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maariarogers · 3 years

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Thoughts on True Beauty and Why I’m On Team Suho

Ever since the tv show started, I’ve begin thinking and noticing for a while now that, more than anything, I’m more #TeamSuho than I am #TeamSeojun.

And the thought of “why do I think like that?” kept repeating in my head, because, if I’m honest, the casualness that Seojun and Jugyeong shared early in the series (I’m talking webtoon and, truth be told, a bit of the tv series) really struck me as them having a much easier and playful, therefore fun, relationship. Which makes for an interesting dynamic than what Jugyeong had with Suho.

So, here are my thoughts why I think I prefer Suho with Jugyeong towards the end.

To warn, this is, firstly, have nothing against any of the characters or the ships! I’m merely sharing an in-depth analysis of my thoughts on my own view why I prefer Suho with Jugyeong. Secondly, I’ll be referencing a lot of the webtoon rather than the tv series (although I feel like I’d like to spill my thoughts on that soon, so I don’t know if that long analysis of “why I surprisingly find myself enjoy the adaptation more than I thought I would” is coming soon, buuuut yeah, we’ll see) so, please be aware of spoilers.

As reference, I’m currently at Chapter 124 of the English-translated version of True Beauty as I’m writing this, but I am aware of spoilers ahead of the chapters.

Another Warning: This is so long. Oh my god. How did I manage to write it this long? So. There’s that.

Okay. So. What brought this on?

Honestly, it was just the excitement from knowing that True Beauty was airing soon and I was just so interested to see the dynamics the actors were going to play out rather than just seeing the characters across the a page screen in comic strips as I’ve been following them since I stumbled into the webtoon about, yikes, a year ago?

But – more than anything, I just really wanted to see how Suho played out.

1. So, What’s The Deal With Suho?

If I’m honest, I’ve always thought that Suho is laughably (yikes) boring. Not necessarily in a bad way, no! I actually think it’s one of the things that’s made him quite appealing — in ways that, in other settings, I would have actually found him uninteresting and easily passable as a main lead. But not in this particular world.

To add: the Author also referenced this many, many times throughout the webtoon. Quite brilliantly, in fact — specifically, from Sua’s point of view, as she points out quite a few times that, besides from Suho’s looks, “he’s really got nothing going on for him” or that “he’s boring”. (I frickin’ love Sua in both the webtoon and tv show!)

This was also a really important plot device during the Prince of Princes (Did I get this name right? Omg) competition TV show when the influencer (again, I really can’t be bothered with what’s-his-name) actually called Suho out for basically “not trying his best” when everybody else was clearly giving his all. This triggered Suho to actually act outside of his comfort zone and actually wanted to pose for a sexy photoshoot.

I do also honestly think he’s clinically depressed on top of just having had naturally adapted a much calmer composure to compare with an easily expressive Jugyeong and a very charismatic Seojun. But the thing is, the author really made Suho “boring” on purpose — and the best thing is? It works.

Because as much as Suho is “expressionless” — as in, he doesn’t really emote whatever his feelings as honest or as obvious as the other two leads — he can still carry his character well. Like Jugyeong has learned over time, we start to figure out that, oh, Suho has to put his act together because his father’s famous and he doesn’t want to tarnish that reputation. He’s ruthless to admirers because he’s logical about rejecting unwanted advances. He’s surprisingly rigid and slightly cold, but only because he’s used to only have himself as company.

In all honesty, I’m still trying to wrap my head around Suho. I still don’t quite understand why I’m so fascinated by his personality when, if those sort of “dark brooding” tropes were played in other medias, I would have rolled my eyes and rejected it instantly for how much it’s overplayed.

But I didn’t. Not with Suho.

Perhaps, an angst-lover at heart, his unrequited relationship with Jugyeong really struck with me. His patience when he’s obviously hurting as Jugyeong dismissed their almost-romance, or when Seojun and her were being lovey-dovey in front of him was really incredible. Suho rarely lost his composure, which was quite a feat considering as readers we know he still has lingering feelings towards Jugyeong, and I felt like that spoke volume about his character.

(Besides that, Suho was always so incredibly respectful — not only towards Jugyeong but also towards Seojun. Seojun obviously learned it much later on, but Suho never once carried any ill-intention when he learned Seojun and Jugyeong were together. In fact, again and again, he congratulated and cheered them on, even when we knew later that he feels awful for the lost chances. Still, Suho never acted violently or aggressively. Not once. It was only Seojun who had easily misunderstood him and thus, reacted badly.)

(Although again, that’s so brilliant on the author — because Seojun’s quick-temper is such a staple and big part of what made Seojun Seojun. I’m happy that he acted that way, because that meant his characteristics are consistent from when we first saw him in the webtoon. Of course, that doesn’t mean the temper in and of itself is always good, but — it’s realistic for him.)

2. So, Why Jugyeong and Suho?

Now, this is the part where it gets tricky.

A lot of the fans — some of which are my own friends, and people I knew — abandoned the webtoon because the drama has gotten “tacky” or Jugyeong’s growth has been “stunted” for a few chapters. I can’t say I totally disagree, because I do see there’s quite a lag in the plot, buuuuuuut.... I do feel like the author adds that in on purpose.

Of course! I might be wrong! But hear me out.

I think it’s on purpose because it wants to show the development of Seojun and Jugyeong’s relationship – and why it didn’t work. (Again, anything can happen; I’m only at Ch124, so things might still change for Team Seojun!) Of course, for all those who are aware of the spoilers, the answer was simple: they didn’t work because the agency asked Jugyeong to stop dating Seojun due to his rising status as an idol.

It’s more than that, though.

I’ve also been reading a few comments and some of them pointed out how they thought that Jugyeong has always seemed more relaxed and more playful when she’s with Suho than she is when she’s with Seojun. But... I do have to slightly disagree. Only slightly. Because, if we review the arc during their high school when Jugyeong liked Suho, she was obviously more comfortable and were able to tease and be more playful with Seojun — but she was a little guarded with Suho, which was understandable. She didn’t want to look bad in front of her crush.

I’ve always felt a little threatened at this point because, man, Seojun and Jugyeong’s chemistry was so, so good during this arc. I love Seojun, I really do. He is such a nice and considerate man in ways that I really didn’t think he could be when we saw him as a teenager — but the author really pulled him off well. And he’s so sweet, too? So loyal? Ugh.

The downside is, though — he doesn’t push Jugyeong.

More than that, their relationship (perhaps because they were each other’s first true, committed relationship) really caused each other massive anxiety. Jugyeong wasn’t really honest all the time due to this — not her feelings and not her concerns, and Seojun became an unnecessarily worry-wart even when he shouldn’t be. This had, several times, led him to become inconsiderably possessive i.e. during the time he fought with Suho when Suho had only wanted to help.

Of course, they sort the issue out in the end and Seojun started to reform himself to be an even better partner. But... you can tell, in a lowkey sort of way, that the good-feeling they had when they were just friends, it isn’t really there anymore. They don’t really have fun together. (Although maybe that’s just because Seojun became busy and/or the author skip most of their dates along, so — I might be biased a bit regarding this!)

But with Suho, even as friends, Suho has always pushed Jugyeong — more than just about her bare face, he pushed her to pursue what she wants to do. Not only that, he encouraged it; he helped her.

Which is why I think the plot became slightly stagnant in the moment: because, like Jugyeong, we’re focusing too much on her relationship with Seojun and what would it mean when Seojun became an idol. We’re carried along with her anxiety, with their upside down, with Jugyeong’s worries. We’re stuck in Jugyeong’s first relationship — and that’s it.

But with Suho, the plot moves: Suho pushes Jugyeong to study, Suho talks to her about her ambitions, Suho makes her confronts her fears, and one of the best parts of the series so far — when Suho was consulting her after Selena scolded Jugyeong for messing up on set — Suho recognised what she wants to do, what she likes to do, and he encourages her for it. He comforts her, and tells her to not give up. So now, we see her wanting to try her best in wanting to help Selena.

With Suho, I feel as if... Jugyeong’s focus grows more than just her being upset about one single relationship. Suho’s calamity and logic straightforwardness probably helps — it doesn’t cause as much anxiety as Suho’s relatively honest, which Jugyeong can depend on and seems to explicitly trust — and Jugyeong’s story, once again, grows to be more than just another love story.

It’s become a story of her trying to find a place in the world again, of her trying to figure out what exactly she can do for herself despite all these obstacles and hurdles.

I’m not saying with Seojun, she doesn’t go through any character development at all, no — but her focus tends to single-handedly narrow towards Seojun directly and their relationship, and it leaves very little for Jugyeong to really consider anything else, specially her own growth, which is equally important.

With Suho, she’s just able to do that a bit better, and we can see she’s slightly more comfortable too.

(And, before anybody comes at me, yes, I do think Jugyeong pushes Suho too. She literally recommends Suho books that he doesn’t seem he was going to read anytime soon, or he could’ve overlooked it easily — but she does that. She pushes him out of his comfort zone and suggested a new author / series. And Suho reads it, and he learns that he likes it. It’s the same when she recommends the music app. Or the hairdo. She’s always been a giant force pushing Suho forward; Suho’s always trying to change and/or improve himself when Jugyeong comes in.)

3. Conclusion

This is sooo long so I thank you if you’ve made it this far! I’m just really, really happy with the TV series and these thoughts about why I adore Suho have been nagging at me.

I hope everyone likes the full analysis of my messy thoughts as much as I enjoyed writing it fully on a whim at 1am.

#True Beauty #Lee Suho #Team Suho #teamsuho #suho x jugyeong #meta #true beauty meta

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dana-chan-the-control-brain · 3 years

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Thoughts on, Invader Zim Quarterly: Holiday Special

WEEEE WISH YOU A MERRY JINGLY WE WISH YOU A MERRY JINGLY!

Ahhhhh It’s out! I’m so excited!

But I always get excited when it has my man Membrane and my man Eric Trueheart involved with the comics.

Also santa.. Tbh, I was excited and nervous about this quarterly.

Excited because it has Membrane santa backstory...

But I was nervous because that it means they might bring back the santa-blob monster from the Holiday special on the TV... and The Christmas special is one of my least favorite IZ episodes... I mean... I rewatch it occasionally, and it’s fun, but I’m just kinda used to IZ having more BITE in it’s satire if you know what I mean? The Christmas Special in the IZ universe doesn’t really say anything about the capitalism of Christmas... it’s not like IZ hasn’t made fun of capitalism before. (that’s the whole show) The Christmas Special in the show just kinda fell flat of my expectations of what an Invader Zim episode should be....

The only thing I respect the Holiday Special for, is that it goes down the “Santa isn’t real” route in a kid’s show and sticks to it. (there’s no “real santa” that shows up and “solves everything”) All of the “Santa’s Helpers” confused the Santa mythos with the Christianity Jesus mythos. (”waiting one day for his return”) Which makes sense, since IZ is like dystopian future Suburbia Hell. I just kinda like that there’s no “real santa” that interfered to “fix everything” and that Zim himself ended up CREATING Santa when he didn’t exist previously. Like I find that kinda cool...

Other then that, I just kinda wanted something else from the Hoilday special then what I got. (It taking priority over scrapped episodes like “the trail” and “Ten minutes to doom” and “mopiness of doom” does not help it’s case in being one of my C-tier episodes...)

So maybe this quarterly will fill the void of what I wanted out of a Holiday special? Well, let’s see.

SPOILERS FOR THE QUARTERLY BELOW THE CUT

Ways to get Dana off-board immediately: Monster Santa is canon.

I always never liked to view the special as canon for ways that it fell flat before.

And I had the excuse of saying that the snowman was an unreliable narrator and I could adapt it down the line in my fic as a different story.

I just didn’t like the idea of Monster-horror-blob santa... Like... Cool design... but he just kinda represents everything I disliked about the special... (including the major inconsistency of when Tak’s ship got fixed...)

But then again.. I need to remember IZ’s lore isn’t as consistent as I think it is sometimes...

Okay, fine. Monster blob santa real... what else you got for me, Holiday special?

FACE HUGGER SANTA! FACE HUGGER SANTA! I AM NOT INTO IT!

WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT?! NO. DANA HATES THIS!

Okay, kinda into it because this means that ZIM CREATED SANTA in this mythos... I am dying.... wait.. this takes place in the future then...soo...?

haoFhaGHAOhfgg

It was all a dream?!

GOOD.

my heart couldn’t take it if horror-santa was real...

Also... that nightcap and bed... Does this mean we’re going to have an Invader Zim Christmas Carol?!?!?! I know that’s been adapted a schmillion times but I would be so into that....

Also... Flying... hamm...

Good ol’ Zim... Repressing those memories...

Also this being the THIRD ETF reference in a quarterly, It can be very safe to say the Quarterly issues take place after the events of ETF.

Clembrane exists in the Quarterly, Membrane has robot arms, Zim remembers this (kinda) Yeah this is definately ETF verse and it’s here to stay.

Christmas Carol?! I’m down for this... and I can’t help but notice their claws look familiar

OH HOLY HELL I WAS RIGHT! THESE GUYS! I LOVE THESE GUYS?!

Why are you here tho?

I’m a bit lost on why these guys wanta take over the earth, but they’re hilarious so I’m just glad they’re here.

Also... The Christmas Special is Schrodinger's Christmas... did it happen, or was it a dream, or the tales of a lunatic snowman... I guess I’ll never know.

The issue goes on for an IZ Christmas Carol parody (heck yea) and the visions are all hilarious and I’m not gonna spoil them here... but...

Eric.... this is terrifying..........thanks I hate it.

TINY DIB THOUGH! GHAOGHAHGAHAHA

THIS IS GREAT

THE MORE DIB SUFFERS THE MORE I LOVE IT!

“Though I am Dib and sickly father”

I’m dying XDDDDD

Also... What the fuck is Zim’s reaction here...

I find it funny that Zim has put Dib into simulated realities before... (in the show and comics) and in the show, Dib is all powerful and in the comics, Dib is just himself and Zim is his brother..

But seeing a simulated Dib all weak and pathetic and chronically ill BOTHERS ZIM?!?!

That’s... well that’s interesting.

Thought he’d laugh at this honestly, but he seems greatly annoyed...

I CHANGED MY MIND! THIS IS THE BEST THING!

(those who know me know why I’m dying over this)

YES!!!

ZIM DOESN’T LIKE WHEN PEOPLE FEEL BAD FOR HIM OR PITY HIM!

(which confirms like a lot of my hcs and adds spicy kindling to my au much mad respect)

This I find interesting... Zim complepative over his lonely/abandoned grave. It’s like he really doesn’t know how to feel. It’s more of a numbness then a sadness. Or he noticed how empty his life is...

He feels lonely and empty about it... which tracks considering how Zim’s greatest fear in the Trial was to be deleted and never be remembered by anyone.

I don’t know... This panel makes me feel things...

Johnen: Haha. Zim’s not that deep a character.

Eric: Hey for the Christmas special, let’s have Zim parody a Christmas carol and feel lonely staring at his own empty grave when he realizes no one cares about him or misses him.

Johnen: Cool. Do it.

What are you two assholes doing to me, man?! I have feelings!

AND ONCE AGAIN!

Zim hates pity and people feeling bad and sorry for him.

Man this makes me so sad... And it really feels like this issue looked into my brain again, cause I have some plans relating to Zim not wanting sympathy or pity from anyone later down the line (okay I’ll shut up about my au. We’re talking Zim here)

And of course, Zim breaks everything like he usually does. (this time on purpose)

Also nice callback that Zim remembered that Dib said he liked his boots one time in the Poop-wizard issue.

Also, it ends? I guess this quarterly has a few shorter stories this time... which I’m fine with.

Also, Zim should consider Green and Blue like D-list friends at this point and just invite them in for some fundip or something (come on, Zim, it’s Christmas.....)

GASP!?!?!

LITTLE MEMBRANE!!!

AND GRANDPARENTS CONFIRMED!!!

Wait... so his Parents are scientists too? Is that why he always wanted to be a scientist?

But then wait.... If Membrane inherited Membrane Labs from his parents... Why is HIS FACE the brand of the Company?..... There’s so much Membrane-face brand merch in the show. (it decorates his home..)

Like even if they were dead, if his parents founded Membrane labs, I feel they’d still be the face. of the company... (that’s how a lot of corporate faces are these days... they show some old dead guy who made the company as opposed to the son who inherited the Company.... Like everyone knows who Walt Disney/Mickey Mouse is, but unless you pay close attention to that kinda thing, not everyone knows who the current chairman or CEO is in the modern age....)

I just find that a bit odd.

Anyways... I feel people can still do what they want with Membrane’s parents and get away with it. I’m not changing my “his parents were farmers” headcanon. Sorry comic..

BUT I LOVE THEIR DESIGNS.

I love how Membrane looks a lot like his mother, and his father is just BUFF GAZ with a pipe.... Truely legends.

GASP!!!

COLLEGEBRANE COLLEGEBRANE COLLEGEBRANE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOOKOUT DIB, THIS IS YOUR FUTURE!

I FUCKING LOVE HOW OILY HE LOOKS.. AND IT ADDS UP CAUSE...

The Membrane Men when they don’t shower or bathe in months.....

Someone help these two.

(thank god Membrane got better at personal hygiene.)

Also Teenbrane STILL has his human arms and not his robo-arms.

This means he loses his arms later in life... YUSH HORRAY FOR HEADCANNONS BEING VALIDATED!

He didn’t lose his arms in a shark accident when he was a KID! It happened WAY LATER!

NICE!

OH MY GOD HE IS BABY!

HE IS SO SHY AND ACKWARD! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

I LOVE HIM!

He is just... all sweat and hiding his work but also very passionate and spiteful.

Like you can see who he grew up to become, and you can also see how a kid like Dib came out of a man like him...

