collecting signatures to help a homeless shelter.

Part II came out on July 17, and the series would end with Part III on July 19. So on July 18, I spent most of the day reading Livejournal comments about it. There were all these theories: Maybe Penny was secretly Bad Horse, the archvillain whose approval Billy has craved since the beginning. Maybe she will collapse the love triangle with Billy's rival, Captain Hammer, by acting on her clearly-demonstrated discomfort and dumping him. Maybe Billy will learn that relationships are based on intimacy, not being The Best. Maybe Penny will become a superhero and replace Captain Hammer as Billy's nemesis. Maybe Billy will succeed and rule the world and give Penny Australia.

And then... none of those things happened. Joss Whedon ended the series in a way less progressive, less imaginative, less cool, than even the most half-baked fan theory out there. The story opened up possibilities to break out of an old, tired, toxic set of stories around men and women and sex and heroics, and then hid under a rock rather than change a single one of them.

July 19 was the day I concluded that while Joss Whedon might have his own baggage to work through about toxic masculinity, and artists have the right to make work meaningful to them, he wasn't making art that was meaningful to me. And I basically stopped expecting anything of him.

And then, for years, Buffy fans, educated and squeeful feminists and sharp pop culture critics, got told they were crazy histrionic SJWs for thinking Whedon didn't shit solid gold. For years. (I recently saw a video essay that included the line, "If you have the phrase 'mewling quim' branded onto your memory, you probably need some Metamucil" and, ouch, rude.)

There was so much excitement! A lot of us actually believed in the guy (although even then, there was enough evidence for many people to suspect what we now know to be 100% true about him.)

We wanted it to be good. We wanted to enjoy it.

I miss that feeling.

#joss whedon tw #dr horrible's sing along blog

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canonmisogynyvictimstournament · 9 months

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Now that submissions are closed, we can talk stats. There were 881 valid, unique submissions for 474 characters! Woof, women have it rough out there!

The most submitted characters, with a relevant propaganda snippet included, are:

1. Sakura Haruno (Naruto): 28 [where do i even fucking begin]

2. Cordelia Chase (Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel): 21 [OH SO MANY THINGS]

3. Misa Amane (Death Note): 20 [The author of Death Note invented new forms of misogyny just to apply them to Misa.]

4. Kaede Akamatsu (Danganronpa V3): 15 [Oh, you thought we would have a female main character in one of our mainline games? With a cool defining talent, no less? That's stupid of you]

5. TIE: Kairi (Kingdom Hearts): 14 [I'm so mad. I think she deserves a gun.]

5. TIE: Stephanie Brown (DC Comics): 14 [She does eventually get retconned as surviving the event and hiding out in Africa (don't ask, it does not make more sense in context)]

The canons with the most submissions, with a relevant propaganda snippet included, are:

1. DC Comics: 61 [DC has SO MUCH sexism it's laughable]

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: 35 [Fuck Joss Whedon, man.]

3. Naruto: 33 [because Kishimoto hates women]

4. Warrior Cats: 26 [Warriors is one of the most misogynistic children's series I've ever seen]

5. Danganronpa: 25 [I honestly had to think about it just to decide which woman is treated the worst because this series hates them so much]

The canons with the most characters submitted, with a relevant propaganda snippet for a specific character included, are:

1. DC Comics: 21 [Free her from the huge tits back breaking pose.]

2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel: 12 [Anyways she was so hot and for what. 10/10 my lesbian awakening.]

3. Supernatural: 11 [Yeah, she got randomly killed off-screen for shock value and manpain, but she sent an email right before she died so at least her death wasn't in vain, right?]

4. TIE: Star Trek: 9 [She literally gets teleported out of her clothes in one episode.]

4. TIE: Yu-Gi-Oh!: 9 [One loss is particularly brutal as she falls from a large height directly onto her head and goes into a coma (again. yes this was the second time).]

5. TIE: Warrior Cats: 8 [I'm sure she'll get submitted again just ask any reasonable fan they'll tell you about her and her sister]

5. TIE: Attack on Titan: 8 [As a child soldier, she does commit some war crimes]

And here are some charts to show how some of these entries fucked the scale on my charts:

Look at Sakura, fucking up my chart with her numbers.

On a similar note...

Good god, DC, I know what you did, but add fucking up my charts to your list of crimes.