But I love social anxiety awkward early twenties/late teens Membrane... He is a baby!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

MEMBRANE ;w;

Basically, Membrane knows that Santa isn’t real, but he doesn’t want to be mad at his parents so he harbors a grudge on Santa instead... THAT’S SO SWEET I’M CRYING TTmTT

LIKE THAT IS SO SWEET AND I’M CRYING!

(also I love how me and Ceph understand Membrane’s character too well that the gesture he does in the 2nd panel here are reminisant of our fic so many times... Like we have his mannerisms down and I love when the mask slips from Membrane and we get to see a real person... augh soo good)

WHO GAVE THEM THE RIGHT TO MAKE MY MAN THIS SAD?! ONLY I CAN MAKE HIM SAD!

MEMBRANE TTMTT

AUUUGHH

Also probably guessing the parents are dead... I’m just laughing at their designs...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Yes you are, Professor Membrane... Don’t let anyone tell you different. (actually, please do) Well, I mean, At least you’re trying and get progressively better.

(also... this probably means everytime Dib has asked his Dad for a dangerous weapon to fight Zim with, Membrane just gives it to him no questions asked and I’m doing a MAJOR concern about this man’s parenting skills... get help please good sir!)

Also, Dib really saved the day again here (like he did in Dib’s big day)

Dib called about destroying santa when Membrane was in one of his lowest points... He hides it really well... Especially from his children..

Ah.. I loved that one.

But I’m a huge Membrane Simp though.

I did find the stuff about Membrane’s parents a little weird... like I said regarding how Membrane’s face is the brand of Membrane labs...

Could be true that they were other scientists and that Membrane founded Membrane labs later... but that seems highly unlikely...

Also... Why does the house look that hug when in the christmas special, it looked kinda like...well... just not that, and kinda more humble from the interior and not some big rocket lab...

So yeah... AMAZING character building for Membrane (which I eat up)

Hilarious Grandparent Designs. But I still prefer @esthyradler ‘s Grandparents. The superior Grandparents.

Anyways... The Quarterly was GREAT!

I kinda find it funny the Zim story is the weaker one of the two again... But I honestly blame the Christmas Horror blob connection and the Christmas Carol parody.

Or maybe my Membrane Bias is clouding my mind here. I do have Zim bias but sometimes Zim can frustrate me. There’s just so many times Zim can do and say the same things you know? Zim is my baby, but sometimes his denial and annoyance with everyone can be very predictable at points. Zim was just way more fun in the last quarterly than this one.

With Membrane it’s more of a blank slate what to do with him cause he ony started really mattering as a character since ETF. Yes, I do love show Membrane, but I admit he wasn’t exactly a character then. More of a presence and excuse for why Dib had access to lab equipment. With Dib’s Dilemma and this Hoilday special, the Quarterly folks seem determined to turn him into a fully realized character with the rest of the cast and I’m extremely excited to hear that!

(Computer issue/backstory WHEN?!)

I don’t really have ratings or systems for these but hope you liked my thoughts.

Merry Christmas everyone.

#Invader Zim #invader zim quarterly #IZ comics #IZ comics Spoilers #danachan's rants #Professor Membrane

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chalkrevelations · 3 years

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WELL. Episode 3 of Word of Honor.

First of all: If you are NEW or JUST VISITING, this is a re-watch, so there are SPOILERS not just for this ep, but for the ENTIRE SHOW. A lot of them, actually. Scroll away and come back later if you haven’t seen all 36.5 eps and want to watch it unspoiled.

So, this ep feels a little disjointed. I don’t think it actually is, not in the way the back nine are a speedrun where the writing starts to feel like it’s thisclose to coming off the rails, but it feels like it, in that we’re now getting a double handful of threads thrust at us that are only just starting to be woven together into a plot, and it’s the kind of hot mess that any fiberwork looks like before the pattern starts to show itself, particularly when you’re using 15 different color threads from jump. There’s generally a major theme or issue or overriding concept that stands out to me in each ep that, you may have noticed, gets primacy of place in these reactions, but honestly, y’all, I really struggled to figure out what that might be for this episode, because a lot of this, on re-watch, strikes me as groundwork for later developments. Wen Kexing gives us an “as you know, Bob” speech about the Amory and the Glazed Armor, we meet approx. 3.2K new characters, and I feel sort of like I should start keeping a chart of who’s supposed to have a piece of the Glazed Armor and who actually does have a piece of the Glazed Armor, but it’s already so confusing that it might be too late.*

ANYWAY, on re-watch, I can absolutely see the value of spending Eps 1 & 2 on introducing us to Zhou Zishu and Wen Kexing and getting us pulled into their orbit, because then we have scenes we’re already invested in to maintain our interest as the background politics begin to frustratingly play out with a bunch of people we don’t know or have any investment in yet. I mean, y’all. I forgot just what an ill-tempered gremlin ZZS was in these early eps. He is so fk’n put out that these people will not let him drink himself to death in the gutter in peace! Or, you know, in occasional Nightly Nails Torment. And the exasperation from both ZZS and Chengling over WKX’s antics – both of their faces are priceless in the scene when they discover he’s the one who’s bought out all the rooms at the inn. I literally lol’d. Again. Even knowing it was coming. All of this interaction is so delightful. This is actually the ep that provoked my very first WoH keysmash flailing Tumblr post and inaugurated the “wen kexing’s thirst is practically a third character” tag. I guess the biggest throughline for this ep is that we can continue to see how everything changes when we know about their previous relationship – things like WKX’s insistence that they have a “deep bond through fate” take on additional layers of meaning rather than just sounding like some dude who’s trying to pick you up at last call. Interesting that ZZS describes WKX at one point during their push-pull conversational dance as “like a wretched soul that keeps haunting around.” You mean, like a GHOST? Like a Ghost Valley ghost? Like the almost forgotten memory of a past life ghost? ZZS wants to know why WKX keeps following him around, and it would be nice if WKX would just come clean, but that would be too easy, wouldn’t it?

ZZS, re: Chengling: I do my best to ensure what was entrusted to me.

WKX: :makes (already! in ep 3!) yet another in a series of bad decisions not to say anything about the fact that he, himself, was in fact entrusted to ZZS:

Show: Here’s the first of many helpings of heartache to come. EAT IT. EAT IT ALL.

(Me: Well, here’s another AU idea: What would the course of this relationship be like if WKX flat-out asked ZZS what ZZS’s relationship to Four Seasons Manor was, and bare-faced claimed sanctuary as long-lost shidi Zhen Yan at this point? Because I bet there are plenty of ways that could actually go wrong. Not to mention the deliciousness of just watching them navigate a relationship shift that sudden. I feel like, at this point, WKX would have to be actively confrontational about it, would have to throw it in ZZS’s face – it would need to be something he did in the heat of anger, in order to have this pushed out past all of his fears. Like, you say that, but where were you when I needed you? Also, you think so, well what if your responsibility actually turned out to be the TERRIFYING GHOST VALLEY MASTER, what then, huh? And ZZS, still pretty actively suicidal over all of his failures, having to deal with what’s now being presented as YET ANOTHER FAILURE.)

Also, the theme of “knowing” (zhiji, the one I know) is starting to slide in sideways – we’re seeing a lot of back and forth between them asking about seeing the other’s “true face.” WKX says that he’ll tell ZZS what he (WKX) wants from him once he gets to see ZZS’s true face (LIES, it’s going to take a lot longer than that). ZZS asks to see WKX’s figurative true face, and WKX looks kind of sad and contemplative as he warns that it may be unappealing or terrifying. So, you know, we’re starting to poke at all the softest, most tender places and the issues that are going to stab me repeatedly in the heart for the rest of the show. We’re also already seeing the way Xiao Chu just layered in references throughout the script when she wrote it that call back to each other – it’s like almost any line of dialogue references three other lines of dialogue (and that’s without even getting into all of the literary references that I’m missing because I don’t have cultural context). You get things like WKX’s little speech right at the end that it’s hard to tell a ghost from a human, which on its face might be referring to the two “ghosts” that were coming for Chengling that he took care of and act as an admonishment to ZZS not to be so quick to assume they’re actually from Ghost Valley, but it also refers to WKX, himself, and specifically lays the groundwork (“someone wearing a ghost mask is not necessarily a ghost”) for his conversation in a later ep with ZZS when he asks if ZZS thinks he’s a good person, and also calls back (“someone who looks human may not be human”) to the line from earlier in this ep, itself, when WKX tells ZZS that perhaps WKX’s true face is terrifying. And so we get a nicely little wrapped package of the dichotomy of WKX and his issues. (As a somewhat related aside, A-Xiang’s little face when Zhou Zishu says all of the ghosts of Ghost Valley are full of evil (at 6:55). D: This reaction is obviously for herself, but also may be the first time she acts as proxy for Wen Kexing, as well.)

What else, what else?

So, nobody has a good opinion of the jianghu. WKX is going to be constantly all, “You killed my father, jianghu, prepare to die,” but ZZS also goes off about how it’s just about greed, hatred and ignorance, and yeah, I guess he’d have a pretty bad impression of it, when Prince Jin and Tian Chuang seemed like a better option than the pressure he was facing, trying to keep Siji Manor Sect alive back in the day. We talk a lot about WKX’s childhood trauma, because it’s so awful and right in our faces, but I don’t know how much we actually talk about the fact that ZZS was a teenager not much older than Chengling when he inherited a sect and tried desperately to keep it from being torn apart by the rest of the jianghu. I think we see some bitterness come out in the first few episodes – frankly, in this ep, he doesn’t seem to make much of a distinction between Ghost Valley and the rest of the jianghu. Also interesting that the metaphor he uses about the jianghu’s and Ghost Valley’s greed for the treasures of the Armory is “reaping without sowing,” given what we find out is actually in there in Ep 36.

We see our metaphor of light get pulled out again – this throughline strikes me as more like beads on a string than a thread, at this point, but maybe I’ll notice it more on this second time through … Anyway, WKX’s comment at 9:11 that it’s almost dawn is notable. Indeed, but is it because your plan is beginning to work and you can see the destruction of Ghost Valley and the jianghu coming down the pike, or is it because you’ve found your shixiong?

I notice WKX has color-coordinated ZZS and Chengling in the robes he bought for them, has already grouped them together, marked them as belonging to each other – he’s already subtly treating them as each other’s family. The show, with a particular lack of subtlety, also will have ZZS there to wake up Chengling from nightmares later in the end of the ep, as Chengling calls out for his dad in his sleep.

OK, Deng Kuan is the guy in charge of the Yueyang sect contingent that arrived in time to see the Mirror Lake chaos in Ep 2 and has taken charge of cleaning up the bodies in this ep. I actually overlooked him, pretty much, the first time around, but here, he’s already got Shen Shen yelling at him (in a completely ridiculous fashion) for not getting there in time to save the Mirror Lake Sect, so he’s just going to be a punching bag through the whole show, apparently. Shen Shen is wu-di, fifth (little) brother, and he refers to Chengling’s dad as si-ge, fourth (older) brother, so Shen Shen appears to be the youngest of the Five Lakes sworn brothers, leading me to believe that some of what makes him so insufferable through a lot of the show is baby brother syndrome. Also, Shen Shen and his group find the Soul Winding Threads of the Hanged Ghost … supposedly. I mean, the Hanged Ghost was the guy who we saw get got in Ep 1, soooooo …. (remember these Soul Winding Threads, btw).

*This got super long so I’m’a put this last bit under a cut, but I did try to start a running tally of who’s holding a piece of the Glazed Armor:

Each of the Five Lakes Alliance sects is supposed to have a piece of the Glazed Armor, yes? So, as of the end of Ep 3 (hierarchical bro-titles are from didi Shen Shen’s POV):

- Yueyang Sect, led by Gao Chong (da-ge) - presumably still has his

- Tai Hu Sect, led by Zhao Jing (er-ge) – presumably still has his

- Danyang Sect, led by Lu Taichong (san-ge, presumably) – apparently the sect has already been attacked off-screen (by “Ghost Valley?” and WHEN?), as we learn in Ep 3 that Lu-zongzhu has been killed and his remaining two tiny disciples have fled to the protection of Ao Laizi and Tai Shan Sect, one of the lesser sects, and are believed to have taken Danyang’s Glazed Armor with them. We learn this from Tao Hong, Lv Liu and Begger Gang Chief, but I notice that Gao Chong only mentions the Mirror Lake massacre as the precipitating event for the Hero’s Conference and total war on Ghost Valley – he doesn’t even mention Danyang Sect, so does Five Lakes not know about this yet?

- Mirror Lake Sect, led by Zhang Yusen (si-ge) – Zhang-zongzhu killed by “Ghost Valley” in Ep 2, Glazed Armor “missing” and speculated POST EP 2 to have been taken by Ghost Valley (but will turn up in a few eps, thanks to our little Goldbean)

- Dagu Shan Sect, led by Shen Shen (wu-di) – presumably still has his

And then we move to:

- Tai Shan Sect, led by Ao Laizi – in-world speculation is that he now has the Danyang Glazed Armor. We do see him near the end of the ep with the two tiny Danyang shidi, where he makes the intriguing comment that he’s going to follow their shifu’s last wishes and keep their Glazed Armor from falling into the hands of the Five Lakes Alliance, so what exactly was going on between San-ge and his sworn brothers at the time of his death? This group also is apparently being pursued by Shen Shen to get their Glazed Armor, and they make him sound awful. You need better PR, Shen Shen.

- Ghost Valley – POST EP 2, speculated to have taken the Mirror Lake Glazed Armor (FALSE)

NOTABLY, “Ghost Valley Master” set a lot of this chaos in motion in Ep 1 when he claimed that Hanged Ghost (who got got a scene earlier) had stolen HIS piece of the Glazed Armor, although he shouldn’t have a piece (supposedly) until after Ep 2, when he’s believed to have taken Mirror Lake’s. So, what piece would that be, exactly, Terrifying Ghost Valley Master? You wouldn’t be lying in pursuit of chaos would you? (Somewhere, WKX gasps theatrically behind his fan, and he doesn’t even know what motivated it, this time.)

#zhou zishu #wen kexing #gu xiang #zhang chengling #shen shen #deng kuan #word of honor #word of honor episode reax

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ronnie-azumane · 3 years

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Kitten?

This is something I came up with at midnight while trying to complete my numerous missing assignments. I apologize in advance

Summary: Tsukishima Kei is a mod of a discord server And with his luck, he finds his first love on the server he runs. He falls head over heels, and vows to fulfill all her needs. However, not everything is what it seems.

Tsukishima was a simple man with simple likes. Granted, However, these likes weren’t as commonplace among his peers.

Sure, he moderated a Discord Server full of people of all ages. In said server, they would play games and talk about the various shows they watched together, some of which were considered children shows.

“Anyone catch the new episode of My Little Pony?” someone on the server would ask.

Tsukishima would bat in immediately, saying, “Remember the two-week spoiler warning, everything else must be covered and properly tagged.” He was the perfect mod, as he was both online all the time he didn’t have school or practice, as well as he was a stickler for the rules. Plus, he had only recently gained access to last week’s episode not long ago, therefore, he had not seen the new episode.

Another thing he liked to do on this server was talk to others on the voice call feature. He enjoyed talking to the many people who decided to join the server, even making a couple of friends, which he refused to believe for the longest time.

One of these many friends was a user that went by the name of gamergirl05. She was a peculiar person, only logging in late at night and logging out early in the morning, only to be away from her computer until late that night again.

She intrigued Tsukishima. Not only was she one of the only girls on the server, she always seemed to be on the voice chat. She never typed messages, never spoke, unless she was spoken to on the voice call.

Her voice was soft and breathy, with a medium pitch. Her profile picture was a white cartoon cat against a pastel pink background. Sometimes, when playing videogames, you could here her grunt in frustration every once in a while.

Tsukishima couldn’t help from gaining a crush.

She didn’t seem clingy, she seemed rather chill and independent, it was like God itself sent this woman into Tsukishima’s life.

She was perfect.

Tsukishima couldn’t help but get excited whenever he saw that she was online. He would always join the voice call whenever he saw she was online.

They would have meaningful conversation. Tsukishima would learn much about her. She was living in Tokyo. She was a year older than Tsukishima; a second year in high school. She had been playing videogames for as long as she could remember. She has an overactive imagination, pretending that she was getting chased by dragons and facing checkpoints every time she walked to school in the morning. She wasn’t popular, but had a couple of close knit friends.

The more they talked, the more Tsukishima fell head over heels. However, the more he started to fall for her, the more he realized that he didn’t know how to express himself in a positive way. He was known as a negative nelly most of his life, with his relationship with the fellow members of the Karasuno volleyball club solidifying that feeling of disgust he felt toward others. Ever with his best friend Yamaguchi he was unable to show positive feelings toward, even though he didn’t feel anything negative toward his best friend.

Unknowing what to do, he looked up online ‘how to show someone you like them,’ only to come up with a website offering a free test to those wondering what their love language was. perfect.

Tsukishima took the test, answering each question as truthfully as he could, even asking his mom what she thought of him for one of the questions.

After thirty minutes of reading, understanding, and clicking, Tsukishima gat the result he was looking for- his love language.

His love language was gift-giving.

He knew exactly what to do at that point.

Later that night, he stared at the voice call box, waiting for a certain someone to join the call. At 11:00pm on the dot, gamergirl05 joined the call. Tsukishima joined the call soon after.

“Um, hey, uh, how was your day?” Tsukishima asked her.

“My day? I guess it was okay,” she replied. Her voice was still light and breathy as usual. Not too high-pitched as to make Tsukishima believe that she was fake, and not to low to make her sound unattractive to him. The perfect voice for arguably the perfect human.

“Do you have Nitro by any chance?” Tsukishima asked her.

“No, I don’t see the benefit for paying for it myself,” she replied.

“If someone got it for you, would you use it?”

“Sure, I don’t see why not.”

“I-I Don’t mid gifting it to you, if you tell me your Venmo, Ill send the money right now!”

“Ok.”

She read off a couple of letters and numbers, spelling out her Venmo for him to gift money to. Tsukishima used his mom’s credit card to send her over $50, with the unspoken promise of paying her back one day, even though she didn’t even know her youngest son stole her card.

They talked the rest of the night, until Tsukishima had to go to bed.

XxX

Tsukishima didn’t let up on his gifts to gamergirl05, or Cat as she started referring herself to. Anything she mentioned offhandedly form a new skin to a longing for a fast food meal, Tsukishima sent her the appropriate funds needed to retrieve that item.

Each monetary gift he sent on Venmo was given a reply of the kissing face emoji.

Tsukishima was over the moon. Not only was he becoming better at volleyball every day after school, but he was also getting closer and closer to Cat. When he found out that he was going to Tokyo for a training camp, he excitedly went online that night to tell cat about how he was going to be in Tokyo and that maybe they could meet up.

“Sorry, but I have plans for that weekend,” Cat said. Tsukishima sighed, but figured as much. He was disappointed, but not surprised.

However, he picked himself up by the bootstraps and packed up his stuff to go to Tokyo for the training camp.

XxX

The weekend was tough. Karasuno faced loss after loss against the Tokyo powerhouse schools. However, the team had learned a lot about both themselves and their offensive and defensive power.

After a long weekend of training, all the guys were sore. All their muscles were aching and screaming, begging for some relief. The coaches complied, supplying all the players with all the watermelon they could eat.

All the players gathered into groups, talking within each other’s friend groups. Tsukishima kept his distance from the others, with Yamaguchi joining in with them. They talked about various topics here and there, but nothing too serious.

Tsukishima was starting to zone out, thinking about Cat, and what she may or may not be doing. He hated to admit it, but he was head over heels in love, even though he had never seen Cat in a picture, much less in person.

While Tsukishima was zoning out, thinking of his unofficial lover, Hinata, Kenma, and Lev gathered nearby, talking loudly about who knows what. Tsukishima wasn’t paying attention, until the topic of discord came up. All his focus then went into listening in on this conversation.

“So you guys are on discord? What servers are you guys in?” Hinata asked.

“Not too many, I bet Kenma’s on a couple though,” Lev replied, only for Kenma to grunt in reply.

“Oh really! What servers are you on, Kenma?”

“Ehh, just a couple here and there. I frequent a My Little Pony server because a mod there gives me money a lot.”

Tsukishima felt a shock run throughout his body. A My Little Pony server? Maybe he was on the same server as him. He would never bring it up, but he was glad to know someone on the server; talking to 12-year-olds all day did get old.

“Wait, someone pays you to be on a My Little Pony server?” Lev asked.

“No, I think he is somehow attracted to me, every time I mention something I want, he sends me money.” Kenma replied, taking a massive bite out of his watermelon slice.

‘That’s kind of odd, who would give money like that to a guy like Kenma?’ Tsukishima thought.

“How did you do that, Kenma? I could sure use the extra cash,” Hinata asked.

“Well, Kuroo taught me to raise my voice like this to sound like some kind of gamer girl,” Kenma explained in a girly voice. Not too high to sound fake, not too low to sound unattractive. Perfect.

Just like Cat.

‘This has to be a coincidence, there’s no way that Kenma and Cat are the same person’ Tsukishima desperately thought.

“Oh, do you guys want to be friends on Discord, so we can keep in contact?” Hinata asked.

“I guess. I’m gamergirl05#0000,” Kenma replied, essentially murdering Tsukishima with his response.

Tsukishima stood up from where he was sitting. Forgetting the fact that he was still supposed to be in a conversation with Yamaguchi, he left the area, trying to find a secluded area, eventually settling for a small ally in between two of the gyms.

Once making sure he couldn’t be seen, he let all his held-in emotions out. He screamed up to the sky as the threw his watermelon rind against the wall, watching it break into numerous pieces.

“My Heart!” he screamed out, “I loved her!” He sank to the ground and let the tears flow. As he wailed out in despair, he covered his face with one hand while knocking his fist against the grass with his other.

Yamaguchi, who saw this all go down, ran up to go comfort his best friend. He didn’t know what was going on, other than the fact that his best friend was a mess on the floor.

How was Tsukishima going to tell his mom, who was already suspicious of him stealing her credit cards, that the money wasn’t being spent on her future Daughter in law? How was he going to log back in on the server, knowing he was cat fished?

He didn’t know what tomorrow would bring. All he knew at that moment was the soft an warm hand of Yamaguchi softly rubbing his back in an attempt to calm him down.

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu fanfiction #haikyuu #tsukishima #tsukishima kei #hq #yamaguchi tadashi #yamaguchi #hinata shōyō #shoyo hinata #kenma #kenma kuzome #lev haiba #fanfiction #this fanfic is stupid af I'm sorry #discord #discord mod #discord kitten

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media-on-the-mind101 · 3 years

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Turtles All the Way Down: OCD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (Book)

* May contain spoilers*

I recently finished reading Turtles All the Way Down by John Green, and it is now one of my favorite novels. The story hit me close to home because it deals with a disorder that I was diagnosed with. I thought writing an article about it would be a good way to educate you readers, while also sharing a little bit about myself.

Turtles All the Way Down is story about a teenage girl named Aza Holmes who suffers from OCD or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The story shows how the disorder impacts her daily life as well as her relationships. Because the author suffers from the disorder in real life, the depiction is fairly accurate. However, I spotted a few things that might suggest a whole different diagnosis whatsoever. The story also covers Aza’s treatment which I felt was missing a lot of important things.

According to the DSM 5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a disorder where a person gets caught in a cycle of obsessions and compulsions. Obsessions are intrusive thoughts that trigger distressing feelings, while compulsions are repetitive behaviors that are performed to relieve anxiety or prevent something bad from happening. OCD is often confused with OCPD (Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder) which is characterized by extreme perfectionism, order, and neatness. OCPD is often portrayed as OCD in the media which means that stereotypical OCD is really OCPD.

While Aza does have obsessions that involve cleaning, they are more about health and less about being organized. People with OCD often have a specific thing they worry about, and for Aza it is contracting an infection from a parasite called C-diff which essentially causes food poisoning and stomach damage. While she doesn’t really do anything to neutralize or cancel her thoughts out, she repeatedly reads articles online and uses hand sanitizer to relieve her anxiety.

As you may already have figured out, people with OCD often have illogical thought patterns and they are fully aware of it. But their anxiety makes them perform their compulsion anyway “just to make sure.” This is seen in the book when Aza drinks a bottle of hand sanitizer to insure that all bad bacteria inside her body are cured. Of course we all know, that drinking hand sanitizer would actually be more harmful then helpful.

“Drinking hand sanitizer is not going to make you healthier, you crazy fuck. But they can talk to your brain. THEY can tell your brain what to think, and you can’t. So, who’s running the show? Stop it, please (pg. 210).

In this scene, Aza knows that drinking hand sanitizer is actually more harmful then helpful, but she feels as if something is controlling her brain. The “they” refers to her OCD and she tells it to stop but isn’t able to control it.

While reading the book, I noticed that some of Aza’s symptoms don’t quite fit the diagnosis of OCD, such as her feeling of not knowing if she is awake or dreaming, real or non-existent. In one chapter she says the following:

“the pressing of my thumbnail against my fingertip had started off as a way of convincing myself that I was real . . . every time I thought maybe I wasn’t real, I would dig my nail into my fingertip, and I would feel the pain, and for a second I’d think, Of course I’m real” (pg.106).

The feeling of disconnect she has from her own body and surroundings are actually symptoms of DDD (Depersonalization - Derealization Disorder). According to the DSM, the disorder is characterized by persistent feelings of being a stranger to yourself or your surroundings. According to Psychology Today, however, you have to have no signs of other mental illness that can explain your symptoms, in order to be diagnosed with DDD. This is when diagnosing a patient becomes challenging; so many disorders can have similar symptoms or be co-morbid with each other that it they can difficult to differentiate.

The other symptom I noticed that is actually its own disorder, is the fact that Aza has a habit of digging her nail into her fingertip to the point where her finger becomes scarred. While picking of the skin is often comorbid with OCD, it is actually a separate disorder called excoriation disorder or dermatillomania. According to mhanational.org, this disorder is characterized by picking of the skin that creates skin lesions and that causes disruption in everyday life. It is true that the disorder falls under the category of obsessive compulsive disorders in the DSM, but excoriation disorder is not the same as OCD.

Now we’ve defined what OCD is, but another important part of how the book portrays it is in the treatment. According to Mayoclinic.com, the most common treatments for OCD include CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy), exposure therapy, and medications such as SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors). These are the treatments that I had during my childhood, and they have been statistically proven to be very effective.

In the book Aza sees a therapist and takes medication, but she doesn’t get exposure therapy, one of the main treatments for OCD. Aza mainly gets CBT which is essentially talk therapy, but she is not forced to face her obsessions without performing her compulsions. An example of this would be touching a dirty substance and then forcing herself not to take out her phone or use hand sanitizer.

The last important thing is how OCD effects a peoples relationships. Throughout the story, the characters in Aza’s life talk about how hard she is to deal with. One scene toward the end really emphasizes the importance of this issue. In this scene, Aza and her best friend Daisy get into an argument because Daisy feels that Aza is too self-centered.

She says “and you’re so, like, pathologically uncurious that you don’t even know what you don’t know.” And later she adds “I don’t mean that you’re a bad friend or anything. But you’re slightly tortured, and the way you’re tortured is sometimes also painful for, like, everyone around you”(pg. 216).

Daisy is frustrated because she feels like Aza is so caught up in her own thoughts that she never shows any interest in the lives of others. When she says Aza is “tortured” and it makes it painful for everyone around her, this shows just how much her illness impacts her relationships with other people. Basically, people find her difficult to be around because they, in a sense, have to experience everything with her and they begin to lose patience. At the end of this scene, the two girls get into a car accident because they weren’t paying attention to the road.

Aza’s other important relationship in the story is with is Davis, who is like a friend with benefits. The reason he never becomes Aza’s boyfriend is because of her social anxiety and fear of contamination that prevents her from being physically close to people.

“I enjoyed being with him more in this nonphysical space, but I also felt the need to board up the windows of myself. Me: I feel kinda precarious in general, and I can’t really date you. Or date anyone. I’m sorry but I can’t. I like you, but I can’t date you” (pg. 162).

I this scene, Aza reveals that she communicates better online then in person and this suggests that she has some form of social anxiety.

Another scene tells us just how much her fear of germs effects her life: “billions of people kiss and don’t die just make sure his microbes aren’t going to permanently colonize you come on please stop this . . . then you’ll get C. diff and boom dead in four days please fucking stop just kiss him JUST CHECK TO MAKE SURE. I pulled away” (pg. 152).

In this scene, Aza has difficulty being physically intimate with Davis because her fear of germs prevents from enjoying it like most people would. Based on this fact, we could predict that Aza will have difficulty in her future relationships because of her mental illness and this is a great example of how it effects people in real life.

As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, the author John Green himself suffers from OCD. Compared to his own experiences, the book is pretty similar. Like the main character, Green suffers from obsessions about contamination. In an episode of the Vlogbrothers Youtube channel, Green explains that

“I might worry out of nowhere that my food is contaminated or somehow poisoned and then somehow suddenly that will be the only thought I'm able to think . . . I can lose all control over my thoughts for an extended period of time to the extent that I can't follow what's happening in a TV show or read a book.” (Green).

*John Green, author of Turtles All the Way Down*

So like Aza, he worries about contamination to the point where he can’t focus on anything else. He also has the same kinds of thought spirals :

“the compulsive behaviors I use to cope with these obsessive thought spirals, repeatedly checking my food for contamination, for instance, or spending hours Googling what will happen to me if I eat moldy bread.” (Green).

As you can see, the characters compulsion of checking in internet comes straight from the author’s real life experience. According to the New York Times, John Green developed the disorder at around seven years old and eventually got it under control with the right medication and CBT. It was not said weather or not he underwent exposure therapy. So the treatment that Aza receives is based on the way some treatments work in real life.

While reading Turtles All the Way Down I often found myself feeling nostalgic because my own experience with OCD is very similar. Although I do not have an obsession with a specific thing like Aza does, I have the same types of intrusive thoughts. I also have similar compulsions to seek reassurance from the internet or other people about my health, as well as other compulsions to neutralize, or cancel out my thoughts.

Because I had Tourette Syndrome (a neurological disorder that causes physical impulses) as a child, I developed what is called Tourettic OCD. It is pretty much exactly what it sounds like; Tourette Syndrome and OCD combined. The reason this occurs in some individuals is because the ability to filter out and thoughts and the impulse to move, take place in the same brain area, the basal ganglia. As a result of this, my compulsions tend to be more physical, such as moving my eyes excessively whenever I see negative words in a book, or someone getting sick in a movie.

Like Aza, I went through CBT but I also went through several years of exposure therapy and I take an SSRI in conjunction. I think exposure therapy is a very important part of the treatment of disorders such as OCD and PTSD and I was disappointed that the book did not include it. I think that if you are going to educate a person about disorder, then you have to educate them about the treatment as well. In conclusion, Turtles All the Way Down was a great novel that captured OCD more accurately then any movie I have seen. The fact that the author has the disorder makes it all the more realistic and personal, and I have to say as a person with OCD and a psychology major, I was quite pleased with the way the character was portrayed. The story may have been missing a few important elements but overall it provided a realistic way of educating people about the disorder.

#john green #turtles all the way down #ocd #mental health #mental illness #books and literature #psychology

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lethendralis-paints · 4 years

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Artist Meme

Was tagged to answer this set of interesting questions by @kourvo

(original post is here: https://kourvo.tumblr.com/post/621355098110640128/artist-meme

Thank you so much for that!

Let’s see....

1) What is the character you've drawn the most (Can be original or fanart)

This precious boy. I can never get enough of him. One of the most compelling characters I have ever come across. Love everything about Fenris and can relate to him on so many levels!

2. What colour do you often use?

Gray and brown are my faves. And all other colours have the same chance of appearing in my artwork :D

3. Any colour you are bad at using?

I don’t think so...I love them all, even the pinks and yellows people usually find hard to incorporate into a colour palette. Tell me in the comments if I’m wrong :)

4. When drawing people, where do you start?

Funnily enough - either with the front of the hairline or with the left eyebrow. Don’t ask me, why - I don’t know myself.

5. What is a character only your eraser will love?

Hmmmm...any sort of villainous character. I can’t draw evil people convincingly. I’m a huge softy at heart.

6. Which of your works took the longest time?

Big scale commission I did for @pikapeppa, featuring all the Inquisition companions, along with Fenris, Rynne and Carver Hawke. That one took almost 3 weeks, due to its sheer scope and my relative lack of experience in such large works. Pika was extremely patient with me though, for that I am eternally thankful!

7. What techniques do you use when you want to improve in drawing?

Classical art studies. Varying my technique, themes I choose and software I use. I try to experiment and go outside my comfort zone often.

8. What do you think of the art of the person who gave you this ask meme?

I adore Lillymon’s technical skill, refined style and limited colours! She is a huge inspiration for me!

9. What art tools/media are you good with?

DrawPile, Photoshop, graphite pencils and liners. That’s about it :)

10. Art tools/media you are bad at?

Traditional paints. I have no formal artistic education and my lack of knowledge comes to the forefront whenever I have to paint on a real canvas. It’s so much trial and error, you can’t even imagine....

11. What do you think about your own art?

Lately it’s one of the last few things that were bringing me joy. I hope I won’t lose the passion for it. Because at this point I’m not sure I’ll be able to find some occupation I will be genuinely interested in and good at it. I don’t know if me gravitating towards moody fantasy art speaks about my fear of facing reality. If so, idk what to do with that. I do hope to develop my skills and being able to support myself financially as an artist.

12. Do you consult references for your drawings?

Yes. A lot of them. Anatomical atlases, schemes for both academic and manga art, photographs found online and taken on my own, copying colour palettes from classical art - anything goes. I think it’s essential to develop your technical skill.

13. What do you like about your art?

Lately - consistency, both in terms of produced results and in sticking to the timelines I set to myself. I hope this lasts. I would also like to branch out to other themes and not confine myself to quirky fantasy characters, so I’m working on developing my own story behind the scenes (spoilers) :P

14. What habits do you have while drawing?

Only the bad ones, lol. Hunching forward in front of the screen, forgetting to eat, drink and letting my eyes rest. Tilting my head to the side instead of rotating the canvas....I’m an idiot XD

15. Are you good at drawing faces facing right?

I think that’s the thing I’m good at!

16. How frequently do you draw?

For the last 1,5 years - almost every day without fail, for good or ill.

17. What do you do when you have artist's block?

Change occupation and work myself into a depressed state. I changed work places in the last few years a lot, working as an interior designer, draftsman, textile designer, a cook, a bartender to name a few.

18. What must you have when you draw?

No commotion around me and a cup of some hot beverage.

19. Do you have a lot of stray lines (messy lineart)?

In the starting stage of my work process - yes, like you wouldn’t believe! If it’s a personal doodle, I sometimes just leave in as am under layer and draw clean lines on top of that mess. It looks cool in a way.

20. What is drawing to you?

An essential part of what helped me to retain my sanity in the last year and a half. Hopefully a lasting profession that will help me pay bills and survive on my own, if my life falls apart entirely later.

21. Your art goal from now on?

Broaden the themes I depict, improve my technical skill, work on personal creative project and not only fan arts. And most of all - not giving up on it this time.

22. Artists you've had influence from?

To name a few: @kallielef @kourvo @shayafury @fairsparrow who I met here on Tumblr, and many others who I follow and zealously study their works for clues on how to improve my own work.

23. Artists you like?

I am following them all either here or on Instagram, I also do my best to share their works on my side blog!