And now, enjoy some rankings of my favorite things:

My favorite universal sentiment quotes from propaganda are:

She lived she served cunt and then she got killed off super early so that the male characters could experience man pain and also because I guess she would have been too powerful if left alive. [Wen Qing (Mo Dao Zu Shi)]

That design. Dear god. I don't want to live on this planet anymore. [Mitzi (The Queen's Corgi)]

In the end she may have girlbossed too close to the sun, but I support her anger. [Ling Wen (Heaven Official's Blessing)]

the victim of “writer doesn’t understand women and also hates them” disease. [Naomi Misora (Death Note)]

She could 100% kill somebody but nobody ever effing lets her. Rip queen. [Kairi (Kingdom Hearts)]

My favorite raging at a writer quotes from propaganda are:

1. You took every single protagonist to weird lion heaven, Clive, but suddenly Susan isn't good enough. [Susan Pevensie (The Chronicles of Narnia)]

2. Being a woman written by Joss Whedon should automatically entitle her to financial compensation tbh. [River Tam (Firefly)]

3. A lot can be summed up in a couple words, namely, "Furman, why?" [Arcee (Transformers)]

4. Can you tell respect women juice ran in Tolstoy's veins. [Lise Bolkonskaya (War and Peace)]

5. TIE: (specifically a guy called Dan Didio, who we all hate) [Stephanie Brown (DC Comics)]

5. TIE: until Geoff motherfucking Johns comes into the picture [Pantha (DC Comics)]

My favorite quotes from propaganda that have nothing to do with misogyny, y'all are just funny:

I wish I could use bold here, because there's no such thing as uppercase numbers. [Arcee (Transformers)]

the most convoluted and lore dense piece of media this side of the afton criticality. [Jane Crocker (Homestuck)]

ended up starting a gang war by accident [Stephanie Brown (DC Comics)]

Ashfur, who later turns out to be a murderous incel [Squirrelflight (Warrior Cats)]

Hawkfrost is actively seeing Brambleclaw and his evil father in cat hell. [Squirrelflight (Warrior Cats)]

#not polls #stats

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catbountry · 10 days

Text

It's been a year since the premiere of Trigun: Stampede. The series, despite the fears of the fans of the '98 anime, actually turned out really good; Yasuhiro Nightow is a big superhero comics nerd, and wanted to have this new anime adaption be an adaption similar to the adaptions of the MCU, back when those movies were consistently enjoyable, and I daresay a bunch of the people watched Trigun probably were either already anime fans, or they were nomad fans who may have been really into the MCU at one point.

I have a lot of thoughts on an American perspective on Vash the Stampede as a character, with a lot of comparisons to American comic book superheroes. And while Trigun wasn't my first anime, I was hooked on it, as someone who grew up around Batman and Spawn's 90's popularity. During my first Otakon in 2001, I must have seen a dozen Vash's and Wolfwoods. I remember the year there was a Wolfwood cosplayer whose Punisher gun was shaped like the Star of David instead of a cross, making him a rabbi. That shit was amazing. The larger point is that I've loved this character for more than half of my entire time being alive, and I haven't seen a lot of discussion of Trigun viewed from a more political lens, and why it resonates so much with Americans (or at least me, who is an American) in particular

Buckle up, kids, this is gonna be long and rambly.

There was a period of time where I watched nearly every single new MCU movie in the theater. It was exciting seeing adaptions of comic books that would have probably never gotten a movie before the success of The Avengers. And I don't think it's a mistake that the most comic book-y of the movies are usually the best; Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel remain as probably my favorite MCU movies. Nightow was working directly with the studio making a new Trigun anime and reportedly got the crew to watch a bunch of Marvel movies to set the tone for the anime as an adaption; it's why Vash got a completely new redesign that freaked all us old fans the fuck out. Though it appears that once again, Trigun tried and failed to get that massive Japanese audience that most successful anime have. But boy, oh boy, do us westerners fucking love Trigun, especially us Americans. Nightow's love of superhero comics bled into Trigun, and it just so happened that he was incredibly influenced by Spawn, Hellboy and Batman as much as he was influenced by Akira Toriyama and mechanical art. McFarlane Toys released a Vash figure that is McFarlane'd the fuck up. Nightow loves all superhero comics but especially the Blade trilogy.

Just look at this and imagine being 13 years old and seeing this on a screen for the first time with the instrumental hard rock opening.