24. Which is easier to draw, humans or animals?

It was animals earlier. But now that I started to diligently study human anatomy, I would say it evened out! I’m quite confident drawing humans/humanoids now!

25. Show us an old drawing

My first digital drawing from 2010 when I first bought my tablet!

26. What is the charm-point of your art?

I ummm....I don’t really get the question? Is that like the the strongest suit of me as an artist? Intense expressions maybe? Idk. Let me know in the comments :D

27. What is the first thing you would draw if we're talking about fantasy?

Broody warriors, he-he

28. Please draw your most beloved character:

Here’s a sneak-peek of me drawing him right now! :D

29. When thinking of characters is it mostly female? male? or androgynous/no sex?

I usually gravitate towards depicting strong-willed, caring, passionate, brave, honest men and women.

30. What did you draw yesterday?

Started cleaning up that sketch from the last question, actually!

31. What is the funnest part to draw?

A circle. Mostly because you’d die laughing seeing my struggle to draw a believable one XD

32. What part of other people's drawings do you notice first?

colours, mood, eyes, hands.

33. Regarding backgrounds, what is your method of making it easier to draw?

pick your favourite textured brush, find a good reference for mood and colour scheme, zoom out, squint your eyes and start slapping colours like mad. You’d be amazed at how much you’ll be able to achieve in 30 minutes with this approach. Bare white background is the enemy - destroy it! >:)

34. What colour coordinations do you like?

Gray or brown as a main colour and then deep, earthy, saturated colours to complement the main one. Pink and orange is the combination I strangely enjoy using lately too.

35. What character did you last draw? Fenris and Eris :)

36. Does your style change easily?

I don’t think so. More like it’s evolving slowly into something more serious and deliberate.

37. What part of drawing do you pay most attention to?

Facial expression, body movement, mood and light effects. Not so much the composition and framing, he he.

38. How do you feel about drawing adult art?

Tbh, I don’t consider straight up porn to be ‘adult’ exactly. To me adult art means aiming towards serious topics, exploring complex emotions and ideas, being honest with your viewer. I did doodle a few more steamy sketches of my OTP just to see if I could, but it was definitely a tongue-in-cheek kind of a artwork that I don’t take seriously.

39. Do you like criticism from others?

If it’s friendly and in done in private - I welcome it always.

40. How many people do you normally draw per artwork?

1 or 2. Rarely more. Crowded battle scenes are definitely not my thing :D

This was fun! Tagging forward to @shayafury @schoute @stella-minerva @nug-juggler @kallielef and anyone else wishing to go through such a long questionnaire!

#artist meme #art questions #art style #lethendralis rambles #my art

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kittybellestark · 4 years

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Okay I think Time Can Heal All, But Maybe Not This has been out long enough that I can actually talk about it

If you haven’t read TCHABMNT yet there’s gonna be some spoilers but you can find it here

EDIT: I forgot to talk about May bc I did this at night when I was really tired and my brain just wanted to talk about Peter ig, that is my absolute bad so I added that in everything else is the same tho

So obvs y’all know I had troubles with getting it published here and there’s still been some struggles but I wanna actually talk about the story.

So I started writing it a few months ago but only got 7 paragraphs in before not knowing where to bring the story. Originally the line “And Peter is terrified” was supposed to end that paragraph.

After that the fic was going to be all fluff and Harley and Tony trying to reassure Peter that his insecurities aren’t going to come to fruition.

But then I had a bad day. And the story had been sitting in my drafts forever. So I figured out how to continue the story.

Make Peter feel alone.

I had to keep the snap canon because otherwise there’s be no other plausible way for all of Peter’s family to just ditch him and for Flash and Peter to become friends.

I had to make it so that everyone in Peter’s life moved on without him.

So May moved to Italy and has a boyfriend who Peter assumes will be her husband by the time he’s 20, she has her dream job and is doing what she loves.

She moved out to Italy to forget Peter. It was for selfish reasons, she lost everything in her life, her husband, his family (Peter’s parents), her parents had died years prior and now Peter is also dead. She’s left alone and she doesn’t know what to do. So May moves to Italy to forget Peter and forget the pain and grief she feels. She doesn’t want to remember him.

By trying to forget she finds a new life. She’s a version of who Peter could have become. May is alone with no one, left behind in a world that lost everything. She has a new family and she can’t give it all up to move half way across the world. May would be uprooting her whole family. She moved on from Peter. Tried her hardest to forget him.

May wants to have a relationship with Peter, she just mentally cannot handle having him back in her life because then that opens up the possibility of Ben being back in her life, or her parents, or Peter’s parents even. By acknowledging that Peter is back for more than a phone call or a FaceTime it’ll send her spiraling. May has crafted this reality for herself and it is safe and she cannot give it up.

She loves Peter, of course she does, but having him back will only hurt her more.

I still think it’s canon, in this story, that Tony reversed what Thanos did for Peter. And I couldn’t just kill Tony off either because that wouldn’t really be as painful as Peter just not having contact with him after everything.

It’s not because Tony just forgot Peter existed that they don’t really talk at the beginning. Obviously the affect of snapping left Tony seriously injuries and I referenced that in the story, “…Tony needed a lot more attention after the snap due to his injuries…” so Peter doesn’t really have the full idea of what his injuries are like, but I imagine pretty horrible, which would mean that Pepper wouldn’t be able to move him very soon.

Not to mention Morgan, who is born post snap and now the world had doubled in population and suddenly her father is so badly injuries he can’t be moved. That’s traumatizing on a child of her age, and then try and move her into the city?? That’s going to cause lasting affects on her mental health so of course the Starks are going to do what they can for Peter, but they have some really big things they need to deal with too.

But the Starks did move back into the city for him, it’s just a little late, because Peter is now going away for school. It’s not that they didn’t put an effort in to be with him, it’s just that they were spread thin between the Tony’s recovery, having Morgan cope, the company, what’s left of the avengers, trying and get themselves back to the city and being in the midst of what is probably an economic crisis.

When Peter turns 22 there’s a line “Just some empty seats and empty promises,” which isn’t much to go on, but a little bit later when Peter is thirty I wrote that Tony also has an 8 year old son. So Tony and Pepper were supposed to go to Peter’s MIT graduation, but she went into labour and they couldn’t go. It’s such a small little thing that’d be easily missed, but I wanted to sprinkle in that Tony and Pepper were trying to make an effort with Peter at least. But then they have another kid and being parents is hard enough, but now two kids? That’s hard, they’re going to forgot to prioritize Peter, especially when he hasn’t been a priority yet.

I felt it was important to give Peter someone though. Which is why Peter and Flash are friends through the story. It’s unlikely, and it wouldn’t have happened had they not been left behind. In the beginning I had wanted to have Flash and Peter get together romantically at some point, but that felt like a cop out, and too predictable. Which is why Flash ended up with Peter’s P.A, Gwen (yes Gwen Stacy). Having Flash move on with his life could either give Peter the idea that he could have what Flash has, because they’ve been in the same boat forever, or it could lead him to think that he’s incapable of having a life like that.

I had originally written that Peter tells Flash about Spider-Man, about how he can’t put on his suit without getting really bad flashbacks and panic attacks about what happened. But I didn’t want to turn this story to be about Spider-Man, because it’s not. This isn’t about Spider-Man’s struggles to get the suit back on and save people, this is about Peter’s struggles with mental health and his addiction. In my head Peter told Flash when they were still in high school, sitting on the bleachers in the evening, drinking a bottle of whiskey that Flash stole from his Dad’s liquor cabinet, which would also be the beginning to Peter’s alcoholism. But I ultimately didn’t feel like it was necessary to add to the story. It is something I’m willing to write out in the future though.

It felt really important for me to make everything in the story connect with each other. Peter goes to school at MIT, which is in Boston, where Ned lived when he was an adult (and we know that’s also where Tony went to school), and Peter is in California when he meets Harley again, where MJ went to school (Tony also previously lived in Cali). Everything needed to be connected to the life Peter lost. Which is also why there are so many similarities in Peter’s life now and Tony’s life before he settled down.

Tony went to MIT, well now so does Peter. Tony is an alcoholic with preference for whiskey? Yeah, Peter too. Tony is pretty much alone except for Rhodey? Peter is also alone, but he has Flash. Tony had suicidal and self-destructive tendencies? Peter has only tried killing himself multiple times. By making Peter into a version of Tony, it brings a reference to SM:HC, where Peter says after the ferry boat accident, “I just wanted to be like you” and Tony responds “And I wanted you to be better.” Peter is Tony, he’s just found fame and fortune at a different time, runs his own company and makes ground-breaking research that will help the world.

It’s why Peter is so hurt when he’s called (look a SM:FFH reference) “The Next Tony Stark.” He already is Tony Stark, except he doesn’t have the happiness or the family Tony currently has. Peter just has Flash and his assistant Gwen (just like young Tony only had Rhodey and Pepper). Peter being a version of Tony Stark, he can’t really see an escape. He is so horribly hurt and the only way he can see there being peace in his life is if he isn’t alive. Which is why he continues to try and kill himself.

I didn’t want Peter to die though, I wanted him to find something that would make life tolerable. Which is why I reintroduced Harley. Peter tries to ignore Harley, pretend he doesn’t recognize him, because Peter doesn’t want to remember his past and who he was and what he lost anymore. Harley being there is such a big reminder of who he used to be and who he wants to be, that Peter wants Harley to go away. He doesn’t acknowledge that he knows Harley, even when Harley all but says ‘I’m Harley Keener’ to Peter. At this point in the story Peter made up his mind that he is going to die. There was no other option, but then this beacon of hope shows up and Peter doesn’t want it anymore.

I think by reintroducing Harley it was important to never say that Peter and Harley end up together or that they’re still in contact. I left that pretty open ended because Harley just swooped in at the last second and stopped Peter from killing himself. Peter’s recovery is clearly not an easy one because that was when Peter is 30 and it’s only when Peter turns 32 that he’s one month sober. It was important that you don’t know who is Peter’s family. Because maybe it’s not the Starks or MJ and Ned or Harley or May. Maybe Peter moved on from his past they way they all had and has finally made peace with life, or maybe Peter’s past is now in his life again and he’s happy because he has what he always missed.

Everything in this story was so deliberate and there’s so much that I did that’s just these small little things and I love it so much. I think it was important to see Peter struggle with life and death and his mental illnesses.

So yeah, I’m completely in love with this story and if you guys have any questions about it please send me some asks and I’ll totally answer them, I’m just not over this story yet and I really want to talk about it some more !!

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gizkasparadise · 4 years

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kdrama rec/review: bridal mask

KDRAMA AND CDRAMA MASTER LIST OF REVIEWS

Series: bridal mask / gaksital Episodes: 28 Genres: historical, action, drama, romance, tragedy, people screaming each others’ names in all capital letters 2006 anime style Spoilers in the Rec: im going to try to avoid them. im really, really going to try. but no guarantees If You Like, You’ll Like: zorro, robin hood, v for vendetta, chicago typewriter, vigilante shit, kate beaton comics on My Nemesis, mr sunshine, watching people become progressively unhinged, bad guys that become good guys, good guys that become bad guys, Parallel Narratives, cat and mouse games but they’re both cats, 2010 hair in a 1930s world, people in a room together internally thinking does he know that i know that he knows?

Rank: 9.5/10

GAKSITALLLLLLLLLLLLLL PREMISE

set during the japanese occupation of korea in the 1930s, bridal mask centers on lee kangto, an absolute shit weasel. like. good god, what an asshole. anyways.

kangto is a korean police officer who is employed by the japanese--meaning he’s essentially a rat/turncoat to his own people and supporting their colonization and abuse of power. it’s especially fucked up because kangto’s older brother was tortured so much by japanese police officers that he’s essentially lost his mind. people hate kangto. straight up hate him.

as a lieutenant in the imperial police, kangto’s been working to catch members of the korean resistance movement, but left and right he’s been thwarted by...

THE BRIDAL MASK (gaksital in korean)

a mysterious figure who wears a mask resembling a korean bride’s traditional makeup. bridal mask is essentially zorro, fucking up shit left and right and generally making kangto lose his shit. he makes it his goal to be the one to apprehend and arrest this mysterious figure. seems straightforward, but as kangto’s search for the bridal mask continues, and the people around him are drawn into the hunt, it’s clear that shit’s not what it seems.

MAIN CHARACTERS

lee kangto/sato hiroshi/lee young

a korean man who works for the japanese as a police officer. 0% approval rating from the koreans and maybe a 5% approval rating from the japanese. kangto’s initial goals for joining the police force were to help his family get out of poverty, but his morality’s been cha-cha sliding progressively darker the longer he works for the police force. he becomes obsessed with catching the bridal mask and everyone would like him to really quit being an asshole but he will not.

catch phrase is bingo! takes over the nightclub stage when he’s feeling swaggy. would shoot the love interest. shoots pretty much anyone wearing a mask, really, then yells about it

oh mok dan / mild spoiler: esther / spoiler: boon yi

a patriotic korean woman associated with the independence army, mok dan commits acts of subterfuge and gathers intel against the japanese forces. her day job is a performer at a circus, where she lives and hides out from japanese officials whenever shit goes awry. when lee kangto sees her getting saved by bridal mask, he assumes she’s the bridal mask’s lover and therefore intends to use mok dan as The Bait. mild spoilers it turns out she was once childhood friends with lee kangto’s best friend, kimura shunji

wears many amazing suits. has no problem with spitting or shooting. fears no boxes. can take a punch or 5. basically my dream girl it’s fine

kimura shunji

a japanese man and kangto’s best friend. coming from a family of influential, imperialist asshole samurai cops, shunji is the black sheep as he works as a music teacher for korean children, and is generally against the corruption and abuse of power when he sees it. basically the only one kangto’s never a straight up asshole to, including his family. the two practice what appears to be kendo together (i know jack shit about martial arts), and shunji’s a capable fighter. my default is to assume shunji is everyone’s favorite character, because he is my favorite character :’D, but if not i think he’s definitely the most compelling in the series.

wears bowties when he wants to dress to impress. rides bicycles both happily and tragically. has a thing for a childhood friend who saved his nanny. will give you a ride home after you’ve been tortured. save this man from his family.

ueno rie/ra ra/ spoiler: chae hong joo

a korean woman from a rich family that was murdered by the independence army who later became a gisaeng. as a gisaeng, she crosses paths with a very important japanese man who later adopts her into his family. because the japanese police keep fucking up the apprehension of bridal mask, her adoptive father calls her to korea from japan in order to kill the vigilante

stealth fave?! will step all over you and makes grown men cry. hyper competent and hardcore. bridal mask’s best dressed (try again with the bow ties next year, shunji). men are weak

the bridal mask GAKSITAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the mysterious figure either ruining or making everyone’s day. dramatic horse escapes. dramatic rescues. generally just drama. symbolically destroys japanese flags/insignia a lot. GAKSITAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SOME SUPPORT CHARACTERS SELECTED BY HOW MUCH THEY ARE MY FAVORITES

mok damsari

mok dan’s father and a general in the independence army. v good at being rescued dramatically. knows how to make an exit and also bombs. dispenses life wisdom when he’s got free time in between rounds of being torture

lee kang san

kang to’s older brother, who joined the independence army and was tortured by the japanese police to the extent that he’s now lost his mind/severely mentally ill. dude just needs a hug or 20 and to never chase after a car ever, ever again because it makes me sad.

katsuyama jun

ueno rie’s bodyguard, which is amusing to me because she can clearly kill anyone she needs to, so it’s kind of like he’s a butler as well. stoic af, says maybe 20 lines in the entire series, but look, he’s cool

i dont like any of the japanese police officers because they’re dicks so they don’t get a feature :|

Drawbacks

the production value is something you gotta settle into LOL. there’s the cheesy martial arts sound effects, sometimes it skews a little narmy, but once you get used to it and once the show gets progressively darker (and how) you adjust and then don’t notice it

my main #1 beef: mok dan starts to disappear in the last fourth of the series. like she’s still there, but she’s doing bullshit like making soup and just sitting at a table with nothing to say. as a character that’s so important in the first half, it’s severely disappointing the route that her narrative takes toward the end/she does become something of a satellite character even though i still love her

there are main character deaths--more than one. some people would say the ending is bittersweet but to me i think it’s straight-up sad (which is fine with me/appropriate for the story, i just know that’s not everyone’s cup of tea)

there’s torture and for the most part it’s shown / it’s not off-camera

shit gets dark. the first handful of eps might lull one into thinking is something like zorro or robin hood, but there’s a lot of fuckery and death by the time you get to the end

Reasons to Watch

i mean, it’s fun! which is a messed up thing to say about a dark show, but there’s a lot of twists and the show’s an extended game of cat-and-mouse that’s a good time because the audience knows certain things but the main characters don’t. the drama of it all!

Now That’s What I Call Character Arcs. kang to + shunji’s respective character arcs are amazing and are referred to as the best part of the show for a reason. you’ll hate and love them both throughout the series and it’s great. shunji was my favorite

i love both the female leads a lot. they’re totally different in personality and the sides that they’re on, but they’re both compelling and they have their own troubles and goals to work through

one of the main characters looks around the chaos happening and decides to just fucking leave all these people behind forever lmao i love it

acting is great! some people knock on mok dan’s actress but i thought she was perfectly fine for the character

i’ll admit, i’m into characters who become progressively unhinged and the actor who plays the character who does is so so A+

there’s romance but gd does it get dark sometimes. this is a plus or a minus depending on who you are lol

Final Thoughts.

#bridal mask #gaksital #joo won #park ki woong #jin se yeon #gizka does kdrama #gizkarec #kdrama #GAKSITAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAL #!my post

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mistbornthefinal · 3 years

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Madoka Magica Aniversary Analysis: Part2

Hunting for Witches

(here there be spoilers, proceed at your own risk)

We get a quick recap of Mami introducing herself and blowing away Gertrude’s familiars, before cutting to Madoka waking up in bed much like last ep. Only this time Kubey is being a creepy bunnycat like always and is looming over her bed. Cue Connect.

As the two of them are brushing their teeth in their weird giant bathroom Junko chastises Madoka for being late and not checking in with the family. We then cut back to yesterday as Mami leads Madoka and Sayaka back to her house. Honestly I prefer the original broadcast version of Mami’s house it’s emptiness laid the seeds for the reveal of the desperately lonely girl Mami actually was.

(Shaft there was a point where this need to stop and we’ve clearly passed it)

Mami gives them some cake and then gets down to business about this whole magic thing. She starts with the soul gem, the source of a magical girls powers which is created when she forms a contract with Kyubey. Kyubey then lays out the terms in exchange for becoming a magical girl he will grant the subject one wish, according to him anything is on the table. But becoming Meguca has a price, a magical girl must fight Witches.

Back in the present Madoka asks her mom what she would wish for. Junko says she’d oust a couple of board members at her company, maybe the president as well the man is by her account too long in tooth and yet still refuses name a successor. Madoka suggest the she might be the next president and you can almost immediately see the wheels starting to turn in Junko’s head. Madoka watches slightly nonplussed as Junko begins playing her next moves in Game of Thrones: Mitakihara office politics edition.

(Madoka has no idea the cataclysm her off the cuff statement precipitated)

Hours in the past Sayaka asks what a Witch is and how they are different from magical girls. Kyubey replies (in retrospect very weaselly) that if magical girls are born from wishes than witches are born from curses. In addition Witches can not be seen by normal humans, but none the less prey on them sowing anger and despair. Mami chimes in that many seemly inexplicable murders and suicides are due to witch curses. Sayaka asks why this isn’t common knowlage. The answer Witches hid from humanity in unreal pocket dimensions, the labyrinths.

What happened to the girls earlier is they had wandered into a labyrinth, something that’s usually fatal to ordinary humans. Mami stresses that within the labyrinth even her life is in danger so the two of them ought to weigh their options carefully before making a contract. As tempting as wish might be the price could very well be death. Despite the danger Mami offers them a chance to accompany them on a witch hunt to see what it’s like before they sign up.

As Madoka meets up with her friends on the way to school Sayaka is quick to react to the bunnycat perched on her shoulder. In addition to being invisible to muggles Kuybey also acts as telepathic relay. Though the twos silent conversation give Hitomi the wrong idea

youtube

(this scene became a meme for good reason)

In the classroom Sayaka questions the wisdom of Kyubey coming to school, given the girl who tired to ice him yesterday is in their class. Kyubey says Mami is in telepathic range (prompting her to chime in) and he doesn’t peg Homura as the sort to cause a public disturbance. Homura’s arrival in class triggers another flashback to last evening.

Specifically the part of the conversation were they discuss the transfer student. Mami confirms that she is another magical girl. This confused Sayaka, why would a magical girl attack Madoka, shouldn’t they be allies of justice. Kyubey corrects her Homura was after him, likely to prevent him from making new contracts. Mami explains that conflict among magical girls is a common occurrence. Witch hunting has it’s rewards and sometimes megucas will fight each other to secure them. Sayaka rather astutely connects her interest in Madoka with the presumed desire to keep competitors out of the picture.

This whole cutting between past and present thing might be a little hard to follow in text recap form, but it does us a service by cutting our big exposition dump and giving us time to breath in between segments. This scene tells us everything we need to know about magical girls and witches (or so we think) and even gives us some insight into what Homura is about. After EP 1 left us with nothing but questions EP 2 has given us faith that this show isn’t going to leave us in the dark.

At lunch which Madoka and Sayaka have decided to eat on their schools aesthetic as fvck roof, the two discuss the possibilities of a wish.

(this school is cursed and I love it)

Sayaka says that as tempting as a wish is she balks at the cost, then laments that most people should have a wish that they would risk their lives for and that neither of them do shows how privileged they are. There is a brief cut who we will later learn is Kyosuke before laments that there are plenty of people in the world who would risk their lives on a wish, so why them.

Before we can get an answer Homura enters the scene. The girls are startled but Mami’s voice chimes in revealing that she’s providing overwatch from a nearby tower. Homura says she’s not here to fight and going after Kyubey again is pointless now that he’s made contact with Madoka. She just want’s to know where the stand re:becoming meguca. She then reminds Madoka of her earlier warning, a warning that hopefully has not fallen on deaf ears. Madoka asks what Homura wished for but only receives a cryptic look.

They ditch Hitomi to go Witch hunting and fail to correct her... assumptions along the way. When the meet up with Mami at the cafe we learn that Sayaka brought a bat, while Madoka brought sketches of magical girl costumes.

(sketches drawn by her awesome voice actress Yuuki Aoi)

They go back to where Mami fought the familiars so she can pick up the Witches magic trail and track it to her labyrinths new location. As the girls are following the trail we cut to a woman stumbling into an abandoned building, a building that someone wrote a Faust quote on one of the walls in the original German (more on that when do a post on Madok’s Faust references).

Bach with Mami and hangers on we learn she has been systemizing her method of witch hunting, checking the places already prone to violence and accidents that witches tend to frequent. According to her the worst place for a witch to be is a hospital where they can leach the life from those already weakened by illness.

The arrive at the abandoned building just in time for Mami to catch the woman from earlier when she jumps off the roof. Though uninjured the woman is cationic and marked with a strange glyph that Mami identifies as a witches kiss. She lead the two of them into the labyrinth through a portal but not before enchanting Sayaka’s bat. Homura is not far behind.

Mami makes easy work of the familiars and after a series a surreal doors open we reach to core of the labyrinth and meet it’s creator.

(I’m not sure what people were expecting back in 2011 but I don’t think it was a butterfly rosebush monster)

Gertrude gets her name plastered on the screen in witch runes, setting us up for a boss fight, cue magia. Mami curtsies to the witch causing two of her signature muskets to fall from her skirt. Gerturde throws her sofa at her and the flies through the air to dodge return fair from Mami’s guns. While Mami is focused on the witch herself several small familiars on the ground merge into a giant tendril that takes her off guard and slams her into the wall.

Mami is able to turn the table by conjuring threads from the bullets embedded in the ground to ensnare the witch. She then uses the ribbon of her uniform to cut herself free and then conjures a giant gun with it that blows the witch away.

(No one else in this show names their attacks, Mami is such a dork)

Mami celebrates with a cup of tea as the barrier dissipates, then picks up a strange black object from the ground. This she tells Madoka, Sayaka, and the audience is a Grief Seed. The Grief Seed is a witches egg and it can be used to cleanse the darkness of a girls soul gem, replenishing her magic. She then tosses it into the darkness only for a previously unseen Homura to catch it. It has one more use which Mami offers to Homura. Homura rebuffs this offer which Mami takes poorly and Sayaka even more poorly. Madoka on the other hand just wants everyone to get along.

With the influence of the witch gone the woman from earlier awakens, and is distraught at what she almost did. Mami comforts the woman telling her it was all a bad dream. The episode ends with Madoka musing that while she has no idea what wish she would stake her life on she admires Mami’s heroism. (cue Mata Ashita)

That’s Episode 2 which I would say is the most fundamental episode for understanding Madoka’s plot. We got a whole lot of exposition dumped, far more than you notice because it’s intercut with slice of life movements and character building. The it was capped off with a cool fight scene. Everything from here on essentially either confirms or subverts what episode establishes.

#semi-original content #puella magi madoka magica #madoka magica anniversary analysis

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zhuhongs · 4 years

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Here’s my long ass review of TGCF that literally no one asked for it i have opinions and I have no one to tell them too so i must write them out and post them. (also part of this is abt the mdzs novel bc i can’t not compare them and I have a lot of thoughts abt that too)

This is very very long so it’s going under a read more. Spoilers ahead!!

Okay so first off this book was a fucking behemoth i can’t believe i read all of that (minus the extras) in under a week.. what the fuck. I definetly got reading fatigue halfway thru book 3.

I’m gonna separate my thoughts into sections bc i have a few points that don’t all relate

firstly, overall writing and organization:

I said it earlier but tgcf is a lot more structurally sound than mdzs imo. My biggest criticism of the MDZS novel (minus the bad sex scenes, homophobia, and general I hate mxtxness of it) was the way the flashbacks were presented.

Like OH MY GOD they were presented so badly. I hated that the flashback was told intermittently and only when one of the characters invoked the past. For example, when WWX meets Jiang Cheng and a second time, Jin Ling distracts JC to release “Mo Xuanyu” bc he saved his life in the Nie Ancestral hall earlier. WWX then proceeds to be the self sacrificing dude he is and take away Jin Ling’s curse and put it on himself. When he escapes and returns to LWJ, LWJ offers to carry him.

If you watched CQL, you know exactly what LWJ is referring to when he says smth to the effect of “You once offered to carry me too, remember.” HOWEVER in the novel you don’t know what he’s talking about. This is because the flashback wasn’t been revealed to you yet. The next chapter goes to tell the flashback. I think that this takes away all of the emotional depth away from the scene. But in CQL, having the flashback already be known, you make the connection on your own and are like “awww wangji remembers that.. even 16 years later.“ Its a lot sweeter bc you know what the two have gone thru. At this point in the MDZS novel its barely the 30th chapter or so and you have no real idea what wangxian have been thru together or what reasons wangji has for loving wwx. You just think, well obviously they like each other bc this is a danmei novel and they are the two leads, ofc they have to like each other. But in cql, you learn through watching them that they’re in love. It’s not just like”well they have to be!! its a bl!!”

Okay that was a rlly long side tangent but it makes me so angry. So what did any of that have to do with TGCF?? well tgcf doesn’t have this issue. In fact, i believe that it gains a lot from having the flashback withheld from the reader.

I really liked how the flashbacks were contained to books 2 and 4 respectively because it adds a layer of mystery. Hua Cheng is a very secretive man so it makes sense for us to not know everything about him upfront. The way that the author teases and hints little things at you make you want to know more, making it all the more satisfying when the truth is revealed. Because in a way you Know that Hua Cheng meets Xie Lian before and you know that he’s the child XL saved during the God Pleasing Ceremony but you don’t know all the details. Like obviously since Hua Cheng is a ghost you know that he’s died and it was likely for Xie Lian or Xian le’s sake but you probably never expected that he actually died twice. Once on the battle field and second when he took the human face disease. I think the difference between these flashbacks and the flashbacks in MDZS result from the length. In TGCF you get two long concise flashbacks that make sense to be placed where they are. Book 2 because you already have a feel and hint at what the characters have been through and book 4 because the White No Face appears again so then you learn how he and Xie Lian met before. It wouldn’t make sense to place book 2 any earlier bc there is no emotional impact. And it doesn’t make sense to place book 4 earlier because you don’t know what the white no face’s deal is so it’d be confusing. In MDZS, you get numerous short flashbacks happening alongside the main story and it makes it hard to piece together the timeline in a way that feels satisfying. Ik a lot of ppl grill cql for having a confusing intro episode and having a rlly long flashback but its much better than the mdzs novel. However the mdzs donghua handles the flashback in the most concise way imo.

Overall i think the way the story is structured is very good and is a step up from mdzs. Also the horror aspects of tgcf are rlly enjoyable and honestly i think mxtx should just write short horror stories at this point. like enough long ass novels chock full of fetishization. just write some fun horror with no romance and call it a day.. pls

Side Characters:

okay so straight up, i think the side characters arent used as well as they were in mdzs bc mxtx wanted to focus on hualian and didn’t want to give the side characters as much focus. This is a weaker point of the novel.

I’ll get into it more below but i think hua cheng was done dirty as a character by having him rlly only care abt xie lian. Since he doesn;t have any real relationships with others outside of xie lian this takes away from having more depth in the side characters. They’re really only related as far as xie lian’s relationship with them. Though thankfully xie lian gets rather close with a few officials and the ones we get to see more of are rlly interesting. I especially loved the reconciliation of mu qing, feng xin, and xie lian at the end of book 5. honestly their relationship was one my favorites and i’m glad they finally said what they had to say to each other after 800 fucking years. Also Shi Qingxuan is a delight. we stan sqx in this house.

The characters i wish we had seen more of were yushi huang (although she didnt rlly want to be there, good for her), Quan Yizhen and Yin Yu. I very much wish yizhen and yin yus story happened earlier on and we had more time with them. It felt strange to have their subplot occur towards the end and it was sort of out of place but i liked them a lot!! i wish there was more to it. and that there was a reconcilation but mxtx hates happy shidi’s doesnt she, (glares at novel jc). Also man yin yu did NOT have to die like that i’m sad.

Also, honestly.. i don’t think qi rong added to the story whatsoever and i have no clue why he and guzi were there. qi rong just pissed me off the whole time and added literally nothing.

going back to yushi huang, i’d like to say for the millionth time that i hate how mxtx uses any of her female characters. like we get it.. u hate women being useful... im still pressed but what i want to say has been said many times before so ill leave it at that.

Hualian:

I really really did like hualian at the end. They had a truly epic love story and it was so beautiful, especially when hua cheng repeated his words as wuming to xie lian as he started to disappear. But, I said it once and i’ll say it again. I don’t think Hualian is a super healthy relationship. As fiction its fine (i firmly believe fiction impacts reality but let me finish), i guess bc literally nothing about their situation can be replicated irl and none of it ended up containing manipulation or abuse or anything bad but there was a potential for it to and i’m really glad it didnt go that route.

Hualian is a highly idealized and romanticized relationship full of some truly troubling feelings of self worth. While its “beautiful” in a way that hc really was xls most devoted believer, it wasnt healthy for him to live for xl like this. Nor was it healthy for xl to feel so unworthy of hua chengs love.

Hua Cheng’s devotion to Xie Lian is a little too extreme and it bothers me. When the truth was revealed abt the Temple of 10,000 Gods I had the same reaction as Mu Qing and Feng Xin. I was like... HEY WHAT THE FUCKK that’s a little uh... thats NOT HEALTHY,, dianxia PLEASE say smth. But ofc Xie Lian didn’t say fucking anything and and i was so pissed. Like the whole thing of Hua Cheng living his life solely for XIe Lian is really kinda fucked up and not romantic. I was holding out hope that at some point XIe Lian would sit him down and be like “Hey! I love you and i’m really grateful that all these years you’ve still believed in me when no one else did. But you can’t just live your life for my sake. You deserve love from many other other people and deserve to have a life and happiness outside of me. I still want to spend the rest of my life with you, but you need to not only think of me.” or something to that effect

It bothers me that after Xie Lian learns the truth he doesn’t once reassure Hua Cheng that he didn’t have to make Xie Lian his reason for existence. Like.. idk i just think that’s rlly kinda unhealthy. Like I understand why Hua Cheng is so deeply devoted to Xie Lian-- he saved his life twice and was the only one to ever show him kindness and he’s seen xie lian suffer a fate worse than death multiple times. I get that he wants to protect him and make his life easier, but to not let anyone else into his life and spend 800 years looking for xie lian is just overkill. Like if the whole 10k statues thing never happened i’d be 100 percent fine with hualin but the whole devotion to that extent... uhhh yea.. no that put a bad taste in my mouth. Obsession should not be romanticised. I don’t think any reader of tgcf is going out and deciding to live like hua cheng obviously but still.

Also Side note, the whole 100 swords scene.. bro i felt for hua cheng, the way he screamed seeing that, i don’t blame him. I was so horrified reading that chapter. i don’t think i’ve been so horrified by a piece of media like that in a while. Poor fucking xie lian.. oh my god. I understand the intense reaction he had and how seeing that prompted such a degree of loyalty but still.. 10k statues?? the cave that mu qing and feng xin saw... thats a little too much obssession... like please.. dial it back.. im begging u.

I was talking to mary (liviahyes) and she said smth abt how Hua Cheng doesn’t have a character outside of xie lian. And she’s right, he kinda doesn’t. If Xie Lian didn’t exist neither would Hua Cheng. I get that that counds kinda romantic but in practice i don’t think its a good things. Especially because Xie Lian has a story outside of Hua Cheng, hehas goals, he has friends, he has something. Hua Cheng said it-- his only dream is Xie Lian. Which is romantic but very very unbalanced.

THAT BEING SAID, i still rly liked their relationship and i think theyre cute they just have issues they need to work through. I mean they have time but yea. It wasn’t perfect but eh. overall i’m bitter bc they couldve been THAT COUPLE but theyre so many bad implications as mentioned above and i.. smh. They still have amazing moments. Like the lantern scene, the alter scene, the “what matters is you, not the state of you”, the end when hua cheng helps release the shackles on xie lian, the scene where hua cheng disappears, the way xie lian waited for him, like they were so close to being THAT COUPLE but then mxtx and her fujo ass just had to make it uncomfortable like that. i’m so bitter. Like the reason why i wrote out all of this is bc this novel could’ve been great but so many little things added up and made the experience far more sour than it shouldve been.

MXTX did hua cheng SO DIRTY by not giving him a character much outside of loving xie lian and being good at everything. Like when I first learned abt how Hua Cheng beat 33 heavenly officials at what they excel in best i was like WHO IS THIS LEGEND but honestly.. he rlly doesn’t have any motivations outside of helping xie lian and I wish he had more to him . Like if we had more situations like the one where hua cheng dug out his own eye to save the group of mortals on mount tong’lu then he’d have been a much more well rounded character. Honestly, that’s rlly the only instance where he seems to have taken xie lians ideals to heart. I wish we had more of that bc that scene was so cool. i wish it hadn’t been revealled so late and there was more than one occasion where he defends others (minus xie lian ofc) without anything for himself to gain that.