Also, I wouldn't actually get around to reading Spawn until I was an adult, but you know what? It's pretty good. The writing is definitely weaker than the art, but holy shit, that art goes hard and I still think that shit's cool as fuck.

As stated before, around the early 2000's Trigun was considered peak anime, though it's been more overlooked in recent years in favor of Cowboy Bebop, an anime that has aged gracefully by comparison. But while Bebop has that sort of timeless cool and level of quality that drew the attention of filmmakers like the Wachoski sisters, Trigun has that very specific kind of adolescent sense of coolness that comic book fans get, especially back in the 90's before this sort of thing would be smothered to death by MCU's Joss Whedoning of superheroes. Spawn, Hellboy and Batman are still cool. And Trigun also has a shitton of guns, obviously, given that Vash being an incredibly OP gunslinger in a world where everybody has guns.

And America loves guns.

I think the contrast of Vash's pacifism while still wielding a gun is extremely interesting because it's not something you see very much (I bet if I watched more westerns, I'd have a better idea if this is a trope in them at all). Batman does not use guns and doesn't kill people, which is why there's still discourse around Tim Burton's Batman films to this day still; I don't think Kevin Smith has budged on this. Other more morally grey superheroes will use guns (by this definition I'm counting The Punisher even if he doesn't have any superpowers, unless you count severe PTSD as a superpower). And a lot of them had huge surges in popularity in the 90's around the time Nightow was making Trigun. Vash posed like Batman or Spider-Man looking brooding (like the gif above) happens a lot in the earlier issues even though that's not really his character.

Several years ago, there was an attempt by a conservative thinktank to discredit a bunch of Hollywood actors saying that gun violence in America is a serious issue and contrasted their statements scenes of them shooting guns in movies, but if we're being real here, gunplay in movies can be really fucking cool. Again I invoke The Matrix, or movies by Robert Rodriguez and John Woo. Look at video games, and compare the decline in violent crime that's been happening here since the 70's and 80's, as culture warriors bemoan movies and video games for becoming more violent. Remember when Wayne LaPierre, vice president of the NRA, brought up fucking Splatterhouse as a reason why Sandy Hook happened? Do you know what Splatterhouse looks like?

It looks like this.

You know how these guys constantly say the only way to counter a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun? Usually, the inference is that if the "good guy" with a gun shoots, he's shooting to kill. Deadpool and the Punisher would shoot to kill. But Vash is constantly trying to avoid it. And I remember as a teenager finding that really cool? And the manga and anime don't shy away from how impractical Vash's pacifism is. It's a bit more realistic than Steven Universe's ending, but also Steven Universe was made for children.

I know Avatar: The Last Airbender is often invoked when criticizing Steven Universe's philosophy, but I haven't really seen Vash's similar philosophy criticized in the same way, and I think a lot of that has to do with the presence of Wolfwood, who is the "I think we're gonna have to kill this guy" guy. I'm honestly surprised I haven't seen art of this yet. I may have to get on that. I already drew Vash horrified at the Trolley Problem.

Vash is a character designed with maximum coolness in mind, but also an overpowered being who is capable of killing millions, and in the anime, he somehow destroys July City without killing anyone directly, but the destruction of the city led to a bunch of people dying. He's so deeply committed to not wanting to kill anyone that he's probably killed more people than he would have if he just shot Knives. The best Batman stories acknowledge that Batman's refusal to kill Joker has similarly results in the deaths of people Batman could have prevented if he killed one guy, and this could also apply to Vash's relationship with his brother Knives, who was kind of destined to be a mass murderer with a name like that, let's be real.

Online, we tend to joke about bringing out the guillotines, or justify not feeling an sympathy for billionaires who die in a sub trying to view the Titanic. But if you were given a gun and a real human person begging for their life, what would you actually do? Do you honestly think that you would be the ethical Death Note user?

Vash has guns but he chooses not to kill people; he prefers to not even use them unless he has to, instead opting to run away and look cool doing it somehow.