To contrast hualian with wangxian, i think wangxian work so well bc at their core, they have the same life goals and same ideas about people and the world. Where in hualian, xie lian has core principles and morals and hua cheng is just like, anything for xie lian. SMH they couldve been great but overall i think hualian falls flat for me because of my own fear of dating someone who doesn’t have a life outside of dating me. Moreso, my parents had this sort of unbalanced relationship towards the end of their marriage and it ended very badly and yea, i just can’t whole heartedly love relationships that in any way resemble this, even if it ends differently. that’s a personal thing tho.

I don’t think Hua Cheng has ANY bad intentions towards Xie Lian or ever will. I don’t think he’s ever manipulated xl or tried to force him to love him. But again, it’s my own personal feelings that makes me feel kinda.. ehh conflicted abt hualian. There was potential but again.. fujoshis ruin everything... smh. Overall i think the way it ended redeemed the issues it had but still there were issues and i really wish xie lian like,, reassured hua cheng about living his life freely at some point but whatever.

IN CONCLUSION

TGCF had the potential to be better than mdzs, it rlly did but it was bogged down by the authors own toxic mentalities abt love, and mlm relationships, and treating women like ppl and it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I enjoyed this book, truly i did (otherwise i wouldn’t have stuck through and read 750k words of it) but there are some flaws that cannot be glossed over. I hope that tgcf when it does get adapted, goes through the same miracle that cql did and makes the characters more like ppl and less like tropes but i doubt it. Also i highly doubt that a live action tgcf is feasible given the supernatural aspects of the series but we shall see. I’m excited for the donghua when it eventual comes out but i will continue to be critical of the novel bc..well.. you see why. idk if i’d reccommend this book tbh bc like yes i would, no i would... well.. </3. yea. overall, it sure was something that i enjoyed in spades. especially the last 5 chapters. I generally liked it but had many issues with it at the same time, but honestly, yea thats the standard fair for a mxtx novel.

#text heavy #'like rlly fucking text heavy #tgcf #tgcf lb #and with that... the lb is over #i dont think i'll read the extra but who knows #also i reread this twice looking for missing words and typos so i HOPE its coherant #anyways if u read this.. bless u and feel free to ask me anything abt what i've said #i legit just finished it and i havent thought back on everything so im v willing to hear different standpoints

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why-this-kolaveri-machi · 4 years

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what more can you do?

WOO! this week’s episode was sad and weird and badly paced and startlingly, unevenly mature in true titans fashion. i loved it (with reservations)! let’s talk about it in excruciating detail:

SPOILERS ahead.

1. i can’t say that i’m awfully thrilled about the show following up on a character’s literal suicide attempt by... not addressing said suicide attempt at all. maybe it’s the awkward way an entire episode’s worth of flashback was shoehorned in between the end of 2.07--where dick literally talked jason off the ledge while in the throes of a psychotic break of his own--and the beginning of this one, but it’s honestly not just bad storytelling, but irresponsible storytelling.

1.5. in a general sense, tho, the tableau at the beginning of the episode is so egregiously unfair--so shockingly, plainly one-sided, with a slump shouldered dick facing the world, only kory on his side, that it’s quite apparent that it’s the lowest these heroes can go. and i do think their individual reactions to dick’s confession provide an interesting insight into their characters. hank and dawn have been operating alone for so long, each a reminder of their traumas and losses and very human frailty to the other, without even the resources that dick and the batman enjoy. it’s been them v the world for so goddamn long; is it any wonder that they were looking for the first excuse to bail out of there, to not Deal with the idea that what they were doing to deal with their traumas and guilt was clearly not working, and dick was--and has been always--so willing to be the scapegoat? hank punching dick was utterly unwarranted--but i can accept that as part of the unaddressed emotional outbursts arising out of years of accumulated head injuries from both college football and vigilantism. (this isn’t to excuse what he did but to contextualise it within hank’s history and personality.) their instinct when facing ugly truths is to retreat to what they think is familiar and what they need--except, as hank realises later in the episode, that’s exactly what’s fucking them up further.

rose is understandably upset at being lied to about her brother’s death and the titans being complicit in the same--but i’m curious that her reaction was to merely leave and not try and fight them. maybe after being defeated by dick while sparring and nearly being killed by rachel she was sensible enough to realise that she couldn’t take them on all at once? i don’t know--she’s curiously been a bit of a cipher this season. jason leaving with her made sense tho--unburdened of the weight of being the team’s scapegoat, understandably miffed at dick for keeping a secret that nearly cost him his life and left him with a great deal of trauma, just Angry at the world in general, he gravitates towards rose, the only other outsider/rebel who tried to reach out to him when everybody else shunned him or looked at him like an impostor. i think the decision was more impulsive than anything--they still look confused and uncertain in the taxi as they leave the tower behind. but--i don’t know. theirs is the storyline that i’m the most perplexed about. we just don’t have a lot of information about either of them, rose especially.

(a part of me still thinks she’s slade’s mole in the tower. but why would she leave if she is? to keep up appearances bc to react in any other way to the news of her brother’s death would be suspicious? maybe she left because her job is done and the titans were splitting up? maybe she was part of the long game to seduce jason over to slade’s side--seeking revenge for dick swaying jericho over to the titans’? am i going to stop asking myself questions in this post? am i ever going to write a review that’s not just stream-of-consciousness nonsense? only time will tell.)

DONNA. oh, donna. her decision to leave seems to me a logical continuation of her s2 arc that i’d talked about in a previous review--paranoid, insecure, retraumatised, and taking out her frustrations on jason and dick. it’s also very interesting to me that she complained to rachel about dick treating them like “soldiers” and only told them things that he deemed that they “need[ed] to know.” it was because of jillian and whatever mysterious business that themyscira was conducting in sf that she and garth and slade ever landed up in that airport at all; even worse, jillian deemed it was something that donna didn’t need to know until it was too late. donna lost so much in that fiasco--the man she loved, her friends, several members of her amazon family, and her sense of purpose, her belief in her strength and her destiny and her faith that other people trusted her as a warrior and as a leader. she’s projecting all that pain onto dick--who again, doesn’t deserve all this shit but takes it anyway because of his own issues.

1.8. and, like. as much as jericho’s death became the Traumatic Event that overshadowed almost everything else in dick’s life for the last five years and helps explain a lot of his hang-ups right from s1, it just doesn’t have the same significance for the others. don’t get me wrong--i’m sure hank, donna and dawn are devastated and guilty about the part that they had to play in manipulating jericho and his eventual death. but their issues with each other, with the titans tower and with their past run deeper and in different directions, and i think all of that came into play when they each decided to go their separate ways.

1.95. idek what the fuck is going on with rachel. i felt every ounce of dick’s heartbreak and devastation when she got up to leave with donna. for all that she saved dick in the first episode of this season, she still hasn’t reached the point where she’s willing to unburden her emotions and issues on him. it must be frustrating and sad for her to realise just how much dick didn’t trust her either. but there’s something else going on as well: maybe she’s realised she has no real control over her re-emerging powers, and, carrying on with the fatalistic attitude she had at the end of 2.05, she wants to spare the titans the chaos and darkness that she carries around with her. (she’s used to running away at this point, after all.) she goes with donna bc donna knows her the least: it would therefore be easy to fool her and escape.

2. more faddei! and kory backstory! \o/

it’s curious that they never once bring up trigon, because s1 gave the impression that she’d come to earth with a specific mission to seek his portal out and destroy it before he could, y’know, Fuck The Universe Up. faddei makes it sound like kory just went on this fun little sabbatical before taking up royal duties, which kiiinda undercuts a lot of what was cool about her s1 arc. i realise you aren’t entirely happy with your freshman season, titans, and s2 looks like it might be a soft reboot, but you don’t have to mutilate it like this!

but seriously. the stakes just got upped exponentially for kory, and it would be really interesting to see where she goes from here. apart from a promise to rachel, she doesn’t really owe the rest of the titans anything--not that i think she views relationships in such transactional terms, of course. on the other hand, abandoning her responsibilities on tamaran has led to its takeover by an unfit leader and the deaths of several of her family and friends. the choice shouldn’t be a choice at all. she should go back home. and yet--she waited too long, and the choice has been taken away from her. faddei is dead, both of their ships are destroyed, and she is stuck on earth, grieving and frustrated and furious. kory is usually very clear headed about exactly where she stands emotionally, but after such a big event, she must be feeling so much pain, guilt, sorrow, anger, even resentment. it’s so easy to look at kory’s level-headedness and open, empathetic personality and use her to prop up other characters, but i hope that this isn’t always the case, and that she’ll be allowed to really work through these emotions while somebody else looks out for her.

2.35. (the little snippets of faddei and kory just enjoying the shit out of the Little Things that humanity has to offer is just... it filled me with so much warmth. i wouldn’t mind an entire episode of them just chilling and exploring and annoying each other with badly-applied out-of-context pop culture references)

2.5. blackfire! i don’t know much about comics!blackfire beyond “she was starfire’s sister, Evil, and possibly sold her sister into slavery??? yikes” so i’m just going purely off what the show has revealed about her so far. it was honestly disconcerting to see so many references to her possible disability (?) and to see both that and the efforts to accommodate her spoken about in... i want to say mocking way? i don’t know. i just saw a murder mystery/thriller movie today where the serial killer was revealed to have been both disabled from birth and mentally ill, and maybe i’m just feeling extra sensitive to the truly disturbing and pervasive trope of having disabled characters be Evil--and tying their Evil to their disability.

2.8. anyhow, blackfire appears to have accumulated a fair bit of power in the time that kory’s been gone: not only can she remotely possess other tamaraneans but she can blow up their ships too. (and didn’t faddei say that she had goons on the ground, looking for starfire?)

2.9. it’s a Lot to deal with this late in the season. maybe kory will leave for tamaran to deal with blackfire once and for all at the end of the season. and if titans ends up cancelled, wouldn’t that be a bittersweet ending.

(wherein ‘bittersweet’ translates to ‘devastating’ ofc)

3. oh where do i even start with dick

his worst fears came true. after his confession, not only did his old friends up and leave, but so did rachel and jason, which he found more heartbreaking than anything else. utterly consumed by guilt and convinced more than ever before of his culpability, he actively seeks out ways to self-flagellate, first by going to adeline to apologise, then by banishing himself, then by making sure he is punished (tho i have my doubts on that last one; will elaborate a little later). after watching him have an extended psychotic break and dash into not one but two suicide missions, watching dick grayson do this to himself feels like watching an extended feature on human suffering. it’s not fun, or pretty, and i can feel it reaching its nadir so that dick can bounce back up again, but i hope it happens soon.

(dick’s natural tendency to internalise guilt and responsibility into a hard little diamond core at his centre and his long training with batman with all the emphasis on secrets and subterfuge with a healthy underpinning of paranoia ironically means that he does so much goddamn emotional labour for this team. he’s the glue that keeps them together, that gives them purpose. he’s trying so hard to do good by everybody that he isn’t really able to achieve it with any of them, which leads to another self-flagellating spiral and him determining to try harder and the cycle just keeps going on. only kory seems to have ever broken this cycle, because she’s never demanded anything of him, nor he of her. it’s really sad to think how bereft dick feels right now, and more than that, how it’s stopping him from being there for the people who really do need him and trust him, like gar and rachel.)

3.25. adeline makes a very good point about how merely apologising doesn’t mean you’re owed forgiveness, and that seeking it out after all these years is a self-serving exercise in itself. but i can see dick taking it hard, especially after discovering that she’s letting slade--the man who actually killed her son--recuperate at her home. (and let’s be clear: however good her intentions, she participated in lying to her child about the truth of what his father actually does. wow, jericho was really just fucked over by pretty much every one he loved, wasn’t he?)

but i am glad to see dick isn’t so far gone that he takes the blame for jericho’s death in front of slade. he’s very aware that slade has permanently broken the team and very aware of the threat slade poses if they ever try to get back together again, but he’s not going to completely surrender every last shred of his self-worth and dignity to this man, and that was refreshing to see.

3.5. so he banishes himself to the farthest place he can think of with nothing more than the shirt on his back and a single duffel bag. it’s so over-the-top yet so... dick grayson.

3.8. BUT WAIT! ~PLOT TWIST~

ok so here’s what’s happening, all right? strap in:

a) jericho is one hundred percent inside slade. i have no doubts about this. adeline knows this too. it’s why she was so even-keeled while talking to dick, why she confidently said that jericho loved dick, and why she said “they” might be willing to forgive him. i’m thinking when slade crawled back home, jericho took advantage of his father’s momentary weakness to tell what was happening to his mother.

b) jericho tried to communicate to dick. i saw something somewhere which said that slade had gestured something very specific in asl while conversing with dick? i’m willing to believe that was intentional.

c) when dick was turning to leave and slade called him one last time and gave his “banishment sentence” jericho likely jumped bodies from slade to dick

d) so why did dick get himself arrested at the airport?

- dick was going through, as others have speculated, a dissociative episode. given how he’s exhibited signs of mental illness throughout this season this isn’t that far out of the realm of possibility, but it’s a weak and redundant narrative bridge and wasn’t shot in a way that suggested that it was a mental break. so i’m ruling this out.

- jericho took over. maybe he felt that this was the only way he could force dick to stay in sf. maybe some of his father’s anger/resentment leeched into him and he wanted to dick to experience some actual punishment instead of scarpering again. maybe he was overwhelmed by dick’s own self-flagellating tendencies and chose the shortest route to maximum pain. maybe it’s a combination of all three.

- dick finally got his brain into gear and realised at the last minute that jericho had possessed slade and was trying to tell him something. why he then proceeded to get himself arrested instead of running out of the airport is a mystery.

personally, i’m leaning towards the ‘jericho possessed dick’ possibility.

4. gar is such a sweetheart and i am so glad that he took centrestage this episode, even though, like always, it was to support another character and ended up with him crying and begging for help from an unresponsive dick. *sighs*

4.5. much like dick himself, he’s trying to do good by everybody, only to end up badly misjudging a situation, and all alone.

5. oof. this has gone on for far too long and i am Tired. more thoughts to come later, because right now my brain is as disorganised as... as disorganised as a titans episode. hah! self-burn!!!

#titans #titans spoilers #dick grayson #koriand'r #garfield logan #hank hall #dawn granger #donna troy #rachel roth #slade wilson #meta #aaaah this is 2.6k+ words long I'M SORRY

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darklingichor · 4 years

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Carry On by Rainbow Rowell *Major Spoilers*

I wrote a little about this book last month, but I want to write more. This is one of those books that has been lingering in my brain so what follows will be long and rambling.

Now, I haven't read Fangirl I've been pulled more toward action adventure and humor in my fiction, for a while now. Hmm, I wonder what could have happened a few years back that would cause a Pacific Northwest liberal to feel the need for escape? Just one of those things, I suppose.

I need to read it, if only because I wrote Harry Potter fanfic for years and sort of lost myself in it right after high school.

Anyway.

I've heard people calling Carry On an HP knock off. I don't get this. Simon Snow is obviously Fangirl's Harry Potter. That makes Carry On more of a tongue in cheek homage to HP and stories like it as well as something of a love letter to fanfic writers.

A lot of the main characters start out as your standard for this type of story. "The Hero", "The Mentor", "The Damsel", "The Enemy", "The Unspeakable Evil."

Through the book it becomes clear that our hero is well meaning but ill-suited for the role that his mentor thinks he place him in. The mentor is shown to be unhinged. The damsel is sick of screaming and doesn't want to be in the story at all. The enemy is love sick for the hero and dealing with the puberty from hell. The unspeakable evil, isn't. Its just an unforeseen byproduct of the mentor's plan, in which, the hero, is a pawn.

The book plays with archetypes and I read some of them as being fairly meta about their expected place in the story.

Agetha, especially, seems to know her role and resent it. She's who is saved by the hero, whether she likes it or not.

Baz is so certain of his role as "The Enemy" that until his role flips, he's sure his destiny is to be killed by the person he's in love with.

Simon knows his role so well, he's on auto pilot as a defence mechanism. He's either going to die, or he'll get a stock Happily Ever After. He doesn't even allow himself to think too much about what really matters to him, because he knows his life isn't really his.

I would have loved this book because of everything I wrote above, but add to it the nods to fan contribution? It was enough to make me remember my old ff.n login!

I don't know if Rainbow Rowell researched fan fiction but I figure she must have.

I mean, the things I saw played with and reshaped in Carry On, are fanfic tropes. Rowell took things that grew out of fans having fun with their favorite characters and made them canon.

Main character going out with an exchange student, pop culture references, evil good guy, and:

Four words: Draco is a vampire.

Sure, not every fic that used these were the best, but so what? Many were sincere.

What better way to go to Hogwarts as a person raised outside the UK than to live though an OC in an exchange program?

It was weird that no one in the wizard world listened to muggle music, watched movies or TV. Even the muggleborns? I'm sorry, but I was in the same age range as the characters. In fact, if Harry were real, he would be three years older than me. You can't convince me that there were not at least a couple of muggleborns who were sending an owl a week to remind their parents to tape Friends or My So-Called Life.

There were a fair few stories where Dumbledore or even Harry turned out to be evil. Even before we found out Dumbledore wasn't a saint. It can be fun to play with expectations and Dumbledore was too perfect for too long.

The vampire thing? I mean, why not? Either Draco or Snape. It fits enough for a fic, and you can get some fun stuff out of it. Besides Hogwarts allowed a warewolf, why not a vampire?

The point is, this book reminds me of some goofy fics I read but also reminds me of some that I sometimes have to remind myself aren't canon, because fan fiction can be amazing.

Example: It has been years but I still remember a great fic that someone wrote about Uric The Oddball's years at Hogwarts. I don't remember much about it off hand but I do know that if I re-read HP, when Uric is mentioned, I think of this story like it is something that is actually in the history of the series. (Dude, I googled "Uric the Oddball fan fiction" on a whim. Popped right up: Uric the Oddball and the Wild Hunt by Ariana Deralte. Guess I shouldn't be surprised! Maybe I should read it again to see if it's still as good as I remember).

So yeah, Carry On is so not an HP knock off and has a number of things that I think make me like it more.

The first one is diversity. It is very nice to have it explicitly said in the text that characters are of different ethnicities, sexualities, and abilities. Watford is a far better representation of a population than Hogwarts is, outside of fanfic (It wasn't there, people wrote it in).

Then there is magic itself, it comes from somewhere it's in the environment, it has to do with celestial alignment, people give words power to channel that energy.

That brings me to something that made me adore the world building here.

The actuality of Simon Snow's universe is that Mages cannot exist independently without the Normals. Without the Normals giving weight and meaning to turns of phrase, rhyme and songs, the Mages couldn't do what they do. Add to that, this means that magic is ever evolving and the Mages must learn about and be a part of, to some extent, the Normal world. This makes Mages who look down on Normals seem even more ridiculous.

I also think this book handled romance better than Harry Potter. I don't know what it was but the relationships seemed awkward and strained in HP. Maybe it was because most of it was shoved into one book, like Hogwarts's water supply was spiked with hormones? I don't know.

What I do know is that even though Simon and Agetha are going through the motions of being together in this book, they still feel like two people who have been dating for a long time.

We don't get a lot about Penny and her boyfriend, but the way she is described talking about him reminds me of how my best friend would talk about her boyfriends when she was visiting me. The way she would go on, you'd think that he was on the moon instead of 90 miles away. I bought that Penny and her boyfriend enjoy each other's company.

And the biggie. Simon and Baz

I almost didn't read this book for two reasons. First: Vampire main character. I love vampires, but I lived through the deluge of Twilight, True Blood, and Vampire Diaries, not to mention that every other book seemed to be about vampires. Even though I didn't watch or read all of them, I just got vampired out.

Second: I have never been one for the whole "enemies to love interest" thing. The Harry/Draco pairing never spoke to me. Not that I never read fics that managed that ship well, it was just not my favorite, probably because I just never liked Draco. I tend to prefer romances that are built on friendship (Remus and Sirius dated each other at some point, and nothing can convince me otherwise).

All that being said, I like the Simon/Baz pairing.

I like that Baz freely admits to the reader that a lot of his tormenting of Simon is pigtail pulling.

I like that Simon is more or less: "I like a guy? A guy who was my nemisis? That's new, let's go for it."

There's none of that "Hate turns to love" shit that I personally can't stand. None of the "I am evil, yet his light draws me" or "His darkness is so seductive"

Baz isn't a villain needing to rethink his position. He's a slightly snobby guy with a lot of family pressure, who is in love with a dude who has been set up as opposition, by the adults in his life.

Simon isn't a good guy wanting to be bad. He's a guy who is following the path set out for him without giving context to his feelings with thought, because he doesn't think. So, when Baz doesn't show up at the first of the year, Simon knows 3 things for sure:

Baz is his enemy

His enemy is not there

He feels very uneasy about it.

Why?

See numbers 1 & 2

This equals out to "plotting" in Simon's mind because that's what enemies do.

It doesn't dawn on him that he was actually missing Baz and that he has romantic feelings for him until later

I also like the interaction between them. Again, I buy that they like each other. The simpler moments, like sharing food, or being flirty. It also makes sense that Baz is so nervous and guarded about the relationship. It fits that they would bicker and argue while trying to figure every thing out.

The relationships feel authentic.

In fact all of the relationships between the characters feel authentic. The sibling relationships between Ebb and Nicky, I know siblings that close. The interaction between Baz and his little sister, I know people like them too. The Friendships; in my opinion, too few friends in fiction are depicted messing with each other or being lovingly annoyed by each other.

I've known my two best friends most of my life. Not a day goes by where one of us doesn't say something that if it was said by anyone else, it would lead to a fight. Said by us, it's funny, or at least something we can't argue with.

So I related when Baz's friend complained that he had wasted his childhood hating Simon now that Simon and Baz were no longer enemies and Baz said: "What else were you going to do with your childhood?"

I spent my 20's with my friends seemingly taking turns crashing at my apartment. I spent most of my time ossulating between wishing they would go home and being glad they were there.

So at the beginning of the book, when Penny won't leave Simon's room? I saw myself in the way Simon felt about it.

That authentic and relatable quality was what I really liked about the quiet - if not Happily Ever After - then the Attempting Normal For Now ending each character got.

Well, as normal as you can get with a story involving mages, vampires and powerful Elton John songs.

I am a dodecahedron of geekdom, btw and the classic rock side jumped up and down clapping hands at all of the music references (and giggled when Carry On was fallowed by Wayward Son which will be followed by Anyway The Wind Blows).

And now we come to the reason I have not read the sequel even though it is sitting in a bag with the rest of this year's Powell's haul.

From what I have read, Wayward Son is, at least in part, about what happens after Happily Ever After and ends on a cliffhanger.

After Happily Ever After with a cliffhanger and no release date... Yeah, that will drive me crazy. I haven't even read the second book and I'm already thinking about the third. Aw man! Who dies? Who breaks up? Who becomes evil?

So, even though road trip stories are right up there with time travel stories as one of my favorites, even though I love the idea of showing a character battling depression, even though I love these characters, period; Wayward Son will stay unread until I run out of new books to read, or the next book's release date is close. Whichever comes first, because I want to think of the characters in their quiet ending ending for a little while.

#Carry On #Books #book #rainbow rowell #spoilers #four #book blogging 2020

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twdmusicboxmystery · 5 years

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FTWD 5x16: Analysis

Wow! What did everyone thing of last night’s episode? I thought it was great. Yes, it ended on a little bit of a cliffhanger, but I thought the writing was really genius.

***As always, spoilers abound for episode 5x16 below. Don’t read until you’ve watched!***

First, let’s appreciate the title: End of the Line. I know it had to do with the song Grace and Daniel sang at the end, but it caught my attention for another reason. I just have to point out that Terminus was also once referred to as “the end of the line.” I might have more to say about Terminus in a later post. For now, just wanted to point that out.

We started with seeing a pair of feet running. It reminded me of when we saw Morgan’s feet running at the beginning of FTWD S4 when he ran away from Washington D.C. and toward Texas. We saw with the feet and not the face. It’s also similar to what we saw in Inmates: Beth and Daryl’s feet while they ran away from walkers. After a moment, Dwight tripped and we saw it was him.

I'm trying to decide why they used this parallel. You could argue that Morgan ran away from a war happening (between TF and Negan) and he ended up saving a lot of people (the current Fear crew). Similarly, Dwight ran away from a war about to happen between Morgan's group and Ginny, and he ended up taking back some horses and saving them. That's probably not the extent of this parallel, but it's a start. I wonder if Morgan, in a bigger sense, or his group will end up going back to D.C. and saving them in some way there. But that's just conjecture. I’ll get into why I’m wondering about that later in the week.

At first, I wondered if this bit with Dwight was a flashback. I soon realized it wasn't. He thinks he hears Sherry's voice through the walkie, but she doesn't answer him when he says her name. It's as though he can hear her, but she can't hear him.

Later he tells June he thinks it was in his head, but her voice was leading him to something. That’s because right after he hears her voice, whether phantom or not, he sees the horses.

This is super-significant in my mind. I mean, we had the disembodied voice on the radio at the end of TWD 9x16. A disembodied female voice leading him toward something. And then there’s all those pesky parallels between Dwight/Sherry and Daryl/Beth. So it feels like a parallel/foreshadow.

And then there’s the horses. They’re a huge Beth symbol. We saw Buttons in 5B, and Morgan finding the one in 6x16 with the sign, "You're still alive" nearby. And now here, Dwight finds horses to take back to Morgan's group and help them.

Next, we see a bird’s eye view of Gulch, looking down on the walkers. We’ve seen that shot many times before, mostly in regular TWD. We saw it with the tank Rick jumped into in 1x01. We also saw it after the prison fell. I feel like this is how they signal that there's a big change coming.

More specifically, it’s often a separation of characters. So, in 1x01, Rick was separated from his family. When we saw it in 4x09, the prison had just fallen and all of the characters scattered/separated. And, of course, by the end of this episode, our entire crew was forcibly separated by Ginny.

We then hear Morgan talking to Ginny. Remember at the end of the last episode he called her on the walkie. Something she said stood out to me. She said she was glad he called her for help. "Glad as a grandma with a gravy boat." It just struck me as a callback to Daryl in The Cell and the “gravy train” named in the Easy Street song.

When Morgan tells her his group is at the Gulch, she seems surprised. She tells him a little story. She says there were 263 souls in that place and they had a crackpot leader who made the wrong call.

That struck me as something of a Grady parallel. Remember that in Dawn's case, she talked about Capt. Hansen and how he had “cracked.” After that, Dawn stepped in. So, if Ginny represents Dawn in this analogy, we have a supposed crackpot who made a bad call got a lot of people killed, just that Capt. Hansen did. And Ginny seems to have assumed leadership in his stead, as Dawn did at Grady.

Even at this point, I saw the parallels. As the episode progresses, we learn even more about what happened there. Ginny wasn't being entirely truthful. Upon learning more, the parallels to Grady only become stronger. Because as it turns out, she killed this man and his 263 people for fighting back. So just as Dawn killed Capt. Hansen, Ginny killed this guy.

She refuses to guarantee to Morgan that she’ll take everybody or that she’ll let them stay together. Morgan asks her to come anyway because they don't have another way to survive.

When he goes to talk to Grace, she has some interesting things to say. She says she knows her time (for dying) is coming. Because she's sick, she knows Ginny won't take her. Morgan assures her that he’ll make sure she's taken along.

She also tells him she understands what he was trying to tell her before. (Quick refresher: last episode, Morgan started to tell Grace how he felt about her, but she asked him not to.)

She says that she actually did tell her previous boyfriend how she felt before he died. The main reason she did was because she knew he was dying. She even tells him of the two of them slept together. She just didn’t want to make things any harder because she’s sick and still thinks she’ll be dying soon. Morgan insists that they will see one another again. Keep that in mind, as I think it's foreshadowing.

After that, Dwight shows up with the horses. He points out that if these horses are alive, there must be water nearby. Which means Ginny lied about them not being able to survive there. She simply wants them to come with her.

Alicia takes her weapon back from Strand and they decide to try and clear the Gulch of walkers. They do a mini Operation-Lead-the-Walkers-Away, which made me smile.

John, June, Daniel, Morgan, and Grace get on horses to lead the horde. (I had to smile at this part as well because Morgan rode double with Grace. Especially as she’s ill, there was no reason AT ALL for her to go rather than staying behind with Al and the others. This was just to enhance the Morgan/Grace romance. Which again, made me smile.)

They plan to use the walkers to surround Ginny and not hurt her, but just try to get her to agree to what they want. Unfortunately, this plan falls through because Ginny shows up with Luciana in tow, and Morgan’s group doesn’t want to risk Luciana getting hurt. Plus, her being there means Ginny has leverage against them, which is no doubt why she brought Luciana. So the plan fails before it even begins.

Back at the Gulch, Al finds some of the key badges Ginny’s people wear. She figures out Ginny lied about the people at the Gulch having simply died from refusing her help. She attacked and killed them because they resisted her. So, they realize that if she comes, she’ll make war on them and they're vastly out-manned and outgunned. They basically prepared to surrender to her.

Daniel had a great line in this episode. Strand is considering taking up Ginny on her offer and Daniel says, "She's not giving us a choice. That is all we need to know." Amen bro! Go Daniel!

When Ginny's people arrive at where Al's truck was left, things start to go bad. Dwight’s horse starts to freak out, obviously afraid of the walkers. He becomes surrounded and his horse refuses to move.

Finally, he stands up on top of the horse’s saddle and jumps over the walkers’ heads. He hurts his leg when he lands, but at least he isn’t bitten. The horse isn’t so lucky. The walkers fall on it and start munching. It looks exactly like what happened to Buttons, so I think it's a callback to that in S5. (And also, by extension, to Rick’s horse in 1x01.)

Limping, Dwight gets up and runs. He eventually comes to the river of water. This struck me as a Beth parallel. I never really saw Buttons as much a Beth parallel—he seemed to be more about Daryl. Watching this, it struck me that it actually might be. Dwight hurt his leg and was limping (like Beth in 4b). He finds the water (Beth = water) and of course he’s running from a walker horde.

If Morgan finding the white horse (Beth) next to the "you're still alive," sign represents Beth living, then maybe walkers feasting on Buttons could represent what happened to her. Or at least what TF things happen to her. This is just me conjecturing, but if it ends up being true, then Daryl seeing Buttons go down kind of has a new meaning, now doesn't it?

Morgan goes after Dwight and then John, June and Grace go after them. They eventually lead the walkers across the river and the river water sweeps the walkers away. So once again we have an example of water saving them. From walkers.

Back at the Gulch, they realize they're going to have to give in to Ginny. They don't any other choice.

Before she arrives, Lucia and Wes paint at the church and John and June get married. It's a very sweet, happy and hopeful ceremony.

June wears green, which I think is important. (GREENE, and think of the parallels between John/June and Daryl/Beth.) Dwight gives them his and Sherry's rings. He talks about how when he finds Sherry, it will be a new start. John’s ends up being too small for his finger, so Charlie gives them a necklace and he wears it around his neck.

Rabbi Jacob talks about how they live in a broken world. And this kind of thing, two people falling in love and getting married, is a way to repair it.

Grace and Daniel sing “Well it's all right." The light shines into the church in really lovely way and Jacob says that it's Nar Tamid, the eternal light. Yeah, massive foreshadowing there. More on that in a minute.

After that, Ginny arrives. Morgan demands she take everybody. After some humming and hawing, she finally agrees, deciding it will be easier to do that than to have a big battle. Unfortunately, she doesn't let them stay together. They all go to separate places.

Al confronts Ginny with the reason why. She says Ginny separates people because she believes if they get too close, their caring for one another will get in the way. In other words, she separates them so she has more power over them. She's definitely a dictator.

Daniel and Charlie have to part, which was kind of heartbreaking. Ditto Sarah and Wendell. They take Daniel’s cat away from him. John and Joan part as well, with John saying, "were going to find our way back to each other." (Beth and Daryl, anyone?)

Grace tells Morgan she finally feels hope and after all that happened, for the first time, she doesn't feel like it's the beginning of the end. In other words, she's going to live. Morgan finally tells her he has feelings for her, and she reciprocates. Of course, Ginny makes them go to different places.

She brings in a guy named Dr. Holt who apparently once did a rotation in oncology. I've got a lot to say about the radiation angle. @wdway, @frangipanilove and I have been discussing it, but it’s a whole post unto itself. For now, let me just point out the Grady parallel. Trevitt, who was brought into Grady, was an oncologist. I’ll go over what we think this means in a lot more detail later this week.

After everyone else leaves, and Morgan is the only one left, it turns out Ginny has decided to kill him. He's just too much of a threat because of the way he rallies people. He's too much of a leader to suit her. She takes out her gun to kill him. He lunges at her with his stick and manages to hit her in the face and knock her down. (I thought that was AWESOME! Go Morgan!) Unfortunately, she still shoots him in the shoulder.

She grabs another gun and tries again to shoot him, but the gun hisses and sputters, not firing correctly.

Just then, Dr. Holt contacts Ginny to say Grace is not sick. She's pregnant. So that's where the information she gave Morgan earlier in the episode—that she and her previous boyfriend slept together right before he died—is so important. It created baby. Morgan smiles when he hears this because he sees hope in it. He realizes what they were fighting for was worth it.

The creepy thing? Ginny gets super happy when she hears Grace is pregnant. She actually laughs. Then she says she hopes Morgan dies, but that’s no longer the point.

I have no idea what the hell Ginny is up to, but there was a creep factor there. Almost like she’s going to take Grace’s baby and do experiments on it or something. Hopefully it won’t be that sinister--I’m really not trying to be morbid--but that disturbed me.

And I have to say that, given all the Child and Baby symbolism around Beth, the idea of this definitely has potential. Frightening though it may be.

Ginny simply walks away from him, leaving him behind to die. We end with him speaking into the radio saying, “If anyone can hear me, we fought for the future. We made the hard call for her." (I'm assuming he means Grace.) “For all of us. Live. Just live." And we see walkers closing in on him.

So what are my takeaways from this? I suppose the biggest question is, will Morgan guy?

No, he won't. If you hadn’t already figured that, just take my word for it. Everything we’ve seen, the precedents we have, the qualifications for death we always see…none of them are present here for Morgan.

When someone truly dies in the show, some other major member from the group needs to be there to witness it. We also need to see either a body (decapitated or reanimated as a walker, or stabbed in the head to prevent that, so we know there's no coming back from it) and/or a burial/grave. We haven't seen any of those with Morgan.

While he does seem to have lost a lot of blood and is in a somewhat dire situation, he can also simply go into the nearest building and shut the door. He's in much more danger medically than he actually is from the walkers, which is significant.

If you want to talk logistics and outside-the-show stuff, keep in mind that Morgan/Lenny James has filmed scenes we haven't actually seen yet. I also feel like by setting up his bond with Grace, they set up future arcs for the two of them. Lots of Bethyl parallels there. There's also the fact that I still think he and Rick need to meet again before either of them dies. So no, I'm not worried about Morgan dying.

And how about those foreshadows I keep mentioning? Well, Morgan told Grace very firmly several times that they would see one another again after Ginny split them up. That, my friends, is a dialogue foreshadow. Those have never failed us on this show.

Then there's the eternal light. We saw it come through during John and June's wedding (John and June, who have so many parallels to Beth and Daryl) just before Ginny showed up to split them up. So, I feel like it's saying that Ginny splitting them up will lead to the eternal light. Which is them finding each other again, as John said, but also could be a Beth thing.