He really, really doesn't want to kill people. He doesn't become numb to people dying. It hurts him every single time he watches someone get killed. In reality, most of us that aren't sociopaths would be distressed at the thought of killing someone. The only reason armies in real life work is that they become inoculated to the idea of violence and dehumanize the enemy. Vash is no soldier. He is idealistic, he is empathetic, and he sees every human being as a person worthy of life. Batman refuses to use guns, as that's how his parents were killed in front of him. Vash has to use guns in order to protect people from getting killed. He has the ethics of Superman but the tools of a comic book antihero. He's the logical conclusion of an shonen anime protagonist in a world that chews up anyone with that kind of optimism and hope and spits them out. And yet... he still keeps going. He remains committed. He's still cheery, goofy, lovable Vash.

Batman used to kill people, in the earliest comics. With the Comics Code Authority, no superheroes could kill people. In the 80's, comics were getting darker and edgier, taken more seriously. While Alan Moore's Watchmen delved into the moral complexities in a world with superheroes that was similar to ours, Frank Miller was keeping Batman consistent, even as Gotham got darker and uglier.

Batman is a vigilante. The police can be helpful or they can fuck up everything, depending on what's needed for the story. In Batman Year One, there's a scene where Batman crashes a party attended by the elites of Gotham, politicians and mobsters mingling.

Seeing this during the Bush presidency blew my mind. I don't want to get into just how perfectly the members of his administration seemed to resemble a rogue's gallery of sorts with the shared goals of making a lot of money and bombing the shit out of Iraq and Afghanistan. I was extremely anti-war even before the 2000 election as a very opinionated 14 year-old watching, Jon Stewart on The Daily Show and feeling relieved that a grown-up was able to see through all the bullshit; it helps when the guy who's against the war and killing people is funny. I remember writing in my diary at 12 years old after Columbine happened that I wanted to take all of the guns and melt them down in a pot, similarly to that scene in Superman IV where he throws the entire world's nuclear arsenal into the sun. But also that same year I would fall in love with The Matrix... and not long after that, Trigun.

Again, we come back to the idea of someone using a gun, a weapon designed to kill people, and using it in pursuit of the exact opposite. That resonated with me. I myself was very idealistic, and the political climate of my teenage years seemed to do almost everything to stamp that out of me. Things feel just as fraught two decades later, but in slightly different ways. Pacifism is looked down upon, as indicated by the backlash to the ending of Steven Universe, and how one crazy lady called Rebecca Sugar, a Jewish person, a Nazi for writing it that way. But for Steven, things worked out. For Vash? Well, he still has hope somehow, despite everything. I think the fact that he strives to protect human life, even when someone is a complete monster, is admirable in that it cuts to the very basic desire to not see people hurt. But we're also selfish, and scared, and sometimes it's hard to conceive of a solution to a problem that doesn't involve violence. Seeing dead bodies on TV or the internet upsets us, but we're often paralyzed by feeling like we can't do anything, and even if we tried, we'd likely perish in the attempt. We desire revenge, punishment for those who transgress by inflicting violence, and we can rationalize using it against the right targets. Vash the Stampede would have a fucking breakdown dealing with the state-backed violence that's been a part of geopolitics pretty much as long as there have been states and geopolitics. Vash would try and solve the bombings of Gaza with an impassioned plea for both sides to stop fighting before he would somehow wind up making things worse and it would eat away at him inside, no matter how brave a face he puts on as he tries to find some kind of hope in a hopeless situation. And... you know what? I kind of wish more people would be like that. Maybe if there were enough people like that, these sorts of things wouldn't happen in the first place. I wish more people could look at human suffering and feel compelled to try and stop it, not discriminating against one side or the other, trying to understand why people are doing what they do. Seeing anti-war protestors in Tel Aviv brings back memories of protests against the start of the War on Terror, and how hated America was internationally during those years, even when most Americans approved of the war. Michael Moore was booed at the Oscars for condemning George W. Bush and the War on Terror. It's terrifying that those in power want us killing each other and have conditioned us to support it. I want so badly for human beings to come together to just stop the violence, but it feels impossible, like we're destined for failure, like we might somehow make things worse or become worse versions of ourselves full of hatred and ugliness. But we should want to try, even if it's hard or unprofitable or we have no idea how to even do it. Somebody actually dedicating themselves to trying to fight our violent impulses out of love is appealing, and if they're more powerful than use, and can do more... well, I want the biblically accurate angel with every mental illness willing to martyr himself over and over again. But it is more fun when he's Bugs Bunny about it.

#political bullshit #trigun #comics #tl;dr #not fanfiction #I am high right now I hope this still makes sense when I'm sober

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