Another reason I don't think Morgan will die? He kind of became Beth in this episode. Think about it. Right after establishing a romantic relationship with someone (remember that Grace and Morgan had a Still/Alone parallel episode) he was shot by an evil dictator who happens to be a woman. (Okay, Beth wasn’t actually shot by Dawn, but she was shot because of her in a roundabout way.) Then he was shot, left behind by the rest of his group, and he's surrounded by that pesky horde of walkers as well. Not to mention, he's in a Humbug Gulch, which has sheriff stars and badges all over the place.

Specifically, take a look at the second time she tries to shoot him and the gun is defective. That gun was pointed at Morgan’s head. And it did go off, it just didn’t shoot correctly. But, like Beth, we have a potential head shot that...didn’t kill.

We don’t know if any of his group, like Grace, heard him speak into the radio at the end. If they didn’t, then they don’t know anything about him being shot or left behind. They’ll just assume he’s wherever Ginny told him to go. So that’s a little different than Beth, but the lack of realization on the rest of the group’s part is the same.

I guess you could say that, much like Glenn in S6, if Morgan dies, TD is screwed. But he won't. Glenn didn't.

Morgan’s isn’t truly a death fake out because, much like Rick’s, the audience sees it from Morgan's point of view and kind of knows that he is still alive. But for the rest of the group (John, June, etc.). this might turn into a death fake out for them.

It will be interesting to see what happens next because it could go several different ways. In terms of parallels with Beth, I'm kind of wondering if Morgan will run into the helicopter group, independent of the rest of the Fear crew. (Like maybe they’ll save him?) Because that's what we think happened with Beth. On the other hand, he might just be on his own for a while on the outside and save the others from Ginny. Maybe he actually runs into Beth. Who knows? It will be fun to see how this happens, moving forward.

As I said in an Ask yesterday, I have a lot of things to post in the next week before TWD starts. I wanted to wait to see how this all ended. The timeline didn't advance quite as much as I would've thought. I thought Morgan's group would run into the helicopter group by the end of the season. They didn't, and it's becoming more and more clear that Ginny’s group isn't actually part of the helicopter group. I think she's her own thing.

But I really did like this episode and the way it ended. Even though it was cliff-hangery, it set up a great arc for next season of all the characters needing to find one another. After all, this is not unlike what happened in TWD when the prison went down with all the characters going in separate directions and being separated from one another in 4b. Now, they're all going to have to find their way back to each other. And that, my friends, always makes for great story.

What did you think of the finale?

#beth greene #beth greene lives #beth is alive #beth is coming #td theory #td theories #team delusional #team defiance #beth is almost here #bethyl

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takerfoxx · 5 years

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So…I recently finished up Shiki. And boy, do I have…opinions!

See, this anime has got me feeling more conflicted than I’ve felt about any show in a long time, and it was honestly kind of hard to watch at times. And I mean that in the best possible way.

See, on the surface, Shiki doesn’t seem to have much special about it. The plot is as follows: in a small, insignificant village in the Japanese mountains sometime in the 1980’s, a mysterious family moves into a grand, western-styled house. At first the locals are curious, but overall unbothered and welcoming. But then people start to die from a mysterious illness, in which the victims become sleepy and lethargic, isolating themselves from everyone before simply dying. What is more, soon there are rumors that those who have died of this illness have been sighted walking around after dark. As the deaths mount up, it is up to our protagonists to…yadda, yadda, yadda.

Look, the new family are vampires. They’re sneaking into people’s homes and turning them into vampires. This isn’t a spoiler, the show doesn’t bother to hide it, it’s made explicit in the freaking opening. It’s pretty much Salem’s Lot set in a Japanese village instead of an American town. Hell, the author has already confirmed that Shiki is meant to be a Salem’s Lot homage…with a few twists.

So yeah, on its surface, there doesn’t seem to be anything special. We’ve seen this kind of story before. Even if Salem’s Lot didn’t exist, it’s not like the whole vampire invasion story hasn’t been done before. In fact, given how slowly paced the first entire third of the show is, I can’t blame anyone who got frustrated and gave up. I mean, it still treats the whole vampire thing like it’s some sinister mystery that the characters have to figure out before it’s too late, despite letting the audience in on the secret pretty much from the get-go. I can really see many people pretty much tearing out their hair and screaming at the characters, “It’s vampires! You’re being attacked by vampires! It’s so obvious!”

But no, the show takes its time, slowly building tension, making us spend time with all the townspeople as they go about their lives while trying to make sense of these strange happenings. Hell, it’s several episodes before we even see any of the vampires. And of course, you have the small band of heroes who figure out that something’s up before anyone else, and they start poking around and try to warn people, only to get laughed at and ignored, and of course the vampires are secretly sabotaging them and destroying their credibility, so blah, blah, blah, we’ve seen this before!

But it is then that the show finally tips its hands, and it does so so subtly and elegantly that you might not even notice that something’s up before it’s too late.

See, we then start to see things from the vampires’ (who refer to themselves as the Shiki) point of view. We get to meet them and come to know them. And we learn what it is that really sets this story apart from Salem’s Lot.

And that is this: becoming a Shiki does not turn you into a demon. Oh, you’re still a vampire. You’re an undead being with the standard collection of advantages (immortality, super-healing, can hypnotize those you feed upon) and weaknesses (sleep during the day, sunlight is deadly, circulatory system is vulnerable, need an invitation, aversion to religious totems), that requires blood to live. But it doesn’t change who you are as a person. You’re still you, but with an unbearable thirst for blood, and it is how you deal with this thirst that can change you. Some are already nasty people who continue to be nasty people, some are otherwise decent but go along with things because what else can they do, some truly hate what they have become but reluctantly go along with it because the thirst is just that bad, and some outright refuse to hurt anyone no matter how badly it hurts. We come to know the Shiki just like we came to know the villagers, with some being pretty evil while others are completely sympathetic and others are sort of a mix of bad and good.

But what makes it kind of brilliant is that it doesn’t somehow change the complexion of the whole vampire invasion thing. It doesn’t make it some kind of misunderstanding and the vampires were the good guys all along. No, they really are invading and killing people to add to their ranks, though their motivations are more about loneliness and desire for some kind of sanctuary than to build an army or anything like that. But it still doesn’t make it right, especially since there is the new wrinkle of whether or not someone who has died rising up again as a Shiki being a chancy thing. Some do, but others simply rot, so some of the people they kill are just dead, which in a way makes things worse. They even start to kidnap people from the city as a food source. What they are doing is still monstrous, and the show makes no pretentions otherwise.

So you start to feel conflicted. It’s not that you start rooting for the Shiki to succeed (or maybe you do, but you’re not supposed to), but you do start to feel for many among their number, and want them to have some kind of happy ending.

But then the show tips its hand again, and all hell breaks loose…but to talk about that we have to go deep into spoiler territory, so if you’ve already seen the show or just don’t care about spoilers, check under the cut for the rest.

In their desperation to survive, the human resistance start to take more and more drastic measures to warn the others, with the one in the lead, the town’s doctor, who had already been outwitted by the Shiki on several occasions and had been personally warned by them, being forced to resort to horrific means in order to gain an advantage.

He uses his authority as doctor to isolate one of the infected and keeps them hidden until they die, deliberately fudging medical records so the Shiki would not be informed of their death. Then he keeps close watch on the corpse, waiting to see if it would be one of the ones to rise up.

It is, and now with one of the Shiki under his power, he closes the clinic and starts to subject his new prisoner to a variety of torturous tests, checking to see if it is indeed harmed by sunlight (she is, and graphically so), repulsed by religious iconography (she is), affected at all by drugs (she isn’t), if it can heal from any injury (she can), and so on, until he has learned all that he needs and kills the Shiki with a stake to the heart. He carefully documents the whole process, cataloguing irrefutable proof that vampires exist and now walk among them. Smart plan, but it should be noted that the Shiki herself has no idea what is going on, and is fully awake through the whole process, bound and gagged and feeling everything that he does to her. She struggles, she cries out, she begs him to stop until he gags her, because as far as she knows, she had gotten sick, passed out, and woken up to find the doctor torturing her for no good reason.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that the Shiki also so happens to be his wife?

It’s a truly horrifying scene, not only because of what he’s doing and who he’s doing it to, but how cold, clinical, and detached he is throughout the whole process. And given my rant from earlier, it should have made me lose all sympathy for him.

…and yet, it didn’t. Because I understood.

Honestly, that’s what makes Shiki work. That’s the whole point. It’s a lot of otherwise decent people who do terrible things that are wrong, that are evil, and yet they don’t lose their sympathetic points, because you kind of get it, because you can’t say that you wouldn’t do the same in their position. After all, considering the situation, what else could they have done? And even if you don’t agree with that, you can at least understand why they made the choices they make, as they always fall in line with understandable human nature.

But of course, that’s just the first two-thirds. You know that sooner or later, the rest of the village is going to wise up to what’s happening. And they do: the Shiki are finally exposed.

And then all hell breaks the fuck loose.

The script is flipped yet again, and the last six episodes or so are the humans fighting back and doing a damned good job of it too. Suddenly, the hunters become the hunted, and the Shiki are dragged out from their hiding places and exterminated. Graphically.

This ought to be gratifying to watch. This ought to exhilarating. Finally, the invading monsters are getting what’s coming to them! They brought it on themselves, after all.

But it’s not. Not at all.

Because we’ve already gotten to know several of the Shiki, some of them even before they were turned. We’ve come to empathize with them and the community they’ve built. And now, seeing them not as monsters fleeing a hunt that has gone all wrong but as victims who are terrified for their lives, who desperately seek any way of escape, who die screaming for mercy, often at the hands of their former friends, is heartbreaking. Even the Shiki leader that masterminded the whole thing breaks down crying, wondering if this is punishment for having killed so many people…but then she says that it can’t be her fault, because she didn’t ask to become a vampire, it was forced on her! So how can she be blamed for just wanting to have others like her around to keep her company? It’s a very poignant breakdown to watch, as this ancient monster grapples with her own guilt and inhumanity and the unfairness of it all.

But it goes beyond that. See, we all have a little bit of a monster inside us, and though they may have begun as innocent victims, it doesn’t take long for many of the villagers to succumb to theirs.

There are many that are just a little too gleeful about bashing the Shiki’s heads in, about dragging them to burn in the sunlight, about stabbing them and beating them with pipes, despite many of them formerly being their neighbors. Some admit to specifically targeting those that they had already disliked, while others are quicks to kill actual humans that they merely suspect of being Shiki collaborators. One innocent family that had nothing to do with anything is massacred just because one of their relatives had Shiki connections.

But even with all that violence and cruelty, it isn’t as if the roles are completely reversed. Many of the villagers outright refuse to have anything to do with the massacre because they can’t stand the thought of killing their loved ones. Others do take part in the killing, but it’s clear that they hate it, and one man, upon seeing how the Shiki are being tortured to death for no reason, proceeds to give each every one of them a merciful quick death to end their suffering before breaking down and crying. And all the while, we continue to see the damage that the Shiki’s wrought, from a meek housewife who has gradually gone insane as her family dies and rots one by one to a poor little girl who has watched her own family disappear and resorts to digging her own grave because she’s convinced that she’s next. Even the worst and most violent of the villagers gets the chance to verbally tear down each and every one of the lead Shiki’s justifications for her actions, brutally smashing all of her defenses. And though he has been portrayed as a pretty terrible person thus far, he’s actually right in everything he says.

I’m not going to give away the whole game, but suffice to say, things end pretty badly for both sides. A lot of people die, and the few survivors end up scattering to the winds to try to move on and rebuild their lives. So basically, neither side really wins. But then, it was never about sides. The plot is propelled by sides, yes, but the focus is always on individuals, about the good and bad in everyone and how extreme situations bring that out.

Of course, the next question would be how it holds up to Flip-Flappers, which I had watched immediately before. And as for that…apples and oranges, man. Flip-Flappers was a very throw everything at the wall and see what sticks kind of show, while Shiki had a concept that it stuck to from beginning to end. But I will say that Flip-Flappers didn’t always stick the landing and Shiki was more consistently good from beginning to end, but Flip-Flappers heights were higher than Shiki’s heights, and leave it at that.

Anyway, I am way behind on the Best of the Super Juniors tournament, so I’ll be taking a break for a bit. After that…I dunno, maybe I’ll put it up to another vote.

#anime #shiki

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mairzymarzipan · 5 years

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Night of the Full Moon- New Update(with WEREWOLVES)

Hey I know I’ve hardly started these reviews butttt- Night of the Full Moon updated in the America today! There’s lots of exciting stuff I want to go over real quick. We have new enemies, new illustrations for the classes, and brand new class!

New Illustrations

We got some cool new art for the various classes! The easy levels still show the story ofc, but the hard levels depict Red and her Grandma when she was a kid.

The first thing I notice is just how happy Red looks to be in almost every illustration, and how supportive Grandma looks. Even when Red is pursuing an ‘illegal’ career as a witch, Grandma is smiling on. The apothecary is the only one with a change. Red looks distinctively unhappy, and Grandma is apparently too sick to be conscious.

Oh yeah, and this is further proof that whatever kind of nun Red is, she doesn’t go the evil church because Grandma is very cool with it. Which makes it even more annoying that everyone refers to the evil church as THE church like its the only church there is. Hmph.

There’s red(the color) on the glass, like someone cut themselves on a picture frame and them jammed it back together again. Nasty.

Another interesting bit, though, is that each Red looks consecutively older than the last. Knight Red looks like a toddler and apothecary Red looks almost adult. Which means that all of these might take place in the same timeline? So that mean that if you play as a knight, you’re playing as a five year old?

Errrr. For reasons, I hope not.

Also Nun being there makes things really confusing because like, isn’t a Nun supposed to go live in a convent? Actually, the Nuns I know of sort of make a commitment to marry the church...I don’t think that’s appropriate for a little kid. But what did she, go to the convent and then come back and learn dark magic? That’s...odd.

Yeah...I just have to assume this is not all the same universe. But making her look older in each illustration does manage to tell an effective story about a little kid who had a good grandma with her grandma until her grandma got deathly ill...

New Enemies

We got some new enemy silhouettes! You know what that means- beating up more people!

OK, let’s go through these quickly. First up we have ‘weird fishman’ who is guess, and fish-man? Who is weird? Next up is an ettin which is apparently a two headed DnD monster. If it turns out to be a couple of people fused together that would be fun. Piggy Architect is interesting. Do they build houses for all the other monsters? I’m guessing it’s a Three Little Pigs reference?

Slaughter looks kind of look Oogie Boogie. Candy Man is, I’m guessing, a man made of candy? Hard to tell with the silhouette, TBH. Could be a man in a weird hat. Not sure what the things on the side are supposed to be. Poker Soldier looks like it might be a card soldier from Alice in Wonderland. Card-based monsters always have a good chance to be meta.

Prince Charming is a horse that’s flexing, I guess. And then- Red Riding Hood?

So, you fight yourself? This better not be another shitty mirror-fight. I hate fighting that guy.

But this means...that Little Red Riding Hood has a voice actress now. This means that we get to hear Red’s voice!

A bit more interesting at the additions to the bosses. No new standard bosses, instead the new silhouettes have red borders. In this game, a red border means that this person is going to be a final boss.

You have a Cursed Werewolf who takes all of the frame except for like a pixel. Beeg. Obviously they get called a ‘cursed’ werewolf because just ‘werewolf’ was already taken. Then there’s a Cyclops Detective who I guess, must be a cyclops and a detective. Looks like they’re maybe some kind of goblin, too. And-

Little Red.

Again.

So she’s a enemy AND a boss? You have to fight yourself twice?

...Actually, no, I don’t think you do. I’m gonna stop playing ignorant, now.

New Class

The werewolf class finally opened up! Now Red gets to be a big doggo!

Psyche!

Wait a minute...

OK, I gotta admit I am a little disappointed that we don’t get to see Red go full monster. Butttt, playing as another POV issss pretty interesting!

Anyway, this guy’s name is Jerry, and...well, spoilers, but he’s the Werewolf that we skipped last time. I’ll go more in depth about him later but what’s important to know is that he has a crush on Red and also he’s a werewolf.

The name on the grave is interesting to me. Who was Sofia?

And who’s that lingering above him? It looks like the three new big bosses we just looked at.

That’s right, I bet that Red, the Cursed Werewolf and the Cyclops Detective are bosses you can only fight as Jerry. It could be that there are other characters you can only fight as one hero. I already know someone I’m sure you can only fight as Red...

I just have to say I’m curious to see if the programmers adjusted of the lines for his route, because there are some enemies who come out and call you ‘little girl’.

So what’s Jerry’s deal, anyway? Why is he going into the woods? Who is he trying to save? Red? His dad?

Anyway, the blurb on the class selection screen should tell us, right?

“The person the carpenter likes the most is Little Red. He always goes to play with her after finishing his day’s work. Many times he almost professed his feelings to her, but each time he eventually swallowed his words. This is because the secret only he knows...”

Oh.

Ok.

Ok, game, so you’re going to focus on the most boring thing about Jerry.

Hey, don’t give me wrong, I think this kid is potentially a neat character, but I just don’t care about the romantic angle the game is always trying to push so hard.

If you toggle it over to hard, you get something- a bit more interesting. But we’ll save that for later.

I’ve played a bit of the werewolf path and by a bit I mean just a sliver. I guess this is the game’s version of a berserker class because you have a rage bar you can fill, but I haven’t really figured out what I’m doing yet. I’m glad to report then when you defeat and enemy, though, you get some really cute art of Jerry and his own family

Dawww

You can also buy cards with your own visage on it. Jerry looks...Markedly more stressed than Red ever does, though.

Anywhoo. I’ll be around with a real review sometime. Now off to beat up some monsters as a big doggo. My order for character reviews is plotted out in advance, but as I unlock new characters, I’ll figure out what where to put them.

#mairzy posts #night of the full moon #new update #jerry #the carpenter #the werewolf

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